Psychology In The News

WRITING ASSIGNMENT

Psychology in the News

(100 points)

Directions: The PSY 1010 essay will require you to use your critical thinking skills and your writing ability to address a question of primary importance: How will you use psychology in personal life, family, and/or career. In order to be able to successfully answer this question, you must be able to analyze and synthesize psychological concepts and be able to apply them to your speculations concerning your personal life, family, and/or career. In your essay, you will need to clearly identify how the information directly relates and enhances your personal life, family, and/or career.

Your paper will make use of two sources. The first source is your published article.

The second source is an article from a refereed (peer-reviewed) journal (preferably an American Psychological Association journal published within the last five years) which addresses the study in the published article You will want to find an article which is research (data-driven) based and which uses the experimental, correlational or quasi-experimental method. The article must have the traditional sections associated with a research study (abstract, introduction (literature review), methods, results, discussion, references). That means no reviews of literature or other types of articles.

In discussing information from your text, you must reference the published article and identify the study. You will be expected to use specific examples of how the concepts will be relevant to your career. Detailing the information is important to show relevance and understanding of the assignment. You must be specific about how it will benefit you.

For the journal article, you will be integrating the article and its content into your paper to highlight its significance to your chosen field of study rather than merely citing it. You will be using the journal article to discuss its relationship of the topic you have selected as important to your personal life, family, and/or career. Note that you will be discussing the article and the implication of its findings in some detail, not merely mentioning it in passing.

STEP 1: Find a popular news article from within the past 5 years that reports on the results of a psychological study. This should not be a blog entry, but a published article from a news source such as Time Magazine, The New York Times, Newsweek, NPR, CNN, Fox News, etc. A great place to look is the APA’s Psychology news portal: http://www.apa.org/news/psycport/. Read through the article and ensure that it is descriptive and sufficiently long enough in order to draw conclusions from the original research mentioned. You should select an article that relates to an area of psychology that interests you and can be applied to your life in some way.

STEP 2: Go find the psychological study or studies that are mentioned in the news report. The study should have been performed within the past 5 years.

STEP 3: Submit your topic. You will provide the reference for your news article and for at least one scholarly journal for approval.

STEP 4: Write a paper between 3-4 pages that

• describes and summarizes both articles

• compares and contrasts the key points, style, and purpose of the news article with that of the research article

• examines if the news article accurately describes the research

• a reflection of how the information you read directly relates to your personal life, family, and/or career

• includes correct citations (both in-text and in a reference page) for all articles discussed

Your paper must be done using APA formatting style which includes:

1) A title page with the title in the middle of the page

2) Page numbering in the upper right corner beginning with 1 on the title page

3) In-text citations in APA format (that means the citation follows either the quote or the paraphrase of the information provided)

4) A reference page at the end (called References) in APA format