PSYC 381: Abnormal Psychology

Research Paper

This 7-10 page paper presents an opportunity to both explore a topic that you are interested in and to demonstrate your skill at reading, interpreting, and critiquing journal articles.

You will select a topic in abnormal psychology that either a) addresses a disorder we will NOT cover in class (e.g. dialectical behavior therapy for borderline personality disorders); OR b) explores a unique aspect of a disorder that we will cover (e.g. global burden of disease for psychological disorders such as depression and substance abuse).

Paper assignments:
1) July 20th -- Submit your topic and 2-3 journal articles that you will use in your paper.

2) July 31st & August 1st -- paper rough draft conferences OPTIONAL

3) August 8th -- Final draft due

Pick your Search Terms

Once you've decided on a topic for your paper, the first step is to pick your search terms. 

Tips:

1. Pull the keywords or search terms from your topic or research question.

For example, What are the major types of depression prevention for middle school and high school students? 

My major keywords or search terms are:
Depression
Prevention
Middle School Students
High School Students

2.  What are some synonyms or alternative keywords? 
Suicide
Intervention program

3. Search Strategy Builder links your keywords with the word: AND and links together synonyms or alternative keywords with the word: OR.

After you click on "Click to create a Search Statement", the Search Strategy Builder combines your basic search with additional synonyms or alternative keywords. 

Here's my new search:
(depression or suicide) and (prevention) and (middle school students or high school students or school and intervention)

You can copy your search strategy to the journal database you are using.

Journal Articles

For your assignment, you are required to find articles from refereed or peer-reviewed journals (such as academic journal articles).  You will need to understand the difference between popular and scholarly articles.

Popular vs. Scholarly Articles tutorial describes the key differences between magazine articles and academic journal articles.

Journal Indexes:

PsycInfo-- Contains citations and abstracts to articles in journals, dissertations, and book chapters in all areas of psychology. Includes full text and indexing of all articles from PscyARTICLES.

Medline (AHSL Ovid) -- Medline is the premier bibliographic database of international biomedical literature providing comprehensive information on every aspect of medicine, biomedical research and health care.

CINAHL -- Provides comprehensive, authoritative coverage of the literature in nursing and allied health care areas.

Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index -- Indexes core journal articles and cited references in science, technology, and the social sciences.

ERIC -- ERIC indexes journal articles in 1,000 education-related journals.

For additional journal indexes:

Indexes to Articles and More -- provides access to all of the journal indexes accessible through the UA Library.

Other Considerations

It is important not to plagiarize another person's ideas when you are writing your paper.

Avoiding Plagiarism provides tips on how to avoid plagiarism and examples of good and bad paraphrased statements with commentary.

Citation Guides give you examples of how to cite articles using APA: Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, MLA: Modern Languages Association Style Manual, or the CMS: Chicago Manual of Style.