This paper assignment requires you to summarize and respond to a psychology research paper of your own choosing

This paper assignment requires you to summarize and respond to a psychology research paper of
your own choosing

Choose a psychology related article from a peer reviewed journal. This article should
not come from a magazine. Please note that Psychology Today is a magazine and
therefore is not appropriate for this assignment. You should use the library’s electronic
databases to find an article – the Psychology and Behavioral Sciences collection is your
best choice. Be sure to limit your search to those available in full-text (you can print out
the whole article). Some of you can use the journal article you selected for your first
paper if you successfully found a peer reviewed article in that assignment. The article
must include a “methods section” which will indicate that it is reporting an actual
study. If you choose another article, you may want to run it by me first.
2. Read the article. You may need to do this several times. I suggest making notes as you read.
3. The paper should be roughly two pages in length, typed and double spaced. I’m less
concerned with the length than I am with the content. However, I can’t imagine this can be
done effectively in less than a page and a half or so.
4. The first half (3/4 to 1 page) of the assignment is to write a summary of the article you have
read. This should be your description of the article you read. It is important that you
summarize the main point or points of the article and that anyone reading your summary
will know what the original article was about. Your summary should include the conclusions
the researchers reached from their study. Overall, you need to answer three questions:
 What did they want to find out?
 How did they study that question?
 What did they find?
I will be grading this section of your paper based on how well you understand the article and
how well you are able to communicate that understanding. You do not need to give me
detailed descriptions of experiments and please do not quote or paraphrase the article in an
attempt to summarize accurately.
5. The second part (1 page or so) of the assignment is for you to write your own thoughts,
reactions, ideas, etc. about the article you read. This is the more important part of the
paper. If you do not complete this part you cannot get higher than a C on the paper.
You should include the following:
 A critique of the research methods used in the article. You might be critical of how
the research was carried out or you might say it was done well – either way you need
to support your position.
 You must include at least one specific idea for future research that you would like to
see explored that relate to the topic you read about. There are no correct answers for