Health
Psychology:
Research
Paper Instructions
Research proposal due April
1; paper due April 20
Psychology
305 -- Spring 2004 -- Dordt
College
Purpose,
Process, & Proposal
The purpose
of the research paper is to allow you to synthesize research about and
apply the biopsychosocial model to a specific health issue. Your
paper involves choosing a specific health issue, researching how that situation/disease
develops and the factors that contribute to it, and current treatment,
education, or prevention approaches. The specific steps are given below.
-
Choose a topic from the following list; other topics must be pre-approved by the instructors:
-
Self-care (e.g., breast, testicular
or skin self-exams; getting regular check-ups)
-
Exercise (e.g., improving adherence
to training programs)
-
Eating disorders or obesity
-
Prevention of accidents & injury
(e.g., safety gear, helmets, seat belts)
-
Smoking
-
Pain management
-
Immunizations or vaccinations
-
Infant mortality or treatment of
terminally- or chronically-ill children
-
Compliance with medical advice
-
Health impact of caregiving (e.g.,
family members of Alzheimer's or AIDS patients)
-
Brain or spinal injuries
-
Cancer
-
Arthritis
-
Survivorship & grief
-
Asthma
-
Hospice vs. hospital care for the
dying
-
Strokes
-
Narrow your topic and consider what
kind of information you need
-
For example, if your chosen topic
is "infant mortality," you could focus on SIDS ("crib death"), birth defects,
child abuse, etc.
-
You then need to think about focusing on
prevention, coping, or treatment
-
How you narrow your topic dictates
what key words you need to search the literature - and what you find in
the literature may help you narrow your topic
- Conduct library research
-
Your paper must include at least
5 primary & and scholarly references (i.e., not textbooks, not popular magazine articles,
not the Web) and at least 1 secondary source (handbook, professional
encyclopedia,
etc.). For more information about the difference between primary
and secondary references, go to http://www.library.sjsu.edu/subject/biology/primary.htm
-
Focus on sources that help you understand:
-
the nature of the topic or its definition
(e.g., what is SIDS?)
-
how this behavior or disease develops
and important contributing factors (look for biological, social, emotional,
cognitive, and spiritual factors)
-
current treatment or prevention
approaches (e.g., cognitive or family therapy, drugs, exercise)
Turn in a typed, 2 paragraph description
of your research topic and at least 2 relevant APA-style references by
April 1. Your instructors will tell you whether
your topic is approved.
Writing
your Paper
Content Requirements (depending
on your topic, you may need to organize your paper differently than this,
but the content should still include these kinds of issues):
-
Describe the nature of your topic
(1-2 paragraphs)
-
Discuss factors that cause
and contribute to the behavior or disease (hint: think BPS model; about
2 pages)
-
Synthesize the research by topic
rather than summarizing article-by-article.
-
For example, say "chronic stress
has been shown to negatively influence disease X (Smith & Wesson, 1998;
Zeus, 1989)" instead of "Smith and Wesson (1998) showed blah blah.
Zeus (1989) found blech blech. Jones' (1994) research showed that...."
-
Note that for every factual statement
you make in your paper, you must include an in-text reference (which is
then included in the reference list at the end of the paper). Further,
you may only include those sources in your reference list that are actually
cited in the paper.
-
Summarize current treatments or
prevention approaches (about 1 page)
-
Reflect on this health issue from
the perspective of the BPS model (e.g., what's left out?) and your own life experience (1-2 paragraphs)
Format Requirements:
-
The body of the paper (excluding
title page and references page) should be 5-7 double-spaced,
typed pages.
-
Papers must follow APA style in
terms of the title page, proper referencing, and professional writing style.
-
Turn in 2 copies of your
paper.
Evaluation
Criteria
Papers are worth 100 points. The best papers
will:
-
demonstrate good understanding of
a specific example of the chosen broad topic (e.g., crib death as an example
of the broad topic Infant Mortality)
-
demonstrate comprehension of the
factors involved in causing, maintaining, contributing to, preventing,
and treating the health issue
-
demonstrate your ability to apply
the biopsychosocial model to this issue
-
demonstrate your ability to synthesize
information from a variety of sources
-
be well-written and meet the format and APA-style requirements (note: a significant number of grammatical
errors will decrease your grade)
this page last revised January
2004