SRPSY

PSYC 2305 FINAL PAPER RUBRIC Disclaimer – this is my tentative, rough rubric. I reserve the right to grade differently based on individual project-specific circumstances and/or particularly egregious errors. I am providing this as only an approximate guide for you to use as you edit your final paper. The definitive guides to what to do in your final paper are in the lab slides and your lab manual.

1. Title page – 5% a. Title, name, affiliation b. Other formatting

i. Gets its own page ii. Title, byline above middle

iii. Title < 12 words (if feasible) 2. Abstract – 5%

a. Topic/significance/question b. Participants c. Hypotheses d. Methods e. Conclusion/implications f. APA formatting

i. <250 words ii. not indented

iii. Abstract title bold, centered iv. Gets its own page

3. Introduction – 15% a. Introduces problem/research domain b. Introduces specific question c. Reviews past lit and relates to current project by identifying gaps or contradictions or

serious limitations i. Does a good job of summarizing

ii. Successfully relates to other lit or to present study iii. Identifies non-trivial, non-generic limitations or gaps

d. Basic intro to operational definitions of study variables e. Basic intro to approach f. Hypotheses/expectations g. Decent transitions between paragraphs/ideas

4. Method – 15% a. Participants

i. Who? ii. How recruited?

iii. How compensated? iv. Consent/IRB (may be subsumed in procedure, potentially)? v. Participants appropriate for study?

b. Design i. Identifies kind of design (may be subsumed in procedure, potentially)

ii. Identifies experimental vs correlational iii. Identifies IVs/PVs, DVs/CVs

c. Procedure – enough detail to do the study d. Materials/Instruments/Measures – as needed, sufficient detail to do the study, supported

or plausible rather than arbitrary or relying only on intuition 5. Discussion – 15%

a. Presents possible results and what each possible result means for the hypotheses from the Intro. May give equal weight to all possible results, or primarily discuss expected result, but must have at least some significant discussion of unexpected possible outcomes. 50/50, 60/40, maybe even 70/30. NOT 99/1.

b. Relates each set of possible results to other literature c. Discusses practical/theoretical implications d. Discuss limitations e. Discuss future directions

6. References – 5% a. APA style for each ref (especially journal articles; be more liberal on websites or databases

or government reports or other oddball sources) b. Alphabetized c. References centered top not bold d. Hanging indents e. Starts on fresh page f. Each in-text cited item appears in references, and vice versa.

7. APA Style within Abstract and Main Body– 10% a. Running head, title in body b. Page numbers c. In-text citations done properly d. No extraneous info about cited work (e.g., author first names or affiliations or article title in

the text) e. Margins f. Font g. No contractions h. Numbers done (more or less) correctly i. Headings done (more or less) correctly j. No first person k. Abbreviations done correctly

8. Writing Clarity and Quality – 10% a. Proper grammatical sentences b. Appropriate word choice c. Concise/does not repeat to fill space d. Does not make logical leaps but actually spells things out for the reader e. Is it clear, or am I guessing what the author is trying to say?

9. Contains at least 4 peer-reviewed empirical primary sources – 20% a. Uses at least 4 – at least 4 in intro, at least 3 in discussion b. Actually uses them in some meaningful way

10. In addition to all of the above, I will take off points from the relevant section(s) for any of: a. Failure to properly cite close paraphrase or quotations (note that if this verges from

formatting error into plagiarism, the academic honesty process will be used instead) b. Failure to cite factual assertions that are not widely-accepted, every day knowledge. For

instance, “Depression is increasingly common among current college students, compared to prior college cohorts,” would require a citation to back it up, while “The sun rises in the east and sets in the west,” would not require a citation.

c. Obvious failure to have read the cited sources d. Over-use of direct quotations where paraphrase is feasible