Mental heath issues

Research Paper Requirements

Papers should be typed and with the following format guidelines:

11 or 12 point Times New Roman font

double-spaced

1” margins

Papers should be no longer than 10 pages of text (not including title page, abstract, references, figure caption, figures)

For the final paper, you are asked to do the following:

Title Page

Abstract

Introduction

at the end of the introduction you should include your hypotheses:

including explicit predictions about both main effects and about the interaction of the two independent variables (i.e., whether each main effect/interaction will be significant and the nature of the effect)

a discussion of why the variables should interact. 

Method

Your methods section should propose a research design that tests your hypotheses. Your research design must be a true experiment, including:

Two independent variables (i.e., a factorial design).

At least one of the independent variables must allow random assignment of subjects to conditions (you are allowed to include one Individual Difference Measure (subject variable) in your design, e.g. gender, ethnicity, or perhaps (for example) a group with depression versus a control group without depression).

Proposals with a single independent variable will receive a maximum of 70 points. 

Describe your study in enough detail that someone else could replicate the experiment you have designed. 

Results and Data Analyses

The Results and Data Analyses section should show what the results would be if the experimental hypotheses were supported. 

Briefly describe what analyses would need to be performed and your design

Go through and explain if you expect significant main effects and an interaction

Describe the direction of these effects. 

Present a figure showing the predicted results.  The results should be in the future tense.  In other words, “I would expect to find…” or “It is predicted that…”

Discussion

The Discussion section should briefly describe the implications of the expected results. Reminder: You didn’t do this study, so you need to write about it in the future tense, e.g., “The expected finding of a main effect for X would support the idea that…”  It should also include a section where you describe a set of alternative results. 

What might your data look like if you do not find what you expected? 

What would you conclude if you found the data you expected? Your discussion section should also discuss any potential limitations of the study you presented (e.g., generalization given the sample, other possible conceptualizations of the independent and dependent variables).

 In other words, if you did your study and found what you predicted, what would be the next logical experiment to run? you should broaden your discussion to talk about why this is an important research question more generally, pulling out points that you wrote about in Paper #1.

References

Figure Caption(s)

Figure(s)

Copies of Abstracts for all articles you review