Psychology of Loss and Grief Research Paper Guidelines 30% of course grade To give you an opportunity to delve more deeply into a specific topic that interests you, you’ll write a final research pa
Psychology of Loss and Grief Research Paper Guidelines
30% of course grade
To give you an opportunity to delve more deeply into a specific topic that interests you, you’ll write a final research paper on a subject of your choice, a detailed literature review on a particular aspect of loss or grief. This could mean looking more closely at a topic we’ve covered in class, or an investigation into something we didn’t have a chance to cover. The paper should be approximately 10-12 pages long (double-spaced, 12-point font and normal margins) plus references. The paper will be due during finals week by midnight 12/14.
You must use at least 10 references from APA peer-reviewed journals or other scholarly sources. Additional sources from the popular media or real-life examples can be included as supplemental sources, but your main sources need to be from appropriate scholarly publications.
To make sure your topic is appropriate, you will submit a one-paragraph summary with at least five scholarly references via Brightspace by midnight 11/9 (earlier if you can) for the professor’s approval or suggestions. She’ll provide feedback within a week about whether the topic is suitable as is or needs refinement in some way. The most common issue is that proposed topics are far too broad to cover in a meaningful way in a paper of this length, so we may need to work together a bit to find the right level of focus.
You should begin the process of developing a topic by thinking of a specific research question or hypothesis and then searching the literature in the PsycInfo database for evidence to answer that question. In choosing your topic, remember to keep it grounded in the psychological research, not in popular opinion, and you should not use first person. This is a literature review, not a personal essay.
The paper must be in APA style. See:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
for an excellent summary of APA rules, and see my tips below).
Prof. Vermeulen’s Brief Guide to Research Papers
The basic premise behind a literature review paper is that all knowledge in psychology (and science in general) is meant to build on previous research which has been peer-reviewed. This means it has been critiqued and approved by other experts in the particular field, ensuring – theoretically, at least – that the methodology is appropriate, the data analyses are accurate, and the conclusions are logical and defensible. Basing your work on peer-reviewed findings is meant to let you a) draw on valid and reliable existing work rather than reinventing the wheel and b) identify gaps or unanswered questions which you can then focus your efforts on. However, the point is not simply to summarize or reiterate what others have done, but to use that literature as the foundation for something new.
Essentially, previous research provides the bricks that you will combine in a new way, and add your own new bricks to, to create a structure that is your unique contribution to the field. In creating that new structure, you’ll shed light on an important topic, propose or test an intervention, offer a new theory that combines multiple viewpoints or fields, or whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish. In all cases, your goal is convince your readers to agree with your conclusions, and part of that process of convincing is to head off anything that makes them think, “wait a minute….” That means supporting every point you make with an appropriate brick, and not leaving gaps in your argument or including unsupported points, broad generalizations (“as everyone agrees…”) or emotional appeals that destabilize your structure.
A literature review should include three main components:
1. Introduction: This is where you hook the reader. You should not only identify a problem or question, but explain why it’s worthy of the reader’s attention. That could involve citing statistics on the prevalence of a problem, discussing its severity, and/or otherwise making the point of why anybody should care about the topic at all. An intro could run from a paragraph to a couple of pages depending on the complexity of the topic, available data, etc., but the argument for the topic’s importance must be grounded in facts – not just “violent movies are bad,” but “X number of people watch violent movies each year and studies demonstrate this has Y general effects on them, yet outcomes like Z have not been adequately explored.” Above all, the introduction should convince the reader to care enough about the topic to keep reading. This gives your structure a solid foundation to rest on.
This section should answer the question: Why does this topic matter?
2. Literature Review: This will be the major section of your paper in terms of length. Here you’ll present the existing research that has been done on the topic by summarizing and critiquing earlier studies (which could be results of surveys about the topic, reports on experiments, assessments of interventions or prevention programs, etc.). Starting with the first study, explain, as concisely as you can while still communicating the relevant points, the population, methodology, results, and the conclusions those authors drew, and if appropriate point out any particular strengths or weaknesses. The goal isn’t to include every detail from the original study – your reader can just read that if that want that level of detail. Instead you’re pulling out the relevant points needed to support your broader theme. That’s Brick One.
Then move onto Brick Two, the next study – ideally with a transition that points out the relationship between them. Did the second one find similar results, thereby supporting the first set of findings? Did it find conflicting results, and if so, can you tell why? In this way you’re not just laying bricks next to each other, but mortaring them into some kind of new shape. And so on through whatever number of studies you present, at least five and preferably more.
If you find themes across studies you can group them together, or divide them into subsets: “While the previous studies examined the effect of watching violent movies on attention span, the next two focus on their association with aggressive behaviors.” Be critical as appropriate, but not just to be nitpicky, and do NOT include your opinions. Essentially this section (which is the bulk of a lit review paper) is where you are summarizing for the reader the current state of research on your topic of choice – not in a way that simply repeats what others have done, but in a way that creates a new structure or pattern that has never existed before. If appropriate you can include sub-sections that explicitly group related papers together (i.e., “Pet Loss in Childhood,” “Pet Loss in Adulthood”). And again, transitions are your friend here to make it clear how the studies you’ve chosen to include connect with each other.
This section should answer the question: What has been done so far to address this topic?
3. Discussion: Now that you’ve built your new structure, give the reader a guided of tour of it. Synthesize what you’ve just presented and, as appropriate, point out limitations, conflicts, gaps in the literature, areas for future research, etc. This is really where YOUR contribution comes in (but you’re still not using first person here) – take those separate studies and findings you’ve just summarized and bring them all together to explain to the reader what it all means about your topic, and what it means we still DON’T know about the topic that could be addressed in future research. This is the fun part – your chance to be critical, to draw connections between previous studies, to suggest an intervention that hasn’t been done before, etc.
This section should answer the question: What do we really know about this topic given the unique perspective you’ve created in your new structure, and what more remains to be determined or tested?
So, the basic sequence across the three sections is: What’s the topic and why does it matter; what research has been done so far on the topic; and what does it all mean and where do we go from here? In every section, you’re building your case about the topic – don’t simply summarize what’s already been written, but add a level of analysis, criticism, or synthesis that improves the reader’s understanding. And don’t just tell them what they should think about it…. draw them along with you so by the end they can’t help but agree with you, because you’ve made your case so solidly and clearly.
Prof. Vermeulen’s APA-Style Paper Writing Tips
Remember, your goal is not only to write a brilliant paper but to convince your reader that it’s a brilliant paper by building an airtight case for your ultimate point. Don’t give the reader any reason to doubt that you are the expert on this topic, and that includes following APA style rules, as much as they might drive you nuts. So…
DON’T:
- Don’t use second person (“you”) or first person (“I” or “we,” except maybe in the very broadest cultural sense – “We must respond to the crisis of violence before it is too late.” Definitely don’t include things like “I think” or “I believe” – no offense, but your reader really isn’t going to care what you think or believe unless you have such a reputation in the field that you have built-in credibility. Otherwise, you only undermine your own case with appeals to emotion or anything other than evidence-based conclusions and logic.
- Don’t say “prove” or “proven” because you really can’t prove anything, you can only disprove it (maybe – in Carl Sagan’s classic example, can you either prove or disprove that there’s an invisible dragon living in my garage?). Instead stick with terms like demonstrates, indicates, illustrates, supports, etc. It may seem like waffling, but again, you’re just defending yourself against any attempt to tear down your argument: “How can you prove that X causes Y? Maybe it’s really a combination of Q and D divided by R when there’s a full moon that causes Y.” Don’t allow that opening by presenting any unprovable (heh) conclusions.
- Similarly, don’t overgeneralize about anything – avoid phrases like “everyone does X” or “we all know that Y.” There will always (again, heh) be an exception someone can cite that undermines your credibility in general.
- Don’t refer to “research” like it’s an entity – “research says,” “research supports,” etc. – specify which researchers (“As Smith and Jones (2024) demonstrate…”). Otherwise it seems fuzzy and unreliable, like when the media uses something like “experts report…” Who found/says/supports? Be specific. And cite by author last names and publication date, not article title. See https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/ for more citation rules.
- Don’t use extensive direct quotes from other sources. Only use them if there’s some good reason, like a phrase is perfectly worded or there’s no other way to put it, and in those cases include the page number or paragraph in the citation. Otherwise, paraphrase into your own words, and cite the source of the idea. Using a lot of direct quotes is seen as lazy, or as a sign you don’t understand the original well enough to reword it accurately.
- Don’t rely too heavily on one source. If a large percentage of your citations refer to one or two articles, why wouldn’t the reader just go to the originals?
- Don’t use contractions. That is, do not use contractions in APA-style writing.
- Don’t include more than minimal references to texts if you did not actually read the originals. That includes books and dissertations – if you only read the abstract online and not the whole thing, don’t cite it. Only re-cite a source used by one of your sources if you’ve tried and can’t get your hands on the original. Then it’s okay to use something like: (Hall, 1901, cited in Smith & Jones, 2016). Otherwise go to the source, because how else do you know if Smith and Jones are accurately representing Hall?
DO:
- Master the basics of APA rules, including formatting citations within the body and references at the end, presenting numbers, common abbreviations (i.e., e.g., et al., etc.). It’s extremely complicated and convoluted, I know, but it’s more annoying for your reader if you do it wrong. Once again, knowing and following these rules is an indication of your professionalism and expertise. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to do it.
- Support every (non-totally-obvious or common knowledge) claim you make with a reference to a published source, official statistic, or other reputable data source. Again, you’re just heading off any possible objections by your reader – “but how do you know that X leads to Y?” The standard for this might shift some depending on your audience, so if you’re writing for, say, trauma therapists you might not have to support the fact that PTSD can have long-term effects on a client’s marriage, but if you can’t safely assume that they’ve already been convinced of a point, you need to provide evidence for it from another expert source, which in these terms generally means a peer-reviewed publication.
- Connect the dots: Just because the connection between two points is evident to you doesn’t mean it is to the reader, so be sure to make connections or contrasts explicit. Assume that you’re the expert on this unique combination of literature that you’ve brought together – guide the reader through your reasons for pulling this particular group of studies together and don’t expect them to do the work of making the leap from one point to another.
- Define any terms that might not be familiar to the reader (again, this standard will shift depending on your intended audience), and explain at least generally how any variables were operationalized – what is meant by “sibling rivalry”? Or “high exposure to [whatever]”? You need to give enough detail so that the reader really grasps what is being measured and how – otherwise they can’t understand the methodology/conclusions/etc.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
- Trade papers with a friend for feedback/editing, or at least read your paper out loud to yourself to help you catch errors and awkward phrasing. You put so much effort into the research and writing, don’t short-change yourself (and annoy your professor) by skipping the final polishing needed to make it all glow with the shine of professionalism!
