General
Advice
- Start working on your project as soon as
you possibly can. Remember, you may need to make use of resources
not found in our library, so it's best to begin organizing your
project as soon as you can. (And everything takes longer than you
anticipate, right?)
- Be sure that you understand the assignment.
If you have any questions at all, meet with your
professor.
- You should finish the first draft of your
project as much ahead of the deadline as you possibly can. That
allows you time to have the draft read by a friend, fellow
students from the course, and/or tutors in the Writing Center.
Faculty are expecting a polished, clearly written, clearly
thought-out paper. You cannot produce such a paper without careful
revision and proofreading of several drafts of your
paper.
- Completing your project early also serves
to avoid the technical problems that always seem to emerge at the
last minute (computer problems, disk corruption, printer problems,
etc.)
- Many useful links are scattered over a
number of different pages. As a writing resource, we've created a
one-page
list of useful links to aid your
writing.
- Student
Tools and Resources site has general advice and resources.
General
Writing Resources
- A very good local resource is The
Skidmore Guide to Writing, which is also available
in printed form from the bookstore.
- A useful little book is John Bellquist's
A Guide to Grammar and Usage for Psychology and Related
Fields, Lawrence
Erlbaum. Bellquist has worked in the
publication office of the Psychonomic Society, so he has lots of
useful advice.
- Listed below are a number of links that are
useful writing aids:
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Choosing
a Topic
- The trick is to find a
topic that interests you, fits the constraints of the assignment,
and has sufficient research available to allow you ready access to
the information.
- You may not have a lot of
freedom in your choice of topic, but within whatever constraints
you find yourself, you should try to choose a topic that truly
interests you. You are about to embark on a journey--one that may
become difficult at times--so you should be sure that you are
happy with the destination.
- If you're having a
difficult time deciding (Hey, it's all fascinating, right?), then
you might try talking with your professor. He or she will surely
have some advice for you.
- Generally, such advice
might include:
- Jot down topics that intrigue you as you
read the textbook and listen to lectures.
- You can use references
cited in your textbook as a starting point. For example, if
your book cites an article about a particular topic, you can
look at that original article and search the list of references
for related articles in which you might have some interest.
- Look in related books
for topics that you'd like to explore in greater
depth.
- Browse appropriate
journals for articles on topics that interest you.
- Locate articles on a
particular topic using the PsycInfo or Medline search databases
in the Lucy Scribner Library.
- If you can find one good
source, use the references from that source for additional
readings to help you focus your topic.
- You should also work to
avoid a topic that is too broad (difficult to develop a concise
thesis) or too narrow (far too few resources available). Again, if
you are having difficulty determining the appropriate level of
your topic, consult your professor.
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Conducting
Background Research
- Web Resources: You
are reading this advice on the web, so you may also be inclined to
use the web for your research. Do so with extreme caution. Keep in
mind the virtually anyone can put virtually anything on the
web--totally without oversight. You have a number of Internet
search
tools at your
disposal. Our department also maintains a list of useful
links, organized by
areas within the discipline. However, you must learn to separate
the wheat from the chaff. To help you do so, why not use the web?
Here are some sites that have been developed to help you in the
evaluation of the information found on the web (thanks to Miriam
Joseph, St. Louis University):
- Journal
Articles: The ideal reference is one that has been reviewed by
peers of the author(s). This level of oversight allows you to have
greater confidence that you can trust
the information. You will typically find such references in
scientific journals, some of which you will find in our library.
You can typically obtain the ones not found in our library by
using interlibrary
loan. To aid you in your search for
information, you'll find a number of databases
available. You may also choose to look at a site that has a fairly
comprehensive list
of journals in psychology (Guenther), some of
which may not be represented in the library databases. You should
think of journal articles as primary resources (i.e., based on
original empirical research). You may want to check out what David
Wasieleski (Valdosta State) has to say about summarizing
articles.
- Books: Some books, often edited
ones, actually contain chapters that are primary resources (though
they may not have undergone the peer scrutiny that typifies
journal articles). Other books are secondary resources, so the
author(s) will typically review and integrate primary sources. If
you have any question about the acceptability of a book for use as
a resource, check with your professor. You can access our
library's holdings through the local
catalog. You may also find that
other
library's catalogs are useful
resources for books. You can also request books through
interlibrary
loan.
- You'll find many useful tools to enhance
your library research. Because the APA publishes major journals
and abstracts (including the PsycInfo database), you may want to
check out their advice
about conducting library research.
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Writing
the Paper
- Typically you will be
writing either a generic research paper or an APA-style paper for
your courses in psychology.
- By a generic research paper, we mean one
that relies primarily on library research. Thus, this type of
paper will resemble those that you might write for courses in
other departments. On another page we have some advice for
writing
a generic research paper. If you've
never used the APA style of referencing, you may find it useful
even in this type of paper.
- By an APA-style paper, we mean one that is
highly structured and based on empirical research as well as
library research. Thus, this type of paper will be unlike any that
you would write in other disciplines. Instead it would typify the
writing for Experimental Psychology (PS 306) and other
laboratory-based courses. On another page we have some advice for
writing
an APA-style paper.
- In the past, scientific writing was rife
with passive voice. To an extent, it might have seemed that
researchers weren't actively doing anything, but evidence just
sort of fell out of the sky into their laps: "It was found that
..." In part, such writing may have been an attempt to avoid using
the first person pronoun (either because of modesty or to
emphasize the impartiality of data collection). Now it is much
more fashionable to write in the active voice, though researchers
still tend to avoid the first person singular pronoun: "We found
that..." or "Researchers found that..." Nonetheless, the passive
voice remains much more acceptable in scientific writing than in
other areas of written discourse (especially when you want to
focus on the object rather than the actor). You can learn more
about using the active vs. passive voice in the APA Publication
Manual and in John Bellquist's Guide.
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Plagiarism
- Plagiarism is a serious violation of the Skidmore
Honor Code. (You may want to read about the
ethics
of scholarship.)However, plagiarism is not always easy to define. For
instance, plagiarism is typically
defined as passing off another's words as your own. But how many
words do you have to change to make the words your own? (Answer:
If you're approaching plagiarism that way, you're already off to a
bad start.) Is it possible to plagiarize yourself? (Answer:
Maybe.) First, we'll give you some advice, then we'll provide you
with a number of links to good resources about
plagiarism.
- A good place to start discussing plagiarism
is to talk about the purpose of writing a paper. Typically, a
paper serves as a means of exploring a topic in a depth that is
not ordinarily achieved in a course. Thus, the paper is an
opportunity for you to learn a great deal about a particular
topic. The goal is to get some new ideas into your mind. The goal
is an admirable one, but one not easily achieved. Attempts to
shortcut the process inevitably subvert the goal of learning and
understanding. That's why using the original author's words is a
problem--you're likely to be parroting without understanding.
That's also why submitting a paper (in whole or in part) that
you'd written for a previous course to satisfy a requirement for a
current course is a problem. Doing so prevents you from learning
something new.
- Let's put the concept in a more positive
light. You are taking courses in psychology to learn as much as
you can about this fascinating field. If you really want to learn,
then you should take every opportunity to do so--recognizing full
well that learning is often an arduous process. And if you
really understand a concept, you should be able to explain
it entirely in your own words. (In fact, you should be so excited
about the concepts that you want to talk to people about what
you're learning.)
- But suppose that you aren't passing off
another's words as your own, but are quoting extensively from your
sources (with proper attribution, etc.). Once again, ask yourself
if you really understand the passages you are quoting. If you do,
then why are you quoting? Our best advice is to avoid quotes
entirely, unless the original passage is unique in some
way.
- The web has brought us a number of
opportunities. One is the opportunity to cheat. You are likely
aware that all sorts of sites exist to supply you with papers on
various topics. Clearly, use of papers from such sites is
plagiarism. (And faculty are as aware of such sites as you are. In
addition, people have developed sites just to detect
plagiarism.)
- Here are some links with advice about
plagiarism:
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