Running head: LITERATURE REVIEW INSTRUCTIONS 1

PAPER II: METHODS AND RESULTS INSTRUCTIONS 7

Instructions for Paper I: Study One Literature Review Instructions (Worth 25 Points)

Purpose of Paper I: Study One Literature Review

1). Psychological Purpose

This paper serves several purposes, the first of which is helping you gain insight into research papers in psychology. As this may be your first time reading and writing papers in psychology, one goal of Paper I is to give you insight into what goes into such papers. This study one-lit review will help you a). better understand the psychology topic chosen for the course this semester (Facebook Consensus), b). learn about the various sections of an empirical research report by reading five peer-reviewed articles (that is, articles that have a Title Page, Abstract, Literature Review, Methods Section, Results Section, and References Page), and c). use information gathered from research articles in psychology to help support your hypotheses for your first study this semester (Facebook Consensus). Of course, you’ll be doing a study two literature review later in the semester, so think of this Paper I as the first part of your semester long paper. I recommend looking at the example Paper V, actually, to see what your final paper will look like. It might give you a better idea about how this current paper (as well as Papers II, III, and IV) all fit together into your final paper of the semester.

In this current paper (Paper I), you will read five research articles, summarize what the authors did and what they found, and use those summaries to support your Facebook Consensus study hypothesis. IMPORTANT: Yes you need five references, but keep in mind that you can spend a lot of time (a page or two!) summarizing one of them and a sentence or two summarizing others. Thus spend more time on the more relevant articles!

For this paper, start your paper broadly and then narrow your focus (think about the hourglass example provided in the lecture). My suggestion is to give a brief overview of your paper topic in your opening paragraph, hinting at the research variables you plan to look at for study one. Your next paragraphs will review prior research (those five references required for this paper). Make sure to draw connections between these papers, using smooth transitions between paragraphs. Your final paragraphs should use the research you just summarized to support your research hypothesis. And yes, that means you MUST include your study predictions (which we provided in the researcher instructions and the debriefing statement. Use them!). In other words, this first paper will look like the literature reviews for the five research articles you are summarizing for this assignment. Use the articles you are using as references as examples! See what they did and mimic their style! Here, though, you will end the paper after providing your hypothesis. In Paper II, you will pick the topic up again, but in that future paper you will talk about your own study methods and results.

2). APA Formatting Purpose

The second purpose of Paper I: Study One Literature Review is to teach you proper American Psychological Association (APA) formatting. In the instructions below, I tell you how to format your paper using APA style. There are a lot of very specific requirements in APA papers, so pay attention to the instructions below as well as Chapter 14 in your textbook!

3). Writing Purpose

Finally, this paper is intended to help you grow as a writer. Few psychology classes give you the chance to write papers and receive feedback on your work. This class will! We will give you extensive feedback on your first few paper in terms of content, spelling, and grammar. You will even be able to revise aspects of Paper I and include them in future papers (most notably Papers III and V). My hope is that you craft a paper that could be submitted to an empirical journal. Thus readers may be familiar with APA style but not your specific topic. Your job is to educate them on the topic and make sure they understand how your study design advances the field of psychology.

In fact, your final paper in this class (Paper V), might be read by another professor at FIU and not your instructor / lab assistant. Write your paper for that reader – the one who may know NOTHING about your topic and your specific study.

Note: The plagiarism limit for this paper is 30% (though this excludes any overlap your paper might have with regard to citations, references, and the hypotheses). Make sure your paper falls under 30% (or 35% if including predictions).

Note: I am looking for 2.5 pages minimum with predictions.

Instructions for Paper I: Study One Literature Review (Worth 25 Points)

Students: Below are lengthy instructions on how to write your study one literature review. There is also a checklist document in Canvas, which I recommend you print out and “check off” before submitting your paper (we are sticklers for APA format, so make sure it is correct! We mark off if you have a misplaced “&”, so carefully review all of your work and use the checklist! It will help). Also look at the example paper in Canvas. It will show you what we expect.

1. Title Page: I expect the following format. (5 Points)

a. You must have a header and page numbers on each page.

i. If you don’t know how to insert headers, ask your instructor or watch this very helpful video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pbUoNa5tyY.

ii. The header goes at the top of the paper and it is left justified.

1. Use “Insert Headers” or click on the top of the page to open the header. Make sure to select the “Different first page” option so that your title page header will differ from subsequent pages

2. The R in Running head is capitalized but the “h” is lower case, followed by a colon and a short title (in ALL CAPS). This short running head title can be the same one as the rest of your paper or it can differ – the choice is yours, but it should be no more than 50 characters including spaces and punctuation

3. Insert a page number as well. The header is flush left, but the page number is flush right.

iii. Want an example header? Look at the title page of these instructions! You can use other titles depending on your own preferences (e.g. SOCIAL MEDIA AND CONSENSUS; CONFORMITY; JUDGING OTHERS; etc.).

b. Your Title should be midway up the page. Again, see my “Title” page above as an example of the placement, but for your title try to come up with a title that helps describe your study one. Avoid putting “Paper One”. Rather, consider the titles you saw in PsycInfo. Create a similar title that lets the reader know what your paper is about

c. Your name (First Last) and the name of your institution (FIU) beneath the title. For this class, only your own name will go on this paper. Double space everything!

i. You can also refer to Chapter 14 in your powerpoints and/or Smith and Davis textbook

d. This Title Page section will be on page 1

2. Abstract?

a. You DO NOT need an abstract for Paper I. In fact, you cannot write it until you run both study one and two (as the abstract highlights the results), so omit the abstract for now

3. Literature Review Section (12 points)

a. First page of your literature review (Page 2)

i. Proper header with page numbers. Your running head title will appear in the header of your page WITHOUT the phrase “Running head”. To insert this header, use the headers program.

ii. The title of your paper should be on the first line of page two, centered. It is IDENTICAL to the title on your title page. Just copy and paste it!

iii. The beginning text for your paper follows on the next line

b. Citations for the literature review

i. Your paper must cite a minimum of five (5) empirical research articles that are based on studies conducted in psychology. That is, each of the five citations you use should have a literature review, a methods section, a results section, a conclusion/discussion, and references.

1. For Paper I, you MUST use at least three of the five articles provided in the Canvas folder. You can use four if you like, but you must use three at minimum – however, you cannot use all five. For that fifth article, you must find it using PsycInfo. There are some other conditions for this fifth article that you must follow:

a. First, remember that the fifth article cannot be any of the five found in the Canvas folder.

b. Second, for your fifth article, it can be based on a wide variety of topics, including general priming studies, studies on consensus or conformity (without a social media angle), studies on social media (without a consensus or conformity angle), studies on impression formation, studies on friends, studies on informational social influence or morality etc. Trust me, there are TONS of topics that can help you in your paper. Just choose one that will help you support your experimental hypothesis for your Facebook Consensus study. That is, it has to help you justify your study one hypothesis (all students are using this same hypothesis, so make sure to read it. You can find it in the researcher instructions along with the questionnaires you are giving to participants. I actually suggest copying and pasting that hypothesis into this first paper at the end).

c. Finally, you can have more than five references if you want, but you must have a minimum of five references.

ii. Proper citations must be made in the paper – give credit where credit is due, and don’t make claims that cannot be validated.

iii. If you use a direct quote, make sure to provide a page number for where you found that quote in the citations. Do not directly quote too often, though. You can have no more than three direct quotes in the whole paper (though zero quotes would be even better). Instead, I would like you to paraphrase when possible.

c. Requirements for the information in your literature review

i. Your study one literature review should use prior research as a starting point, narrowing down the main theme of your specific project – think about the hourglass example from Chapter 14 in Smith and Davis.

ii. The last part of your literature review should narrow down your focus onto your own study, eventually ending in your study hypothesis. However, DO NOT go into specific details about your methods. You will talk about your specific methods in Paper II in a few weeks.

iii. Again, to make it clear, at the end of your paper you will give an overview of your research question, providing your specific predictions/hypotheses.

d. The literature review must have minimum of two (2) full pages NOT INCLUDING THE HYPOTHESES (2.5 pages with the hypotheses). It has a maximum of five (5) pages (thus, with the title page and references page, the paper should be between 4.5 and 7 pages). If it is only four and a half pages (again, including the hypotheses), it better be really, really good. I don’t think I could do this paper justice in fewer than five pages, so if yours isn’t at least five pages, I doubt it will get a good grade.

4. References (6 points)

a. The References section starts on its own page, with the word References centered. Use proper APA format in this section or you will lose points.

b. All five references that you cited in the literature review must be in this section (there should be more than five references here if you cited more than five articles, which is fine in this paper). However, at least three must come from the article folder on Canvas while the remaining two can come from either the last Canvas paper or two new ones from psychinfo. Only peer-reviewed articles are allowed here (no books, journals, websites, or other secondary resources are allowed for paper one).

c. For references, make sure you:

i. use alphabetical ordering (start with the last name of the first author)

ii. use the authors’ last names but only the initials of their first/middle name

iii. give the date in parentheses – e.g. (2007).

iv. italicize the name of the journal article

v. give the volume number, also in italics

vi. give the page numbers (not italicized) for articles

vii. provide the doi (digital object identifier) if present (not italicized)

5. Writing Quality (2 Points)

a. This includes proper grammar and spelling. I recommend getting feedback on your paper from the Pearson Writer program prior uploading it on Canvas.

6. Between the title page, literature review, and reference page, I expect a minimum of 4 pages and a maximum of 7 pages for this assignment. But like I said, the shorter the paper, the less likely it is to get a good grade, so aim for 5 pages minimum.

The above information is required for your paper, but I wanted to provide a few tips about writing your literature review as well. Students often struggle with the first paper, but hopefully this will give you some good directions:

· First, remember that you need 5 references, all of which MUST be peer-reviewed (three coming from the Canvas folder and one or two that you find on your own using PsycInfo).

· Second, I don’t expect a lengthy discussion for each and every article that you cite. You might spend a page talking about Article A and a sentence or two on Article B. The amount of time you spend describing an article you read should be proportional to how important it is in helping you defend your hypotheses. See if there is a prior study that looks a lot like yours (hint – there is at least one, which I based this study on, but you’ll have to find it on your own!). I would expect you to spend more time discussing that prior research since it is hugely relevant to your own study. If an article you read simply supports a global idea that ties into your study but has very different methods (like “frustrated people get mad!”), you can easily mention it in a sentence or two without delving into a lot of detail. Tell a good story in your literature review, but only go into detail about plot elements that have a direct bearing on your study!

· Third, this paper is all about supporting your hypotheses. Know what your hypotheses are before you write the paper, as it will help you determine how much time to spend on each article you are citing. My suggestion is to spend some time describing the nature of consensus and conformity, and then talking about studies that looked at this area. Use those studies to help defend your own study hypothesis. That is, “Since they found X in this prior study, that helps support the hypothesis in the present study”. Do you remember your hypotheses? Okay, I’ll be really helpful here. BELOW are your hypotheses. In your paper, support it! Just remember that the rest of your paper needs to be at least two full pages NOT INCLUDING the hypothesis below. In other words, including the hypotheses below, your actual text for your paper should be at least two and a half pages!

· Fourth, make sure to proofread, proofread, proofread! Use the Pearson Writer for help, but note that their suggestions are just that – suggestions. It is up to you to make sure the flow of the paper is easy to understand. Good luck!

· Fifth, go look at the supporting documents for this paper. There is a checklist, a grade rubric, and an example paper. All will give you more information about what we are specifically looking for as well as a visual example of how to put it all together. Good luck!

· Finally, note that you have a lot of help available to you. You can go to the Research Methods Help Center (which is staffed by research methods instructors and teaching assistants). You can go to the Writing Center in the Green Library (at MMC) and get help with writing quality. You can attend workshops from the Center for Academic success (CfAS) focusing on APA formatting, paraphrasing, and statistics. Your instructor might even be willing to give you extra credit for using these resources, so make sure to ask your instructor about it.