Research Paper

Paper 1: Brief Research Project with Sniffy

Writing-Intensive Course Requirement

As part of the university’s commitment to student writers in all undergraduate programs, at least one upper-division course in each major has been designated as fulfilling the “writing intensive” (WI) requirement. While other courses in the major may require written projects, teachers of the designated WI courses will devote class time to instruction on how to complete assignments successfully, assign and grade a minimum of 3500 words, provide constructive feedback on drafts, and allow revision of at least one graded assignment.

This course fulfills the Writing Intensive requirement in the Psychology major. It does so through a 1250-word mini-research project in APA style, a 1750-word original research proposal, and through APA style worksheets as well as answering questions regarding Sniffy assignments. Both papers will be completed through a draft/feedback/revision process.

Your paper should include:
• At least 5 cited references (the Sniffy book and lecture text book can each count as one cited reference) to support your research topic/question.
• An introduction that clearly describes classical conditioning and what research has been conducted in the past. Please do not give me complete detailed descriptions of every single experiment you come across. This section should start out very broad and then become focused at the end, with specific hypotheses at the end.
• A clear methods section (do not take the directions right from the book and say “I then clicked isolate Sniffy.”) Write it as if Sniffy were a real rat, and these things were happening in real time.
 Indicate trials, time between trials, stimulus type/strength, etc.
• A results section that simply states the results
• A discussion section that describes what exactly your results mean/why they are important/implications.
• This paper will be on the first 3 Sniffy assignments

Your first draft should be as finalized as possible, so that I can give you adequate feedback for your revision. Utilize the writing and editing resources you have on campus.

I would encourage everyone to email questions or stop by during office hours to talk about different steps of the writing process for this first paper.

The main goal of this project is to give you some experience with the mechanics of a publishable paper. The draft/feedback/revision process is an integral, weekly experience for graduate students and professionals in most fields of research psychology.

General Format (*see APA Publication Manual for more details on each section as well as Purdue Owl*):

• Title Page (1 page)
• Title
• Author Name
• Institutional Affiliation
• This should be about a quarter of the way down the page
• Abstract (150 – 250 words, starting on a new page)
• Concise
• Gives a little bit of background information, what you used (Sniffy program), basic results, and a brief sentence of what these mean/what should be done in the future.
• Introduction (starting on a new page)
• Do not label introduction; use title
• Why is this research important?
• What other studies have previously done similar research? (Lit review)
• How is theory driving your research? (theory review)
• State research questions/hypotheses.
• Methods
• Labeled subsections:
• Participants (should just be Sniffy)
• Procedures (should include research design, and how specifically the design was carried out)
• Results
• Actual results from Sniffy Program
• Include graphs/pictures after the reference section in a “Tables” section.
• Refer to data as Table 1, Table 2, etc.
• Discussion/conclusion
• What is the theoretical, clinical or practical significance of the outcomes?
• What problems remain unsolved or have arisen because of your findings?
• References (starting on a new page)
• APA formatting
• At least 5 sources
• Only cite what you reference in-text