Paper One: “Surveying” Students in the
Discipline Length: 4-6 pages
(Note: You may choose to co-author with another
student. If you co-author, paper should be 6-8 pages)
“[S]urveys are questionnaires and interviews that
gather information by asking people directly about their experiences,
attitudes, or opinions. … Surveys produce bushels of data—but they are not easy
to do well. The biggest hurdle is getting a representative sample, a
group of subjects that accurately represents the larger population that the
researcher wishes to describe.” --Invitation
to Psychology, p. 20
Question:
What personality types and/or what kinds of life experiences seem to
draw people to the field of psychology?
The chief purpose of this assignment is to
give you practice in using primary research, in the form of (empirical)
interview data, to prove or disprove a hypothesis. While your mentor interviews and your own life experiences will
constitute the major part of your research, I would like you to use secondary
research as well, that is, research from chapters one and two in Invitation
to Psychology (and any other chapters you think are relevant). In your paper, you’ll want to acknowledge
that your mentor interviews do not constitute a representative sample
so you are not able to make any generalizations from the results (see
Invitation p. 29). Rather, you’ll be concerned with examining a small sample of
data and using that data to suggest some interesting questions for further
research.
Steps to follow:
·
Generate
a hypothesis based on your own experience, biases, and prior assumptions.
·
Determine
whether you need to “operationalize” any of the terms in your hypothesis (see
Invitation p. 13).
·
Sort
through data from no fewer than four mentor interviews (see Invitation p. 20)
to see how they can be interpreted (see Invitation p. 16).
·
Based
on the limited data, revise your hypothesis and identify points you might use
to support your hypothesis. Generate a hypothesis based on your own experience,
biases, and prior assumptions.
·
Describe
your methods for doing research.
·
Identify
evidence—both primary and secondary—you might use to support these points. Note about secondary research: Usually
psychology researchers use other, similar studies to support their own work;
however, you’ll use secondary research in a different way. You can use
information from your psychology textbook to back up your speculations. For
example, it might be very helpful to consider how the five major theoretical
perspectives in psychology (Invitation 7-8) or psychological practices
(Invitation 9-10) connect to your speculations about what draws people to
psychology. Similarly, personality
theories might help you operationalize your terms and/or explain some of your
speculations. In all cases, you’ll
want to be sure to let readers know that your explanations are only speculative
and based on very limited data so they cannot be taken as valid and reliable
claims (see Invitation 14-16).
·
Synthesize
the evidence under relevant points, being sure to document carefully.
We’ll work through the format for this paper in
class. But here are some things to
remember:
·
You
need a title.
·
You
need an identifiable thesis/hypothesis.
·
Points
should be clearly discernible and supported with evidence.
·
Supporting
evidence should be clearly cited and documented using APA style (see A
Writer’s Reference).
·
You
need a conclusion.