Have you ever seen a headline or clickbait centered around psychology research? Often, these “popular press” (as opposed to “academic research”) articles are written to grab your attention and do not represent research correctly. Perhaps even more importantly, the take-away message from these articles can lead people to misinterpret research findings. As a psychology student, you are now positioned to evaluate these popular press articles with your new knowledge of psychology research methods and what we can/cannot conclude after a research study. For example, we know that we cannot conclude that X causes Y using findings from a correlational study. Nope. Never.
1. Choose ONE article about which you will write. Links are on the next page.
2. Next, identify the claim the journalist is making (likely found in the title) and describe the type of study to which the journalist is referring (i.e., descriptive, correlational, experimental).
a. For example, you read an article claiming that chocolate makes people happy. The study described in the popular press article is a correlational study and you know this because of…
3. Then, evaluate whether the claim is warranted. In other words, can we conclude what the popular press article is claiming based on the study described? To do this, you should discuss THREE RESEARCH-BASED CRITERIA you used in your decision.
a. For example, you decide the claim is not warranted due to the lack of an experiment with random assignment. You would describe what random assignment is and why it is important in this case.
4. Also, remember you are writing for an academic audience. The tone of this paper should be professional and accurate with research methods terminology. Your response should be approximately 2-3 pages long.
How You Will Be Graded?
The guide that that we use for grading is posted on Canvas.
Why?
The goal of this assignment is to facilitate your ability to interpret research findings. related to psychological concepts.
In What Style?
Your paper MUST be in APA style (APA Publication Manual, 7th edition). This includes text that is double-spaced, 1-inch margins on all sides, and specific APA style elements such as a properly formatted title page, page numbers, in-text citations, and a references page. No abstract is required for this paper. DIRECT QUOTES ARE NOT PERMITTED IN THIS PAPER. You must paraphrase everything you write, while still including citations for where you got the original information. You should cite only what you actually read (the popular press article, not the academic article) and your textbook. Be sure to include in-text and References page citations for these two sources.