1. Chose a topic.
2. Find your articles. After you identify your topic, you must find at least 4 articles related to your research topic. You may use articles that you and your groupmates identified in the discussions. You should read these articles thoroughly and make sure they are actually relevant to your topic. *Hint* Save the full APA references for the articles as you find them.
3. The paper will consist of 3 parts.
A) Introduction (~1 page) – For this section, you will introduce the topic of the paper. Do not copy/paste the discussion questions from Canvas into the paper. You need to rewrite the topic in your own words. So, tell us what the topic is, how it relates to development, and why it is important to understand/research. How it relates to development and why it’s important may be the same thing.
B) Summarize and Synthesize (~4 pages) – In this section you will summarize the articles you found. Describing who the participants were, what the research methods were (what things they measured), and what the basic results were (DO NOT PUT NUMBERS IN THIS PAPER I SWEAR ON MY CATS LIFE I WILL MARK OFF POINTS FOR IT). When summarizing the articles make sure to explain how the article relates to the topic you’ve chosen and what it says about your topic.
C) Discussion & Future Directions (~1 page) – Summarize what all of the articles say about your topic, and what the main takeaway from all the articles together should be. Most of this should be your ideas and demonstrate your critical thinking about the articles and the topic. Then discuss where the articles fall short in terms of explaining/describing the topic (Is the information generalizable? Did they look at all of the relevant variables? etc.) and suggest some future directions for research on thistopic. What do you think still is not known that should be figured out or what are some additions that need to be made when researching this topic? Explain why these things need to be researched further as you describe them.
Paper Formatting
The paper should be at least 6 pages typed and double-spaced (Times New Roman font, 12 pt., 1 inch margins) not including the reference page.
In-text citations and the reference page must be in APA format (refer to the Purdue OWL link below with questions about this).No quotations are allowed in this paper (not even the title of the article is allowed in the body of the paper, the title should only be in the reference section).
In order to get full points on your paper, it must be in proper APA style and format. This includes:
– Title page. Including title, name, university, course, instructor, and date.
– In-text citations (Author(s) last name, year of publication). You must cite the research articles. Example below about how to cite an article
– 1-inch margins, double spaced, 12 pt. font, Times New Roman
– Reference page. With each reference in alphabetical order by the first author’s last name. Must have a hanging indent.
– You do not need an abstract
There is an APA template available for you to download and use as you write your paper, located in the Final Paper Module on Canvas.
Consult the Purdue OWL: General Format – Purdue OWL® – Purdue University
Example of how to cite:
In-text Citation:
For 1 author: (Last name, year)
For 2 authors: (Last name & Last name, year)
For 3 or more authors: (Last name et al., year)
At the end of a sentence, you will include the citation like this, (Rushing, 2022).
Reference: References should all have a hanging indent as shown below and should be listed in alphabetical order based on the first author’s last name. Also, the title of the article should be in all lowercase after the first word.
Author A last name, A., Author B last name, B., & Author C last name, C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Journal, volume number(issue number), pages.
Example:
Eschenbeck, H., Schmid, S., Schröder, I., Wasserfall, N., & Kohlmann, C. (2018). Development of coping strategies from childhood to adolescence: Cross-sectional and longitudinal trends. European Journal Of Health Psychology, 25(1), 18-30.
