The Paper: For this paper I want you to review any topic in the Psychology of Human Sexuality that interests you. You can literally pick anything you want to review as long as it’s related back to the science of studying Human Sexuality in some way. A review question for a smaller paper like this should focus on a narrow question of interest within a field. Basic Format: You can feel free to stray from this basic format, but this is just to help for people who may be lost in how to structure a research review paper.
Title page (no abstract needed) Introduction – what is the question you are asking and what do you already know about it…or think you know about it? The Body – take a paragraph or two to discuss each of your sources, and how they help to answer your research question separately Nearing the conclusion – ‘Additionally, do the articles contradict each other at all? Conclusion – what did you find, what questions do you still have that are left unanswered. And what’s the next step you would take if you could ask another question on the topic References – in APA style (like the rest of your paper. Use that online writing guide I link to above, its very easy to use and contains a sample paper) Acceptable types of sources: Gold standard: peer-reviewed research papers found through the library databases. These can be original research, or peer-reviewed Review or meta review papers on a topic.
Magazines like Psychology Today do not count as peer-reviewed research. Silver: Books published by notable scientists in their field (means you have to check their credentials, what training they have, if other peers doing similar work get similar results, and if they’ve published results in peer-reviewed journals before) Bronze: Interviewing a scientist who does this work yourself, whether in a live or written interview format Don’t even think about it: Blogs, random webpages run by one person, Wikipedia entries, pop culture scientists like Dr. Phil/Dr. Oz that don’t actually do research. Feelings or opinions not backed up by empirical evidence. Journalistic sources are not scientific sources. If the newspaper article cites science then it is your job to search the databases for work by that scientist so you can read it yourself. Examples of journalistic sources: NYtimes, psychology today, Washington Post, The Guardian, etc.
