Assignment Question
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 the psychology of human sexuality in some way (meaning it is about behavior or thoughts related to sexuality/gender). A review question for a smaller paper like this should focus on a narrow question of interest within a field typically.
Basic Format: 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 review question separately Nearing the conclusion – How does the research you found tie together to complement each other to answer your question. Additionally, do the articles contradict each other at all?
Conclusion – what did you find, what questions do you still have that are left unanswered. What is the next thing these scientists should ask/do? 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, it is very easy to use and contains a sample paper) Acceptable types of sources: peer-reviewed research papers found through the library databases.
These can be original research, or peer-reviewed review papers or meta review papers on a topic. Magazines like Psychology Today do not count as peer-reviewed research. Not acceptable: 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. If a book is written by a scientist about their work, you should be able to search the databases and find peer-reviewed papers by them (which are a LOT shorter than a book anyway, and more reliable) Please feel to message me with any questions.
