Guidelines for the Final Paper
The culmination of your work throughout the semester will be a final paper in which you demonstrate your understanding of, and original thinking on, topics covered throughout the course. Your Paper will integrate research and theories from multiple topic areas covered in the course, using primary and secondary sources to develop an intervention, prevention, or training program to address a specific group dynamic or dynamics, based on the research covered in more than one of the topic areas covered in the course. That is, your program will be designed to enhance/increase a positive dynamic(s) or reduce/minimize a negative dynamic(s). Your Final Paper will draw on scholarly work in the areas of interest, and will demonstrate your own original thinking and synthesis of the relevant literature.
Topic
The readings and discussions throughout the course will provide a springboard for you to do your own independent research on group dynamics. For the Final Paper, you will integrate research from multiple areas to develop an intervention, prevention, or training program to address a specific group dynamic or dynamics. You’ll be adding information and ideas not covered in the text, including material that you came across through independent research.
Sources
You are required to cite at least ten sources within your Paper, all ten of which must be peer- reviewed journal articles, at least five of which must be sources that were not specifically assigned readings in the course. Additionally, at least five of the peer-reviewed journal articles must be primary sources. In the scientific context, primary sources are usually research articles that are reporting the results of studies for the first time, as opposed to review articles, which summarize the results of a number of studies, second hand. Research articles that are primary sources tend to have the sections, “Participants,” “Methods,” and “Results.” These are the articles that give you a lot of details about exactly how the studies were conducted, and it is always a good idea to read the original article (primary source) whenever possible, so that you can think for yourself about the limitations and implications of each study.
However, review articles can be useful for gaining a broad sense of what’s been done in a particular area, and for putting the studies in context. Often, people will start by reading a review article or two, and then will read some of the primary sources that were cited within the review article for more information. Because this is also an essential step in the research process, it is required that at least one of your peer-reviewed journal articles be a non-primary source (e.g., review article).
1. How well did the classmate identify relevant group dynamics (e.g., was more than one area identified? Are there additional areas that the classmate might want to include)?
2. How well did the classmate identify multiple topic areas to integrate (e.g., Was more than one area identified? Did their connection make sense to you? Are there additional areas that the classmate might want to include?)?
3. Did the classmate meet all source requirements (e.g, peer-reviewed, primary, secondary, articles not specifically assigned)? Please be specific about which source requirements were not met (if any).
4. Did the classmate include all sources listed in the reference list within the Outline itself?
