Theories of motivational pyschology

RESEARCH PAPER GUIDELINES

The paper can be on any topic of interest in (1) Motivational Psychology or (2) Positive

Psychology and the instructor will allow students to do research on a wide range of subjects

within these two subject areas. References must be paginated and scholarly which generally

means that they are either: (a) peer reviewed journal articles; or (b) doctoral dissertations, a

master’s thesis or a scientific book that is written by a scholarly author. Some unacceptable

references are Wikipedia, non-academic sources, online newspapers, online magazines, online

blogs, online chat rooms or discussions, websites, and any reference that is non-paginated. In

citing a reference within a research paper, it is important to make it clear to the reader exactly

where they can find the quotation [the reference name and page number]. In general, there

should be at least one literary citation for every page of written content and a superior

paper for a letter grade of “A” in the categories below will have 13 full pages [not counting the

title page, abstract or reference section pages]. The APA paper for this class will only require

four elements of APA Style: (1) a running head; (2) a title page; (3) a review of the literature;

and (4) a reference section. APA paper examples that appear online are generally examples

of experimental research studies, so they include several sections which will not be required

for our paper such as an introduction section [which contains the hypotheses or research

question]; a methodology section [discussing the research design, methods and procedures of

the experiment or study]; a results section [discussing the outcome of the experiment or study]

and a discussion section [which restates the hypotheses and contains the significance of the

results and their implications for further research]. Research study papers may also contain

footnotes, graphs and appendices or tables that are associated with the experiment or study.

The purpose of the APA Research Paper in our class is simply to demonstrate that students can

research a scholarly topic of interest finding peer-reviewed academic sources outside of our

primary text and demonstrate a reasonable undergraduate level of proficiency in writing a

research paper using The APA Style of citation and reference. The number of pages and the

number of scholarly references are therefore important criteria. The paper must have enough

pages and scholarly citations to achieve the grade indicated below. If your paper does not

meet the criteria for the grade below you will not get that grade.