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PSY 221 Childhood and Adolescence

Term Paper

For this assignment, you are asked to write a 7-8 page research paper that is based on scientific literature. It will synthesize research from the literature, and draw conclusions based on your research. Your paper should be written in APA style and will follow all the guidelines outlined by your professor.

A checklist for success

  • Find a manageable, interesting, and sustainable topic of interest related to child or adolescent development
  • Use scholarly and popular information to gain a 'background' understanding of the major themes, issues, and opinions related to your topic
  • Search multiple sources of scholarly information to get a good understanding of what has been done on this topic
  • Read your sources well, probably a few times.
  • Take good notes
  • Compare your notes to synthesize the information in the literature to help support your ideas.
  • Write the darn paper!

Cartoon: A woman sitting behind a desk with a man sitting in front of the desk. The women asks "You ever fantasize about locking 100 babies in a plain white room at birth, then returning 10 years later to see what they're like?" The man responds "No! ...Dear God, No!". The cartoon is captioned: I could tell immediately that he wasn't cute out for developmental psych research.

From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal