Final Paper Pointers Behavior Disorders in Children

Avoid:
Too many quotes

Final Paper Pointers
Behavior Disorders in Children

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The frequent use of direct quotes does not show any understanding of the material.
You should use direct quotes as infrequently as possible. No more than five
percent of your paper total should consist of direct quotes. This means, in a ten
page paper, no more than one-half page should consist of direct quotes.
Non peer-reviewed sources
When discussing research, you should only include research that has passed
through the peer review process. Some of the library’s databases will allow you
to narrow your search to peer-reviewed sources, but some will not. Here are some
sources (not a complete list) that are not peer-reviewed and should not appear as
references in your paper…
Harvard Mental Health Letter, Psychology Today, Science News, Psychiatric
Times, Nutrition Research Newsletter, Brown University Child and Adolescent
Behavior Letter
In general, if a source title includes the words “Newsletter,” “Letter,” or “News,”
it is not peer-reviewed. These sources generally contain brief summaries of
studies published in peer-reviewed journals. So, if you did a search and found an
article in Science News, you could read the Science News article, which may be a
synopsis about a study published in journal A, and then find and read the article in
journal A. Cite journal A’s article in your paper, not Science News.
Internet sources
Internet sources are a quick way to lose points. To clarify, an article found
through a library database (e.g. PsychInfo, ProQuest Psychology Journals,
Medline) which you then access through the internet is ok (provided it is peerreviewed),
but the use
of websites
is
a
bad
idea
99%
of the
time.

Citing the text
In research papers, the text is not a good source to cite, as the text only contains
brief summaries of studies done elsewhere. However, the text is a great place to
find references. Go to the portion of the text that deals with your topic and you
will likely find several useful references. Do not cite the text in your paper.
Do:
Allocate space appropriately
Given that most papers will be written about the treatment of a certain disorder or
about risk factors/etiology of a certain disorder, you should be able to emphasize
the most important research in the area. For example, if the most research has
been conducted on treatment X for your disorder, you should likely spend the
most space in your paper discussing treatment X, as opposed to treatment Y,
which has received very little support.
Ask questions
It is likely that most students have not written a research paper that requires the
use of roughly 20 or more sources in the field of psychology. Thus, it is to your
advantage to ask your professor if you have questions about researching and
writing your paper.
Search for articles efficiently
For most topics, there are review articles available. These articles contain a
summary of many studies that have been done in a certain area. To find these
articles, use the term “review” as a search term when looking for sources. These
articles generally contain much useful information and also contain many sources
which you can obtain from the reference section of the review article. Also, you
may want to use “meta-analysis” as a search term in order to locate quantitative
review articles that will provide useful information about results combined
across several studies. Meta-analyses will also contain many useful references.
Start early! Interlibrary loan generally requires a few days, sometimes longer, to
obtain articles. Thus, you should start searching for articles immediately after
selecting your topic. Finding review articles and meta-analyses is a good way to
start your search.