Head-Start for the Senior Thesis
Step 1: Establish
personal career goals and a five-year plan. It’s time for commitment.
You may want to use our Career Services and Counseling & Testing
Services. Click
http://www.wadsworth.com/cgi-wadsworth/course_products_wp.pl?fid=M20bI&flag=instructor&product_isbn_issn=9780495093039&discipline_number=24, then click Careers in Psychology for
some useful grad school and career hyperlinks. . If you
are considering graduate school, read free excerpts from the three
recommended books at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/guides/guide-display/-/1C85GFTZ4ZJO6/ref=cm_bg_dp_l_1/103-8107662-4389401: Peters
(1997) Getting What You Came For: The
Smart Student’s Guide to Earning a Master’s or a Ph.D., Bolker (1998) Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing
Your Doctoral Thesis, and Kobliner
(2000) Get a Financial Life: Personal
Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties.
Step 2: Select an
area of interest and three topics that support your career goals. Investigate these topics to identify a
meaningful concentration for your thesis review. Your textbook may be helpful. Consultation with faculty and career-goal
professionals is strongly encouraged. You
must obtain formal approval of a thesis topic from the Instructor (this topic
is still likely to be refined over the course of your literature search) -- you
may do this by email over the summer.
Step 3: Initiate
the literature search as soon as possible. You
need to find if your preferred topic works.
Plan to search starting with Annual Review articles to other more
specific reviews and research reports in journals. Concentrate on recent material published within
the last 10 years. Thesis topics usually
evolve and change somewhat over the course of this search.
(a) Find and read recent Annual
Review of Psychology articles that cover your topic (and perhaps other
Annual Review articles – there are Annual
Reviews of Neuroscience, Public Health, Sociology, Medicine, etc.). These reviews should help you identify existent
literature pertinent to your interests. Importantly,
if you can not find a review covering your preferred topic, you may need to select an alternative topic.
To
search for Annual Review articles on
your preferred topic, click http://psych.annualreviews.org/search.dtl or http://neuro.annualreviews.org/search.dtl. You can read the full text of psychology review articles on line at our Library website:
click http://www2.evansville.edu/libweb/,
under Databases by Subject click Psychology, and then click Annual Review of Psychology FT – you may also
access the other Annual Reviews from
this page.
For off-campus access,
go to
http://libproxy.evansville.edu/login and enter your Student ID barcode
number. Hardcopy Annual Reviews
are also available in our Library (and the Instructor’s office has most of the Annual Reviews of Psychology back to
1965).
b) Conduct PsycINFO,
MEDLINE,
and PsycARTICLES searches to obtain the most recent reviews and
research reports—the last will provide full-text articles.
To conduct these searches, click http://www2.evansville.edu/libweb/,
under Databases by Subject click Psychology, and then click PsycINFO PFT, Medline PFT, or PsycARTICLES FT. Enter the key
search terms for your topic. Print out
important abstracts (or save to a floppy or hard disk). If the journals are not in our Library or
available from PsycARTICLES, order
photocopies of the articles through our Interlibrary Loan service (assess http://www2.evansville.edu/libweb/,
click Request Forms, sign in, and
request the article.
(c) Reprints of articles can
often be obtained by emailing the
authors. Author addresses are a part of
the MEDLINE output, and e-mail
addresses are usually available at the author’s institutional website (find
with http://www.google.com/). Ask for a ‘reprint’ of the article and also
ask for reprints or 'preprints' of any subsequent or related work. These minor direct contacts have helped
some select a graduate program.
Step 4: Build your Literature Portfolio. Collect your printouts of
online search abstracts, interlibrary loan photocopies, photocopies of key book
sections, and PDF files of PsycARTICLES (full-text journal articles). Store everything in a quality folder, and
burn a CD of your PDF files that have been downloaded from My Documents folder or your
personal PC. This Portfolio will be used to prepare your Thesis Prospectus and Thesis,
and it must be submitted with and as part of your Thesis.
Step 5: Prepare your Thesis Prospectus by the end of
Fall Recess. This
Prospectus is due about one month before submission of the Thesis. This Prospectus will present you refined
topic (the title page), an initial introduction to the topic, a proposed outline
of your thesis, and the references obtained from your literature search. You will also include a detailed statement
explaining your career goals and how the selected topic relates to those
goals. Prospectus Format: Title
Page (1 page), Personal Relevance Preface (1 pages), Table of Contents (1-2
pages), Preliminary Introduction (3-5 pages), Tentative Outline of Section
Headings and Subheadings each section with one or more text sentences (1-5 pages), References (1-5 pages). The Prospectus must strictly adhere to the new APA format (Publication Manual, 5th Edition). The
Prospectus file is the beginning of your Thesis file – the first working draft –
and it will be expanded into the Thesis.
Step
6: The Senior Thesis is due on or before November 10th. Most
acceptable theses range from 30 to 60 pages citing 25 or more references contained
in the accompanying portfolio. Papers
that have been submitted in other courses are not acceptable as Senior
Theses—in whole or in part. Late
submissions are penalized with a progressively lowered grade.
What’s
Expected:
Good Content: All Senior Theses will thoroughly review the literature—primary journal articles that report research data as well as the secondary literature (books and review articles that may summarize those research reports). Avoid overuse of a few secondary references! All literature relevant to the topic will be methodically searched, effectively organized, and concisely presented in your thesis. Then, this review is to be intelligently evaluated for unique insights, valid conclusions, and noteworthy perspectives. Any original research on the topic (your own study) should be integrated as a primary report following this review and evaluation (good research begins with a good literature review—your results should contribute to that literature and knowledge). As a goal for your thesis effort, you are to become an “expert”—knowing more about the topic than your faculty reader (the best theses are those that educated the grader). This expertise can help achieve those stated career goals.
Good Construction: Senior
Theses will be well written and carefully edited. Effective writing skills must be demonstrated
to pass the course—regardless other performance. If needed, you are authorized to obtain
assistance writing and editing your thesis from our Writing Center (you must acknowledge this and any other assistance
with a title footnote). See Rosnow &
Rosnow (latest edition) Writing Papers in
Psychology for good basic construction information. Avoid verbosity. Avoid awkward and nonparallel constructions. Avoid discursive and logical transition errors. Avoid lexical and grammatical (semantic and
syntactic) errors. Avoid APA citation
and format errors. Direct quotations may
not exceed 5% of the total word count. To
obtain your best work, start early and put in the time to write, rewrite, edit,
and rewrite some more.
Graduate Record Examination (GRE) information at http://www.gre.org/. For
preparation see Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/tag/gre/ref=tag_dpp_cust_itdp_bn_t
(good reports for Kaplan's Premier). If you
think you might go to graduate school – ever
– take the GRE now and take the subject test in psychology just after our Senior
Comprehensive Examination – you will never be better
prepared
Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) information at http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/start.htm. Medical school application information at http://www.aamc.org/students/amcas/start.htm. For preparation see Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Kaplan-2007-2008-Premier-Program-CD-ROM/dp/1419541978/ref=pd_sim_b_title_9.
Association for Psychological
Science
website at http://www.psychologicalscience.org/: general information for STUDENTS.
American
Psychological Association website at http://www.apa.org/: general information for students at http://www.apa.org/students/.
National Association of Social Workers at http://www.socialworkers.org/
with information for students at https://www.socialworkers.org/profession/overview.asp.
Society for
Neuroscience website at http://www.sfn.org/: general information about
neuroscience and links to other related websites.