Extended Essay Topics In Psychology Text

Jonathan Friesen - Writing Coach

The goal of this part of the site is to help you better understand your role as supervisor. A good supervisor can motivate and assist the student not only in completing the extended essay requirement, but also help them to better understand the research process. In this section you will find advice for helping students get started, suggestions for topics for extended essay, tips for assessment amp the viva voce, and samples of student work from our own school with my own comments. Criterion j of the extended essay rubric assesses students on the essay's abstract. The quiz below is based on the original quiz on the biology site developed by david faure.

An extended essay in psychology allows students to investigate a topic of personal interest in a systematic manner. The essay should be based on a well focused research question that the student attempts to answer throughout the course of the essay. The essay should be considered more of an investigative, analytical argument than a research hypothesis to be uncovered by use of research methods in a formal psychological study. Data collection and research methods, such as experiments, surveys, observations and case studies, are not appropriate for a psychology extended essay, and should not form part of the student rsquo s project.

In fact, some of the most interesting, engaging and successful extended essays are not necessarily based solely on material learned as part of the psychology course. Essays confined to the guide often produce descriptive, dispassionate accounts of classic psychological research. Supervisors do not need to have detailed knowledge of the student rsquo s topic: this is a less important factor in topic selection than availability of resources, student interest and the scope of the essay. Topics that generally fall within the area labelled as ldquo pop psychology rdquo or ldquo self help rdquo are usually not appropriate for the extended essay. Psychologists conduct research studies and develop theories in their attempt to understand behaviour and experience.

Academic Writers Account

Psychology extended essays must be supported with careful and appropriate citation of relevant theories and/or studies within psychology. This implies that the best resources are academic and psychological research journals and texts. Anecdotal support or references from popular publications do not form an appropriate base from which to develop an extended essay in psychology. Additionally, popular topics such as eating disorders, dysfunctional behaviour such as schizophrenia and depression and forensic psychology pose a challenge to students unless they have a tightly focused research question. These are very ambitious topics that need far more time and experience than students have at their disposal. The research question must be focused and provide direction for a psychological argument, issue or topic.

Funny Persuasive Essay Topics for High School

Topics that are general in nature inevitably lead to a descriptive and superficial recounting of what can be found in many resources, rather than the development of an argument that attempts to answer a specific question. A more focused question leads to a more tightly developed essay that makes appropriate use of psychological research as the basis for a reasoned argument. While the research question does not need to be phrased as a question, to encourage focus within the essay, it is often helpful to the student if the research question is thought about as an actual question itself. In this way, students can ask themselves ldquo have i answered this question? rdquo. It is also appropriate for the title to be phrased similarly to the research question, which, again, refocuses the development of the essay. The choice of topic is best described as a logical process that starts with a field of psychology that is of personal interest to the student.

From this decision, a research question is developed that may best be constructed in the form of a question, followed by a statement of intent that indicates the approach that is going to be used in answering the question. It means you need to supply an investigation of the source available to address the issue. What is more, to make your essay strong, your research should include reviewing the issue from different angles. All of these you will should present in the main body of your extended psychology essay.

While writing an abstract, answer the questions of the aim of research, procedure, and findings. When it comes to the research question, it should be controversial and provoke further discussions. Secondly, you should proceed with reviewing the sources related to the topic of the essay.

In this section, you need to describe the studies that contradict or advocate your research question. After the stage of reviewing the literature is done, you need to take your time to evaluate what has been learned from the sources. This stage is particularly complex and involves critical thinking and lot of analysis.

Academic Writing Linking Paragraphs

The final stage of your psychology essay is the answer to your research question. If you are aimed to write an a+ paper, here are small tips on how to choose the topic. As you move on along the writing process, the topic should ignite the spark of interest and keep up the enthusiasm. Acknowledge that the topic should be interesting to the world of contemporary academia.

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