Research Report- Find a Peer Reviewed Article

You are responsible for finding a relevant peer-reviewed article from a recent scholarly journal and writing a research report summary. Do not select a review article. Some articles are extremely difficult to summarize and some are much easier. Choose an article with interesting results and a clear method that will allow you to demonstrate that you can apply what you have learned in the lectures to new material.
§ Articles must be selected from psychological journals and must be relevant to topics covered in General Psychology such as child development, sleep, learning, memory, psychopathology, etc.
Research Report Summary Format
Articles should be no more than 10 years old. The Research Report should be 5 pages double-spaced pages (including a title page, 3 pages of summary, and a reference page).
1. Construct a title page that includes your full name, course section, professor name, date and the words “Research Report”.
2. Structure your summary using the following headings:
Introduction. Begin your report with a brief introduction that describes what the article is about. Show that you can situate the study in a larger conceptual and/or empirical context. What is the real question? You can take your lead from the ‘introduction’ section of the article, but note that you can disagree with the authors regarding the really important issues addressed in the article. This section should include the topic of investigation, the major question(s) being addressed, along with hypotheses/predictions.
Method. The next section should focus on the methods, describing what the researchers did. This description should highlight the participants, materials and procedure that are relevant to the study.
The method section should be subdivided as follows:
a. Participants. Who or what served as participants? If humans were involved, provide the relevant information, e.g., 103 undergraduate students, 63 females and 40 males.
b. Materials. What materials were used? Here you report the instruments or equipment used in the study (questionnaires, observations, tests, injections, mazes).
c. Procedure. What did the participants in the study do? What procedures did they follow? For example, “Participants were asked to memorize a list of words under 3 different conditions” (describe the conditions) “and were then tested for their ability to recall the words.”
Results. The third section should describe what the researchers found. You should limit yourself to the critical findings that make the paper important and interesting. Briefly summarize the results. In many instances, results are reported in the context of the statistical methods used in the investigation. You are not expected to be able to understand this statistical information. Instead, go for words and report the major findings (pay attention to words like “supported” or “significant” in terms of the hypotheses).
Discussion. Next, you should describe why the researchers think their findings are important. What was their primary interpretation of the results? The final conclusion should include your own point of view. You might relate the method or findings to materials you learned from lectures or other readings. You might criticize some aspects of the article or highlight some aspects that you think are important but were not touched on by the authors.
3. At the top of the last page, center and write “References” and then provide the reference of the article in APA style. Begin with author(s) name(s) followed by year, title of the article, journal name, volume and pages. Here is an example of the expected format:
Rich, C.L., Ricketts, J.E., Fowler, R.C., & Young, D. (1988). Some differences between men and women who commit suicide. American Journal of Psychiatry, 145, 718-72