Psychology of Religion Scholarly Paper

Students will complete a scholarly paper researching a particular topic relevant to the psychology of religion. This should include:

1. A critical review of the literature
2. Implications for practice
3. Implications for future research..

It is recommended that students discuss their topic with the instructor prior to beginning their scholarly paper. This paper is worth 200 of the 400 points for the course.

Other Paper Requirements

1) The paper should be 10-15 pages of text (not including the title page or references). Please note this is slightly shorted than noted in the syllabus.

2) The paper should be written in APA style unless otherwise noted. No abstract is required.

3) The paper should include a minimum of 10 references from scholarly sources. This should include both theory and research articles appropriate for your topic.

4) The paper must be turned in electronically to the professor unless the student receives permission ahead of time to turn in a hard copy. The paper must be received on the due date to avoid the deduction of late points. It is strongly recommended that you send a copy (cc) of your paper to your own Email address to be able to verify your attempt to send the paper. If there is an error in transmission and the student is unable to demonstrate evidence they attempted to send the paper, late points may be deducted from the paper.

Scholarly Paper Tips

Hopefully, all of you are well versed in writing scholarly papers at this point of your academic career. However, please allow me offer a few tips based off of common mistakes. Additionally, I recommend spending some time reviewing the writing resources on this web site.

1. Be sure to have a point! While this seems obvious, it is one of the most common mistakes students make on scholarly papers. While this is not a position paper where you are articulating your position, you are still advocating for a position which you hold. However, the presentation is different. The paper should be more objective, focus more on content and scholarly resources, and focused on a particular topic. Journal articles provide a good example of what a scholarly paper should look like.
2. Integrate your resources. It is not uncommon for a paper to take turns addressing a different sources one by one. This is not good, academic writing. Part of the art of academic writing is making the paper your own. When students struggle with this, I will at times recommend they write the paper and without any references and then go back to integrate the references into the paper. While I wouldn't normally recommend this approach as it often leads to a choppy paper after the sources are integrated, it does help illustrate the idea that you are to write the paper around your own organization.
3. Use scholarly resources. If you are unsure what makes a resource scholarly, please read the section of the web site on determining if a resource is scholarly.
4. If you are unsure about APA style, look it up! At the graduate level, it is expected that you can write at a professional level which includes using proper APA style. You will be marked down if you do not use correct APA style. Additionally, using poor style can lead to many other problems such as 'unintentional plagiarism' and creating a lack of clarity in your position. Learning APA style as you go helps make later projects, such as your dissertation or articles written for publication, much easier. This web site has a number of good resources which can help you with APA style issues.
5. Do your own work! Again, this goes without saying. However, this seems to becoming more of an issue in academia all the time. Most students are surprised how easy it is for professors to recognize plagiarism. This can be a very quick way to end a career. If you find yourself tempted, just keep in mind the amount of time and money you've invested in this career choice. It's not worth the risk!!

Grading Rubrics for the Scholarly Paper