Psychology of Religion Theory Paper

Students will complete a position paper delineating their approach to the psychology of religion. The paper should address their

1. Epistemology/philosophy of science
2. Approach to dealing with personal beliefs and biases
3. Implications for integrating their approach to the psychology of religion into practice.

Other Paper Requirements

1) The paper should be 6-8 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 5 references from scholarly sources. These may be references from the required class readings or outside scholarly resources.

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.

Theory 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 make your position clear! Even in theory/position papers, this is a common mistake.Your positions should be clearly stated in your paper.
2. Back up your position. It is important to back up your position with scholarly sources. When making potentially controversial statements, it is particularly important to back up your position with clear reasoning and, when possible, scholarly material. For this paper, you may use class resources to support your position where appropriate.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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!!

Psychology of Religon Theory Paper Grading Rubrics