In the Proposal, you will begin documenting your intended observation of social behavior and submit it for review before engaging in the actual observation to make sure you are on the right track. The proposal should be written in future tense as you will not yet have engaged in the observation and should be about two double-spaced pages long.

1. Literature Review Sample:Copy and paste one abstract from social psychological literature relating to your intended observation, and explain how it helps form the research question or observational methodology for your observation. *Please read the Literature Review section of the Final Paper instructions for more information on choosing an appropriate abstract.
2. Introduction & Proposed Research Question: Identify the general social psychology principle you will be looking for in your observation, describe how the abstract you’ve included in your Literature Review section relates to your observation, and provide your ultimate research question(s). Make sure that your research question is capable of being answered through observation alone. You have not done all the research necessary to fully develop these concepts yet, but explain what you are thinking at this proposal stage.  You will develop these topics further in the Final Paper; at this point, I just want to make sure that you are on the right track.   Note:  You should read ahead in your in-class readings if you intend to investigate a topic that comes at the end of the class. Remember to include APA-style in-text citations where appropriate, including any references to things you have learned from your class readings. *See the “How APA-Style Citations and References Can Help You Prevent Plagiarism” section at the end of the syllabus (which was referenced in the Plagiarism Tutorial & APA-Style Citations/References Discussion). And please read the Introduction and Research Question sections of the Final Paper instructions for more on what kinds of information to include for these topics.
3. Proposed Subjects & Setting:Identify the proposed subjects and setting for your observation.  These may change after you do more research, but again, I just want to make sure you are on the right track.  *Please read the Subjects and Settings sections of the Final Paper instructions for more on what kinds of information to include for these topics.
4. Proposed Observational Methodology: Describe how you plan to conduct your observations.  Include as much information as you can at this point.  You can modify this information before conducting your actual study; this is just to see if you are on the right track.  *Please read the Observational Methodology section of the Final Paper instructions for more on what kinds of information to include for these topics.
5. References: Finish your proposal with a proper APA-style reference for the abstract you included above and any other external sources you have included in your proposal. *See the “How APA-Style Citations and References Can Help You Prevent Plagiarism” section at the end of the syllabus.

 

Literature review for full paper. Locate five appropriate abstracts from social psychological literature relating to your observation. Copy and paste these abstracts in this section of your paper; below each abstract, explain how this article helped form the research question or observational methodology for your observation.  Note that an abstract is one of the first elements included in professionally published articles; it serves as the summary of the entire article.  In most cases, the articles you will consider will be research based (meaning that the authors actually conducted an experiment), but you may also choose articles that are more theoretical in nature as long as they have an abstract.  Many websites contain unprofessional “stories” that do not contain abstracts; this makes them inappropriate for this assignment. [Formatting notes: Clearly number and label the beginning of each abstract with an appropriate APA-style in-text citation (i.e., the author’s last names and publication year); e.g., Abstract 1: Smith & Jones, 2015.  Also clearly label your interpretation of how the abstract contributes to your research question by using some appropriate subheading (e.g., Contribution:, Evaluation:, etc.]