Major Term Paper: Rationale and Some Ideas

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The course term paper is in lieu of formal exams.  My plan is to walk you through the paper, so that even thought it is a single project you can be assured of success. We do this in stages, so that by the time the paper is due, it will be 95% already written! You will be working on the paper almost immediately, and not waiting until the end of the course.
The mechanism to do this is called the Section Draft paper. For each of the first four sections of the course you will prepare a draft paper using information from that section as it applies to your paper topic. Please check on deadlines  for due dates.  For this to work, two things are essential:

You must commit to a topic early on; I can help you with workable, interesting course topics;

You must apply the section information from lectures, assigned readings, and your own library  searches to your topic, staying within the then current section. For example, don't try to write a draft paper for Section II that requires information (and  knowledge about Section IV!

You must clear your paper topic with instructor.

What is a draft? You should use a draft to develop ideas about your topic using the section of the course as the guide. Thus, Section I is about theories of marital satisfaction and marital quality. You would want to address something about the theoretical basis for your topic and its relevance for marital satisfaction. If your topic is spouse abuse, you would want to ferret out current theories about marital abuse, casting them in a psychological framework (not a sociological framework).   Then when we get to section II --assessment--you will want to talk about studies that use the kinds of assessment methodology we are learning about as applied to studies of spouse abuse. In Section III, we will deal with interventions (prevention, therapy, psycho-educational approaches, etc.) and you would write about studies that pertain to intervention in the abuse area.

And so on for each of the four pertinent Sections.

Since the final term paper  major term paper should run between 15 and 20 text pages, exclusive of references (using APA style), and there are four sections to each paper, drafts should run around 3 to 4 printed pages, (again, exclusive of references). (If you write 4 drafts at 4 pages each you will have a 16 page paper.)
 

The paper, when finished will be a complete rendition of current work on your topic, reflecting your ideas and your understanding of the course material. Most importantly, it will reflect how you apply this learning to the subject you chose.

We will grade the drafts fairly liberally and we will make suggestions for improvements. The more finished the drafts are the less new writing you will need to do at the end. The basis for grading will be appropriateness to your topic, use of current material, your own ideas, and evidence of applying lecture information.

During the first few class meetings I will suggest interesting topics that fit with the course.  The course readings are set up to taper off quickly toward the end of the course. This is to ensure that you have time to send on your papers. Please use your time well. Complaints that you have three other  papers to write and final exams for other classes will fall on deaf ears! You can have a finished paper by the end of the course if you follow this advice.

Here are some Topics grouped according to  key ideas:

 I.  What is marital quality?
        What are theories of marital quality, and how do
they lead to therapies? The focus here is more general
and parallels the course itself (i.e., how have the theories
lead to empirical research in each of the four areas?).
How does quality get defined as the dependent variable
in therapy studies?

II.   Psychopathology & Marriage
         Psychopathology deals with marriages that have
gone wrong for whatever reason. Usually the issues are
depression, alcoholism, abuse, severe personality disturbance.
 Here the focus in on one or more specific psychopathologies
viewed through the eyes of the Sections (e.g., models,
assessment, intervention, etc.).

III.   Marital Therapies/Prevention Programs
         Marital therapies are just that: the focus is primarily
     comparisons of intervention; psychopathology is not in
     the forefront, whereas treatments are. One would still have
    to deal with models and assessment in this topical area.
 

IV. Personality variables in marriage
 Personality variables refer to the role of individual
difference variables. For example, one could look at
attachment theory and research and write about how
it is involved in  marriages gone right and gone wrong.
What alternative models are there to attachment?
 Does attachment literature inform marital therapy?
 
V.  Divorce Prediction
Using the framework of the sections, what is the
current status of divorce prediction within psychology?
What studies and theory do we have in the psychological
literature that address our ability to predict divorce?
 
VI. Marriage and Health
        What is the evidence for a marriage and health
connection? Again, using the four sections of the course,
develop a state of the art paper on such a connection.

VII. Family Therapies
        A review of family therapies, again from the perspective
of the four relevant sections of the course.

VIII.   Marital Conflict Effects on Children
        How do various manifestations of parental conflict
affect children? See an extensive bibliography link
marital conflict & children.

IX.  Adult Attachment and Marital Functioning
        How do adult attachment theories apply to marital
adjustment? What assessments are used, what interventions
are available for overcoming marital problems related to
attachment iissues. Note: adult attachment studies, not
infant attachment.

I will entertain any suggestions people have for term
papers. The biggest problem we will have is that folks
will suggest more sociologically than psychological
focused papers. Sociological questions are of the
form "How does income affect marriage? Children
and marriage?" "Are dual income marriages
more or less successful?" These are basically
survey questions, not truly psychological ones.