.J., a 30-year-old African American client, is in his last year of law school and is clerking for a prestigious law firm. He and his fiancé plan to marry as soon as he graduates. During the last week he has had four dizzy spells and a headache at the base of his skull upon awakening for the last 2 days. His father has a history of hypertension, so T.J. is aware that his symptoms may indicate high blood pressure. On his way home from work, T.J. stops by the clinic and asks the nurse to check his blood pressure. The nursing assessment yields the following data.

• Transcribe your first interview. Use a transcription service or do it yourself. 
• For your second interview, use a summative technique (e.g., Halcomb & Davidson, 2006) 
• Provide your debriefing partner with the audio (if possible) and transcript of one interview. 
• Write in your unique thread a statement in which you compare and contrast the two ways of turning interviews into data. Consider which approach gets you “closer” to the experience of the participant and which approach gets you “deeper” into seeing potential patterns and categories. 

review attachment for topic 

 

Overview

This weeks APA Style assignment requires you to read and summarize an empirical research article. The goal is to demonstrate your understanding of the research article and the research methods covered so far, while following APA Style guidelines.

Instructions

1. Read the article “Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction” (Loftus & Palmer, 1974).
   • You can download the article here Download hereor view it on the next page.
   • The two resources below will assist you with reading empirical articles. Click on the links below to download them.
     • Tips on Reading Research ReportsDownload Tips on Reading Research Reports
     • Note Taking TemplateDownload Note Taking Template
2. Summarize the article. (See questions provided below the instructions)
   • Please organize your summary with the following headings:
     • Introduction
     •  Methods
       • Sample
       • Design
       • Measures
       • Procedures
     • Results
     • Discussion
3. Include an APA Style Student Title Page.
4. Include an APA Style reference page.
   • This should include a reference for the article and any other resources you use.

Please use the following template when writing your summary. It includes information on what to include and how to format it using APA style – Research_Article_Summary_Template_APAStyle.docx Download Research_Article_Summary_Template_APAStyle.docx 

This assignment should be 2 pages minimum (double-spaced), but will likely need to be more to sufficiently summarize the article.

Your assignment will pass through Turn It In, so be sure your work is your own!

You can view the rubric that will be used to grade this assignment at the bottom of the page.

 

Use the following questions to help you summarize the article. Answering these questions will help you to map out all of the information that should be included in a thorough summary.

Introduction

• What was the researcher interested in (what was the research topic)?
• What were the variables? How were they conceptually defined? (See Chapter 4, Psychological Measurement Links to an external site.; especially section 21. Practical Strategies for Psychological Measurement)
• What were the researcher’s research questions and/or hypothesis?

Methods

Sample:

• Describe the sample – sample size (how many), gender, age, ethnicity and race, any other important demographic information.
• How were they recruited?

Design:

• Was the research experimental or non-experimental?
• If non-experimental:
  • Was it simply describing variable(s), or was it correlational?
• If experimental:
  • What was the independent variable(s)? What was the dependent variable(s)?
  • Was a between-subjects or within-subjects design used?

Measures:

• How did they operationally define their variables? 
  • I.e., what measures where used? (What are they called and what do they measure?)

Procedures:

• What did the participants have to do?

Results

• What did the researchers find/what were the results?
  • Note: for this section, you do not need to include any statistical information. Using everyday language, explain what the main findings were.

Discussion

• What explanations (possible reasons) does the researcher give for the results? In other words, why do they think they found what they did?
• What were the limitations of the study?
• What do the researchers recommend future research should do?

 

Overview

This is the first assignment for your APA Research project. Each assignment builds on previous work so take care in completing this week’s work! By the time you finish the course, you will have first-hand experience constructing and administering a survey, as well as practice in analyzing your results and drawing conclusions. 

As you learned from the previous page, you will be conducting non-experimental research using self-report surveys. Because this is your research, you may choose a topic of interest to you. 

Before completing this assignment, please read the information on ‘Writing Survey Items’ in section 7.35 of your textbook Links to an external site.. Understanding the information that can be gained from survey items will make this assignment much easier. You will be learning about survey research in more detail next week.

Instructions for APA Project – Assignment # 1 (Survey Topic)

Planning

Please read each bullet point carefully.

• This week, you are to choose the topic you would like to research. Choose wisely! In next week’s assignment, you will create a survey using both open-ended and closed-ended items on your your selected topic.
• Don’t forget: You can choose to conduct observational or correlational research.
  • Observational research – your research will describe one variable.
  • Correlational research – your research will examine the relationship between two variables. 
• Here is a pdf with some single variable topic ideas to get you started: ObservationalSurveyTopics.pdf. Download ObservationalSurveyTopics.pdf.Don’t be limited to these research questions though. Be creative and try to think of new ideas.
• Here are a few correlational topic ideas:
  • Study habits and GPA
  • Meditation/exercise/sleep habits and mood
  • Quarantine and eating/drinking/exercise habits
  • Living situation (e.g., alone, with friends, family, kids) and stress
  • Social media use and stress
• Important: Your research is not being submitted to an IRB (from your Ethics chapter Links to an external site.: A committee that is responsible for reviewing research protocols for potential ethical problems) so please do not ask about private, sensitive, personal matters such as mental illness, sexuality and the like. Beyond that, have fun creating questions you really want answers to.

Assignment Guidelines

Your assignment should include the following information using a bulleted format and the labels you see here.

• Topic:
  • Generally, what topic are you studying?
    • For example, sleep quality during quarantine – this is a correlational example. (Please do not choose this topic.)
  • Who is your population?
    • For example, anyone impacted by Covid-19.
  • Based on your topic and population, are there any specific characteristics that your participants need to have in order to be eligible for your study? These required characteristics are called inclusion criteria. Including inclusion criteria means that only people who meet those criteria can participate in your study. You will need to specify this during recruitment.
    • We don’t need any inclusion criteria in the sleep quality and quarantine example because the population is anyone that has been impacted by covid – which is everyone. However, if I was interested in exploring this relationship in a specific population (e.g., women or people between the ages of 18 and 25), then I would need to specify the inclusion criteria.
• Conceptual definitions: Provide a conceptual definition for your two variables.
  • For example:
    • Quarantine – isolating at home for 10-14 days.
    • Sleep quality – includes bedtime, wake time, sleep duration, difficulties falling/staying asleep.
• Questions: Without worrying about the format (closed or open-ended) or how you would pose the questions to respondents, what questions related to your topic would you like to find answers to?
  • For example, Have people’s sleep habits changed during quarantine? Have the number of hours changed, when people go to bed and wake up, or both? Do people feel rested? Are people experiencing difficulties falling and/or staying asleep? What demographic or other factors might be related to sleep changes during quarantine?
• Variables: Using the questions above, identify at least 3 measurable aspects of your variables of interest.
  • For example, 1) quarantine or not, 2) amount of sleep, 3) sleep quality, 4) sleep-wake cycle, 5) sleep difficulties.
• Operational definitions: How will you operationally define (i.e., measure) each of your variables of interest? 
  • For example:
    • Variable 1 – Quarantine
      • Quarantine – response ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, currently quarantining due to Covid-19
    • Variable 2 – Sleep Quality
      • Amount of sleep – hours per night.
      • Sleep quality – 5-point scale from ‘Very Poor’ to ‘Excellent’.
      • Sleep-wake cycle – sleep bedtime and wake time for the day.
      • Sleep difficulties – frequency of difficulties falling asleep and staying asleep, using a 5-point scale from ‘Never’ to ‘Always’.
  • So we are interested in the relationship between quarantine and sleep. We have one variable to measure quarantine and several to measure sleep. 
• Hypothesis: What is your hypothesis?
  • For example, I hypothesize that sleep habits change during quarantine. Specifically, respondents go to sleep later and wake later than before quarantine. Respondents sleep 1 extra hour a night, on average, during quarantine.

Another example is provided on the next page.

Your assignment will pass through Turn It In, so be sure your work is your own.

• After reading the case history about Phoebe, develop a treatment plan using one of the following theoretical perspectives to guide your treatment plan (cognitive-behavioral, family systems, interpersonal therapy, psychodynamic, purely cognitive, etc.), which have been introduced currently throughout the course. Make sure to identify which perspective you use and why you have chosen that particular perspective to guide your treatment plan for Phoebe.
  • Next, provide a list of primary target behavior you plan to address in your treatment plan. 
  • Then explain why Phoebe may have developed her difficulties and which factor might have contributed to her developing Bulimia Nervosa. 
  • Finally, plan a treatment based on your chosen theoretical perspective to guide your treatment. 
  • The assignment is to be anywhere from 350 to 500 words. 
  • Please include the sources used, such as the text, and provide proper APA formatting for the citations and the references. 
  • If you have any questions about the assignment, please message your instructor. 

1. The Case of Phoebe
   Phoebe… Apparently Perfect

   Phoebe was a classic all-American girl: popular, attractive, intelligent, and talented. By the time she was a senior in high school, she had accomplished a great deal. She was a class officer throughout high school, homecoming princess her sophomore year, and junior prom queen. She dated the captain of the football team. Phoebe had many talents, including a beautiful singing voice and marked ability in ballet. Each year at Christmastime, her ballet company performed the Nutcracker Suite, and Phoebe attracted much attention with her poised performance in a lead role. She played on several school athletic teams. Phoebe maintained an A-minus average, was considered a model student and was headed for a top-ranked university. 

   However, Phoebe had a secret: She was haunted by her belief that she was fat and ugly. Every single bite of food that she put in her mouth was, in her mind, another step down the inexorable path that led to the end of her success and popularity. Phoebe had been concerned about her weight since she was 11. Ever the perfectionist, she began regulating her eating in junior high school. She would skip breakfast (over her mother’s protestations), eat a small bowl of pretzels at noon, and allow herself half of whatever she was served for dinner. This behavior continued into high school, but as Phoebe struggled to restrict her eating, she occasionally binged on junk food. Sometimes she stuck her fingers down her throat after a binge (she even tried a toothbrush once), but this tactic was unsuccessful. During her sophomore year in high school, Phoebe reached her full adult height of 5 feet 2 inches and weighed 110 pounds; she continued to fluctuate between 105 and 110 pounds throughout high school. By the time she was a senior, Phoebe was obsessed with what she would eat and when. She used every bit of her willpower attempting to restrict her eating, but occasionally she failed.

    One day during the fall of her senior year, she came home after school and ate two big boxes of candy alone in front of the television. Depressed, guilty, and desperate, she went to the bathroom and stuck her fingers farther down her throat than she had dared. She vomited. Moreover, she kept vomiting. Although so physically exhausted that she had to lie down for half an hour, Phoebe never had in her life felt such an overwhelming sense of relief from the anxiety, guilt, and tension that always accompanied her binges. She realized she had gotten to eat all that candy, and now her stomach was empty. It was the perfect solution to her problems. Phoebe quickly learned what foods she could easily vomit. Moreover, she always drank lots of water. She began to restrict her eating even more, and her bingeing increased. 

   This routine continued for about six months, until April of her senior year in high school. By this time, Phoebe had lost much of her energy, and her schoolwork was deteriorating. Her teachers noticed this and saw that she looked bad. She was continually tired, her skin was broken out, and her face puffed up, particularly around her mouth. Her teachers and mother suspected that she might have an eating problem. When they confronted her, she was relieved her problem was finally out in the open and stopped binging for a while, but mortally afraid of gaining weight and losing her popularity, Phoebe resumed her pattern, but she was now much better at hiding it. 

   For six months, Phoebe binged and purged approximately 15 times a week. When Phoebe went away to college that fall, things became more difficult. Now she had a roommate to contend with, and she was more determined than ever to keep her problem a secret. Although the student health service offered workshops and seminars on eating disorders for freshman women, Phoebe knew that she could not break her cycle without the risk of gaining weight. To avoid the communal bathroom, she went to a deserted place behind a nearby building to vomit. She kept her secret until the beginning of her sophomore year when her world fell apart. One night, after drinking beer and eating fried chicken at a party, she attempted to cope with her guilt, anxiety, and tension in the usual manner, but when she tried to vomit, her gag reflex seemed to be gone. Breaking into hysterics, she called her boyfriend and told him she was ready to kill herself. Her loud sobbing and crying attracted the attention of her friends in her dormitory, who attempted to comfort her. She confessed her problem to them. She also called her parents. At this point, Phoebe realized her life was out of control and needed professional help.