I don’t understand this Psychology question and need help to study.

Purpose:

The goal of having a class blog is to provide you with (a) practice searching the literature for interesting and relevant research; (b) experience communicating science to a non-expert audience; and (c) the opportunity to engage more deeply with topics of specific interest that may not be covered in the planned text or lecture topics.

What you will do:

Each person in the course will contribute to a class blog.

• Write a blog post using any of the Types of blogs below.
  • 400-500 words in length (appx. 1 page)
  • Use 3 empirical journal articles for each blog to support your claims (see below (Links to an external site.))
  • Blogs are due on Saturdays at midnight.
  • Topics are chosen based on your own interest in developmental psychology
  • See submission guidelines here (Links to an external site.)
• Comment on at least 5 posts
  • Due anytime before the last day of class (Friday, June 6, 2020).

Types of blogs

Using https://genderpsych323.wordpress.com/ (Links to an external site.) as a guide, your contributions to the blog will include 2 posts which include any of the types below. Blogs must focus on childhood development (pregnancy, infants, childhood, parenting, etc).

• “Research Spotlight” – summary of a recent (last 5 years) empirical article. (This is the only one that requires only 1 journal article).
• “Child Psychology and Pop Culture” – examination of media (books, video) using multiple journal articles/ child psychology concepts.
• “Fact Checker” – examination of a claim you find in the media. Think of this as “I read/heard that ___, but in reality the research says ___”
• “Hot Topic” – Review of a particular research area that summarize findings from a handful of articles (e.g., “Top 10 reasons for ___” or “A Step by Step Guide for ___”)
• “Q&A”– Pose an interesting question about development in children/ adolescents, then provide an answer backed up by research. This can take the form of an advice column (i.e., write a fictional “Dear Researcher” letter to then respond to).

Using empirical journal articles

For each type of blog, you will need to use empirical journal articles as the foundation (not class notes or textbooks). When using a journal article, you should indicate the key results as well as how the study was done in your own words (i.e., avoid quotes and be sure to avoid plagiarizing). Be sure to provide sufficient detail (more than you can simply get from the Abstract) so that someone unfamiliar with the study understands what was done in the study and what they found.

Topic Selection:

Choose a topic related to childhood development. Ideally, this will be a topic that we do not cover in depth in class, in order to broaden our scope, but if you are especially inspired by an article that mirrors (or contradicts!) something we learn in class, go for it! If you have questions or concerns about the appropriateness of a source or topic, please check in with me.

Audience:

As this is for a general audience, that means they may NOT have the background knowledge that you do. Some tips for writing for a general audience:

• Avoid jargon, or words that we only use in psychology. For example, we will learn the term “habituation” in class, but it may mean nothing to someone who doesn’t know about psychology. So, you should define what habituation is for them.
• Avoid terms like “prove” or “proven”. One study cannot prove anything!
• Keep it readable. Keep your word usage lower than a 12th grade level on the Fleish-Kincaid grade score. Read more here: https://blogging.com/readability/ (Links to an external site.)
  • Test your readability here (Links to an external site.), or here (Links to an external site.)

Helpful website for finding images that are copyright free:

• Copyright laws – 12 dos and don’ts (Links to an external site.)
• How to use creative commons to add images to your blog (Links to an external site.)
• https://creativecommons.org/ (Links to an external site.)

Helpful tips on writing a blog:

• Blogging basics for students (Links to an external site.)
• How to write a blog post (Links to an external site.)

Submission:

To submit, you need to do 2 things:

1. Add your post to your discussion board. This is so that others will be able to respond and comment on your blog post.
2. Add your post also to the TurnItIn assignment.

Submission Checklist / Requirements:

Blog must include:

• An interesting title
• An image / video, with an appropriate APA citation at end of paper
• APA-style in-text citations
• APA-style references at end of post
  • 1 for Research Spotlight, and at least 3 for all other article types

At bottom of submission write out the following about your paper:

• Blog type
• Word count (400-500 words)
• Flesch Kincaid reading level (less than grade 12 (Links to an external site.))
• Keywords: 2-5 useful keywords

Make sure to submit each paper in two places:

• On course discussion board: Class blog
• On assignment for Blog 1 or 2