Psychology Junior Paper and Senior Thesis Guide

Current guidelines for Junior Independent Work can be found on the Department of Psychology's website.

The Fall Junior Paper (JP) in Psychology should involve critical analysis and original synthesis, with a topic chosen collaboratively by student and advisor. You will be required to formulate a research question and locate and synthesize relevant literature. 

• The references should be to appropriate sources, primarily published papers in scientific journals.
• The number of references depends on your topic, but are often between about 10 and 30. 

The library can help you:

• Identify sources of literature such as databases and journals
• Formulate a search strategy to locate literature
• Refine your search strategy to retrieve the most relevant literature
• Introduce you to literature mapping tools to help you map the scholarly conversation on your topic
• Help you manage your references using reference management software
• Connect you with library services such as Data and Statistical Services for help with data analysis and the Stokes VizHub for help with data visualization. 

The Spring Junior Paper (JP) in Psychology should formulate an original research idea and embody it in a paper. It should be written for a broad, academic audience. You will have the option to either 1) propose a thesis idea and uses creative exploration of the literature to evaluate the idea or 2) create a research proposal that surveys the literature, identifies an interesting scientific question, and design an experiment that might address that question.

• The references should be to appropriate scholarly sources, primarily published papers in scientific journals.
• The number of references depends on your topic, but are often between about 10 and 50. 

The library can help you:

• Identify sources of literature such as databases and journals
• Formulate a search strategy to locate literature
• Refine your search strategy to retrieve the most relevant literature
• Introduce you to literature mapping tools to help you map the scholarly conversation on your topic
• Help you locate a psychological test or measurement
• Help you manage your references using reference management software
• Connect you with library services such as Data and Statistical Services for help with data analysis and the Stokes VizHub for help with data visualization.