The paper should be organized into six parts: Title Page; Abstract; Introduction; Literature Review; Intervention; Conclusion; References.
A. Title: Your title should be centered and just above the midpoint of the page. Your name should be just under the title, and our university name should be under your name. (You don’t need to put my name or the course name). Your title should give a good indication of what your paper is about. In other words, a reader should know what health problem your intervention addresses and what theory or concept you will be applying (i.e., don’t be too vague).
B. Abstract: This should simply summarize your paper in 150 words or less. Thus, there should be one to two sentences that capture the Introduction, two to three sentences that cover the Intervention, and one to two sentences that cover the Conclusion.Note that the Abstract should be on its own page, with the word Abstract centered at the start of the page.
C. Introduction: Here is where you introduce the problem you want to address. The main goal is to make the reader care about this problem; after reading the Introduction the reader should think that something really ought to be done about this issue. A good strategy is to provide some statistics about the prevalence of the problem (e.g., More than 10% of Americans suffer from gingivitis). You may utilize websites that provide national or worldwide statistics (see below). Thus, it’s ok in this section to use these types of web-based sources. An additional strategy is to describe the consequences for people who experience the health problem (e.g., people with gingivitis tend to have unattractive smiles. This is in turn is increases the risk that others will reject them. As consequence of this social rejection, people with gingivitis are susceptible to depressed affect). You should cite studies that support these thoughts or make it clear that you’re making an argument (that hasn’t been tested). In addition, if it’s true you might discuss how people are resistant to engaging in this health behaviors (people used to be very resistant to wearing seatbelts, for example).
Then you could have a paragraph or so indicating how social psychological theories and concepts may help in changing people’s attitudes and behaviors on this issue. Remember, the Social Psychology and Health Module (p. 562-573) may help you in your thinking. You can then briefly indicate which theories and concepts you will focus on. These will mainly be those theories/concepts that have a role in influencing people. As noted in your syllabus, Chapter 8 is specifically about influencing people. However, you should also try to use concepts from other chapters (e.g., framing effects, social comparisons, possible selves, self-discrepancy theory, automatic self-control strategies, priming). You can also think about how to utilize certain motives (people’s need for self-enhancement) or cognitive processes (availability heuristic).
D. Literature Review: Go into more detail about how the theories and concepts that will inform your intervention. The literature review shouldn’t simply define these theories/concepts. Discuss findings. And summarize at least one study; this should be brief—note how in our textbook the authors sometimes discuss a study’s procedures and results (without going into extensive detail about the number participants and what statistics were used).
In this section, don’t rely on the textbook. Use real peer-reviewed journal articles (that you find via PsycInfo, PsycArticles, and Google Scholar).
The Introduction should end with an Overview subsection. Here you will just have one paragraph foreshadowing your intervention. This is just a good way to prepare the reader for what is about to come. In essence, you’re saying that based on the literature review it makes sense to design the intervention you’re planning.
E. Intervention: You’re to develop a broad campaign to reach a lot of people in order to change their attitudes about some health issue (e.g., make them think that gingivitis should be prevented) and ultimately their behaviors (e.g., they actually start engaging in gingivitis-prevention behaviors–brushing teeth etc.). Your plan should involve ads that you would run on TV (or even internet media—Youtube), radio, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets. Note that you’re not limited to one media source. However, you should develop different strategies for different sources (i.e., what you do for TV ad should be different than what you would do in a newspaper ad). You should also have the different sources in different subsections (i.e., under intervention section, you would have a TV ad section, Radio Ad section, Print Media section). Thus, don’t blend them all into one section—make them distinct from each other. Also, make it clear what social psychological theories/concepts are at play.
Give some detail. If you’re doing a commercial, describe your spokesperson (e.g., a celebrity, an expert, an attractive model, someone hurt by not engaging in the healthy behavior, someone helped by engaging in the healthy behavior). Try have fun with it.
You may also consider whether it makes sense to cater the messages differently to different types of people, either based on cultural differences, gender differences, or personality differences.
F. Conclusion: Describe the strengths and weaknesses of your intervention. For example, as a weakness you may address how your intervention may not convince all people because of various factors (culture, gender, personality differences, self-enhancement motives, or situational—time constraint or multiple sources competing for people’s attention); note that you should actually explain the campaign may be less effective with these groups…perhaps present an idea what might be more effective. Discuss how your intervention (if successful) would extend our understanding of the theories/concepts. End broadly by discussing the implications of the intervention for addressing the problem; in other words, think of the importance it would do for society if people engaged in the health behavior (fewer unwanted pregnancies or STDs, fewer deaths, better psychological well-being, lower health care costs etc).
G. References: This should be in APA style. For instance, the word References (as opposed to Work Cited) should be centered at the top. Note also that the References section starts on its own page.
Health Statistics Sites
Center for Disease Control: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus.htm
National Library of Medicine: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hsrinfo/datasites.html
World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/whosis/en/
You are to design an intervention program to persuade people to adopt a healthy behavior (e.g., exercising, condom use, healthy diet, wear sunscreen, etc.). This intervention should incorporate at least three social psychological theories (or concepts). In addition, this paper should include some concepts from Chapter 8 in your textbook; I also recommend that you read the Social Psychology and Health Module (p. 562-573). The paper should be 5 to 8 pages (excluding Title page and References). You will use APA format for this paper and include at least five references from peer- reviewed journal articles in the area of social psychology. More details about the assignment will be available on 6/2. You will use Blackboard’s Assignment tool to submit your paper, and it will be due by 11:59 pm EDT on Sunday 7/20.
Prior to turning in your paper, you are to submit it to turnitin.com. Turnitin.com provides a score that indicates how much your paper overlaps with other papers. I will only grade those papers that show (based on the score and my judgment) that they do not overlap in a significant way with other papers (usually less than 10% excluding the References section). Students whose papers do not meet this requirement will have to rewrite the questionable parts and resubmit the paper to turnitin.com before I will grade it. I recommend that you submit to turnitin.com two days before you plan on submitting your final paper to me.
How to submit to turnitin: Go to http://turnitin.com/ and create an account. When creating an account enter 8064243 for the Class ID and “psyche” for the Password. If you already have an account then just add the class–use the same id and password.
The use of web-based resources (e.g., Wikipedia) for the paper is not permitted, with the exception of published scholarship that is available electronically (e.g., through PsycINFO), or unless I have approved the use of a specific source in advance. Students
