Psychology

Name:

School:

Course/Number:

August 01, 2010

Instructor Name:

Psychology

Question 1

There are some differences of the first paragraphs within Norman and Malla’s introductory paragraph and the guideline illustrated by Burton. In accordance to APA style format, an introduction paragraph is supposed to contain a general overview of the topic under research. The introduction paragraph of Norman and Malla contains part of the hypothesis. Burton states that the hypothesis should come at the last statement of the introductory paragraph (Burton, 2010). Another difference is that their introductory paragraph unlike Burton’s guidelines, mentions the research method used, rather than mentioning more on the importance of the research to catch the reader’s mind. The introduction paragraph does not connect the reader to the other part of the research or body, as it should.

Question 2

In my opinion, I do not think the Norman and Malla’s article provides a clear and critical literature review of what it intend to cover in the research. More still, I do not believe that the article followed a logical order that leads to their hypothesis tested considering the introductory paragraph did not follow APA guidelines of writing an introduction in a transitional way to give the reader a clear notion of the hypothesis. Instead, the article confuses the reader; it is not concise and does not follow any particular organization to connect the hypothesis to the body, and another reason is that one does not know the purpose of the research or its importance to the reader fro the introduction (American Psychological Association, 2010).

Question 3

The authors have not stated their hypothesis clearly since the have divided it into two sections, and they are written in form of what the article has addressed, while I believe it should be written as a statement showing something like an observation or an issue that the person wishes to find out or test stating  prediction (Burton, 2010). More so, the authors have put the hypothesis in form of a paragraph instead of making it a statement. One specific suggestion that would fit to improve this hypothesis is using formative words such as “May” or “if, and then” statement to show a comparison that the authors are trying to prove such as “different types of education programs my influence on attitudes towards mental illness.” With such a statement, the reader would have a clear understanding of what the research covers (Experiment-resources.com, 2011).

Question 4

            The procedure does not provide enough information to allow replication by a person who has read the work since it does not provide the way the process took place in detail. Some more information that would be important in this work is to define what were the dependent variables and the independent ones, which is a requirement in APA research writing (Gravetter & Forzano, 2008). This is because at different classes people students tend to have different opinions about issues where a fourth grade pupil will have a different idea about the topic than an 11^th grade student. Some more information that could have been important is what kind of studies or units the students took at school considering that the research talked about different education programs may influence the attitude towards mental illness. This would help a person intending to replicate the work understand the exact procedure and reason behind the procedure (Asher, 2005).

Question 5

            The authors did not follow APA guidelines for presenting the results there was no different discussion section that is required in APA format. More still, I believe the results were not reported in APA format considering that the authors provided the table containing correlation first, which is supposed to be the second after another table describing the results. The authors start this section by explaining the figures used in the results, and they do not remind the reader of the hypothesis that would have been necessary for the reader to understand what the results measure and at the same time tell the reader whether the hypothesis was supported (Kahn, .). Clearly, the authors did not follow the APA format after combining the results with the discussion.

 Question 6

According to the table 1 in the article, the perception of mental illness is correlated to physical etiology positively with an alpha figure of 0.30 showing a positive correlation. Psychosocial etiology is correlated to mental illness perception negatively according to table 1 with a figure of -0.01, showing that the more a person may be considered mentally ill, the less the psychosocial component. Social distance correlates to perception of mental health with an alpha figure of 0.23 showing that the more a person will be considered mentally unstable, the further the distance required from that person. According to me, the three correlations mean that students will prefer a bigger distance with those considered mentally ill (Rosnow & Rosnow, 2008).

Question 7

First, the correlation between psychosocial etiology and perception to mental illness is not discussed well in the section. I do not think the results are discussed thoroughly since it does not show whether the results are according to the prediction in the introduction, which was also not well written. In the introduction one of the hypothesis is to show beliefs about mental illness, where the article explains succinctly about the relationship in the discussion. Secondly, the point of relating the person’s sex and beliefs has been addressed but needs more information about the applicability of the results to this fact, which I feel the authors are yet to do.

Question 8

In the future, it would be necessary to conduct a research that includes all age group members in a society to come up with a comprehensive conclusion about people’s perception towards mental illness. Fro the research it is evident that most of the people at this age prefer psychosocial etiology and treatment is positively related to the prognosis of the mentally ill, as opposed to physical etiology and medical treatment is perceived negatively. Gender differences arise in acceptance of psychosocial etiology of the two sexes (Norman & Malla, 1983).

 

References

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological

Association (6th Ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

Asher, J. (2005). A simplified guide to statistics for non-mathematicians. Los Gatos, CA:

Sky Oaks Productions

Burton, L. (2010). An interactive approach to writing essays and research reports in psychology. Milton Queensland: John Wiley.

Experiment-resources.com (2011). How to write a hypothesis. Retrieved from http://www.experiment-resources.com/how-to-write-a-hypothesis.html

Gravetter, F.J., and Forzano, L.B. (2008). Research Methods for the Behavioral Sciences. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning

Matthews, T.C., and Kostelis, K.T. (2011). Designing and Conducting Research in Health and Human Performance. Milton Queensland: John Wiley and Sons

Norman, M. G., & Malla, A. K. (1983). Adolescents’ attitudes towards mental illness: Relationship between components and sex differences. Social Psychiatry, 18, 45-50.

Kahn, J.H. (2011). Sample APA Paper for Students Interested in Learning APA Style 6th Edition. Retrieved from http://www.illinoisstate.edu/~jhkahn/APAsample.pdf

Rosnow, R.L. and Rosnow, M. (2008). Writing papers in psychology. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning

 

Use the order calculator below and get started! Contact our live support team for any assistance or inquiry.

[order_calculator]