FACT CHECK ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS

Purpose and Objectives: The goal of this assignment is to help you develop and practice critical thinking and writing skills by finding and evaluating scholarly psychology research articles. The material you will be "fact checking" for this assignment is your mass market psychology book that selected in the first week of class.

Essentially, you will carefully read the book you've chosen and identify claims, observations, or statements of fact within the book that elicit some reaction in you that you'd like to follow up on and verify. For instance, it might be something the author explicitly said, something they implied, something you found particularly interesting, something you want to know more about, something that made you skeptical, or something you inferred while reading the book. You are encouraged to engage your curiosity and be inquisitive as you do this exercise!

Fact checking original research will require you to find and consult a primary source article (i.e., examine studies published in a peer-reviewed journal) to support the idea you have chosen to investigate. As part of the fact check, you will also practice composing a critical analysis of the primary source article you found. Doing this exercise repeatedly will help you hone the skills required to do well on your final paper and empower you to conduct fact checking expeditions on your own, after you leave PSYC 300W!

You will have multiple opportunities to get feedback to revise/improve your work (i.e., there are three Fact Check Assignments offered; see Course Calendar for due dates). The first assignment is formative in nature, meaning you will receive top marks just for trying (and following instructions) and TAs will provide extensive feedback to guide your future submissions. The later assignments will be marked with more attention paid to accuracy and demonstration of particular skills as outlined in the rubrics. The amount of detailed feedback TAs provide will decrease on each subsequent submission.

This assignment fulfills the following course objectives:

• Build and practice critical thinking skills
• Write concisely and efficiently by focusing on key points and knowing what to omit
• Construct a critical analysis (by thoughtfully examining the positive and negative qualities of the work and justifying a response based on the validity of the evidence). This will require:
  • finding and consulting primary sources
  • critically evaluating evidence
  • taking an informed stance
  • demonstrating scientific literacy
  • seeking new evidence as it becomes available and revising conclusions when appropriate

Requirements: You must choose a new idea to investigate for each Fact Check Assignment. You can choose to Fact Check anything from your scholarly trade book that interests you. The specific components you must include in each Fact Check Assignment are listed below.

Assignments should be no more than 1000 words long (about four pages). If you exceed the max word count, your TA will stop reading and anything written after that will be considered missing. Follow APA style and formatting guidelines (double spaced, 12 pt Times New Roman or Arial, 1-inch margins). References are not included in the word count. You do not need a title page.

Assignment Components: Your assignment should include the following components, and each component must be thoroughly addressed to earn top marks. The questions provided here are offered as suggestions to get you thinking deeply about each component (you might answer all, some, or none of them in your assignment, depending upon which are relevant to you). Also, the approximate word count provided for each component is only a guideline. The only firm word count is the overall MAX word count; TAs will stop reading if you exceed the maximum.

1. What is the idea you will be investigating? [approx. 50-100 words]: Start by naming the subject of your investigation. Briefly summarize the idea/suggestion/statement/piece of advice. If you are fact checking a direct quote from the author, please include it here and cite it properly as a quote using APA style. If your idea was inspired by something the author wrote, paraphrase the relevant part and cite using APA style. Be sure to explain why you chose to investigate this idea. What about it caught your attention? Is it relevant to you? Do you find it questionable or controversial? Are there important implications?
2. Brief summary of the article [approx. 100-150 words]: Locate and read a primary research article related to the idea you are Fact Checking. The article must contain original data (it cannot be a review or theoretical paper). Briefly summarize key aspects of the article that are relevant to your idea. As a rule, you should align your summary with your critical analysis and fact check, so the points you raise here should correspond to what you discuss later (i.e., don't provide irrelevant details here and, similarly, don't critique elements of the paper that were not in the summary). What is the purpose of the paper and/or what is the primary hypothesis relevant to your idea? How did the researchers define, measure, and test their variables of interest? Who comprised the sample and how much statistical power did the study have? What were the key findings of the research and what was the effect size? Why do the results matter? NOTE: Do not evaluate the research in the summary section, that belongs in the critical analysis section.
3. Critical analysis of the article [approx. 150-200 words]: This is where you will evaluate the paper's strengths and weaknesses (remember to include both - being critical does not mean just pointing out the negative aspects of a piece of work). What is your evaluation of the robustness of the evidence? State your conclusion (thesis) and justify it by referring to specific parts of the article as you examine them (always cite using APA style). Discuss the quality of support for the researchers' hypothesis. Was the researchers' definition and measurement of variables convincing? Why or why not? Was the study methodology appropriate for the hypothesis being tested? Explain. What limitations prevented the researchers from drawing firm conclusions? What aspects of the research could be improved to strengthen the claim - be specific and explain how/why those improvements would provide stronger evidence (for top marks, don't just list the weaknesses, but say why they matter and propose potential solutions)?
4. Fact check [approx. 150-200 words]: This is where you compare the article you just read to the idea you are fact checking. Did the idea/statement/advice align with the evidence? How well did the book summarize the original research? What did you learn from the primary source (original research article) that you wouldn't have known if you had only relied on the secondary source (book)? In what ways did your initial impression of the idea change after consulting the primary source article (be specific)? What caveats or limitations of the original research did the book leave out? Why do you think the author chose to omit that information? What new insights did you gain about how to decide what information is interesting vs. essential when summarizing original research?
5. Following-up [approx. 150-200 words]: In this section, you will demonstrate the iterative aspect of science by finding and integrating new evidence to update the idea. For example, you might start by investigating whether any new publications have explored the limitations you identified earlier, or you could look for an article that questioned the conclusions and/or tested a competing hypothesis (i.e., a counter-argument), but these are not the only options - feel free to get creative. Locate and summarize a new scholarly journal article that builds on the idea you have been fact-checking (hint: this follow-up article should be published after the original article). Use what you've learned about information that is interesting vs. essential to keep your summary concise. Then, integrate this new finding with the first research article you read. How does (or doesn't) it align with the idea you are investigating? In what specific ways does it update and/or revise the idea? Importantly, recall that science is never done: If the authors of the book were writing now (vs. when the book was originally published), how might their overall message change based on the most current evidence available? What new advice might you offer with these results?
6. Summary Thoughts about your Fact Check [approx. 100-150 words]: This is your opportunity to summarize your factcheck and provide an original takeaway message. Propose a novel argument about the idea/suggestion/statement/piece of advice you just investigated considering all you There are many ways to approach this section and, intentionally, very few parameters. Feel free to get creative and/or controversial, just be sure to make a well- reasoned and justified argument. You can rely on the evidence you reviewed above and/or provide additional evidence as needed, but you must support your claim(s) to earn top marks. Your argument should be unique, meaning it must go beyond what the author of your book or other researchers have already said. For example, you might connect this idea to another psychology topic in an interesting way, generate unexpected advice based on the evidence, apply the results to solving a real-world problem, suggest a novel hypothesis testing an idea related to the topic, etc.
7. Writing quality & organization: Papers should be clearly written and concise; check for clarity and spelling/grammatical errors. Each section should be well-organized, with accessible writing that logically progresses from one idea to the next. Deductions will be made for poor coherence or significant grammatical errors that hinder understanding.
8. References and APA Style: Follow current APA formatting guidelines. Assignments should be double-spaced in Arial or Times New Roman 12-point font. Provide a complete reference list in APA style. Everything on the reference list should be cited in the text (in APA style) and everything cited in the text should appear on the reference list.
9. the book is Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict

Ara Norenzayan