RIVERBEND CITY Meet Brian Guest and Nicole Nelson In the first week, Joan and Ro

RIVERBEND CITY
Meet Brian Guest and Nicole Nelson
In the first week, Joan and Robert meet two other students in the first course of their doctoral psychology program. Brian Guest is a teacher in a Riverbend City elementary school. He is pursuing a doctorate in educational psychology and would like to work with the elementary curriculum. Nicole Nelson works for a nonprofit that works with older adults. She has decided to seek a developmental psychology doctorate with hopes of researching the developmental needs of aging adults. Brian and Nicole meet to talk about the demands of their doctoral program.
Brian: “I may be dense, but I don’t get what they mean by critical thinking in this program. Isn’t it something we already do all the time?”
Nicole: “Yes, I think we are all critical thinkers sometimes. But in a doctoral program, we have to kick it up to a higher level. We must evaluate the evidence carefully and make decisions based on evidence—not just on what feels right.”
Brian: “I suppose you’re right, Nicole. Synthesizing research findings requires careful critical thinking. We’ll need to be able to do that to write a dissertation.”
This week, you will be able to examine how to assess the literature critically. Peer-reviewed literature, the gold standard in academia, comes in various genres. Here is a partial list:
Opinion/editorial.
Commentary.
Meta-analysis.
Correlational research (most prevalent in the psychobabble world).
Qualitative study reports (all qualitative designs).
Experimental procedures (there is a host of these).
Mixed method.
Length of paper: Write a maximum of 3 typed, double-spaced pages, not including the title page. And References.
APA formatting: Format resources and citations according to current APA style and format guidelines