This assignment is designed to help you get started on drafting your introduction section of your paper. This paper is an APA style lab report on our Coloring and Stress experiment. You should describe the broader idea behind this research, and then delve into prior work that informs us on this topic. Then, you should end with a current work section that briefly describes our specific study and hypotheses. You do not have to stick to this exactly when writing your final paper, but this is a good activity to start the structure for this section and to organize the evidence for the arguments your paper will need to make. This activity will be graded on completion and thoughtfulness/thoroughness of responses (15 points), but not evaluating each citation that you include (i.e., accuracy will not be part of the feedback on this assignment).
Introduction Section: This is the most important part of your paper and is worth the most points. You should be spending most of your time writing and researching this section.
There should be no direct quotes in this section at all. Although other published APA papers may have direct quotes, those kinds of papers tend to be a direct discussion of the literature or discussing definitional arguments between different theoretical approaches to a topic. Since our paper on our Coloring Activity is describing a research study that we have conducted, and it does not get into theoretical arguments within the field, direct quotations should not be used. Please paraphrase only.
Every claim that you make should have a citation. That means if you want to make broad statements such as, “Depression affects people mentally and physically.” You cannot just leave that sentence as is. You need to add at least one citation that supports that claim, e.g., “Depression affects people mentally and physically (Katz, 1996).” This is true even for things you “know” to be true. What I recommend you do, is first decide what kinds of arguments absolutely need to be made in your paper, and then work to find reputable sources to back those claims up. This activity will help you get started on this process.
What claims will we make?
The claims in our paper for Coloring Activity will have to do with arguing the following: 1) showing why stress might be a problem in the US or more generally 2) why it might be useful to reduce stress, 3) how art therapy or coloring specifically might reduce stress or related outcomes (and why), 4) how mandalas or structured patterns might be more beneficial at reducing stress than free form/open exercises (and why). The first two claims listed above (1 and 2) will be quick to argue by using some clinical statistics or other supporting information in about 1-2 broader introductory paragraphs in your paper. For the latter two claims about coloring and stress in particular (3 and 4), those should be the bulk of your introduction section and should be several pages each. Plan for a minimum of 1-2 pages for each of those arguments, going into detail about the studies that you find and how they might contribute to the arguments that underlie our research hypotheses.
What sources to use?
Start with the articles listed in the “Background Articles” Folder in D2L. This can be found in Step 4 in the literature review area of Unit 2. Use the article that you found for Discussion 2 (as long as it is relevant and fits in your argument outline). For your draft of your paper, you will need 6 high quality, peer-reviewed articles to cite in addition to those articles already found in the Background Articles folder. So, this is a good time to start gathering these and figuring out where they will fit into your paper. Peer-reviewed articles are your best bet for this section, followed by reputable research reports or scientific primary sources on the topic (CDC, DSM, APA reports on prevalence of mental disorders, NIH, etc.). It should be a formal report that is published if you want to include it as a high-quality source in your introduction section.
What sources NOT to use?
Blogs, personal information, magazines, stories, anecdotes, non peer-reviewed sources, literary books (these often are sourcing primary literature), textbooks, etc.
Instructions: When asked to provide citations below, use APA style 7th edition reference formatting. This will help you build your reference section later when writing your draft. You can check out the OWL Purdue guide as a start, or the APA tutorial linked in the course site. I personally recommend using a reference builder tool, such as Zotero, Refworks, or something similar because it will save you time, but double check these reference lists after they have been generated to make sure they are consistent with APA style in formatting and content. Make sure you use APA style 7th edition within these programs if you choose to use one.
The supporting files I've provided are the "Background Articles" provided in class then you need to find 6 other ones that relate to the main point. (Coloring reducing stress)
The assignment its self is called Introduction Outline, Please let me know if you have any questions.