Jump to content

Stuggling with the psychology extended essay....just a bit


janeAUSTENgirl

Recommended Posts

Hi, I've decided to do my extended essay in Psychology(it's one of my HL subjects so seemed appropriate).The actual topic is suicide and the depression paradox.The structure is somewhere along the lines of intro,depression,bio,cognitive ,sociocultural level of analysis and then conclusion(Is it a good break down of the title?).Its impossible to find books concentrating specifically on this topic and therefore at the moment my research is mainly done through internet sources(i've been told i'll have to find some books)( any recommendations for books?).To be trully honest my supervisor isn't all that helpful due to the fact he knows little about the extended essay part of the IB. Any helpful advice would be appreciated.....along the lines of how to get excellent psychology extended essays?Research help?Structural ideas? :(

Link to post
Share on other sites

You might also be able to hit on some stuff via Pubmed if you're looking for any stats relating to depression http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

I found that searching through Googlebooks is always a good plan, as well as looking through online journals and papers relating to Psychology (google Psychology journals?) and of course following up on leads. A surprisingly good source of leads would be the citations on Wikipedia. Look up the original texts (again, Google books comes in handy here even if pages are missing!) and see if you can find anything. If not you can always cite the book rather than the web page you found it cited on (provided you CHECK that the web page accurately reflects the text, I should add!). You should check out any old or alternative textbooks you school might have. I found some non-course textbooks for my essay to be actually pretty useful.

Finally, follow up on leads! If you find something, someone, an experiment etc. mentioned, google it until you find the original and see whether it'll add anything to your essay :(

Google Scholar is a good suggestion :)

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Also, Amazon's "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought Item XXX" feature is a godsend. I found 3 great sources that way. :(

Try exploring the results, and the results within the results. You'll find at least one substantial source without a doubt lol.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Go to the psych journals, start with these... they should lead you to a multitude of other references. Psych research builds on itself, so it is always best to find a current source and work backwards. There may be some articles that are more current than these, but this is what came up on my first web search.

Lester D. A test of Lester's depression paradox hypothesis of suicide. Psychol Rep. 1991 Jun;68(3 Pt 2):1254.

David Lester. A depression paradox theory of suicide. Personality and Individual Differences Volume 10, Issue 10, 1989, Pages 1103-1104

If you can't find these articles free online, don't pay $25 per article at Elsevier - that is insane and totally unnecessary. Go to your local university library and use their online search engines to pull up and copy the journal articles to a thumb drive. Most universities will give you limited privileges to use their search and copy facilities, and all universities have the major psych journals online as well as print copies in the stacks.

I have a Ph.D. in social psych - my daughter is an IB student. >.< Clinical psych issues are not my forte; unfortunately I don't know much about suicide apart from the pharmaceutical angle - as I currently work in pharma research - but I do know how to search in psych journals. If you need any more help with your search, let me know and I will see what I can do. Good luck!

Link to post
Share on other sites

Have you asked your school if they have a Questia account? For my psychology EE, it has been the best source I could ever ask for. It's like an online library in which you can find thousands of books, articles, journals etc and you can bookmark, highlight, make notes, etc and then make a bibliography from all of your books. It is the most brilliant source ever. I'm going to be sad when my account deactivates in January. But you will definitely have no problem finding information on any or all of those topics. My topic was the effect of chronic disease on adolescent social and academic health and I had over 20 books that I found through questia that helped me write an excellent essay. If your school doesn't use Questia, let me know and I can give you my username + password so you can take advantage of it until mine expires. :(

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...