Critically evaluate research in two areas of developmental psychology research

PSYH1028 Advanced Developmental Psychology Notes

2500-word literature review:

Topic title: The relationship between adverse childhood effects and disruptive behaviour disorders.

You need to include:

• Critically evaluate research in two areas of developmental psychology research
• Identify theoretically important overlaps between these two areas
• Be able to provide a brief research proposal for a new study

Structure of literature review:

1. Introduction
2. Review of theories/concepts relating to the two area and aim to incorporate your critical evaluation of the research all the way through this section.
   - Include evaluation and critique
   - Emphasise the importance of the two topics that you have chosen
   - Highlight the overlaps between the two topics and explain why that overlap matters and what it might tell us child and adolescent development.
   - Provide a rationale and justification for your research proposal.

Research Proposal

Keep in mind that this should be brief: aim for 500-700 words. So, I’m not looking for an extremely detailed methodology. Instead, your proposal should give the reader some indication of how your proposed study will help to answer some of the issues that you have raised in your review. There are a number of different ways of structuring the review. For example, you might just describe the proposed study in a few paragraphs. However, you may find it easier to use a structured format. This could follow the format of a structured abstract of an article (see Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry as an example).

For example: - Background: just a couple of lines summarising your review - Aims/hypotheses: what is your research question? What are you trying to find out? - Participants: who will you study, how will they be recruited? –

Measures: how will you go about measuring the variables that you are interested in? - Procedure: what will happen in the study and in what order?

Implications: what will the results tell us about the issue that you are interested in? What are the potential implications for children, adolescents, families, children’s services, policy etc (if relevant)

1. Conclusion
2. References