Learning Experiences - Module 2 

1.  2.43 Learning Experience 1: Asking the Right Research Question (plus Discussion Board Activity 2.44) 
2.  2.51 Learning Experience 2: Reviewing the Literature
3. Two Common Errors in APA Formatting

2.43  Learning Experience 1:  Asking the Right Research Question

It's time to get your Learning Experiences in Sport Psychology textbook out.  After reading pages three through five (3-5) in your lab manual, you are to answer numbers one through five (1-5) under “Procedure” on page 6.  Be thoughtful about your answer to #5.  In the next learning experience (LE 2: Reviewing the Literature), you will be asked to find three journal articles on the topic that you selected and write a brief review of literature.  Make sure that you select a topic that interests you.  You might think about your goals for the course.  Do you have any related to topics we will not cover in this course (e.g., aggression, cohesion).  If so, that might be a good topic to use for your library search.

You DO NOT need to answer the discussion questions for this learning experience, but you DO need to answer questions one through five under “Procedure.”   

Learning Experience 1: Asking the Right Research Question has a related Discussion Board activity.  That activity is described below.

2.44 Discussion Board Activity

By Tuesday, January 30, 2007:
Post your answers to Learning Experience 1: Asking the Research Question in your small Groups discussion area for Learning Experience 1 (Comets, Liberty, Monarchs, etc.).  In addition to your answers to questions 1-5, discuss whether the research you designed in questions 1-4 is a study or an experiment.  Explain why you think so.  Again, this is based on the study you designed in answering questions 1-4 and should be reported as #6 in your post.  Information about the differences between a study and an experiment is found in Module 2, Lesson 4, Section 2 (2.42) of our TeleCampus (Blackboard) course website.  

Read and respond to the posts of others.  Have they correctly distinguished between their independent and dependent variables?  Would you agree that they have clearly described how the independent and dependent variables will be measured (operationalized)?  Have they correctly identified the research they designed in answering questions 1-4 as a study or experiment?  Please give your colleagues some quality feedback.  REMEMBER: These are learning experiences ;-)  

Group assignments for the first half of the course (note: these group assignments are in addition to the Journal Post groups):

The Comets:  

The Liberty:

The Monarchs: 

The Stars:

The Sting:

The Fever:

2.51  Learning Experience 2: Reviewing the Literature (two separate assignments)

Learning Experience 2: Reviewing the Literature will give you two chances to practice finding library information. The first exercise is a literature scavenger hunt (see "Scavenger Hunt Small Group Activity" below). The second is a mini-review of literature (see "Mini-Review of Literature" below).  

The scavenger hunt is a partner activity, while the mini-review of literature is an individual activity.  Both of these assignments are to be turned in to your instructor as email attachments.  Make sure that for both assignments you follow APA style for citations, quotes, and references.  You should have a copy of the APA Manual.  There are also guides for using APA format under Resources on this website.   

Scavenger Hunt Partner Activity

On page 11 in your lab manual (Learning Experiences in Sport Psychology), you will see a list of five references that are missing various parts of their APA citation.  In addition, it is not clear whether the reference is a book, a journal, or a dissertation.  As a member of your group, you are to: 

• determine whether the reference is a book, journal, or dissertation
• complete the reference using APA format
• identify the library database where you found the reference

In addition to the references in the lab manual, please find the following five articles in a UT System Digital Library database as full-text articles.  You do not have to send me the article. Just format the reference correctly using APA style which would include the database in which you found the article.

When you are looking for these full-text articles, I'd suggest that you do a guided search or advanced search using whatever information I have given you, rather than a basic search.   

1. Missing the mark: Effects of time and causal attributions on goal revision in response to goal-performance discrepancies by J. J. Donovan and K. J. Williams.
    
2. The role aggression plays in successful and unsuccessful ice hockey behaviors by J. P. Sheldon and C. M Aimar.
    
3. Zone in: Using hypnosis in sport psychology by J. H. Edgette.
    
4. The Sport Grid-Revised as a measure of felt arousal and cognitive anxiety by D. G. Ward and R. H. Cox.
    
5. Examining the multi-process theory: an investigation of the effects of two relaxation techniques on state anxiety by S. Gill, G. S. Kolt and J. Keating.
   
   Again, find these references in #1-5 as full-text articles, and answer the same questions you did for the other 4 (or 5) references in the lab manual, including the nature of the reference (book, article, dissertation, etc.), the database you found it in, and the complete APA citation.
    
6. Answer these last questions: Which of the following journals are available full-text online anywhere in the digital library? If it is, what database and what volumes and/or years?
   a. The Sport Psychologist
   b. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology
   c. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology
   d. Journal of Sport Behavior
   e. International Journal of Sport Psychology
   f. Psychology of Sport and Exercise

Partners

By Friday, September 9, 2005:
Email your results as an email attachment to Dr. Cassidy at Cassidy_C@utpb.edu.

Mini-Review of Literature

Again, on page 11 in your lab manual (Learning Experiences in Sport Psychology), you will see a paragraph at the bottom of the page that reads:

As an additional exercise, from the question you devised in the first learning experience (Asking the Research Question), find five references (academic journal articles) pertaining to that topic.  After you have identified and read the articles, write a brief literature review on your topic using these articles as your base.

For this assignment, I would like your references to be research journal articles, not websites.  The journal articles may be online, full-text articles, but they are to be published articles. You are to find at least three such articles. More is fine; three is a minimum.  The review of literature should discuss the nature of the research studies conducted and synthesize the conclusions from the three articles.  Citations must follow APA format.  The literature review is to be accompanied by a list of references (in APA format, of course :-).

By Thursday, February 1, 2007:
email Dr. Cassidy your mini-review of literature, including a list of references, as an email attachment.  Send to Cassidy_C@utpb.edu. 

Two Common Errors in APA Formatting

Citing Online Journals

There are two places in your APA Manual where the reference format for journal articles found on the Internet is discussed and examples are given.

I’m going to focus my comments on journal articles, only.

IF you read the online version of the journal article, the APA formatting is found starting on page 271 (example 71 is an example). In this case, you might be a subscriber to the journal. Since you are a subscriber, you may receive a print copy and have online access to the journal. That sort of reference employs the [Electronic version] formatting.

HOWEVER, if you got access to the journal article through a library database, which is what you were to do for the Scavenger Hunt and which you probably did or are doing for the mini-research review, you need to look at the directions and examples starting on page 278 in your APA manual. The title of that section is “Aggregated databases.” SportsDiscus, ProQuest, Academic Search, and ScienceDirect are all aggregated databases. In this case, you don’t use [Electronic version]. Instead you cite the name of the database and the date you retrieved the article.

It’s time to become familiar with the 5^th edition of the APA Manual. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be fine.

Let me know if you have any questions about citing journals in electronic format.

Using Issue Number

The other pretty common error is to use the issue number of the volume when the pages are numbered continuously from the first through the last journal published in a given year, that is, for a given volume. You always use the volume number, of course. However, whether you include the issue number, such as 6(4), depends upon how the journal is paginated. Almost all research journals (e.g.,  J. of Sport & Exercise Psychology, Research Quarterly) have continuous page numbering, so you don’t use the issue number. The reference would just have the 6 without the (4). Almost all weekly magazines and monthlies (e.g., JOPERD, Newsweek), begin with page number 1 for each issue of the magazine, so you use both the volume number and the issue number for those references.

The logic here is pretty straightforward. If you would NEED the issue number to FIND the article, you would include it. If you wouldn’t need the issue number to find it, you leave it off.

Hope that helps you a bit as you tune up your APA formatting skills.