Assignment

Part I: Post here the questions you would like to ask the professional you plan to interview for the Interview a Professional in the Field assignment. Your questions don't have to be finalized but fellow learners can help each other refine and get ideas for them. That, and demonstrating to your instructor that you are on track in developing your questions are the goals here.

Part II: An individual interview like your Interview a Professional in the Field assignment is considered "N of 1" case study research (meaning instead of asking questions multiple individuals, the number of persons you are focusing on is just "1") and "qualitative" (meaning you don't end up with numbers or other types of quantifiable data at the end but instead information in narrative answer form). Think back to your research design course completed before this Senior Seminar one and pick an alternative method of research (for example, naturalistic observation; longitudinal; one-time cohort; multi-question survey; quantitative instead of qualitative, etc.) that one might use to get similar information from professional psychologists in the feel. After identifying your alternative choice of research approach, substantiating with scholarly sources (in this case you can use a textbook or an Internet site, as long as the latter is of an academic nature), identify advantages and disadvantages of using it.

NOTE: The general instructions below will be posted with every assignment for your reference. You should revisit them periodically to make sure you are on target and avoiding point loss.

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS:

Post a 400 to 500 word response to the professor's instructions. APA style for both in-text citations and references must be used in all discussion postings. Ten percent will be deducted for each instance of failing to do this. The online library contains helpful links to assist you in following APA style (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/ is an excellent resource). These are scholarly dialogs so merely stating opinion is not acceptable. Positions must be supported with material from the course textbook or other reputable academic sources such as articles from the APUS online library.