Psychology Eating Disorders
Eating Disorders
First, read the following 3 articles. All are posted for you in the Course Reserves Folder on D2L. To get to the articles, go to Resources, then One-Stop Course Readings.
Franklin, J. C., Schiele, B. C., Brožek, J., & Keys, A. (1948). Observations of human behavior in experimental semistarvation and rehabilitation. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 4, 28-45.
Bair, C. E., Kelly, N. R., Serdar, K. L., & Mazzeo, S. E. (2012). Does the internet function like magazines? An exploration of image-focused media, eating pathology, and body dissatisfaction. Eating Behaviors, 13(4), 398-401. doi:10.1016/j.eatbeh.2012.06.003
O’Dea, J. A. (2005). School-based health education strategies for the improvement of body image and prevention of eating problems. Health Education, 105(1), 11-33. doi:10.1108/09654280510572277
Now you are ready to write your paper. (If you have questions about what eating disorders are, you may find the following webpage helpful, but this is not required.)
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/eating-disorders/index.shtml If you do decide to use this webpage, please cite it in your paper’s References list as National Institute of Mental Health. (2016). Eating disorders. Retrieved from https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/eating-disorders/index.shtml And please cite it in your paper’s text as (National Institute of Mental Health, 2016). You may also use other webpages or sources in your paper, as long as they are scientific and you make sure to cite them it your paper.
Introductory Paragraph of Topic 1. (This is just a suggestion for what to put in the introductory paragraph. You are welcome to write a different kind of introduction, but if you are unsure what to write, here is the appropriate content for the introductory paragraph):
Begin with a general statement that eating disorders adversely affect people. Explain what eating disorders are. Overview some reasons why it is important to study eating disorders, such as that eating disorders cause distress. Finish your Introductory Paragraph with a purpose statement usually best written as “The purpose of this paper is…” For this topic, the purpose will be to use established research to describe risk factors and prevention for eating disorders and then to propose your own study to investigate ways to prevent or reduce eating disorders.
Part A of Topic 1: Please answer the following. (You can also include here other information and ideas that you found important or interesting in the readings, if you want to, but make sure to address these issues):
o Referring to the articles you read, describe two factors that play a role in eating disorders, and the evidence you read about that indicates these factors are involved in eating disorders. In your answer, clearly distinguish between a factor that causes eating disorders and a factor that is correlated with eating disorders. Justify your answer. (You can pick any two factors that interest you).
o Explain how eating disorders can be prevented, describing one approach in detail, and why this approach is successful. Justify your answer. Make sure to mention the problem of iatrogenesis. (You can pick any approach that interest you).
o Use the Ryerson online library system (as described on pages 2-3 of this handout) to find another article related to eating disorders. Any article you find is fine as long as it is about eating disorders. You will find there are two main types of articles in PsychInfo—many are studies (like Bair et al.) and some are review articles (like O’Dea). Either is fine. If you choose a study, in this part of the paper describe: what the research question was for the study, who the participants were, what the participants did in the study, what the results were, and what the results mean in terms of understanding eating disorders (in your justified opinion). If you choose here to read a review article, describe specifically the topic of the review article and at least three of the points made by the authors of the review article plus the importance of the review article (in your justified opinion) to understanding eating disorders.
o End Part A by explaining there is a continuing need to understand how to prevent and reduce eating disorders.
Part B of Topic 1. Now it is time to think about proposing your own experiment about how to reduce or prevent eating disorders. Note: you will not do this study but are asked to think about how you would do a study. Please note that you are to propose an experiment (see chapter 2 of the textbook if you have questions about what an experiment is). The experiment should have the goal of reducing eating disorders. The experiment you propose must be a psychological study—it must involve behavior and/or mental processes. The experiment must also be ethical as well as practical to do in the real world. To come up with an idea for your proposed experiment, you can start with an idea mentioned in the articles you read in Part A above and adapt this idea into your own particular interest (always present your own idea, in your own words; cite the article that gave you this idea). Or you can come up with an idea entirely on your own that was not mentioned in the articles you read. After you have chosen the idea that you would like to study in a research setting (you will not actually be doing this study—your task is simply to think of a possible study), answer the following questions about your proposed study:
– What specific question—or hypothesis—will your experiment be examining? Why is this particular idea important to study?
– Who will be the participants in your study (e.g., women and men at university, or children in kindergarten, or another sample), and why will you choose these participants? Describe specifically how you will obtain your sample of participants.
– What will be the Independent Variable in your experiment? What will be the Dependent Variable in your study? What operational definitions will you use for the Independent Variable and the Dependent Variable? What will participants assigned to your Experimental Group do in the study? What will participants assigned to your Control Group do in the study? How will you use random assignment to assign participants to groups?
– What results do you predict (you are just guessing here—because you will not do the actual study) that you will get? If you got those results, how would they make a contribution to researchers’ understanding of how to reduce or prevent eating disorders? Since no research is perfect, what would be some limitations (or weaknesses) in your proposed study?
– What ethical concerns would you address in your study, and how would you do so?
Conclusion Paragraph of Topic 1. Conclude by summarizing the purpose of your paper, then briefly (a few sentences only) what you found out in reading the articles during Part A of the paper, and then briefly, why your study (proposed in Part B) would be important to conduct. Your last sentence of the paper should be a general statement indicating that since reducing eating disorders is important, it is imperative that high-quality research continues to be conducted on this topic (you can say this idea in different words).
We can write this or a similar paper for you! Simply fill the order form!
