Influence of life stress on athletic injury

Guidelines For Final Research Paper

The purpose of this term paper is to explore and present information on a topic related to STRESS and EXERCISE or HEALTH. The paper is to include an introduction, purpose statement, short review of literature, and a brief summary of the articles followed by the student"s own thinking. The "own thinking" is important!

The paper is worth 50 points. They will be evaluated as follows:
o Introduction – 10 points
o Review of literature – 15 points
o Discussion – 10 points
o Own thinking/reaction - 10 points
o Bibliography-Reference – 5 points

"Coaching Hints" for Term Papers:
1. The bibliography for each paper must consist of at least six articles from
professional peer-reviewed journals
2. The length of the papers is a maximum of six typed pages, double spaced.
3. Form of Paper: Use APA format.
4. Scholarly approach - grammar, sentence structure, paragraph structure,
spelling, etc. will be graded!!

There are 4 main parts to this research paper:

1) Introduction: (10 pts)
a. This section introduces your topic and makes the link between stress response and your topic, e.g., introduce hypertension then the stress hormones that are linked to hypertension. The introduction should lead into a clear statement of purpose that includes how exercise can mitigate or reduce the likelihood of your selected disease/condition. Make sure there are adequate transitions between paragraphs. You may use one of your articles to support the link between your topic and the stress response. Your text is a good source of information for this section.

2) Review of Literature: (15 pts)
a. The articles reviewed should relate to your purpose statement. At minimum you need three articles reviewed in this section – remember these are original investigations with a methods, results, and discussion section.
b. Methods should describe the study in good detail (but at the same time be concise!), e.g., population, treatment, how were variables measured and when. The results should be presented in a logical fashion and easy to follow, be sure to include the significant findings.
c. Avoid presenting your studies as abstracts, start with an opening statement that introduces the articles, e.g., Three studies authored by Evans have served as the conduit for increasing suspicion of chromium picolinate’s purported fat loss benefits. Each study (Evans, 1989; Evans & Pouchnik, 1993) recorded a decrease in body fat mass and an increase in lean mass. A similar decrease in body fat mass and increase in lean mass was observed by Kaats et al. (1996).
d. Following this paragraph would be more detail discussion of each study.

3) Discussion: (10 pts)
a. Discuss the findings of your studies reviewed as they relate to the purpose statement and make a clear conclusion. If you have previous research stated in the introduction, then you relate the findings of the present review of literature to the previous studies. Be critical here, if a study did found significant results but previous literature did not then explain why that might be.

4) Own Thinking/Reaction: (10 pts)
a. I would like for you to consider a couple of things in this section;
i. make connections of the articles reviewed to class content (you might use your text) and
ii. now that you know what you know, how might your use or apply this information.

5) References: (5 pts) – APA format

Remember the paper is 6 pages, double spaced (I stop reading at 6 pages). Include a minimum of 6 research articles

Don’t forget to correctly cite the references in text and in the reference list. Use APA style.