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The four topics options we offer for this assignment allow you to choose according to personal interest and preferred starting time on this assignment. We will make the assignment guidance lecture available no later than Week 5, and earlier if we can, but you can start literature searching and drafting content well before this. This assignment guidance document will help you to get started.

ADVICE ON STYLE, FORMAT & CONTENT

Start researching your topic by using all the literature searching skills you’ve learned so far in your degree. You could start by following up on the literature discussed in the lectures, and then choose careful keywords and date limits to be efficient in your search strategy. We will run a seminar in week 5 which will help you get started with identifying suitable literature for your review.

Think about what types of publications would be most helpful and considered “best evidence”.  Again – if this is new to you, don’t worry – the week 5 seminar will be all about this..

Within each of the topic options given there is scope for different responses as the evidence on them is either mixed or ripe for critical review. It is up to you to decide how many studies or publications you cite. We know that in a short evidence brief you cannot cover everything, but you can demonstrate good searching and comprehension skills by including many of the key pieces of evidence. It is equally possible to produce an excellent brief with a small selection of the best evidence, or to do well covering many studies, grouped and explained clearly.

Structure the report in the way you think will be most helpful to the reader. Clarity of message is important to your audience, so this needs to be a very concise piece of writing. You may have a preferred and effective approach to planning already. If you are not sure how to plan, then you could try mapping out emerging points on PowerPoint slides, after some initial research and reading. This will force you to be concise and will help you to check that points build / flow between slides (you can easily switch points around on slides to check which way around it works best), before you turn this into a full write-up.

You do not need a lengthy introduction. Professionals have asked for this report, so you do not need to explain the reason for the report. Instead, consider what information is needed to help the reader understand the overall structure of what they are about to read. Think about any technical / psychological terms that may be important to define or explain first, bearing in mind your target audience. More generally throughout the brief, think carefully about when it might be best to explain (or avoid) the use of very complex scientific terminology. Also ask yourself if certain critical points you want to make need to be ‘translated into plain English’, so that there are easily comprehended by your audience. In this way, this assignment will develop your ability to write for wider professional audiences (i.e. not just fellow psychologists).

Give most of the word count to the evidence and your message to your reader about it (e.g. why it is good quality or not, what exactly does it tell us, why does that matter, is it appropriate to inform decisions in the real world?). You need to decide what level of detail to report on reviews or studies. You have learned already the importance of linking evidence to the way in which it was produced. So, you need to find ways to report only the most crucial methodological details in as few words as possible. This will test your understanding of what are essential details to link to a piece of evidence, depending on the point you're trying to make. It also develops your skills in precision writing.

End the report with a concluding paragraph. For example, you might conclude that some or all of the evidence is robust enough to justify making certain recommendations to the audience about their professional practice. Equally, in some instances you may want to advise caution or against certain actions entirely because the evidence-base is currently too inconclusive to confidently endorse certain approaches, approaches which may already be widespread in professional practice (but without strong evidence to support them). There is no right conclusion. This section will develop your ability to judge how evidence could inform practice. It is normal to be nervous about making recommendations that will have ‘real-world’ implications for other professions but have a go! Take inspiration from the conclusions of the studies you’ve read, if you’re really stuck for ideas.

This assignment is developing your ability to communicate psychological evidence in an accessible but professional manner. The writing style should be very executive – meaning it is concise, focused and without ‘padding’. Use plain English as much as possible and avoid drama (e.g., we’d advise you avoid exaggerations such as: “The study produced amazing findings that will totally change your classroom”). Aim to have a good draft written-up well before the deadline because we would advise you to review it on multiple occasions (allowing yourself time in-between to walk away from it too!). This revision process will help you to polish it and to hone it to within the word count.

Reference in the normal way using APA format. Most of your references will be to specific forms of evidence (i.e., review, studies, reports). Provide a reference list in the usual format at the end of the report. This list is not included in the word count. Citations in the body of the report are included. This means you need to choose the best evidence and avoid ‘reference dumping’ (i.e., citing loads of references) in an unthinking way.

Supplementary guidance

WHY ARE YOU BEING ASKED TO PRODUCE THIS KIND OF REPORT?

Producing evidence briefs is a common feature of many professional jobs. You can use your success in this assessment in job applications, to demonstrate your awareness and competency in producing this kind of output.

Science Communication is also a particular important skill that this assignment will give you experience in. Indeed, think about how important it became during the pandemic to communicate complex scientific research in a way that could be understood by the non-experts! Making psychological research accessible to people who aren’t themselves psychologists is VERY important. This assignment allows you to practice being in a position many professional Psychologists regularly find themselves in – needing to communicate their expert understanding of psychological science to non-experts from other professional communities (e.g., Teachers, Clinicians), in a way that is meaningful and actionable for them in their jobs.

Producing the report will also support key learning objectives in terms of research skills, knowledge extension and critical thinking. It will increase your understanding of the potential applications of developmental psychology research in the real world. The assessment also pushes you to develop your writing skills as you will need to write and redraft multiple times for clarity and precision.

WHAT FURTHER SUPPORT IS AVAILABLE TO YOU?

We know this is your first time producing an Evidence Brief. We expect it to be a manageable challenge, which builds on and develops your current knowledge and skills. For example, you are already skilled in information searching, critically reviewing and evaluating evidence and in writing about psychological material for an academic audience. Be reassured that there is nothing very different about the skills needed for an Evidence Brief. You’ve had a lot of very relevant practice and training already, even without having written exactly this type of output previously!

And we will support you. A pre-recorded video will be made available at the start of Week 5 that is dedicated to giving further guidance and advice on this assignment. In place of a live lecture that week, we will then have a whole group seminar based around identifying and appraising evidence for your review.  Finally, the following week (week 6), each of the three academic members of staff on the module will run a separate one hour online tutorial on Microsoft Teams, enabling specific questions to be answered about each of the three topics.  These will take place in addition to the scheduled lecture that week.

You can also post questions on the discussion boards for the various assignment options at any time.

Lastly, in addition to this guidance document we have provided you with two example Evidence Briefs. These examples are on non-module topics and they help you see a couple of different approaches to producing an Evidence Brief. We are not providing these example for you to copy, in fact both examples are deliberately quite different from each other, to discourage this. Instead, think of these as a giving you a chance to be the reader of this type of document, putting you then in a better position to write one.

General guidance

As mentioned in the supplementary guidance, writing about science for a non-academic audience is a particular skill that differs in important ways from the ‘traditional’ academic writing style that you’ll see in peer-reviewed research papers.

Below is a list of webpages that give some good advice to scientists on how write for a variety of non-academic audiences (e.g. the general public, children). Please be aware that whilst these resources offer a lot of good tips, not all of the advice in these external resources is applicable to this Evidence Brief. So, if you find any contradictions please give precedence to the advice we give you in this guidance document, when writing your assignment.

· Advice from the APA on how to write about Psychology for a broad audience (link here).

· Tips from the Editor of the American Scientist (a journalist) on how to make scientific writing more accessible for a general audience (link here).

· Advice from Frontiers For Young Minds, a journal that specializes in publishing articles in which researchers redraft their research papers into a format that is more accessible for Children and Young People to read (link here). I recommend downloading the advice on: “How to Write a Young Minds Article?” The link to this pdf is about halfway down the webpage).

Assessment criteria and process

The report will be marked in line with the usual marking criteria for coursework essays and marked using the department’s categorical marking scheme (included at the end of this document for reference). High scoring work will therefore include relevant content (best evidence), coherently presented (clarity, structure and flow) with good evidence of critical thinking (reasoned judgements about the quality of evidence that lead into clear, well-argued implications and recommendations). We will go through the marking approach in more detail in the Week 7 lecture.

Marking will be checked and validated by a second marker following procedures approved by the University and described in the Code of Practice on Assessments.

See further information about assessment, including late submission penalty and mitigating circumstances process, see Student Sharepoint.