Literature Review
Research in progress for PSYC 2301: Honors General Psychology
Faculty Mentor: Jennifer L. O’Loughlin-Brooks
The following paper represents research produced by students in an Honors General Psychology course. The class assignment introduces students to scientific research and writing through a team-based approach. Each individual student team, composed of two or three members, conducts a comprehensive literature review on a specific psychology topic of their choosing. They summarize and evaluate at least seven pieces of scholarly work, discuss future areas of investigation for the field, and explain how this research might add qualitatively to the existing knowledge of the discipline. In addition, student teams interview at least one expert in their research area and include that interview as a primary source of information.
Nicole Swain, Tuyet Tran, and Daphne Carrier researched sleep in teens and posited that many adolescents lack the necessary amount of sleep for their physical health and cognitive functioning (Dunietz et al., 2017). The students proposed that a significant contributing factor to lack of sleep among adolescents is early start times for middle and high school, with later school start times correlating with reduced health problems, behavioral issues, and motor vehicle accidents among adolescents (Morgenthaler et al., 2016). Schools with later start times also frequently observe improvements in attendance, grades, and standardized test scores (Marx et al., 2017). To better understand the relationship between school start times and academic achievement, the review incorporates personal interviews with sleep research experts
