Current State of Knowledge on Sexuality and Pregnancy

Objective of the Essay

For this type of essay, your paper will be a brief review of some of the latest research in an area of human sexuality.  Your objective is to review relevant research in this area and summarize the current state of knowledge using 2 research studies (published in 2010 or later). To summarize, you need to review the objectives, methods, findings and conclusions of these research studies.  You should also critically evaluate this research. Specifically, what is the biggest problem with the current research? To answer this question, you may want to use the skills and methods learned in class and the text (e.g., chapter 3 of your text). Finally, you should suggest a future research direction.  So, your essay should basically try to answer 3 questions:  what’s new, what is the biggest problem with the current research, and what should be done next?  Also, if the topic below introduces a question, you should try to answer it in your essay.  Note that on Sakai, you will be able to find a marking scheme, and this should give more information about how to organize your essay.

Here are the choices of topic:  
1.What is the current state of knowledge on sexuality and pregnancy? 

Resource Material for Essay:

A starting point for your paper should be relevant sections or chapters in an introductory book such as Pukall’s Human Sexuality. Then, to elaborate on some of the ideas and research presented there, you need to consult scholarly journals.  Journals devoted to the study of human sexuality are available through the library including the Journal of Sex Research, Archives of Sexual Behaviour, Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, Journal of Sexual Medicine, Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality, Sex and Marital Therapy, AIDS, and Human Reproduction.  More general social science and biological journals publish articles on human sexuality as well. Most of these journals are available at the library, along with general reference services like General Science Index, Sociofile, PsychInfo, and Web of Science. Note that I am primarily interested in you getting experience with journal articles. Book chapters and popular press reports can be helpful, but the main articles should be journal articles. Some journals are online (on the Internet), so you can use these, but be careful, because a lot of the information online is not from scholarly journals.  You should review 2 recent articles for Essay (Of course, you will likely find many more articles, but you should be selective and pick the best ones that are the most recent and/or the most relevant to the question/issue to be addressed). 

Resource Material for the Essay

Also note that review journal articles are not acceptable for either Essay. You need to find articles that describe the methods and results of a study that was carried out by the researchers. Meta-analyses are acceptable. 

Other Instructions

1. Essays must be typed and double spaced.
2. The length of the essay must be no more than 600 words. So, this is about 1 and 3/4 text pages using Times New Roman, 12-point font, 1-inch margins; so, no longer!  Note: the limit excludes a separate title page and a separate references page. A significant variation on this length will be marked down accordingly. Note that a better written paper is often concise, so try to achieve this in your writing. And, yes, your paper is meant as a short essay assignment! 
3. Use "APA" style for referencing, quotations and pagination. See http://www.apastyle.org for tips on how to reference and how to include in-text citations and direct quotes. 
a. Note that in APA style, you DO NOT include the title of the article or the name of the journal in your essay text. You only include the last name of the authors and year of publication when you need to include a citation in text. The title of the article and name of the journal are found ONLY in the reference list at the very end of your paper. 
b. In APA style, a running head is used, which has a specific format. See https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/ for a good example of how the running head works and what it looks like. 
c. Make sure you take a look at the formatting for in-text citations. For example, list all authors the first time they are cited; in subsequent citations you can use “et al.” (unless there are more than 6 authors, in which case, always use “et al.”). Both websites are helpful with this formatting rule and others that are not mentioned here. 
4. Proof read and revise before you submit. 
5. The paper will be graded on style as well as content, so be grammatical, organized, and take care with spelling and punctuation.
6. Make sure to check out the Sakai version of the marking scheme. This will help you!
7. Make sure you make and keep a copy before you submit your paper.
8. Include a title page with the following information: Running head, page number, title of paper, course name, Dr. Bogaert’s name, TA’s name, due date, and word count. 
10. You should have a small introductory paragraph (stating your thesis, or what the essay is about) and a small concluding paragraph (summary and conclusions; see marking sheet on Sakai).