Kaya Wechsler

Statement of Goals and Choices

While creating my infographic for this project, I had to constantly remind myself of the
audience I was trying to reach with my information; school psychologists. Being a school
psychologist is my future career goal, and I believe that an infographic such as the one I created
would be beneficial for keeping on top of things to look out for in students mental health and
functioning. Since I was writing for an audience of educated professionals, I made sure to use a
lot of logos and ethos in the choice of information that I presented and the sources from which I
obtained it. The fact that most of the information on the infographic was obtained from peer-
reviewed research articles establishes a sense of academic integrity for my infographic. Pathos
was embedded in the concern for the children. A requirement for the character of a school
psychologist is to always have the children in mind, and putting their concerns and health first.
This infographic appeals to the emotions of school psychologists through their want and need to
prevent students from harm.
Through my primary research design, I decided to collect data from a high school
population in order to get statistics on adolescents. I wanted to collect data on their mental health
and also internet habits in order to further research on my topic. I decided to do a survey since it
is easily administerable to a large group of people through sites like Facebook, and it is also
quick and simple. I was hoping to collect this data in order to see if it matched with the
conclusions of the research articles I was focusing on for this project. I found that a large amount
of the articles that I was basing my research on were from different countries such as China, so I
also wanted to see if the same results applied here in the United States. Some pitfalls in carrying
out my research plan include the fact that it was only distributed to high schoolers in my small
town, so there is a lack of variability in respondents. I think that my town is relatively diverse in
itself, so I wasnt too concerned, but the results would be more valid if they came from a larger
population. I was also concerned about the fact that people would be less likely to respond to my
survey since it includes very personal questions, so to account for this, I made sure to include in
the instructions and the Facebook post that all responses are completely anonymous. I anticipate
that this encouraged participants to be more honest in their responses.
 Works Cited

amaz, Tayyar, et al. "Prevalence and risk factors of Internet addiction in high school students."
The European Journal of Public Health (2013): ckt051.

Ciarrochi, Joseph, et al. "The development of compulsive internet use and mental health: A four-
year study of adolescence." Developmental psychology 52.2 (2016): 272.

Raffaella, Perrella, and Caviglia Giorgio. "Internet Addiction, Self-Esteem, and Relational
Patterns in Adolescents." Clinical Neuropsychiatry 14.1 (2017): 82-87.

Yan, Wansen, Yonghui Li, and Nan Sui. "The relationship between recent stressful life events,
personality traits, perceived family functioning and internet addiction among college students."
Stress and Health 30.1 (2014): 3-11.

Schou Andreassen, Cecilie, et al. "The relationship between addictive use of social media and
video games and symptoms of psychiatric disorders: A large-scale cross-sectional study."
Psychology of Addictive Behaviors 30.2 (2016): 252.