Implementing and Evaluating a Writing Course
for Psychology Majors
Perilou Goddard
Northern Kentucky University
In this article, I describe Writing in Psychology, a semester-length
3-credit elective course designed to improve students’ writing skills,
familiarize them with psychology’s writing conventions, and teach
them American Psychological Association (APA) style. Students
produced a case report, a report of an empirical study, a conference
abstract, and a literature review. An attitude inventory and tests
over grammar and APA style revealed significant precourse versus
postcourse improvement, providing evidence that the course can be
a valuable addition to the undergraduate curriculum.
Many students struggle to learn to write well in psychol-
ogy’s technical style. Even students who regularly earn As in
English classes often are shocked to receive critical feedback
on their psychology papers (Nadelman, 1990). However, ac-
quiring writing skills relevant to psychology is a crucial aspect
of becoming socialized into the discipline (Madigan, Johnson,
& Linton, 1995). As McGovern and Hogshead (1990) ob-
served, learning to write reflects students’ ongoing cognitive
development in their psychology courses and in their college
careers more generally.
Psychology faculty increasingly face pressure to improve
their students’ writing skills. Since its inception in the mid
1970s, the writing-across-the-curriculum movement has in-
sisted that teaching writing is not the exclusive purview of
English Department faculty (Fulwiler & Young, 1990;
Rickabaugh, 1993). Many psychology faculty have responded
to this movement, as well as to their perceptions of students’
writing deficiencies, by increasing the writing demands and
range of writing assignments in their courses (e.g.,
Connor-Greene, 2000; Dunn, 2000; Henderson, 2000;
Nodine, 1990a; Norcross, Slotterback, & Krebs, 2001).
Many of these assignments use writing to help students learn
psychology; other assignments focus on helping students
learn to write like psychologists (Nodine, 1990b). The latter
goal is pursued in most research methods courses, which con-
tinue to emphasize learning American Psychological Associ-
ation (APA) style. Nevertheless, few faculty appear to have
answered Calhoun and Selby’s (1979) call to teach a course
specifically focused on writing in psychology.
In 1999, I initiated Writing in Psychology, a semes-
ter-length three-credit elective course focused on improving
students’ writing in general as well as teaching them APA
style and psychology’s writing conventions. My course has
several features in common with Rileigh’s (1998) Communi-
cation Skills in Psychology course. For example, both courses
cover use of library resources and acquisition of skills in topic
selection, grammar, organization, and draft revision. How-
ever, my course focuses on teaching students to produce
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full-scale versions of the types of writing assignments re-
quired most often in undergraduate psychology courses: case
reports, reports of empirical studies, conference abstracts,
and literature reviews. Like Rileigh, I evaluated the course by
assessing the change in students’ understanding of APA
style. I also evaluated students’ improvement in basic gram-
matical conventions and assessed their change in attitudes
toward course-relevant objectives.
Method
Participants
Eligible participants included all students enrolled in
Writing in Psychology during two consecutive semesters (N
= 29; 17 in Fall 1999, 12 in Spring 2000) at a midsize metro-
politan university in the Midwest. Two students (one in each
semester) were absent during the postcourse assessment;
their data are not included in the analyses. All students were
psychology majors or intended to declare psychology soon af-
ter completing the course. Prerequisites included successful
completion of College Writing (the freshman composition
course), Introduction to Psychology, and at least one addi-
tional psychology course. Students represented all classifica-
tions (3 freshmen, 13 sophomores, 4 juniors, and 7 seniors).
With the participants’ consent, I obtained their composite
American College Testing (ACT) scores from university re-
cords. Their median ACT score was 20 (the same as the uni-
versity’s median); however, the scores ranged from 10
(approximately the 1st percentile nationally) to 30 (97th per-
centile nationally). The median number of psychology
courses taken prior to the writing course was 6 (range = 2 to
16). Students could take the writing course before, during, or
after taking the required block of research methods courses;
18 took the course prior to taking Research Methods and
Tools, 3 took the course concurrently with the methodology
courses, and 6 took the course after having completed the
methodology block. Thus, the participant sample was hetero-
geneous with regard to preparation for college-level work,
prior exposure to psychology coursework in general, and prior
exposure to research methodology specifically.
Course Content
Writing in Psychology fulfilled university requirements for
an advanced composition course and also counted as an elec-
tive course in psychology. Teaching methods included short
25
exercises on grammar and APA style, editing of drafts by
peers, and revision of drafts following instructor comments.
Required textbooks included the Publication Manual of the
American Psychological Association (APA, 1994); Parrott’s
(1999) How to Write Psychology Papers; and Rules of Thumb: A
Guide for Writers, a grammar and usage text by Silverman,
Hughes, and Wienbroer (1999b). Primary assignments in-
cluded a case report, a report of an empirical study, a confer-
ence abstract, and a literature review. Students completed all
assignments except the conference abstract in a progressive
format (Hemenover, Caster, & Mizumoto, 1999). That is,
students accomplished each project in stages, with multiple
opportunities to receive feedback on their progress and revise
their writing as needed. Furthermore, in contrast to the rec-
ommendations of some authors (e.g., Price, 1990;
Willingham, 1990), I took an active stance regarding feed-
back on the mechanics of students’ writing. I indicated (but
generally did not correct) mechanical errors in every assign-
ment submitted to me and gave frequent brief lessons on spe-
cific types of grammatical problems.
Case report. The main purpose of the case report, the
first major assignment students completed, was to give stu-
dents an interesting opportunity to learn several conventions
of professional communication that did not require APA
style. The assignment also gave me the chance to assess stu-
dents’ baseline writing skills, establish norms regarding the
appropriate tone of the writing, and introduce the process of
peer editing. For the case report, I told students to assume the
role of a clinical psychology intern nearing the end of intern-
ship training who had conducted four sessions of cognitive be-
havioral therapy with a specific client (“Lisa”). I instructed
students to prepare a report for the intern who would take
over as Lisa’s therapist.
I provided brief background information from the instruc-
tional materials included with the cognitive behavioral ther-
apy videotape from the APA Psychotherapy Videotape Series
(APA, n.d.). I then played the tape, asking students to imag-
ine themselves in the role of the therapist. I instructed stu-
dents to include in their case reports background information
about Lisa, a description of her presenting problem, a sum-
mary of previous therapy sessions, and a summary of the most
recent session (shown on the video). I also told them to make
recommendations for continued therapy. My case report
guidelines required students to (a) strive for a professional
tone, (b) focus on describing the client’s behavior and
self-reports (rather than making unsupported inferences), (c)
avoid labeling the client, and (d) never use pejorative terms
to describe the client.
I assigned students to small groups of three or four peers for
editing and, as with all graded assignments in the course, stu-
dents first prepared drafts for their colleagues. After address-
ing their peers’ comments, students submitted drafts to me
for comments; I encouraged students to respond to my com-
ments prior to submitting their final drafts for a grade.
Report of an empirical study. Because my department
requires all psychology majors to take a research methods se-
quence, my focus in the writing course was not on teaching
students to design and conduct studies. Instead, my goal for
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this assignment was to teach students the elements of an em-
pirical report. In particular, I stressed how APA style
contributes to the clear communication of empirical research
and how the organization of an APA-style empirical report re-
flects the ideal research process (locating the research ques-
tion in the context of past empirical work, systematically col-
lecting and analyzing new data, and relating the findings to
current theories; Madigan et al., 1995). To these ends, I de-
signed, conducted, and analyzed a simple experiment apply-
ing the mere exposure effect (Zajonc, 1968) to a consumer
psychology context. Introductory psychology students rated
the ease of pronunciation of 12 fictitious candy bar names; 1
name was repeated four times during this task. Later, partici-
pants rated how much they would like each of the candy bars.
As predicted, the more frequently repeated name yielded sig-
nificantly higher ratings than the other names. I explained the
study to the writing students and provided them with a set of
articles they could use to construct a logical introduction.
Each student then constructed a title page, introduction, and
references for the paper, based on guidelines I provided.
I discussed and modeled all elements of the paper in detail,
but I paid particular attention to the structure of the intro-
duction, starting with broad statements and references to lit-
erature, narrowing the focus to the current study, and ending
with the specific hypothesis. I sought to show my students
that the persuasiveness of the introduction stems from the
logical flow of one’s arguments, rather than from atten-
tion-getting prose (Sternberg, 1993).
After students revised their drafts of the title page, intro-
duction, and references, they drafted the method, results, dis-
cussion, and abstract of the paper and submitted them for
both peer and instructor comments. Finally, students submit-
ted a complete report of the entire empirical study for a grade.
Throughout our work on this assignment, I attempted to help
students understand the elements of APA style necessary to
prepare the report accurately. However, my main interest
was in showing students how APA style enhances the preci-
sion of written communication; I explicitly advised them not
to be concerned about memorizing the details of APA style.
Conference abstract. Because Dunn (1994) recom-
mended giving students assignments that simulate profes-
sional experiences, and because many of our students submit
abstracts to local, regional, or national conferences during
their undergraduate careers, I had students work in groups to
convert their individual empirical reports into collaboratively
produced conference abstracts. Students grouped themselves
into clusters of two to four members. They reviewed several
examples of conference papers (both the brief abstracts pub-
lished in conference programs and the longer conference ab-
stracts submitted for review) and divided the writing tasks
among themselves. Given that the previously graded empiri-
cal reports served as the basis for the conference abstracts,
students did not submit rough drafts of their conference ab-
stracts to me for review. Instead, each group submitted its own
final conference abstract for a grade.
Literature review. Unlike the other course assignments,
the literature review allowed students to choose their own
topic. The assignment culminated in a paper analyzing at least
Teaching of Psychology
seven journal articles detailing original research; I permitted in-
clusion of other reference materials such as published literature
reviews only if students met the requirement for the minimum
number of original research articles. The literature review was
the final graded assignment of the semester. However, follow-
ing the recommendations of many authors (e.g., Boice, 1990;
McGovern & Hogshead, 1990; Nadelman, 1990), work on the
review proceeded in stages throughout the semester.
First, following the recommendations of Boice (1990),
Dunn (1994), and Poe (1990), I had students engage in a
freewriting exercise in class to brainstorm possible topics for
their reviews. Students then collaborated with their peers
and me to narrow their topic to one that would likely yield a
viable paper.
Next, the students met with an instructional librarian to
learn to use the APA PsycINFO database to identify relevant
journal articles. Students submitted an annotated version of
the PsycINFO search to me for review. After obtaining the ar-
ticles they planned to use in their review, students analyzed the
quality of the empirical studies using guidelines I had compiled
from recommendations of Maher (1978) and Meltzoff (1998).
Following Sternberg’s (1993) recommendations, I
coached students on how to take notes on what they read and
how to construct an outline for their paper. Students submit-
ted their outlines and the articles they planned to use to me
for comment. Finally, students drafted the literature review
and submitted it first to their peers, and then to me, for rec-
ommendations before turning in the final paper for a grade.
Evaluation Methods
I explained to students that the course was new to me, and
I wished to collect several types of data to evaluate the
course’s effectiveness; however, I did not require students to
participate. All students gave their informed consent to par-
ticipate in the evaluation activities, which included
precourse and postcourse tests on grammar and APA style
and a 14-item Likert-type inventory assessing attitudes to-
ward writing-relevant behaviors. Students’ participation in
the evaluation activities did not affect their grades.
I constructed the grammar test from items in the practice
manual (Silverman, Hughes, & Wienbroer, 1999a) accom-
panying the grammar textbook used in the course. I em-
ployed the same items for pretesting and posttesting. I
reviewed the answers to the pretest briefly during the first
week of class; however, students did not retain their copies of
the pretest and I made no further reference to the specific
items during the remainder of the semester.
Two different mastery tests from Gelfand and Walker’s
(1990; revised in 1994) APA style guidebooks comprised the
APA pretests and posttests. I did not permit students to con-
sult the Publication Manual (APA, 1994) during the tests. Af-
ter each test, I allowed students to review their responses
with the answer key, but few opted to do so, perhaps because
their performance on the tests did not affect their grades.
Results
To determine whether I could combine the responses to the
attitude inventory into a single score, I reverse scored the neg-
atively worded items (1 and 7) and computed Cronbach’s al-
pha coefficients on the precourse and postcourse responses.
Because the internal consistency of the attitude inventory was
relatively low (Cronbach’s α = .59 precourse, .57 postcourse),
I examined the 14 items individually. Paired-sample t tests re-
vealed significant (p ≤ .05, two-tailed) differences in the pre-
dicted direction on 9 of the 14 items, with a nonsignificant
trend on one additional item (see Table 1).

Table 1. Precourse Versus Postcourse Ratings of Writing Attitude Inventory Items

Inventory Item Precourse M Postcouse M t p

2. I have confidence in my ability to write a report of an empirical study in 2.74 4.37 –6.80 < .001
psychology.
3. I know how to use PsycINFO well. 2.00 4.52 –9.02 < .001
4. I have confidence in my ability to use the Internet to find useful 3.52 3.96 –2.06 .05
information for research papers in psychology.
5. I know how to write a high-quality literature review in psychology. 2.04 4.15 –8.91 < .001
6. I know how to evaluate the quality of information I find on the Internet. 3.15 3.77 –2.31 .029
8. My writing is grammatically correct most of the time. 3.41 3.37 0.19 ns
9. Writing detailed outlines helps me write better papers. 3.22 3.26 –0.21 ns
10. I have a clear understanding of APA style. 2.00 3.70 –6.54 < .001
11. Writing more than one rough draft makes my papers better. 3.81 4.63 –4.23 < .001
12. My papers are better if I have others read my drafts and make 4.07 4.78 –4.21 < .001
suggestions for improvement.
13. I know how to put information I’ve read in journal articles into my own 3.59 3.96 –1.73 .096
words.
14. I know how to pick out the most important points when I read articles in 3.33 4.22 –4.25 < .001
psychology journals.
1. I tend to put off writing assignments until the last minute.a 3.15 2.93 1.10 ns
a
7. I have difficulty understanding psychology journal articles. 2.89 2.56 1.18 ns

Note. All items were rated on 5-point Likert scales ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). All comparisons were two-tailed,
paired-sample t tests (df = 26, except Items 5 and 6; df = 25).
a
For ease of interpretation, the two negatively-worded items are grouped together here, but they appeared in numerical order when students
completed the inventory.

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 The maximum possible number of correct answers on the
grammar test was 33. The precourse mean was 22.93 (SD =
5.25); the postcourse mean improved to 26.19 (SD = 4.06).
A two-tailed paired-sample t test indicated that the differ-
ence was significant, t(26) = –4.60, p < .001.
The maximum possible number of correct answers on the
APA style tests was 40. The precourse mean score was 20.74
(SD = 3.80); the postcourse mean score improved to 23.85
(SD = 4.23). Again, a two-tailed paired-sample t test re-
vealed a significant difference, t(26) = –3.68, p = .001.
The extreme heterogeneity of the sample with regard to
ACT scores raised the question of whether all students bene-
fited from the course. To address this question, I computed
change scores (postcourse minus precourse) for both the
grammar test and the APA style test. Not surprisingly, com-
posite ACT scores correlated significantly with precourse
and postcourse scores on both tests (rs ranged from .53 to .65,
ps ranged from .012 to .001). However, ACT scores were not
significantly correlated with change on the grammar test,
r(23) = –.10, p = .66, or change on the APA style test, r(23)
= –.06, p = .78. Thus, it appears that students at all levels of
ability improved their grammatical and APA style skills, at
least insofar as such skills were reflected in their scores.
Discussion
This evaluation provides evidence that a psychol-
ogy-specific writing course can be a valuable addition to the
undergraduate psychology curriculum. As indicated by the
writing attitudes inventory, students became significantly
more confident in their ability to write empirical reports
and literature reviews. They also became more sure of their
skills in using APA style, conducting PsycINFO searches,
and evaluating journal articles and information found on
the Internet. Students’ attitudes toward adaptive writing
behaviors, such as writing multiple drafts and having others
read and critique their drafts, also became significantly
more positive. Additional evidence for the effectiveness of
the course comes from the statistically significant improve-
ments on the grammar and APA style assessments and the
observation that improvement on these tests was not corre-
lated with students’ ACT scores. Although the impact of
the course on samples of student writing remains to be
demonstrated, the statistically significant improvements on
the grammar and APA tests are particularly noteworthy,
given that students’ grades were not contingent on their
performance on these tests.
One remaining challenge regarding Writing in Psychology
concerns the ideal placement of the course in the psychology
curriculum. Students who had already taken the research
methods sequence appeared to find the course easier than
those who had not taken Research Methods and Tools, but
students who took the writing course first may in turn find
the research methods courses easier. Unfortunately, addi-
tional data analyses failed to clarify the issue. I found no sta-
tistically significant correlations between the number of
previous psychology courses students had taken and any
measure of course outcome. Moreover, in a series of t tests
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comparing the outcome variables of students who had al-
ready taken or were concurrently enrolled in Research
Methods and Tools versus those who had not yet taken Re-
search Methods and Tools, I found no statistically significant
differences in the final course grades or grammar and APA
test scores.
Another challenge is determining whether the course
should be required of all psychology majors. Given that our
department currently has approximately 350 majors, the
practical reality is that this course cannot be required unless
the department is willing to commit significant resources to it
and other faculty members want to teach it. One possible
compromise might be to recommend the course especially
strongly to students who aspire to attend graduate school.
It is also apparent from the postcourse grammar and APA
test scores that my students still had much to learn. Students’
understanding that their scores on those tests would not af-
fect their course grades may have attenuated their test per-
formance; the fact that I did not encourage my students to
memorize APA rules but administered the precourse and
postcourse APA tests in a closed-book format may also help
explain why postcourse scores remained low. Nevertheless, it
remains clear that my students’ and my efforts (including ap-
proximately 12 hr of grading per student) were not sufficient
to turn most of them into accomplished writers.
A further issue relevant to this course is the extent to
which instructors should focus on teaching the mechanics
of writing. Willingham (1990) argued that mechanics are
strongly emphasized in high school, students already know
that mechanics matter, and the best way to get students to
write with technical competence is to insist that they do so,
requiring students to acquire such competence on their
own if they do not already possess it. Although I agree with
Willingham that correcting students’ errors is not the best
way to help them learn, I am not convinced that my stu-
dents were fully aware of their technical shortcomings, nor
am I convinced that my students were sufficiently moti-
vated or able to achieve technical competence on their
own. Consistent with this argument, it is interesting to note
that the only attitude item with means in the opposite di-
rection from those predicted was Item 8 (“My writing is
grammatically correct most of the time”). Although the dif-
ference in means was not statistically significant, the pat-
tern of means on this item is not surprising; the course
appears to “shake up” some students’ unwarranted confi-
dence in their command of writing mechanics.
I found Writing in Psychology to be a challenging course
to teach, in part because students complained frequently
that APA style is rigid and boring. However, by emphasiz-
ing the format and organization dictated by APA style,
rather than requiring students to memorize the details, I at-
tempted to help students see that this style communicates
the logic of the scientific process (Madigan et al., 1995). I
focused on showing students that, like other sciences, psy-
chology uses language in an efficient, utilitarian way and
that the organization of psychological reports mirrors the
ideal research process.
Teaching of Psychology
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Notes
1. An earlier version of this article was presented at the eighth an-
nual American Psychological Society Institute on the Teaching
of Psychology, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, June 2001.
2. I thank Cyndi McDaniel, James H. Thomas, Frank Kardes, and
three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier
drafts of this article.
3. Send correspondence to Perilou Goddard, Department of Psy-
chology, Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY
41099; e-mail: goddard@nku.edu.
29