Ultimate EPQ thread

I think that question sounds brilliant, especially for clinical psychology. It's a current issue, and whilst views may not have changed much for the better, you could also research what is being done to improve the public perception of mental health and how it could further change in the future.

Thank you for your input as well as your suggestions! In relation to the education on mental health to improve its perception, I was thinking on conducting a questionnaire for psychology and non–psychology students and see which students have a better perception on mental health (basically to see if teaching people psychology would help improve public perception). Do you think this would be a good way to go about part of my epq?

Pit should be a discussion of your findings, backed up with some evidence. Probably shouldn't last longer than 10 mins.

Yes, they were set as the first homework for this unit. I really recommend researching your possible choice avenues before settling on one thing you're going to stick to. This is because I realised when I first started that one idea might look good on the surface, but if there are no sources of debate that other people have researched before you, you'll have nothing to quote. Unless, that is, if you're purely about to analyse texts. Camus sounds good to me, and so does the interwar years If you're going to focus on one person, I think you should look at something about them which can be debated so you have something in depth to discuss. Like, were they a literary genius? Are they overrated? What inspired them?

Can someone please explain to me how you include references and analyse their reliability in your EPQ?

I know you when you make a statement and you found that information from a particular source you then put it in brackets e.g. (Smith et al., 2005) and you have references at the end of your project in alphabetical order, but where do you analyse your sources in the text?

How do I go about referencing in my work?

Do I embed it in the essay e.g Harvard style. And then create a separate bibliography.

Some other people have a number above a word - still don't know how this system works.

Pick a system and stick to it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation gives some idea of different systems.

As long as
a) you cite where ideas/evidence/images/tables/quotes are from
b) those citations can be linked through to a full reference (either Harvard style with (Author Year) in the text and the full reference at the end, or through using footnotes/endnotes on a word processing package or using MHRA style where you have a footnote with the full reference)
c) you use whatever method consistently

Once you get to uni you'll often be given a licence for software like Endnote which makes referencing much more straight forward.

For EPQ I would suggest using endnotes on your word processing package as you go along - then once you get to the stage where you want to redraft decide whether that works well or whether you'd like to go back and rejig your references into something more formal. If you use endnotes/footnotes then I would suggest also having an alphabetic bibliography section (so that readers can see your sources all in one ordered place) whereas if you use Harvard you would include an alphabetic reference section so a separate bibliography would be unnecessary.

So in harvard style referencing you quote a bit of text and then say (Author, date).

And then you create a separate bibliography which entails the full detail of the source but how would you lay this out as I believe it is different for the type you use e.g. web, ebook, newspaper.

So is it better to have footnotes at the end of the page or to just create a bibliography ? Also how do you remain alphabetical on word?

Harvard style you cite in the text

(eg: "PQ, 2014 stated that Harvard style is a pain in the arse" OR "Harvard style is universally acknowledged as a pain in the arse (PQ, 2014)")

THEN you have an alphabetical list of references (NOT a bibliography) at the end of your report. The references must include EVERY book/paper/website cited in the text and must NOT include any other relevant reading that you've done but haven't cited within your text. The format of how that's laid out will differ for each type of source material but it is still listed alphabetically by Author surname.

If you use Harvard style then you don't use footnotes.

HOWEVER if you're typing up a report on Word and don't have access to software like Endnote then I would NOT recommend using Harvard style for your EPQ. Unless you find you have a lot of time at the end for redrafting.

What I would recommend using is the inbuilt footnote/endnote function in Word.

(eg "PQ stated that Harvard referencing is a pain in the arse1" or "It is universally acknowledged that Harvard referencing is a pain in the arse2")

Then in the footnotes/endnotes write in the full reference details (including page numbers etc) right there.

If you do this as you work Word will put together all your end notes - so if you decide you'd like to do Harvard referencing you can do so in the edit, and if you decide not to then just leave the foot/endnotes as they are in the report and add on a "Sources" or "Bibliography" section after that containing all the sources you've used (so in the example above you would have 2 foot/endnotes (1 and 2) pointing at 2 different TSR posts - in your sources/bilbiography you would just list TSR once (so even though you referred/cited source material from it multiple times there's also somewhere where you just list each source once in alphabetical order)).

The point is - use Word to keep track of when you've used someone else's words/ideas/theories/images....then once you've finished your project and are drafting decide how you want to present those references. If you've kept track then it will be straight forward to adjust your referencing style in an edit (would maybe take an hour or two on a very very long report to go from foot/endnotes to Harvard style).

If you *don't* keep track of when you've cited things in your text (or start off using Harvard without software like "Endnote" to assist you) then sorting out your referencing at the end will be very difficult and might take days of proof reading and re-digging through books to find page numbers/authors.

It's so good that you get set homework to do! Our school is running the project with v little guidance and set work, which I'm finding a bit of a weird change. Yes I definitely have a lot of research ahead of me- I'll probably look at literature over one time period rather than focusing on one person I think. Although I just finished reading Lolita and I was so into that, I am thinking about doing a topic about that genre?! But I do want it to somehow tie in with French lanaguage/lit/culture. Thanks so much for your advice btw you've been so helpful- how is your project going atm?

I'm doing my EPQ on whether there 'Is there such thing as a typical serial killer profile?' and specifically looking into 3 case studies and how each is a individual case to show there isn't a typical serial killer profile as each killer is a unique person with there own motives and experiences leading to their killings, basically just proving the 'typical profile wrong'
My presentation is then going to be set up to look like a police investigation board
I'm specifically looking at- The Yorkshire Ripper, Doctor Death (Harold Shipman) and The Moors Murderers (Ian Brady and Myra Hindley)
hopefully this should relate to my Uni choice of studying either law or psychology

However I have no idea how to start the actual essay or whether this idea is even going to work!

Is this the correct way of referencing a website?


1: MedicineNet, 2012. Definition of Neuroplasticity. [Online] :http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=40362 Last accessed: (31/07/14)


They're so many styles available. Some had things rearranged e.g year first then source or source then year or online then data then source etc. Confusing

I am doing mine on" Is geothermal energy the future?" Is that a good title or...?