Psychology Extended Essay (HELP!)

I'm an upcoming senior going back to school in August. And I still have not come up with an extended essay topic yet. I really want to do a paper on psychology and I'v narrowed it down to Autism and Dissociative Identity Disorder (but I'm open to any other suggestions). One topic I have is

"To what extent is childhood trauma (physical, mental, sexual abuse) involved with ( or influences) the development of Dissociative Identity Disorder in teenagers and adults?"

But I;m sort of lost and I don't know whether this is an acceptable topic or if it needs to modified etc...

Can anyone help me? :confused:

And do I need to do an experiment in order to get a good score?

Reply 1

Splenda620

7

Someone just emailed me a similar question, so I thought I'd post my advice here, too...

I think what makes a really good psychology essay is something you can debate, that a lot of studies have been done on. Bilingualism is a common topic for extended essay I think because it has a lot of interest among IB students (many are bilingual), a lot of work has been done on bilingual language development, and there's a lot of debate as to whether being raised bilingually is helpful or not (but the general agreement today is that it's a good thing, but it was very controversial 20-30 years ago). It's not a bad topic to pick if it appeals to you.

My topic was titled something like "simultaneous balanced bilingualism: does being raised with two languages help or hinder language development?"

The key is to pick a topic that is very specific (otherwise you can't adress the question well), with two arguments (so you can debate), and something not too obscure (so you can find information on it). If you think a topic might be good, type it into scholar.google.com and see what comes up.. if you're already getting some useful information it could be a good topic (as long as it's specific enough!).

On the other hand, you could pick something to do with adolesence or social psychology, as long as your topic is specific and has two opposing views. I'm weary of topics like "adolence" because they're not specific enough and "first impressions" because that's not really a topic much credible research has been done on. If you're interested in abnormal psychology for example, you could write about the high incidence of diagnostic rates for depression among adolecents and whether the high diagnostic rate means either psychologists are overdiagnosing teenage angst as depression or it could mean that adolencents are getting the help that they need.

Is this helping? If you want more ideas, let me know! I'm not an expert, but that's the sense I get from writing my own extended essay and seeing my classmates write theirs...

Reply 2

swiss_fairy

I did a psychology extended essay and i got a C. Not the best grade, but keep in mind that i was actually doing an english one until a few months before the final deadline, realised it was going nowhere and switched. I also never got it checked by my supervisor, what got submitted was my first draft.

I found the easiest thing to do was to find an psychological disorder that has some kind of controversy and debate surrounding it and then present both sides of the arguement. For example my eassy was about the existance of ADHD and whether or not it is a ligitimate disorder which requires treatment....

If you want any help etc pm me and i'm more than happy to talk to you about it.... buts its late here and i'm really tired from work so am probably making no sense at the moment!

Good luch with the EE, i'm so glad its over for me now - its a seriously amazing feeling when you know you're finished with it!

Reply 3

Splenda620

7

bartal: that was intended as general advice on picking psych EE topics... hope it's still useful. :yep:

Reply 4

Rachel-Isabel

Im doing my EE on bilinguism...and i really don't know where to start,
I want to talk about does being biliguism help everyday learning or not.
Anyone have any ideas where i coudl start or any books i could take out?
It would be much appreciated thankkks. :smile:

Reply 5

Rachel-Isabel

blackroserei

I'm an upcoming senior going back to school in August. And I still have not come up with an extended essay topic yet. I really want to do a paper on psychology and I'v narrowed it down to Autism and Dissociative Identity Disorder (but I'm open to any other suggestions). One topic I have is

"To what extent is childhood trauma (physical, mental, sexual abuse) involved with ( or influences) the development of Dissociative Identity Disorder in teenagers and adults?"

But I;m sort of lost and I don't know whether this is an acceptable topic or if it needs to modified etc...

Can anyone help me? :confused:

And do I need to do an experiment in order to get a good score?

I think Autism is really interesting to do for psychology. If you want to know some books that you could take out i have loads on autism that you'll probably be able to get in a library.
You could focus on how autisic children cope with trauma's in their life or how they percieve their everyday life.
No you don't have to do an outstanding experiment but you do have to write it up really well :smile:

hope i helped!

Psychology Extended Essay (HELP!)

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