Week 1 – Webliography Assignment

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

This assignment is worth up to 50 points and involves researching and writing an entry for the Webliography section of our course.  The assignment references the following TCOs:

·       TCO1 as it applies to cause-and-effect research in social psychology

·       TCO 3 as it applies to the effects of a psychological disorder.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that is caused by a person’s experiencing or observing an extremely psychologically troubling event involving real or threatened death or significant injury to self and/or others.  There are many situations and sometimes predisposing personal mental conditions that may trigger the development of PTSD

Your task in this assignment is to use the Internet to find and describe at least one form of natural disaster as a cause of PTSD.  Among natural disasters are hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes and tsunamis.  You will be working with the independent variables of PTSD.  Here is the basic causal proposition:

Xs (Causes of PTSD)—————-ÚY (Development of PTSD)

Independent variables————— ÚDependent variable

Process:

1. Using the Internet locate an article that includes a discussion of natural disasters as causes of PTSD;
2. Compose a summary of the contents of the article that includes the following information:
1. A general description of the contents of the article
2. A description of least two specific items from the article
3. Identification of the independent and dependent variable
3. Prepare your article for Webliography using one of the following processes:
1. write your descriptive text as a Word document that you copy and paste into Webliography OR
2. type your descriptive text straight into Webliography
4. To add your entry to Webliography, use this process:
1. click on Webliography in the gray/white bar in the blue space at the top of the course website – it is the last component on the right side of the bar
2. click on “Add New Entry”
3. type in the title of your entry and the URL
4. add your text
5. click on “Add Entry”

Note:  You cannot edit your entry once you have submitted it.  If you want to change your entry simply submit the new version.  Your instructor will know to grade the newest article and will disregard the earlier version

Expectations:

• Your entry will have a working URL that goes directly to the article and does not require drilling down (navigating) through layers of a website
• You will write about a natural cause or causes of PTSD, NOT the symptoms of this disorder
• Do not use an article that triggers advertising
• A Webliography entry that is sufficiently informative requires about 150 words
• Your entry is free of spelling and grammatical errors

Grading:

• 30 points for the informational quality of your entry
• 15 points for clear and orderly presentation of your content
• points for freedom from spelling and grammar errors