The Senior Project is the culmination of your academic work at Bard. The psychology faculty provide the following guidelines to make the project a satisfying experience and to clarify some of the uncertainties students typically have.

The first major challenge in doing the project is selecting a topic. This will typically take place during the first month of your work in your Senior year, although you may know what you want to do when you begin. In selecting a topic, you should attempt to work in an area or problem in which you have already had some preparation in a previous course or upper college seminar. This will make your task much easier, as you will have some context for your work. Also, you should select a problem in your advisor's general area of competence and knowledge. This will allow your advisor to provide you with more informed guidance. There are a few instances in which the student can change advisors after the first period of work, especially when there is a better fit between the project topic and the new advisor's area of expertise.

The psychology program typically accepts two types of projects. The first is an empirical research study, in which you actually collect some data from subjects and analyze it with regard to a set of research questions and hypotheses. The second is a critical review of a research literature on a particular question. It is difficult to know in advance which of these will be right for you, and your choice of a topic will certainly have a bearing on which of the two approaches you decide on. However, a few general statements can be made about the two methods. An empirical study, whether experiment or correlational gives you an opportunity to do the kind of study that you would have to do on a larger scale in graduate school or in an increasing number of settings that require research skills. A literature review, on the other hand, is largely a task in synthesizing readings and ultimately in writing.

The student should begin weekly meetings with the project advisor at the beginning of the Fall semester. By the end of September, you should have a good idea about your research topic. At the last meeting in September you should submit in writing (one paragraph will suffice) your project idea to your advisor. The psychology program faculty will review proposed project topics in early October and will indicate whether or not the project topic is approved. There will also be discussion at that time about the probable composition of the senior project board.

On Monday November 26th, students will present the conception and research plan for their projects at a mini-symposium (time and room to be announced). The purpose of the symposium session is to provide you with an opportunity to share the ideas and plans for your project with other students and faculty, some of whom will not be on your project board. It will also help you to further clarify your own ideas in preparation for your midway review. The symposium is open to your fellow seniors, the psychology faculty and any other friends or faculty you would like to invite. The symposium is required, but not graded. At this mini-symposium, each senior will give a 5 minute presentation on their respective senior project using a maximum of three Powerpoint slides (see link below for an example). Each presentation will be followed by a brief question and answer period. One of the goals of the symposium is to provide a relaxed forum where everyone can discuss their projects and receive constructive feedback on their work. Your senior project advisor will work with you during your weekly meetings to help prepare your slides and the presentation.

A midway review will be conducted on the project proposal typically within the last three weeks of the semester. At that review, the project board will meet with the student and discuss his or her plans. The basis of the discussion will be a midway review paper, which will be submitted to members of the project board by November 16th. The content of the midway review paper will vary, but should contain a history and rationale of the problem as well as a proposal for the work that will be conducted during the second semester. If you have specific plans for taking data from subjects, we recommend that you include your Institutional Review Board (IRB) proposal, which is now required at Bard for all research with human subjects. The midway review should be viewed fundamentally as an advising conference. The project board will be selected by the advisor in consultation with the psychology faculty and student preferences. In most instances project boards will consist of faculty members from the psychology program, but faculty from other fields will in some instances be invited to participate, depending on the project content. Students should hand in drafts of their midway review papers in late October or early November, so that the advisor can read at least one draft prior to the midway review and provide appropriate feedback. All projects will be graded on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory (U) basis at the end of the first semester.

Students should attempt to make use of the January break to make headway on reading, writing, or preparation for research. For empirical projects, students should plan to finish their data collection by the end of February or early March and their analysis by the middle or end of March so that they have a minimum of one month to write the project. For those doing critical literature reviews, writing should begin early in the semester and a specific schedule of goals can be worked out with the advisor. In any event, all drafts of chapters should be submitted to the advisor two weeks prior to the actual project due date, so that there is adequate time for feedback and revision.

All projects involving human subjects must conform to the APA Statement on Ethical Principles in the Conduct of Research with Human Participants. The student must also prepare a formal proposal for the use of human participants in standard format that must be submitted to the Institutional Review Board (IRB). The format for such proposals is available through the website for the IRB: inside.bard.edu/IRB. The proposal should be submitted well in advance of the time that the actual data is to be collected. The schedule of IRB meetings will be available on the website. For data that will be collected in February, it would be very much to your advantage to submit the proposal in December. Projects in the literature review format will not typically require IRB review.

All projects involving animal research must conform to the APA guidelines on the APA statement on the Ethical Principles in the Care and Use of Animals. The student must also prepare a formal proposal for the use of animal subjects and may not begin any data collection until the protocol is approved by the advisor and dean's office.

Appropriate forms are available from the advisor.

The project will follow the APA Publication Manual for references, graphs, figures, tables, data summary, and matters of style. With empirical projects, a detailed statistical analysis of data will be included in an appendix and the raw data and computer analysis output will be submitted on a floppy or zip disk. Projects should be carefully spell-checked and proofread before final submission. Each project must include an abstract.

The final project must be submitted to the members of the board on or before April 30, 2008, a date which is set by college-wide policy and is generally three weeks before the end of the semester. By college rule, late projects are subject to a mandatory and substantial grade penalty. On the project due date, you must submit the library copy as well. For general information on senior projects at Bard, see the most recent version of the Bard College Student Handbook. You should receive a brief Guide to the Preparation and Presentation of the Senior Project from the Dean's office during your second semester of work on the project. General guidelines for the format of Senior Projects, including such issues as title page, acknowledgments, table of contents, etc., are posted on the library's website for students and the Student section of the Office of the Dean of the College. The advisor keeps one copy of your project after the project board.