Coursework Guidelines

For all submitted work, please refer to the guidelines below.

Submission

Apart from exceptional circumstances, all assignments will be submitted on-line. Instruction and demonstration will be given for this.

Penalties will be incurred for unauthorised late submission: Please refer to the ‘delays and extensions’ page for details on penalties or extension requests.

You must keep to word limits. Where assignment topics are not listed in the handbook they will be given out in tutorials dedicated to the assignments.

Where exceptional permission has been given by tutors in advance, work may be handed-in personally rather than electronically. In these cases, the following guidelines must be followed.

  • Legibility: Your work must be easy to read. Print on one side of the page only in double line spacing. Leave a margin for comments.
  • Presentation: Two copies are required, which must have your student number as an identifier, not your name. You should NOT submit work in plastic folders.

If you are using the latest version of Word (i.e., Word 2016) for assignments, please use the “Save as” function to save your documents in an older version of Word (e.g., Word 97-2003) for the documents that you are to submit for marking [File, Save as, select the location you wish to save your document, then next to Save as Type select Word 97-2003 from the drop-down menu].

Referencing

Referencing: You must use the American Psychological Association (APA) format for references. Sources are:

Sternberg RJ (2003) The Psychologist’s companion: A guide for scientific writing for students and researchers (4th ed) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

American Psychological Association (2009) Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed) Washington DC: American Psychological Association

The Hartley Library holds a number of copies of the latest APA manual: Publication manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th edition.

There are also a number of online resources that provide information about APA formatting, and how to cite sources both in-text and in your Reference List (the list at the end of your essay of all the sources that you have cited in your text):
• Click here to visit the American Psychological Association’s (APA) website, and to see their Formatting/Referencing guidance
• Click here for an APA Formatting and Style Guide

Secondary Sources: You should, wherever possible, read and refer to original works directly, rather than quoting someone else’s comments on or summaries of the work from textbooks. You will lose marks for using secondary sources excessively. NB ‘excessively’ can mean more than once!

Writing Style

You must write in correct, formal English, and use an impersonal style – that is, avoid referring to yourself (e.g., ‘in my opinion’) – it should be quite clear from the context that it is your opinion, since if it was anybody else’s opinion, you would have referenced it as such. It is usual to adopt a 3rd person, past tense, reporting style in academic writing.  However, this is not necessarily appropriate for all styles of writing, e.g. some qualitative research reports, and personal writing such as reflective skills logs, should be written in the first person (“I felt that…”).

Avoid using terms such as ‘victim of MS’ or ‘suffering from cancer’, and at all costs avoid describing people as schizophrenics, epileptics, the disabled, etc. These are not politically correct terms. Instead, use the terms ‘people with schizophrenia’ or ‘people with epilepsy’, or ‘people with a (preferably specified) disability’.

Take care to use the appropriate terminology when describing someone’s ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, etc. Seek guidance from a tutor if in doubt. Use gender-neutral language.

Academic Integrity

Academic integrity means conducting all aspects of your academic life in a professional manner. All members of the University are expected to maintain high standards of academic conduct. It involves taking responsibility for your own work, fully acknowledging the work of others wherever it has contributed to your own, and also following accepted conventions, rules and laws when presenting your own work.

For details information on academic integrity and how to avoid breaches of integrity such as plagiarism please refer to the Postgraduate Handbook Introduction (common).

Further details on plagiarism are also set out in the Calendar, Section IV, General Regulations which can be accessed via the University’s website here.

If you wish to improve your understanding of Academic integrity the University has more information on the Academic Skills Hub

Disclaimers

All course work must be accompanied by the following disclaimer.

I the undersigned confirm that the attached is all my own work. Reference to quotation from, and discussion of the work of any other person has been correctly acknowledged within the work. All data reported in the work were collected from real participants or sources.

or, in the case of Group work, the following disclaimer:

We the undersigned confirm that the attached is the result of our group effort alone. We are each aware of the contribution made to the work by each member of the group. Reference to, quotation from, and discussion of the work of any other person has been correctly acknowledged within the work. All data reported in the work were collected from real participants or real sources.

Cover sheet

All coursework must be accompanied by a cover sheet that includes your Title, Student ID, Module number/Module Lead and your disclaimer, as follows:

RUNNING HEADER

Assignment title

Student ID:

Module Number:

Module Lead:

Programme name: MSc Health Psychology

University of Southampton

Word count:

I the undersigned confirm that the attached is all my own work. Reference to quotation from, and discussion of the work of any other person has been correctly acknowledged within the work. All data reported in the work were collected from real participants or sources.