Week 5 skill · about 2 hours

The Outline

One or two pages that show your whole proposal before you write it. Every point has a source; every section leads to the next.

What it is, and why you want one

An outline is the skeleton of your paper. It lists every section of the proposal in order and, under each one, the points you will make and the sources that back them up. No paragraphs yet — just the bones.

It earns its keep three ways. First, writing from an outline is faster: when you sit down in Week 6, you already know what each paragraph says and which studies go in it. Second, it shows you the shape of the argument — Bem’s hourglass, broad at the top and narrowing to your hypothesis — before you have spent hours on sentences. Third, and most useful, it shows you your holes. A heading with nothing under it is the next thing you need to search for.

You already did the hardest part. Your theme sort from Week 4 is the middle of this outline. This week you put a top and a bottom on it.

Step one: start an Outline tab

  1. Open your shared journal Doc.
  2. In the Document tabs panel on the left, click the + next to “Document tabs.” Name the new tab Outline. Drag it so it sits just above First drafts.
  3. Type the section names below as Heading 1 (Format → Paragraph styles), and your theme headings as Heading 2. Google Docs then shows your outline in the left panel, so you can jump straight to any section.
  4. Everything under a heading is a bullet point — short, one idea each.

Leave your theme sort and gap paragraph where they are in First drafts. You are copying from them, not moving them.

The skeleton: eight sections

Copy these headings into your Outline tab, then fill in each one.

What goes under each heading
HeadingWhat goes under it
1. OpeningOne line on why the topic matters (a fact or statistic, with its source). One line defining your main concept, with its source.
2. Literature reviewOne Heading 2 for each theme, written as a claim, exactly as in your theme sort. Under each theme: one bullet per study, with author (year), who was studied, and the number. Last bullet: one line that leads to the next theme.
3. The gapOne sentence naming what is not known, and the study (or missing kind of study) that shows it. Take it from your Week 4 gap paragraph.
4. Research questionOne sentence, ending in a question mark.
5. HypothesisOne sentence that names both variables, says which direction (more or less), and says compared with whom.
6. MethodFour bullets. Participants: who, about how many, where from. Design: survey (correlational) or experiment; if an experiment, the conditions. Measures: one line per construct — the scale’s name and source, or “still looking.” Procedure: what a participant does, in one line.
7. Expected resultsOne sentence: the result that would support your hypothesis.
8. Why it mattersOne sentence: who could use the answer, and how.

A worked example

This uses the same made-up studies as the theme-sort example, so they are called Study A, B, C. Yours uses real names and years. Notice the [?] marks: they are allowed, and they are useful.

1. Opening

  • About 1 in 3 college students report test anxiety that hurts their grades (Study F, 2018).
  • Self-compassion = treating yourself with the kindness you would show a friend when things go wrong (Neff, 2003).

2. Literature review

Theme 1. Self-compassion goes with lower test anxiety.

  • Study A (2019): 212 undergraduates; r = −.41.
  • Study C (2021): 340 first-year students; self-compassion predicted lower anxiety 4 months later.
  • But Study D (2022): 150 nursing students before a licensing exam; no relationship (r = −.12).
  • Leads to: if the link is real, can we change it?

Theme 2. A short exercise can lower anxiety, at least right away.

  • Study B (2020): 96 undergraduates; 10-minute writing task lowered anxiety before a practice quiz (d = 0.45).
  • Only one experiment, and the quiz did not count. [?] find a second experiment
  • Leads to: why would it work?

Theme 3. Fear of failure may explain the link.

  • Study E (2023): 405 high school students in South Korea; fear of failure explained the relationship.
  • [?] any study of this with college students?

3. The gap

  • No one has tested a self-compassion exercise before an exam that actually counts (Study B used a practice quiz; Study D found no link under real stakes).

4. Research question

  • Does a brief self-compassion exercise lower test anxiety before a graded exam?

5. Hypothesis

  • Students who do a 10-minute self-compassion writing task will report less test anxiety before a graded midterm than students who write about their weekend.

6. Method

  • Participants: about 120 SJNY undergraduates, intro psych pool.
  • Design: experiment, two conditions (self-compassion writing vs. neutral writing), random assignment.
  • Measures: test anxiety — [?] still looking; ask Prof. Magee; self-compassion — Self-Compassion Scale–Short Form (Raes et al., 2011), as a check.
  • Procedure: write for 10 minutes, fill out the anxiety scale, then take the midterm.

7. Expected results

  • The self-compassion group scores lower on test anxiety than the neutral group.

8. Why it matters

  • A free, 10-minute exercise that instructors could use before high-stakes exams.

That is the whole thing — about a page and a half. Look at what it already tells this student: two searches to run, and one measure to find.

How to do it, start to finish

  1. Start the Outline tab and type the eight headings (10 minutes).
  2. Section 2 first. Copy each theme from your theme sort as a Heading 2, then move each source line under its theme as a bullet. Add the two new sources you find this week the same way.
  3. Sections 3–5. Boil your Week 4 gap paragraph down to one sentence. Turn it into a question. Turn the question into a prediction.
  4. Section 6. Fill what you can. “Still looking” is a fine answer for a measure this week.
  5. Sections 1, 7, 8. One line each.
  6. Read it top to bottom. Does each section lead into the next? Does every finding have a source? Mark every hole with [?].
  7. Copy your [?] list into your weekly journal entry as next week’s search goals.

Two hours is plenty. Keep it to one or two pages. If you are writing paragraphs, you have gone too far — that is Week 6.

If you don’t have ten sources yet

Build the outline anyway, with what you have. Type the eight headings. Put your topic in section 1 and your best guess at a question and hypothesis in sections 4 and 5. Then put a [?] wherever a source should go. That takes about thirty minutes, and it hands you an exact search list.

Then spend the rest of your week on that list: finding articles, saving the PDFs to your references folder with the usual names, and giving each one a source card. Gathering references comes first. An honest outline full of question marks is a good outline.

Where it goes next

Week 6: you write the closing paragraphs of your introduction (sections 3–5, from the question-and-hypothesis frame) and your first theme section, straight from the outline. Week 7: your second theme section, so at least half of the review is written (the check-in). Week 8: the remaining sections and the opening, and your outline has turned into Draft 1 — the funnel Landrum (2020) describes, from broad topic to themes to gap to hypothesis. Week 9: section 6 grows into your Method.

Keep the outline current. When you add a source, add its bullet. When your hypothesis changes, change it here first.

Week 5 assignment. Your outline, in a new Outline tab of your journal Doc, with all eight sections started; and 12 sources in your references folder, each new one with a source card. Due before your meeting the week of October 12.

Where this comes from

Bem, D. J. (2004). Writing the empirical journal article. In J. M. Darley, M. P. Zanna, & H. L. Roediger III (Eds.), The compleat academic: A career guide (2nd ed., pp. 185–219). American Psychological Association.

Landrum, R. E. (2020). Bringing the audience up to speed with literature reviews. In Undergraduate writing in psychology: Learning to tell the scientific story (3rd ed., pp. 79–102). American Psychological Association.

Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85–101. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298860309032

Raes, F., Pommier, E., Neff, K. D., & Van Gucht, D. (2011). Construction and factorial validation of a short form of the Self-Compassion Scale. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 18(3), 250–255. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.702