Human Sexuality Op-Ed and Instagram Project
Acknowledgments:
This assignment is adapted from Dr. Morgan C. Jerald’s final project for her Psychology of Black Women course at Macalester College; many thanks to Dr. Jerald for sharing her assignment instructions with me! Dr. Jerald indicated that the op-ed portion was in turn adapted from an assignment used by Dr. Elizabeth Levy Paluck at Princeton.
Goals:
1. Explore a specific issue relevant to human sexuality in depth
2. Search and synthesize peer-reviewed research relevant to your issue
3. Communicate about sexual science to a public audience in a persuasive way
This project includes multiple parts. First, you will complete an op-ed, including a topic proposal, first draft, and final draft. Second, you will make a PowerPoint for Instagram based on the topic of your op-ed.
Part 1: Op-ed Assignment
Take a position on a social, political, educational, or cultural issue that relates to human sexuality. Op-eds (opinion-editorials) are not reportage or literature reviews. The goal of an op-ed is to make a persuasive argument for addressing a topical issue or problem. How can we best work toward solving the problem or achieving a related goal? Thus, the piece requires you both to take a stand on the issue and to offer practical suggestions that are grounded in research.
It may be helpful to review the Resources page of the Op-Ed project (www.theopedproject.org/oped- basics) and read a few newspaper op-ed sections for examples and more background. There is no one formula for how to write an op-ed, but this website provides some helpful suggestions
Selecting a Topic:
Think of a topic based on what interests you. You can form a thesis based on 1) a topic this class has covered/will cover or 2) your previous interests, on which theories/content from the class can shed light. You can look at the topics covered on our syllabus for some starting points, and some broad categories might be topics related to: LGBTQ+ issues, intersectional identities (e.g., experiences of Black trans women or Muslim gay men), relationships or dating, sex education, sexual health (e.g., STIs, contraception), pornography, treatment of sexual problems or disorders, or the impact of COVID-19 on sexual health or on a specific sexual minority group. The more specific your topic, the better. For example, for my op-ed, instead of my topic being “sex education” or even “comprehensive sex education”, I focused on the importance of including sexual orientation and gender identity in the 2020 update to Texas’ sex education standards. (NOTE: Because my example op-ed is about LGBTQ-inclusive sex education, this is the one topic that is off limits, as it would be too easy to base your article on the example.)
If you’re having trouble thinking of a topic, feel free to drop by office hours or set up a meeting with me so that we can brainstorm together. I have a list of possible topics I can share if you need suggestions, but I encourage you to choose something you feel interested in and passionate about!
Assignment Guidelines:
• Cite at least three peer-reviewed empirical research articles on your chosen topic (not listed on the syllabus). The description of this research will be brief (you don’t have much space!) and used to support your point (e.g., “As Tyler Okimoto and Victoria Brescoll of Harvard University showed in a recent study, women who were seeking power were less likely to receive votes…”). Be sure to also link to your study when you first present it (e.g., in the example sentence above you can make the word “showed” a hyperlink to Okimoto and Brescoll’s study.)
• Peer-reviewed articles are published in academic journals like Journal of Sex Research or Archives of Sexual Behavior, etc., and can be found by searching library databases like PsycINFO, PubMed, or Google Scholar.
• Ground your opinion in social science (i.e., back it up!). You need to back up your argument with at least three studies from psychological science. Your assignment is not to write a pure opinion piece. Your needs to be backed up.
• You may use additional credible sources (e.g., statistics on LGBT well-being from the Williams Institute), but these do not count toward your three peer-reviewed articles. Be sure to cite ALL sources with hyperlinks.
• Hook your piece to something that has happened in the world recently. The best hook is not necessarily a personal experience like, “I learned nothing relevant to me in high school sex ed,” but rather something that your reader can also relate to personally, like “Next week, several hundred thousand Texas middle schoolers will resume virtual or hybrid learning. How will this virtual environment influence what they learn about their bodies and sexuality in health class?” Or more traditionally, your hook will be news on the global, national, or local level, or from within academia. For example, you could say, “Last week in a small town in south Texas….”, or “St. Edward’s students yesterday received a public safety email that said…” or finally “Last week, the Texas State Board of Education gave preliminary approval to its first revision to sex education standards since 1997.” The point is that your hook should be very recent.
Submission, Style, and Formatting
• Length: 700-900 words
• Please type your paper using 12-point font, single-spaced throughout, and 1-inch margins all around.
• Include an APA-formatted reference list for the articles you have selected.
• Save your file as a Word document.
