NASPSPA - North American Society for Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity

North American Society for Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity.

Outstanding Student Paper Awards

Purposes

  1. To recognize meritorious research by student members of NASPSPA.
  2. To foster research by student members of NASPSPA.

Eligibility

At the time of the award application, the applicant must be a currently enrolled student (not post-doctoral fellow) and a member of NASPSPA. Students may submit for the award more than once and are eligible to receive the award more than once. The application for this award must be made by a single student (i.e., not a group of students), and describe research that was primarily conducted by that student, even though there may be co-authors who are also listed on presentations or publications resulting from this research.

Nature of the Award

Successful student authors of the outstanding student paper will receive a certificate of award, the registration fee for the NASPSPA conference will be waived, and they will receive a $200 honorarium. The honorarium will be paid at the time of the annual conference by the secretary/treasurer either by check or PayPal. An award may be given in each of the three conference program areas, but the research should be of very high quality so three awards may not be given each year.

Method of Selection

  1. The selection committee for a given program area consists of at least two of the Area Program Committee members. The Area Program Chair coordinates the review of applications and, if necessary, breaks ties.
  2. The Area Program Chair distributes award applications to the selection committee. Selection committee members independently evaluate which, if any, applications are sufficiently original, innovative, important, and significant to warrant award recognition. Members then each rank the proposals that meet this threshold and submit rankings to the Area Program Chair. Committee members do not rank applications if there is a conflict of interest (e.g., current or former advisees) and inform the Area Program Chair accordingly. The Area Program Chair assembles the rankings and if necessary initiates a discussion among selection committee members to settle upon the top ranked application. The Area Program Chair will communicate the outcome of the decision-making process and provide feedback to all applicants and will notify the Executive Director.
  3. Students applying for the Outstanding Student Paper Award must submit:
  4. A short abstract must be submitted through the web portal by the conference abstract submission deadline. During the process of submitting the abstract for the conference, the student also needs to answer “yes” to the question of whether they are applying for the Outstanding Student Paper Award in the web portal.
  5. A long abstract (no longer than 5 pages double-spaced, 12-pt. font, including figures, but excluding title page and references) needs to be emailed as a single PDF file to the Executive Director. This abstract should include: the research question, a rationale for the importance of the question, methods, results (including selected figures if appropriate), and a discussion of the findings and their significance. Deadline is two weeks following the abstract submission deadline of the Annual Conference.
  6. A letter of nomination for the award must be written by the graduate student’s advisor indicating why this student’s research is worthy of the Outstanding Student Paper Award. This letter should address the criteria being used by the committee to evaluate the research (see above). The letter should also include a statement indicating that the majority of the work done for this research was completed by the student. In the case of multi-authored publications, the advisor should indicate the individual contributions of each author. This letter must be emailed directly to the Executive Director by the advisor. Deadline is two weeks following the abstract submission deadline of the Annual Conference.

Criteria for selection

  1. The research question should be original, innovative, important, and significant.
  2. The researcher observed appropriate standards for the treatment of participants. That is, a statement certifying that ethical treatment of participants was followed in conducting this research should be included. (Note: These criteria are modified from guidelines found in the latest edition of the APA Publication Manual).
  3. At the time of the award application, the applicant is a currently enrolled student (not post-doctoral fellow) and a member of NASPSPA.
  4. Supervisor letter has been submitted attesting to the research being the applicant’s primary work.
  5. Submissions will be evaluated on the above criteria using the following rubric:

Please evaluate each criteria for the research question(s) from 1 – poor to 5 – excellent:

Submission

 Original (1-5) Innovative (1-5) Important (1-5) Significant (1-5) Ethical standards? Supervisor Letter Additional Comments/Feedback

A

Yes/No

Yes/No

B

Yes/No

Yes/No
C Yes/No Yes/No

 

Other clarifications

The NASPSPA website will include a listing of student award winners. Information about awards will appear in the Fall Newsletter. The Student Column in the Fall Newsletter will include information about the winners.