I will provide you with more documents including my research proposal, drafted literature review and methods section, and supporting documents like field notes and interview summaries.
The final paper should be approximately 15-20 pages (including the 2 pages for the title page and abstract page) in length and should include the following sections.
REQUIRED SECTIONS:
Title Page: Provide a title for your paper, and include your name, SID, and TA/Section. You should include a “running head” which is a capitalized descriptor phrase in the header of the paper. It should not exceed 50 characters, and should summarize the paper topic.
Abstract: Provide a concise description of the paper. Your abstract should contain a brief overview of your research topic, research questions, participants, methods, results and analysis, and conclusions. You may also include possible implications of your research and future work you see connected with your findings. Your abstract should be a single paragraph double-spaced and indented on a separate page directly following the title page. Your abstract should be between 150 and 250 words.
Introduction: Outline the key issues to be addressed in the paper. Introduce the general are of inquiry in your study, in a vivid and compelling manner. State the thesis or argument of the paper, and summarize for the reader what is to come in the paper. For this section, you can incorporate the work you did in assignment 1, as improved by the editing process and adapted to changes that have been made as you conducted your research.
Literature review: Describe what is already known about this topic in a literature review, and address the gaps in knowledge about the topic (i.e., how your project adds to our understanding of this topic). For this section, you can incorporate the work you did in assignment 2, as improved by the editing process.
Methodology: Describe the methods that you used in your research in detail. Include a detailed description of the site of study and what happens there; what kinds of observations you made or data you collected; if you sampled data, what was your sampling strategy to ensure your sample was representative; if relevant, your observational “role,” how many hours you observed, and over what period of time; if you used interviews, the number of interviews conducted the selection of interviewees, and the goal and general theme of the interviews; if relevant, any other data sources (such as social artifacts) used including how you accessed and selected them for inclusion. You also need to include a detailed description of your data analysis strategy, including your coding process, and any quantification or statistical testing you did, etc.
Findings: This section is where you present your analysis of your data, and it can be divided into subsections if you wish. Do not simply insert your raw data such as interview transcripts, fieldnotes, or coding tables. Do not simply tell the story of yourself going about your research. Rather, you should devote this section to empirically supporting your thesis or argument using your data to illustrate and support your points. Every paragraph should follow logically from the paragraph before and should lead logically to the paragraph that follows. Each paragraph and each subsection (if any) should be devoted to substantiating the central claim(s) of the paper. Consider any possible criticisms of your reasoning or of your methods and indicate whether or not you consider them persuasive.
Conclusion: Reiterate (in different words) the central claim of your paper. What do you want your reader to walk away with? What are the larger implications of your findings? Are there any topics that should be taken up in future research? Can you recommend any changes in policy? Also feel free to discuss the limits of your research and your findings.
References: All papers should cite at least five peer-reviewed journal articles related to the research topic. Most papers, to be maximally effective, will utilize more than 5 sources, so consider this as a minimum bar, not an automatically sufficient number of sources. As with the in-text citations, this section must use APA style.
Please use standard fonts, one-inch margins, and a 12-point font size. Use footnotes sparingly, if at all, and primarily for explanatory purposes, not to cite sources. Again, you are required to cite at least five scholarly sources, which must also be included in the bibliography. Be sure to use pseudonyms for individuals interviewed, and consider using pseudonyms for groups that you have observed if there are privacy issues to consider. Confidentiality of those who you have observed and/or interviewed is paramount to ethical research. The rubric for grading this assignment is below.
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