Research Study Analysis

For this assignment, you will analyze a research study that was published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. This study is typical of how communication research findings are presented in scholarly journals. It follows a set pattern that all research studies in the empirical tradition follow, so you will look more at its "structure" than its content.

Go to “The Impact of Language Variety and Expertise on Perceptions of Online Political Discussions.”

Write a 1,050-word essay in which you describe the study based on the major headings used in the article. Make sure your essay answers these questions:

* What is a literature review?  What does it do?
* What terms are defined?
* How many hypotheses are there?
* Where does the Research Methodology appear in the study?
* How many cases or subjects were there in the study?
* How many hypotheses were supported by the data?
* Where are the "conclusions" given in the research paper?

(You will likely be baffled by the statistical analyses used on the data collected by the researchers unless you have had a few courses in statistics. You can skip this section of the study.) 

Finally, analyze what you learned about the study. Based on what you have read in our course content, was this study well designed? Why or why not?  Make sure to support all your claims with directly quoted, summarized and paraphrased material from your course resources that you have properly cited with APA-style in-text citations and end-of-text references.