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FINAL PROJECT TIMELINE

Item 1:Research Topic, Dataset, Stakeholder Assessment, & Academic Deliverable

You will submit a document that describes: 1) your proposed research topic and a draft specific research question; 2) the data set you will use, with details concerning which variables/questions will be used to operationalize which constructs; 3) which stakeholders will be affected by the research project; and, 4) the type of academic deliverable that will be produced. Note that if the product will be a proposal, then #2 above is not required.

Item 2:Final Project DRAFT #1: Significance/Background for peer review

You will submit a document that describes: 1) revised research questions and hypotheses; 2) a significance section, which clarifies the theoretical and/or methodologicalgaps in the literature that will be addressed by students’ proposed project; and 3) an innovation section, which highlights the project’s unique contribution to the literature, as well as future research, practice, and community engagement that will become possible due to the findings of students’ proposed project. You will participate in a peer review of these sections, in which you and one peer from class will provide each other with feedback on clarity and on strength of arguments. Your timely and complete submission of Draft #1 is counted towards a separate peer review grade (see syllabus). However, the material you prepare for this draft (and your peer’s feedback on this material) will be integrated into your final deliverable for your final project.

Item 3:Methods: Analytic Plan

You will submit a document that describes your analytic plan (e.g., hypotheses and corresponding planned analyses and descriptive/inferential statistics; relationships of interest).

Item 4:Final Project DRAFT #2 Methods:Design, Procedures, & Measures for peer review

You will submit a document that describes the: 1) sampling method, including the target population, sampling frame, and sample; and 2) study design and procedures, including assignment and the timing of data collection.Your timely and complete submission of Draft #2is counted towards a separate grade (see syllabus). However, the material you prepare for this draft (and your peer’s feedback on this material) will be integrated into your final deliverable for your final project.

Item 5: Final deliverable. Your final product is due on or before Thursday, May4 and should be submitted electronically via Blackboard . Late papers will not be accepted. You will submit a final revised academic deliverable, in which you will integrate all sections above and in which you must address all input from instructors and peer reviewers. In addition to the sections already submitted as drafts, this final deliverable will also include an additional section (either a “Results andDiscussion” section for students completing a poster or manuscript; or an “Implications for Public Health” section for students completing a proposal).

Your final product should be approximately 8-10 pages (typed, double spaced, 1-inch margins) if a manuscript or proposal. Length may vary if your final product is a poster. (Please submit posters in poster format –i.e., as a single PowerPoint slide – and as a text-only Word document for easy reading.)

APA format.

Section 1: Background (i.e., lit review), Research Question(s),and Hypotheses

· Clear and compelling review of background literature

· The review should focus on previous research most related to your research question(s), population and measures

· Should incorporate a review of at least 15 peer-reviewed empirical or theoretical articles relevant to your research question

· The review should demonstrate what is known about your area of interest as well as what is not known

· The review should clearly lead the reader to understand the need for and importance of your research question(s) and your study

· You must identify AT LEAST one way your study will uniquely contribute to the literature by improving upon or modifying (in an interesting way) some aspect of previous studies on this topic

· Clear research question(s) and hypotheses

· Include a research question for each relationship you will test (as specified via email), and a hypothesis for each question. In some cases you will be able to specify a directional hypothesis based on the results of previous research. In other cases, especially if few people have explored the research question before or previous research has found mixed results, you can included a non-directional hypothesis.

· For example if you are interested in whether ethnic identity is related to self-esteem and depression among diverse adolescents you should have two research questions:

1. What is the relationship between ethnic identity and self-esteem among Black, Latino, Asian and White adolescents? I hypothesize that ethnic identity will be positively related to self-esteem among Black, Latino and Asian adolescents. However, I hypothesize that there will be no relationship between ethnic identity and self-esteem for White adolescents.

2. What is the relationship between ethnic identity and depression among Black, Latino and Asian adolescents? Previous research has not yet explored the relationship between ethnic identity and depression, thus this is an exploratory research question.

· Section 1 of this paper should follow the same ordering as required for Paper Draft 1: first, discuss and cite the literature on your topic and use it to illustrate what is and is NOT known in the literature; second , identify a way your study will add something unique that is not already known to this literature by improving upon some aspect of existing studies; finally , end by stating both your specific research questions AND your hypotheses ( separately ).

Section 2: Methods section -

· Study design: Clearly articulate (identify and describe) a study design that is able to answer the research question(s) posed.

· Participants: Provide clear information about how (from where, using what recruitment mechanisms and what sampling design) the sample will be recruited and selected for the study and who will be targeted for inclusion; and give basic demographic information about participants: age, gender, race/ethnicity, any characteristics that are relevant to your study.

· Procedures: Give clear and detailed information about how the study will be conducted. This includes how participants will be assigned to groups (if applicable), how materials will be distributed and introduced and collected, etc. This section will be longer and more detailed for experimental studies, which will include information about how participants will be assigned to groups and how the independent variable(s) will be manipulated. It will be even longer for intervention studies, as the goals of the intervention and details of how the it will be implemented must be described.

· Measures: Provide clear and specific info provided about all study measures, including the independent (or predictor) variable(s), the dependent (or outcome) variable(s) and any variables that are included as covariates ( including confounds) . For each measure, you should provide information about the number of items, the response scale, reliability and validity.

· You should first research what measures previous studies have used to measure the constructs in your study. Information about the number of items, response scale, reliability and validity may come from these studies.

· However, if the sample in your study is very different (in age, race/ethnicity, gender or some other important way) from the samples used by previous research, or if no reliability or validity information is available in previous studies, you should describe what steps you will take analytically to check the reliability and validity of your proposed measure for your sample.

· If you cannot find adequate measures (measures which match your constructs exactly) of some or all of the constructs in your study, you can propose that you will develop your own. In this case, describe what steps you will take analytically to check the reliability and validity of your proposed measure and provide sample items.

· POTENTIAL CONFOUNDS : You must identify and measure at least 2-3 potentially important confound variables. This means that you must also describe the measures you will use to assess these confound variables.

Section 3: Data Analytic Plan

· Data analytic plan: give a clear description of how you will analyze the data to answer each of your research question(s) and demonstrate your understanding of your analyses. This includes (a)a description of the statistical methods you will use for each question, (b) what statistics (e.g., coefficients, R Square, t, F, etc.) you will look at to determine whether there is a significant result for each question and (c) what statistical information you will use to interpret your result.

· Here is an example of language that conveys your understanding of statistics and how they will be able to answer your research question:

· “A t-test will be used to determine whether participants assigned to the counseling intervention had lower depression scores than those assigned to the control group. A significant t-test (p< .05) indicates that the means of the two groups differ more than would be expected due to chance alone. The means of each group will then be inspected to see which group had the lower mean. If participants in the counseling intervention group have the lower mean, we can conclude that the counseling intervention has significantly decreased depression, as hypothesized.”

· The data analytic procedures you choose need to be well-suited to answer each research question and must be suitable for use with the measures you have proposed to use. (For example, if you are using a continuous measure of ethnic identity - say an average of 5 items which tap ethnic identity - to predict self-esteem, it is not appropriate to use ANOVA, which assumes that you have a categorical predictor.)

· Remember that you must include your 2-3 confounds in your analysis!!! (because otherwise there isn’t much point in measuring them!)

Section 4: Discussion and Conclusions

a. For students completing a manuscript or poster: Results and Discussion

· Present the results of your analyses. Include tables as appropriate, and include text describing your primary statistical findings. Text descriptions are required. Tables are likely necessary, but are not sufficient (on their own) for this section.

· Discuss your findings vis a vis the extant literature you described in your Significance/ Background section. Start by restating the gap that your study is filling in the extant literature. Then discuss whether or not your results are consistent with what you expected, based on the extant literature.

· Discuss next steps for this line of research (i.e., what else does the field need to know or what kind of study should be done next to build on yours) and implications for intervention (i.e., explain how the findings can inform and shape the design and development of new interventions and what kind of interventions they might be).

a. For students completing a proposal: Discussion of Importance to Public Health

· Reiterate how the proposed study will innovate upon the extant research, and restate what gaps it will fill in the literature.

· Explicitly state, and discuss at length, the benefits the proposed research will have for public health. Be sure to include both direct benefits to participants in your own proposed sample, as well as indirect benefits to public health, epidemiology, communities, etc. that are implications of the research.

· If your proposed study is not an intervention, discuss implications for future interventions (i.e., explain how the findings can inform and shape the design and development of new interventions and what kind of interventions they might be).

b. ALL Products should include: Strengths and Limitations -

· What does your study add to previous literature? Briefly reiterate this (i.e., say it again).

· Thorough and thoughtful consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of your study’s design. The strengths and weaknesses should be framed in terms of internal andexternal validity.

· Internal validity: can your study establish cause and effect relationships? What confounds are there and how will you address them? Are there any you will not be able to address? What factors do you not have control over that could be a threat to internal validity?

· External validity: how generalizable are the results of your study? To what types of people would the results be applicable? What about the way you will measure your constructs and the procedures you used in your study? How generalizable are these? How biased or representative is your sampling design

c. ALL products should include: Ethical considerations

· Information about how ethical considerations are dealt with in the study. This includes:

· What are the potential risks and benefits?

· Consenting procedures

· Debriefing procedures (for experiments, especially)

· Steps you will take to ensure confidentiality

· Steps you will take to reduce potential for coercion

· In some cases, more information should be provided about how other ethical considerations will be addressed. For example, if you plan to study how different therapies affect depression and you find that one of the therapies is worsening depression, how will this be handled? If you are studying a sensitive issue such as abuse, how will risks to participants be minimized (i.e., will you refer them to services to help them handle any painful or traumatic emotions or memories that arise as a result of participation in your study)? If I mentioned ethical concerns in your feedback email, you must address what I asked you about or discussed with you.