FinalRMC

For your Final Paper, please use the following subheadings. If everyone is using the same basic template, this will help me provide feedback for the upcoming assignments including the prospectus and the rough draft.

For the Prospectus, you can submit a rough outline or bullet points that specifically apply to your topic under each subheading. You can use RR3 for the first heading and then roughly outline or provide bullet points for the remaining sections.

1. Introduction and Statement of the Problem ● Explain the issue you are examining and why it is significant. (Most of you will be able to

use Reading Response 3 to help fill this in. ● Describe the general area to be studied, then focus on the specific problem you plan to

address ● Explain why this area is important to criminal justice research. Policy can also be

discussed, but first and foremost, this proposal is about adding to the body of scientific research on this topic.

● DO NOT make the claim here that your general topic or specific problem has a lack of research here. Especially since your next section is about reviewing previous literature on your topic. Instead, explain what *your* approach is and why it adds to the existing literature.

2. Background/Review of the Literature

● For this heading, discuss previous journal articles/research projects in this area, and why each are important.

● There are two ways of organizing a literature review. You can go through each study in its own paragraph(s) or you can organize the previous literature by subtopic, then discuss studies that produce findings or study areas related to that subtopic. Either approach is permissible.

● You need to summarize and critique past literature in this section. Tell me what they did find, but also what their limitations were, and areas that they were not able to study.

● A literature review in itself is not a research proposal. You need to do more than this.

3. Rationale/Research Questions/Hypotheses

● Here you need to provide a description of the questions you are examining or hypotheses you are testing. Discuss any theoretical models you plan to use here. Don’t just name them, provide detail.

● Explain how your research questions or hypotheses are related to the statement of the problem from your introduction.

● Remember, research questions are not the questions you propose for a survey. They are general questions that your research will answer. They are, in a sense, your hypothesis in question form. Often they discuss the who, what, when, where, why, how, etc. of your project in some way.

● For example, if you propose an evaluation of a local drug court, one research question might be “What are the demographics of local drug court participants?” or “Does completion of the local drug court program improve recidivism rates for drug related crimes?” These are likely not what you will be asking specific participants, but they may be more general questions that your study aims to answer.

4. Method and Design

● How would you collect the data and why? How will you distribute a survey? What is your sample? How will you recruit participants?, etc. Are there any participants that you would exclude? Why? What is the participant required to do?

● One important tip: Not everything has to be mixed methods. Will a simple survey of participants work? Will simply looking at a 3-year reconviction rate of participants work? Will qualitative interviews alone give you the information you are looking for?

● What data do you plan to collect? You can talk here about what questions you plan to ask people in a survey, or an interview, etc.

● What comparisons do you plan to make when examining the data? Do you plan to compare outcomes by gender, race, age, etc.? What would your analysis of data look like? What specific statistics might be used?

● Keep this part as simple and straightforward as possible. Do not aim to examine a problem using the entire population of the United States. Select a sample that is feasible.

● IMPORTANT: You are not required to collect data for this paper. Further, you are not *allowed* to collect data for this paper. This means do not recruit subjects and do not interview or survey anyone. If you have questions about this, please email me and we will discuss it further.

5. Significance and Conclusion

● Discuss, in general, how your proposed research would lead to a significant improvement over the original studies, and how it would benefit the field.

● Relate this back to your original problem from the beginning of the paper. ● In other words, why should someone care? If you were applying for money to do this,

why would someone fund you? ● If you wanted to publish your results, why would they be interesting?

6. References ● Include all references in APA style.