Research

Research Project Report

>>>, 2016

Student Name / ID: >>>

Student Name / ID: >>>

Student Name / ID: >>>

Student Name / ID: >>>

TITLE PAGE

On separate lines and centered, the title page has the title of the study, the author's name, and the institutional affiliation. At the bottom of the title page, you should have the words (in caps) RUNNING HEADER: followed by a short identifying title (2 to 4 words) for the study. This running header should also appear on the top-right of every page of the paper.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY/ABSTRACT

The abstract is limited to one page, double-spaced. At the top of the page, centered, you should have the word "Abstract." The abstract itself should be written in paragraph form and should be a concise summary of the entire paper, including the problem, major hypotheses, sample and population, a brief description of the measures, the name of the design or a short description (no design notation here), the major results, and the major conclusions. Obviously, to fit this all on one page, you have to be extremely concise.

BODY

The first page of the body of the paper should have, centered, the complete title of the study.

INTRODUCTION

The first section in the body is the introduction. In APA format, you do not include a heading that says "Introduction." You simply begin the paper in paragraph form following the title. Every introduction will have the following (roughly in this order):

1) a statement of the problem being addressed,

2) a statement of the research questions / objectives or hypotheses.

3) a brief review of relevant literature (including citations), a description of the major constructs involved, and the literature review section should be in paragraph form.

METHODS

The "Methods" section should begin immediately after the introduction (no page break) and should have the centered title, "Methods." In APA format, this section typically has a few subsections, such as:

i. Sampling Design

This section should describe the population of interest, the sampling frame, the method for selecting the sample, and the sample itself. A brief discussion of external validity is appropriate here; that is, you should state the degree to which you believe results will be generalizable from your sample to the population

ii. Data collection methods

Where appropriate, you should state the name of the design or method you are using in which you are collecting data. In this section, you should briefly describe the overall sequence of steps or events from beginning to end

iii. Design of questionnaire & cover letter

Did you obtain your questionnaire from published research or how was the questionnaire/survey designed. This section should include a brief description of your constructs (what you are measuring). You may present short instruments/themes of questions in this section or you may present some typical questions to give the reader a sense of what you did (include the full survey & cover letter in an appendix). Appendices are typically labeled by letter (for example "Appendix A") and cited appropriately in the body of the text. For pre-existing instruments, you should cite any relevant information about reliability and validity if it is available. For all instruments, you should briefly state how you determined reliability and validity.

iv. Procedures/Data Analysis Methods

Describe how you obtained your data. Generally, this section ties together the sampling, measurement, and research design It needs to be explained so it is easy for other researchers to be able to replicate your study.

v. Limitations

What are some of the limitations in your methodology? Discuss internal validity and describe the major plausible threats in your study and how the design accounts for them, if at all. (Be your own study critic here and provide enough information to show that you understand the threats to validity and whether you've been able to account for them all in the design or not.)

Each of the five subsections should have an underlined, left-justified section heading.

RESULTS

The heading for this section is centered with upper- and lowercase letters. You should indicate concisely what results you found in this research. Your results don't have to confirm your hypotheses. In fact, the common experience in social research is the finding of no effect. Within this section you should have your data displayed in appropriate graphs, charts, etc. and the description of the results obtained from the data needs to be explained clearly and well-organized. The analysis of the data must be accurate and interpretations from the data should be explained clearly.

CONCLUSION

Here, you should describe the conclusions you reach (given the results described in the "Results" section). You should relate these conclusions back to the what your research questions/hypothesis was and the general problem area that you described in the introduction (literature review). You should also discuss the overall strength of the research (for example, a general discussion of the strong and weak validity areas) and should present some suggestions for possible future research that would be sensible based on the results of this work.

REFERENCES

There are really two parts to a reference citation. First, there is the way you cite the item in the text when you are discussing it. Second, there is the way you list the complete reference in the "Reference" section in the back of the report. If you are unsure how to reference properly OWL Purdue is a great website to see examples of APA style referencing.

SEE NEXT PAGE FOR BREAKDOWN OF GRADES per SECTION

Research project evaluation scheme

Team's mark

The team's mark will be based on the final report, according to the following criteria:

1. Prefatory information and Introduction- 25 marks

Executive Summary- 5

Problem statement- 5

Research objectives- 5

Background research (including references)- 10

2. Methodology- 30 marks

Sampling design- 5

Data collection methods – 5

Questionnaire, cover letter and other instruments- 10

Data analysis methods- 5

Limitations- 5

3. Results (including appendices)- 25 marks

Data description- 5

Data display- 10

Data analysis/hypothesis testing/association testing- 10

4. Conclusions- 10 marks

5. Spelling, grammar and style- 10 marks

1	Short Title of Research Paper Student Name(s)