Research Paper

Full Title of the Paper

Name

California State University, Northridge

Abstract

Brief (<120 word) summary of paper

Title of Paper

· In the introduction, you want to begin telling the story about why this behavior is important to you and why it matters that it changes. This should be a dynamic, interesting story that pulls the reader in to want to know more about what you did and what you found.

· Introduce the topic and the project. Is your behavior an excess or a deficit? What is the rationale for your target behavior selection? Why is this behavior important for you to target?

· Describe your analysis of the short- and long-term contingencies that have maintained your behavioral excess or deficit that you aim to change. To do this, include the analysis you conducted of your behavior in Worksheet 2. A thorough analysis of this behavior will include both antecedents and consequences that are relevant to the behavior.

· Provide any insights into your behavior that you discovered during baseline data collection. What do you think contributes to your behavior being where it is at baseline?

· I highly suggest looking at articles we have been reading in class for ideas about writing style.

· These paragraphs should be in indented paragraph form – not bulleted. I simply bulleted to make it easier to follow along. Also, double-space the entire paper, use 1” margins, and Times New Roman font.

· Page guideline for this section: 1-2 page

Method

Participant and Setting

· Describe characteristics of the participant, yourself, in a short paragraph. What does the reader need to know about you to understand the project? For example: your age, gender, and any background information relevant to the target behavior and to the intervention you selected, such as history of the behavior.

· You may write either in first person (i.e., “I”) or third person (i.e., “the participant”). Just remain consistent throughout the paper and do not switch back and forth between first and third person.

· Describe characteristics of the setting that might be relevant for the reader to better understand your project.

· Page guideline: 2 paragraphs

Design

· Briefly describe the phases of the study and the single-subject design used. Describe why this particular design was used.

· What is your operational definition of your target behavior?

· Describe the data collection method used, including how often data were collected, when, in what location, and by whom. Data sheets are not required to be attached but should be described here.

· Describe the measurement of the behavior (i.e., frequency, duration, latency, magnitude, etc.) in specific detail.

· Page guideline: 1-2 paragraphs

Procedure

· Describe the phases of the project, including what occurred during baseline and what occurred during intervention.

· What is your independent variable? The IV is the many components of your intervention. Describe the intervention procedure well enough that someone could replicate your study using only the information in this paper.

· I highly recommend that you organize this section so it’s easier for your reader to understand. For example, “There were three types of antecedent manipulations that were used. The first was….”

· Also, make sure to describe your intervention as:

· Antecedent manipulations (things you do before the behavior to increase/decrease the occurrence of your behavior)

· Examples: social support, manipulating EOs, response effort, SDs.

· Consequence manipulations (things you do after the behavior occurs to increase/decrease the likelihood that it will occur again.)

· Examples: reinforcers, tokens, punishers, etc.

· None of your results should go here. So, when you’re describing baseline, please do not describe what your data showed in baseline. Save that for the results section, below.

· Page guideline: Approx. 2 pages

Results

· Describe the results of the study, including what happened across baseline and what happened during intervention. Refer to your figure when describing the data. (For example, “Figure 1 shows that...”)

· Attach the figure to the end of the paper, after the reference page, with a Figure caption (see the articles we reviewed in class for examples of figure captions) and with all axes labeled. Page guideline: ½ page

Discussion

· Very briefly summarize the overall results of the study. Was the intervention successful, and how so? What characteristics of the intervention were likely effective, for you as an individual? Relate your discussion to the concepts studied in the learning section of this course.

· Did you reach your goal or not? How do you feel about the outcome?

· What were weaknesses or problems with the study?

· How well do you think your behavior change will maintain over time?

· What could you do differently in the future to be even more successful at changing your behavior?

· Were there any surprising findings from this project? What did you learn about yourself?

· Page guideline: 1-2 pages

References

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle.

Location: Publisher.

Notes on APA format:

*You will likely only cite your textbook for this project. When you borrow information from the textbook, such as certain behavioral strategies used in your intervention, you should cite the textbook as in this sentence, with the citation in parentheses at the end of the sentence, with no page numbers (Martin & Pear, 2014). Do not use any word-for-word quotes from the textbook—put the thoughts in your own words. Any idea that comes from the textbook should be cited as from Martin and Pear, not from yourself. If you do not cite your text or another source, it is assumed that it is your idea. You may include additional citations if you sought them out.

*Be sure to attach your hand-drawn or computer generated figure(s) with captions after the reference page. That will be the last page of your final paper. For your figure, you will graph the data in a line graph. Any graphs drawn by hand should be completed on graphing paper and lines should be made with a ruler. Label the axes, draw phase lines, label the phases, and label the data path(s). Include a Figure Caption (look at the research articles assigned for class as a guide). I strongly recommend using the chapter in your book on research designs as a resource when making your graph.

*Get feedback from your peers on this project. Use the class discussion board on Moodle and office hours for ideas and to solve problems with your classmates and the instructor. Using these resources is likely to make your project and your final paper significantly better. The paper and presentation and their quality depends on the work put in early in the project.

*This document should be ALL that you need to make your papers conform to APA guidelines. The only 2 ways that this paper differs from an APA style paper are 1) I have written in bullet format, and 2) the paper is single-spaced. Your paper should be written in paragraph format with headings that look the same as in this paper, and should be double-spaced throughout.