Your final paper is built up around the various components of you assembled throughout the course. As youve done various components of the work, the final version has you assembling for use. Below each section, I note where you can look back to because youve already begun the vast majority of these parts, now its assembling, expansion, and editing.
This may seem a bit odd because its not really a paper in the sense youre used to which, yes, thats correct. But the process here is actually the core process that is used by the majority of researchers as we begin our own studies: we have an idea, get some basic understanding of its scope, read some literature to get a handle on the state of the field and broader/deeper knowledge of the topic, and form some beginning hypotheses from this to get us grounded on what we actually know and what we want to know.
For your final paper, you will need to submit a document that contain the following sections. These should be formatted generally in APA style:
Double-spaced
Size 12 font
Times New Roman
Hanging indent/alphabetical references list
A cover page
remember to do the correct running head style
Page numbers
Make sure your name is on the first page
Regarding length: Im less concerned with a specific word count than I am about thoroughness. You have 5 annotations that you are completing, which are often around 2/3 of a page to 1 page each (so, itll probably be around 3.5 5 pages in that section). The intro is somewhere between 1/2 and 1 page. And the hypothesis section is 1/4 to a 1/2 page in length. This gives you a rough idea but content is more important than just having your paper be a certain length.
Paper structure
Simple Introduction
Your introduction should introduce the reader to the general aspects of your topic. In this, I want you to present that topic youve been interested in, noting a research question and the logic/reasoning that youre interested in this topic. Additionally, you must include a point drawn from either one of the data sites presented in the final week or from a trustworthy news source that gives some insight into the scale of the problem that youre interested in. For example, if your paper is about college drinking, youd want some sort of basic statistic that says what percent of college students drink (or, you could even fine tune it a bit further and do what percent of college students binge drink). This is so your reader/audience can understand and draw a sort of why is this an important topic. Make sure this is cohesive enough that the next section.
Basic items from earlier weeks to use as the basis here: Project Idea
Annotated Bibliography
Rather than have you assemble a literature review that links your articles together, you will need to do an annotated bibliography of your articles. For this, you will need a total of fiveacademic, peer-reviewed articles (note: youve already found 3, so youll just expand on them as you find two more!). For these five articles, they can address the variables youre interested in varying amounts. So, you could have two articles about race, only one on gender, and two on age. Each of annotation
s need to be a fully fleshed out annotated bibliography.
The best resource on this is OWL Purdue: Annotated Bibliographies (Links to an external site.)
(Links to an external site.)An important note is their annotation examples highlight a few different types including MLA, APA, and Chicago. The APA approach doesnt include a reflection for using it in your own work (this is because the annotated bibliographies are meant to be a repository for your own use so that, if youre writing another paper in the future and think you want to use a reference again, you can review your own notes to see if itll be useful). For this project, I want you to use the MLA approach to annotations: a summary, an evaluation of the text, and a reflection on its applicability to his/her own research (The Writing Lab, 2017). All five must have these 3 sections.
Basic items from earlier weeks to use as the basis here: Project Idea; Finding (and Using) Relevant Literature
Hypotheses
The last items that I want you to develop in this are a set of three hypotheses built from the literature. So, youve already spent some time on your articles and thinking about your topic and variables over the week. Youre going to end the components of this by articulating specific hypotheses from the literature you just assembled that would guide your own research. You dont need to go into heavy or long explanations on this but the when your reader/audience sees your hypotheses, the annotations they just read should prime them on these. Basically, do these hypotheses connect to the annotations that I just read or do they seem to come out of left field.
Basic items from earlier weeks to use as the basis here: The Importance of Getting the Hypotheses Right
Descriptive Statistics Graphical
This section should include general, descriptive statistics for your subject that graphically present summary information that is important. You want think about it like: a line graph that shows the adoption cell phones over time or a pie chart that shows the percentages of different groups, etc.
You should have two graphical representations here.
basic items from earlier week to use as the basis here: Exercise from Week 9 if you can create your own. If you cant create your own, depending upon your topic, youll need to find good, solid, trustworthy.
References
And, finally, a full references list that is correctly formatted. Remember, this will have sixentries (your five articles and the background source from your introduction).
Rubric
Final Paper
I also provide the idea of this topic. You can use it or choose your own idea.
Please follow the requirement
Criteria Ratings Pts
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeFormatting
27 pts
Full Marks
0 pts
No Marks
27 pts
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeIntroduction
47 pts
Full Marks
0 pts
No Marks
47 pts
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeAnnotated Bibliography
127 pts
Full Marks
0 pts
No Marks
127 pts
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeHypotheses
47 pts
Full Marks
0 pts
No Marks
47 pts
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeReferences
27 pts
Full Marks
0 pts
No Marks
27 pts
Total Points: 275