Final Paper Instructions for your Research Proposal
For your final paper, you should make the corrections that have been noted in your returned 1st drafts, but also fix overall problems or update your papers appropriately. I may not have caught everything, so re-read your first draft carefully for grammatical errors, and other issues. If you made major changes to your study, make sure that is reflected in your final paper.
- Your paper should remain in future tense, since this is still a proposal for a future study.
- Sections should flow from one page to the next. Make sure to see your APA manual & Cozby textbook for what should start on its own page and what should not and the general organization & format of your final paper. An abstract is not required.
- In addition to improving your introduction & method section, you will write a mini discussion section. More information below.
Checklist for the final paper:
- Title Page
- Introduction
- Opening paragraph introducing the topic & variables, and importance
- Literature Review (minimum 5-7 citations, citations should match the reference section) – spending multiple paragraphs presenting the past research on the topic
- Brief overview of the current study with conceptual definitions of your variables
- Your hypothesis
- Method
- Participants & how you will recruit them; mention the need for them to sign a consent form; include demographic questions, too.
- Make sure to cite any published scales (even if you used just a couple of questions from one or were inspired by a published scale; always give credit where credit is due); update your reference section to include any additional publications cited in your method section.
- Include example questions; explain clearly the scoring of any scales and what those scores mean (i.e. high scores indicate high levels of stress)
- Include a short statement about how you will analyze the data & what you expect to find (restating the hypothesis & specific statistical tests you plan to use; i.e. “A Pearson’s correlation will be used to assess the relationship between variable A and variable B”; OR “A t-test will be used to determine if group A differed significantly on the variable from group B”)
- Discussion
- What are the strengths & limitations of your study? Consider issues of generalizability & connect to the past literature. How could you improve upon your study? Are there other ways to test the same hypothesis? For example, would it be ideal to test the hypothesis experimentally?
- What is the next step for this research? What does the future hold? Get creative here! You have no limits to your research ideas, so think outside the box!
- What is the impact of your study? Return to the importance. How can the findings of your study be used in the real world to help people or society?
- Don’t skimp on the discussion section. These are your final thoughts – make them good!
- References (APA-formatted and updated with any sources that you have added)
- All citations must be fully referenced in the reference section & all references must be cited in-text
You will be graded on overall quality of your paper. This includes your grammar, spelling & word choice, writing style, flow, organization, clarity, and, of course, APA-format. Please don’t lose points on APA-formatting! Use the manual (or OWL Purdue!). As always, use your resources.