Introduction Section: 

• You must incorporate a minimum of two sources articles from the Annotated Bibliographies (not including Parachute Death)
• This should be a minimum of 4-5 paragraphs in length
• Your first paragraph should be a broad introduction into the topic
• Your next two paragraphs should be reviewing your two annotated bib sources (one source per paragraph)
  • You can literally use your main summary arguments from the annotated bibs for these paragraphs as long as you address the feedback I provided on them when they were graded. Do not recreate the wheel!
    • Just add in some flow between the different paragraphs
• Next you need to identify a gap in the research literature you reviewed and tell us explicitly how your research fills that gap
• The last paragraph of your Introduction should first tell us all the constructs and their conceptual definitions. Then tell us the hypotheses and rationale for why we might make those predictions.

Method Section:

Overview

• Restate the reason that you are doing the study
• Reiterate the conceptual definitions of the outcome and predictor variables. You will have already conceptually defined them once in the Introduction.
• Operationally define the outcome and predictor variables. 

Participants

• This was convenience sampling
• How many participants there were
• The demographic information for your participants for all 5 demographic variables in your study
• You are all community college students through ARC and I am a former student who still takes classes for professional development/love of learning

Materials

Paragraph 1: Tell us about the Demographics and Predictor Variables

• Number of Demographic Variables
  • List what they are
• Number of Predictor Variables that were collected not as a survey (e.g., Familial Capital)
  
  • List what they are
  • Give all response options for each of these variables

Paragraph 2: Tell us about the Survey Variables

• What was each survey measuring in terms of the contruct and what higher scores mean?
• What was the name of each survey?  
  • There is a linked document in the Module that tells you this information!
• Response options for survey
  • Do not forget the numeric values and the scale anchors in words!
• How many items on survey
• Explain positively and negatively worded and give example of each

Procedure

• How was the data collected in chronological order?
  • Tell us what the participants experienced from start to finish 
  • This should tell us stuff like the timeframe Data Collection I was available, how you accessed the data collection materials, etc.
• Data collection setting
  • This should be telling us this was using a Google Form, that this was all in an online setting, that participants needed wifi or data to access the data collection materials but could otherwise participate anywhere convenient to them, etc.
• Explain how participants were treated that was in compliance with APA ethical standards
  • This should be telling us stuff like the consent form, that reasonable participation credit was provided in the form of credit towards your grade, the right to quit at any time, anonymity, etc. This study complied with APA ethical standards and you need to give multiple examples of why you can say that and why.

Using the tests you ran on your data and the output it created, you will need to write the Results and Discussion Sections Assignment.

Please Include the Following for the Results Section:

Descriptive Statistics

•  Just like the info you gave for your demographics but for predictor and outcome variables instead

  •  Mean AND standard deviation with range for all continuous variables

  • Frequencies in PERCENTAGES for categorical variables

  • See now why I told you not to put this in participants ? (no need to repeat yourself)

• Additional information to tell us about survey variable statistics
  • Noting that variables computed from surveys are the average scores for each participant across those survey questions

t tests

• Reiterate your hypothesis (always provide the alternate)
•  How the t test was performed (what were the predictor and outcome variables)
• Give relevant statistics (t with df, p, Levene’s test, Cohen’s d)
•  Explain the t test conceptually and in own words (This is the narrating the group means stuff)
• Explain the meaning of Cohen’s d in terms of effect size and what that means for the strength or meaningfulness of the relationship
  • This information in the second stats-related extra credit this week and the Inferential Statistics chapter. No need to memorize these cutoffs.
• Do you retain or reject the null? If you reject the null, do you also accept the alternative hypothesis?
• Wash, rinse, repeat with each hypothesis
  • Please make sure you narrate one hypothesis through these components before you start talking about the next one. No listing all the hypotheses and mixing reporting the test results together. That is really confusing for everyone involved.

Correlations

• Reiterate your hypothesis
•  Report the correlation and significance statistics (r, p, df,  r²)
  •  This should include telling us whether this was a positive, negative, or lack of relationship
•  Explain the results in your own words (This should be the higher levels of one variable higher/lower levels of the other. You need to do this narrative regardless of whether the result was significant or not)
•  Report the strength/magnitude of the correlation 
  • This information in the second stats-related extra credit this week and the Inferential Statistics chapter. No need to memorize these cutoffs.
•  Is this relationship a big deal or not?
• Do you retain or reject the null? If you reject the null, do you also accept the alternative hypothesis?
• Wash, rinse, repeat with each hypothesis
  • Please make sure you narrate one hypothesis through all these components before you start talking about the next one.  No listing all the hypotheses and mixing reporting the test results together. That is really confusing for everyone involved.

ANOVAs

• Reiterate your hypothesis (always provide the alternate)
•  How the ANOVA was performed (what were the predictor and outcome variables)
•  Give relevant statistics for omnibus test (F with BOTH df, p, Levene’s test)
•  Explain the ANOVA test conceptually and in own words
  • This is the narrating the group means stuff like with a t test but here instead you tell us the means of all the groups and how they compare to each other along with post hoc test p values
• Do you retain or reject the null? If you reject the null, do you also accept the alternative hypothesis?
• Wash, rinse, repeat with each hypothesis
  • Please make sure you narrate one hypothesis through these steps before you start talking about the next one. No listing all the hypotheses and mixing reporting the test results together. That is really confusing for everyone involved.
    

     How to Write a Discussion Section

    A Discussion Section Contains a Number of Key Components:

    A Conceptual Full Circle

    • You want to write a discussion section as though the person reading it has no research or statistics background. You cannot talk about anything using statistical words or jargon. The word correlation is completely off limits to you in this section! 
    • Also, as you saw earlier in the semester, it is not unusual for the reader to only skim the abstract and discussion (Parachute Death anyone?). You cannot assume the reader has any idea what you said in the other sections of the paper. You will need to reiterate what the point of your research project was in the Discussion to remind readers (or tell them for the first time if they did not bother reading the rest of it).  This is the same point of your research that you have been reiterating throughout your entire paper in the different sections.
    • You will need to finish your Discussion section with a closing remark. Try to end with a final summarization that links to your first Introduction paragraph that tells us why this topic is important in the first place.

    Explaining Results in Your Own Words

    • What did you hypothesize?

      • First tell us what hypothesis was being tested. This lets the reader know how it compares to what you will narrate next.

    • What did you find?  

      This is where you will talk about your main findings from your analyses using the people statements you have been practicing. (e.g. higher levels is related to higher/lower levels, whether it was statistically/practically significant and meaningful)

    • How do your findings relate to your hypotheses?

      • Did you retain or reject your null for each of your hypotheses?

      • You should narrate one finding from start to finish and then move on to the next. Do not just try to cram everything into one sentence. Be kind to your readers!

    Critiquing Your Own Research Study

    Limitations:

    Problems that were not related to how you implemented your research study. This could be sample size, diversity issues, etc. that are not related to how you designed your research itself. For this specific paper you need to have a total of 3 of these.

    Generalizability:

    • Who does your results apply to?
      • All community college students?
      • All college students?
      • People who might consider going to college in the future?
      • Specific subsets of these groups?
    • No research is representative of everyone. Your research is no different. Make it clear who it does and does not represent.

    Methodological Flaws:

    • Specifically talking about problems with how you implemented the research itself
      • For example, this could talk about conceptual and operational definitions, choice of predictors, research methodology choices, etc. 

    Generating New Research Ideas:

    • Creating new ideas based on what you know from the study you just conducted
      • Based on this research project what new “But…Why?” questions do you have? 
      • You CANNOT use anything from your critiques as a new idea
        • For example: If you note sample size was a limitation, proposing a new study but with a bigger sample size does not count as generating a new research idea. You will not get points for two different things with one idea!
      • I repeat: Must be an entirely new idea!
      • You are required to provide a reason why you chose your new idea. Why do you think this is interesting enough to conduct further research on? Why should we care?

    Relating Your Study to Other Research:

    • You will need to relate your research project to existing research on your topic.
    • This can be applied within the same paragraph as any of the others listed above and does not need to be its own paragraph. Depending on the research you find, you may think it relates most to your limitations, your findings, a new idea, etc. There is no one way to relate previous research to your own just like there was not one way to write an Introduction based on the research articles we used for Annotated Bibliographies.
    • See the Discussion Article Activity later in this Module
      

      Please Follow these Directions for the Discussion Section:

      After reading How to Write a Discussion Section, you will need to write your own Discussion section related to the results you found from your research project. I am not requiring a word or page count but you should need a minimum of 4 fully formed paragraphs to fully cover the requirements of a Discussion section. Please refer to the rubric before submitting this assignment to ensure you are not accidentally overlooking easy points!

      NOTE: ****Components that are no longer optional:

      • APA Headings (including the subsection headings)
      • Running Head
      • References Page in APA format
      • Statistics in APA format
      • APA in-text citations 
      • Indenting Paragraphs
      • Proper font and double spacing
      • Editing for Typos and Grammar

      In order to submit this assignment:

      1. Complete recommended edits to the Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion sections
      2. Fix any remaining APA formatting issues throughout (see reminders page in this Module for tips and info from earlier in the semester)
      3. Make sure all information is in a single document with proper font, paragraph indents and spacing, and spelling and grammar have been double checked