Final Paper Instructions
This Research Paper is to be written in APA style. Proofread and utilize spelling/grammar check to ensure accuracy. For your final, you will be completing the second five sections: Research Methodology, Research Design, Data Collection Method, Recommendations/Implications/Possible Policy Change, and Conclusion. This should be another 7-10 pages. Please submit the entire assignment (approximately 15-20 pages) as your final exam. You will incorporate any corrections/suggestions from your graded midterm into your final submission.
Research Methodology: This is the specific procedure or technique you will use to identify, select, process, and analyze the information about your chosen topic. This section allows the reader to critically evaluate the study’s overall validity and reliability. Define your variables, population, sampling method, and why you chose these methods. Describe in some detail the ways in which you would gather data (statistics, interviews, archives, secondary reading, etc.). Explain how you will measure your dependent and explanatory variables, and how you will evaluate the relationship among them. When creating your research methodology, you should clearly define your variables and formulate a hypothesis/hypotheses about the relationships between them. Then you can choose appropriate statistical methods to test these hypotheses. Analyzing words or images is often a more flexible process that involves the researcher’s subjective judgments. You might focus on identifying and categorizing key themes, interpreting patterns or narratives, or understanding social context and meaning. For example, do you simply want to describe participants’ perceptions and experiences, or will you analyze the meaning of their responses in relation to a social context? Will your analysis focus only on What is said or also on How it is said?
Research Design: The objective here is to convince the reader that the overall research design and methods of analysis will correctly address the research problem. Are you doing a qualitative, quantitative or mixed study? Are you doing longitudinal or cross-sectional research? Consider your priorities and practicalities. How much time do you think it will take to collect data and write up the research? Will you be able to gain access to the data you need? Do you have the necessary research skills, such as statistical analysis or interview techniques?
Data Collection Method: Determine the type of data you need. Primary data (surveys, interview, or experiments) or secondary data (someone else has already collected, like national statistics, official records, publications, or previous studies). Decide how you will collect the data. Determine your research methods. Surveys, Interviews, Experiments, and/or Secondary Data. Decide how you will analyze the data. To answer your research questions, you will have to analyze the data you collected. To analyze numerical data, you will probably use statistics methods, such as Excel, SPSS, or SAS. Statistical methods can be used to analyze averages, frequencies, patterns, and correlations between variables.
Recommendations/Implications/Possible Policy changes: The purpose of this section is to argue how and in what ways you believe your research will refine, revise, or extend existing knowledge in the subject area under investigation. Depending on the aims and objectives of your study, describe how the anticipated results will impact future scholarly research, theory, practice, forms of intervention, or policymaking. Based on your research topic and your expected findings, what do you recommend? What agency/entity would you make your policy change recommendations to? Who will be affected by your research findings?
Conclusion: The conclusion will be the last paragraph/s in your research paper. It is, in some ways, like your introduction. You restate your thesis and summarize your main points of evidence. It reiterates the importance or significance of your proposal and provides a brief summary of the entire study. This section should be only one or two paragraphs long, emphasizing why the research problem is worth investigating, why your research study is unique, and how it should advance existing knowledge.
Citations: As with any scholarly paper, you must cite the sources you use. Utilize APA style for your references.
