Individual Research Project Paper

7 Found helpful • 15 Pages • Essays / Projects • Year: Pre-2021 • Previously uploaded under: SRAP3001 - Quantitative Social Research

Research Project Paper Guidelines INTRODUCTION/LITERATURE REVIEW (approximately 35% of overall length)  An introduction elaborates on the aim of the research study. It highlights the scope of the paper, and the question(s) you seek to answer.  A literature review highlights key related findings by others, with a review of the major related literature (e.g., how the problem came to have significance, other areas in the discipline the problem links to, why the problem has not been addressed by others, or, how you are adapting, building on, or replicating a study and why. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES (approximately 5% of overall length)  Aims: What you want to find out - e.g. why you are actually doing the research.  Objectives: Specific things you will actually achieve which take you some way towards the aim. In other words, the relationship between the objective and the aim of your study. Why is it interesting/important. This should flow from the literature review. 9  Research questions/hypotheses o In the light of the Aims and Objectives, what are the specific research questions are you asking? These are the bridge between Aims and Objectives and the Methods section.  Example:  What are some general attitudes held by males toward women in general?  To what extent do males hold perceptions or attitudes that support violence against females?  Are these attitudes related to violence or sexual aggression toward women? METHODS (approximately 10% of overall length)  Research design: exploratory, descriptive, relational, experimental?  What dataset are you using?  Analytic Strategy: Describe the statistical and analytic procedures that you employed to answer your research questions/hypotheses. Specify how you will analyze the material, e.g. descriptive statistics, statistical tests based on variables levels of measurement  The idea of this section is to be brief but specific about how you are going to carry out the research. RESULTS (approximately 10% of overall length)  A Description of the major findings and will include important tables, charts, and figures, as well as appropriate statistical values of the test procedures you specified in the methodology section.  **IMPORTANT!! – Your results section is DESCRIPTIVE in nature. Here you are simply presenting the results not interpreting them. Interpretation will be left for the discussion section of the study. You will receive more clarification around later in the semester. DISCUSSION (approximately 35% of overall length)  The discussion section of your study is to interpret the findings from the results section.  First, you must indicate how your research has addressed the questions/hypotheses that were presented in your study.  Next, you must provide context for your results by interpreting them and relating them back to your literature review. How do your findings fit in with previous research done in your area of study. Are your results consistent/contradictory to other studies found in the literature, and you must provide explanations as to why or why not. These explanations may be methodological or they may be theoretical. CONCLUSION (approximately 5% of overall length)  What are the limitations to your research? 10  What is the significance of the research?  What new research does it make possible?  Does it have policy implications? REFERENCES  Harvard referencing style

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