Stepping Stones to a Research Proposal

This is a writing intensive source. One of the main goals in this class is to help you better understand and communicate about scientific articles. This is a skill that will help you regardless of what you decide to do after you graduate.

We’ll do several types of assignments to try to improve and build up these skills:

1. You’ll think about possible topics for your paper in this class. You want to find a topic that has psychological research on it, but that’s not too broad. Ideally, it would be a topic that there are only maybe 20-30 articles on. You can start with something broad if that’s where your interests are—e.g., aggression in children—and then use concept mapping to try to narrow it down. For example, maybe just choose one correlate of aggression in children—maybe whether their parents divorce, or how it relates to personality. A good way to think about topics is that most concern either a) causes of something; b) correlates of something; or c) effects of something. You’ll first turn in a list of possible topics for feedback and then choose the one you want to research.

2. You’ll work on how to write testable hypotheses so you can come up with one for your study.

3. You’ll answer questions about an article, showing that you can identify the hypothesis and the independent and dependent variables and explain the results. We’ll also look at identifying problems or confounds with what you read.

4. You’ll write an article summary. This is a summary, in formal style, of an article. It should include:

1) first paragraph—general background—What do we know? What does this study add to what we know (what’s new here)? What is the hypothesis or research question?

2) second paragraph—“who does what”—who are the participants and what did they do in the study

3) third paragraph—what did they find? In general terms—you don’t have to give specific means, etc., but be sure to address all the main or hypothesized findings.

4) fourth paragraph—what does it all mean? What do these results mean? How could they be applied in real world settings?

A sample is linked from the syllabus.

5. You’ll turn in a reference section. What I’m looking for here is whether you were able to find enough good journal articles (you need 12 references, and at least 10 of them cited in your introduction section should be empirical journal articles). I’m also looking for good APA style. The best advice is to update references as you go (or even better, use a reference manager such as Zotero—free—or EndNote) and make notes on them in your annotated bibliography, which will be due with your paper.

6. As you pull together your research, you’ll begin to get an idea of what people have done previously. Then you’ll come up with an idea that tests something new. Your study doesn’t have to be completely new—you can take a study that someone else did and make changes to look at something slightly different. For example, maybe people have looked at the effects of aromatherapy on older adults and you have a good idea of the effectiveness there, but you want to test it on a different population, or see if different oils work better than others, or maybe see if it’s more effective for some groups (e.g., people who are open to experience) than others. Your idea for your topic, which is a short paragraph that describes the hypothesis and study in general terms, will be turned in with an outline of the paper for feedback.

7. The next step will be to write an outline for your paper. There are at least two purposes to writing the outline. The first is so that I can give you feedback on your organization. But the second, and perhaps more important, purpose is to help you write a better paper. You want to think about what will make the best sections in your literature review (which is usually the hardest part to outline). Some things to think about:

· Why is this area important?

· Do all the studies tend to agree on some findings?

· Are there major points of view or theories that are supported by these findings?

· What are some major issues that I would want to remember or tell others about these findings?

Think about how you could best organize the findings (not the studies—a study might appear more than one place in an outline) to describe the research.

Remember that outlines should be in parallel format (e.g., if A. is a sentence, B should be a sentence, or if A is a phrase that starts with a noun, B should be a phrase that starts with a noun) and that you have to have at least 2 at each level.

A sample outline might look something like this (example is for a paper on online vs. face-to-face cheating in college students): 

The effects of delivery type, type of course, and year in school on cheating in college students

I. Cheating as a problem

            A. Prevalence

            B. Reasons why cheating hurts students

II. Factors affecting cheating levels in face-to-face classes

(think of your II and A levels as being potential headings in your paper)

            A. Student level

            B. Student interest

            C. Professor interaction

(you could even get more detailed, putting your topic sentences underneath each A, B)

III. Factors affecting cheating levels in online classes

            A. Student level

            B. Student interest

            C. Professor interaction

IV. Current study

            A. Compare the effects of student level and whether it’s a major class on cheating in face-to-face vs. online classes

            B. Hypothesis: Students will be more likely to report that they have cheated in an online class than a face-to-face class in the last year, especially when they are first year students and it’s not a class in their major.

V. Method

            A. Participants: 5000 randomly selected UNI students recruited via email

            B. Procedure: Survey

                        1. Questions about whether they have cheated in different types of courses

                        2. Questions about participants—gender, year in school, major

VI. Expected Results

            A. Calculate cheating rates by type of courses

            B. Compare cheating in online vs. ftf and major vs. nonmajor classes for first year vs. later students

            C. Expect an interaction of delivery of course, type of course, and year in school: Students will be more likely to report that they have cheated in an online class than in a ftf class in the last year, and this effect will be stronger when it’s a nonmajor class and when they are first year students.

VII. Discussion

            A. What these results mean (summary)

            B. Limitations and ideas for future research

                        1. Self-reported cheating—may not be honest

                        2. May not have taken an online class in the last year

                        3. To fix in future research—do experiments on current classes that are taught both ways and measure cheating directly

            C. Implications

1. If these results were found, it would suggest that faculty need to do more to monitor cheating in online classes.

                        2. Faculty should also try to increase students’ motivation in nonmajor classes.

You don’t have to have sections IV and on in outline format—you can write them up in paragraph form instead (after the introduction).

8. Then, using the feedback I give you on your outline, you’ll start writing the paper. Rough drafts of the introduction sections are due first. I will give you feedback on these, but the feedback will be much more useful the better and more complete your paper is.

9. You’ll turn in your paper in three parts. First, you’ll turn in the final draft of your introduction section (along with your annotated bibliography). Then you’ll turn in the final draft of your method and expected results sections (you’ll also include the “current study” section from the end of the introduction). Then you’ll turn in the entire paper, including improvements on your previous sections. Here you will be summarizing several different articles, pulling them together, and then proposing your own study that would test a new hypothesis in the area.

10. You’ll be able to get peer feedback on your final paper before it’s due. You’ll need to turn in a response to this feedback along with your final paper on where you describe your peer’s feedback and how you responded to each of their points. You will also turn in your final annotated bibliography with your final paper (which should be something you’re updating all along).

Writing is not easy, and it’s something that professors struggle with too. The best way to get better is to keep practicing. There are several books put out by APA and other publishers that can help, including the APA manual. We’ll also talk about writing strategies in class.

There is also a detailed rubric available linked from the syllabus (see the notes on assignments).

There are also several sample papers Blackboard for you to look at, but these were done several years ago when the assignment was slightly different. You can use them to get an idea of format and what paragraphs should look like, but use the information above and on the rubric so you know how long sections should be, what information should be included, etc.