Sign the following pledge and staple this sheet to the front of your paper.
I have neither given nor received any unauthorized aid in writing this research report. I understand that violating this pledge means failure in the course and possible expulsion from the university.
Signature: ______________________________
Instructions:
The purpose of this research paper is to bring together all of the material (or nearly all of it) you have learned during the semester in a practical and meaningful way. What you have learned should enable you to perform a variety of studies that are scientifically valid and reliable after you leave your formal education. In other words, you have a practical skill you can sell. You should get a sense of "WOW! This all seems to fit together now!" At least I hope so.
We began class the first day of the semester talking about the steps of scientific research and then spent the rest of the semester tearing down each step into practical exercises. Your write-up should follow the same steps. Let me review these steps in outline form and list the questions you should answer in each step. YOU WOULD BE VERY VERY WISE TO USE THESE STEPS AS HEADINGS IN YOUR PAPER--AN OUTLINE AROUND WHICH YOUR PAPER IS BUILT. That will make it easy for me to read and easy for you to see if you have covered all the things you need to cover. If you don't answer the questions I pose to you under each of these steps, you will lose points. Need I say more on this subject?
The paper should be typed (though you can do the tables by hand or cut and tape them into the text), double spaced, 12 point font. I want the tables in the text where you talk about them—DO NOT PUT THEM AT THE END!
Here is an outline of what you should have in your paper.
I. Problem statement -- Here you should describe
the problem or question area you chose to study. Focus on the dependent
variable. Why is it important? What
general public policy implications does it have? Or why is it important
to political science or whatever? Most of you have already written a good
draft on this, so start with that and improve it a little if you can.
II. Theory and concepts -- it's probably easiest to combine these two steps.
First, you should describe the concepts involved in your problem statement (like education, civil liberties, political efficacy, political trust, partisanship, media consumption, ideology, presidential job rating, generational groups, and so on). You should be able to do that in several short sentences. Where possible, use a text book definition (which is more likely to be "appropriate") and reference the text from which you got it. Dictionaries of political analysis can be helpful here. American government texts and public opinion texts can be quite useful here as well.
Then in the next paragraph(s) move to talking about theory. Here is where you really need some references in the literature (again, standard texts are your best bet for starting out -- then you look up articles that they reference). What have previous researchers found. Do they suggest relationships that you can test? Perhaps you will expect new relationships than in the past because of the crisis of the war on terrorism in the post 9/11 world. Remember that any survey is a snapshot in time!
Remember that general theories are better than specific ones. For example, if you are talking about someone adopting an opinion because it should be in the self interest of some group in which that person is a member, then your best theory is based on the psychology of opinion holding. See the references on p. 52 of the 6th edition of Kent Tedin and Robert Erikson, American Public Opinion (New York: Longman). That page also has references to works that explain why people do not always have opinions that are in their self-interest as well. Texts are a great starting place!!
III. Hypothesis -- formally state your initial
bivariate hypothesis. State which are the independent and dependent variables
and draw an arrow diagram (or path diagram) to depict the relationships
you are going to test. Then draw a tentative arrow diagram with the confounding
(spurious) and/or conditioning and/or intervening variables included.
A. Bivariate hypothesis: (Example) Among Aiken County residents, those who identify with the Republican Party are more likely to give Bush high job approval ratings and those who identify with the Democratic Party are more likely to give Bush lower ratings.
B. Controls: Next talk about control variables that you think may play a confounding or a conditioning role. You should have at least one, and possibly several, depending on what is available. Why are you going to add a control variable and why did you choose the particular control variable you did? That is, why should it be related to the other two concepts you have already chosen for the independent and dependent variables? Why and how might it change the bivariate relationship? This is again theoretical thinking. It could be put in the theory section just as easily.
Once you have talked about variables that will help you establish support for some kind of causal relationship, discuss variables that may act as intervening variables. You don’t have to have this unless there is an obvious one that we measured in the survey or if you had no possible confounding or conditioning variables you could use
Example of a possible confounding variable: Being troubled by the costs of the war in Iraq could affect the relationship between partisanship and Bush's job approval. For those who feel that the war is not worth it, one might expect that the relationship will disappear, while those who either approve or have mixed feelings should have the expected relationship between partisan identification and Bush job approval.
Party ID à Pres Job Approval Rating
/\
|
war in Iraq position
IV. Operationalization – Here you explain how each of the variables you will be using was measured. You must give the exact wording in quotation marks of the questions used and the answers that were possible. You must also explain how you collapsed variables into groups or combined variables to create new compound variables. Make sure you discuss the validity and reliability of each question used. (Pretesting with focus groups and using standard questions--as we did with the class--add to both reliability and validity. Alternatively, using well used standard questions allows you to assume that the questions are both reliable and valid.) In this discussion, make sure you say what validity and reliability mean.
V. Data Gathering (Methodology)—hopefully you already have this written. It should include: population, type of survey, how the sample was chosen (I want some detail here--the things we did to minimize sample bias), how interviewers were trained (why we trained them--to reduce interviewer bias), when/where interviews were performed, how supervised, response rate and how we tried to maximize the response rate, sample size, and sampling error (calculate this for questions that involve all the interviews performed).
VI. Analysis -- Present the bivariate table with all variables and codes clearly labeled, discuss the table (right below it, where you say things like "As we move from..."), present the chi square (if appropriate) and significance level of that chi square (if you have any trend or shift), and discuss what the significance (p=???) tells the reader. ("There is a ?% chance that this relationship could exist in the sample if no relationship existed in the population.") If you have two ratio level variables, you will have a regression with a scatterplot here instead of a table. If you have one interval and one nominal variable, you will have an analysis of variance (ANOVA) here. Discuss statistical significance for any test you do. Then you should discuss the strength of the relationship using the appropriate statistical measure.
Present the control tables (or regressions or analyses of variance) for each possible control variable. Use with the same discussion after each. Interpret the table--what effect did it have, if any, on the original bivariate relationship? Account for significance and strength. After you do this you should be able to draw some conclusion about that the actual relationship is among all three of your variables. You may have to redraw the path diagram.
You may cut out the tables from your computer
printout and paste or tape them into your report at the right place (or you
can copy and paste them from MicroCase). I don't want to have to flip to the end to look at them!
VII. Theoretical Implications—Answer the question
of what this tells us about the original theory. Do the results support
the theory? Do they fail to support it? Do they support it only under certain
conditions? How does the independent variable actually affect the dependent
variable? Here is where the intervening variable adds to your explanation.
Do your findings suggest a new line of additional research? Have conditions
changed so that one can expect new relationships in a new political environment.
Be thoughtful and creative here.
-- "Works Cited," or References. You should have a minimum of 5 separate references, listed at the end as "Works Cited." Some of the references may be here in the problem statement section and some may be in the next section on theory—you had better have at least one for theory!! I expect three of them to be scholarly in nature (from peer reviewed journals or text books). Remember that a minimum is just that -- a minimum. More helps earn you a better than minimum grade!
That's it!!! You will no doubt need some help. Get it FROM ME AND NO ONE ELSE, although I will authorize you to ask other students or computer lab people routine questions about MicroCase. I'd be happy to comment on your ideas or on rough drafts or anything you do.
It must be typed in 12 point font with one inch margins. Grammar and spelling and punctuation will count!