Final project

Research project (15-20 pages, due on Mar 13, 2023 at 8 am on Canvas) 

The purpose of this assignment is for you to gain experience in designing and carrying out an original research project using primary data. There are two basic requirements for the kind of research you do:

1. You need to work with people (as opposed to analyzing existing texts or data)
2. You need to collect the data yourselves (as opposed to delegating the task to someone else)

At the end of the quarter you should turn in a research paper that has the following 7 components: 

• Abstract: A brief summary of the study (150 words maximum). You should write this last. Good models are the abstracts of articles in top-tier journals, such as the refereed journals listed on pages 10-12 of this syllabus.
• Introduction: What is your topic? Why is it important in our field? Why is it important in the contemporary context? What are your main research questions? You might open your paper with a narrative hook, a vivid vignette, a relevant quote, some powerful statistics arguing for the importance of your study, or another attention-grabbing beginning. Positionalities of the researchers/writers: how did you come to this research project? Why did you select this topic? How do your identities influence the work you are doing? 
• Literature review: What has been known about your topic? What conversations are taking place about your topic, and what space does your work occupy within this conversation? How does your work extend current conversations? What is your theoretical framework? Your theoretical framework is a written discussion of the ways in which your study is situated within the primary theories from which you draw. It is sometimes included as a separate section or in the introduction. Your theoretical framework might also involve defining key terms. 
• Methodology: What were your methods? Who did you work with? What did you do? In what context (participants, setting, procedures, etc.)?
• Results or Findings: What did you find? 
• Discussion: How do you interpret what you found? How are your findings related to previous work in the area? (Note that your Findings and Discussion sections may be combined into one, depending on your methodology).
• Conclusion: Briefly restate your main arguments and discuss unanswered questions and recommendations for future research.

I highly recommend that you team up for these projects. There is a surprising amount of “leg work” involved – finding and contacting participants, meeting with them to conduct interviews, designing questionnaires or tests, transcribing, coding, analyzing, and interpreting results – beyond the more academic library work and writing that you normally experience in course projects. Furthermore, working collaboratively often helps to stimulate thinking and generate original ideas. Teams of two or three are ideal. Grades will be equitable. For those working in groups, you will be asked to turn in a one-page max memo talking about your group work management based on the class community contract and the group work protocol. 

Deliverables

One person per group uploads the final paper

For those working in groups, please share a short memo (half a page) detailing your contributions to the group project.