assignment 6

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Final Assignment (Assignment 6): Capstone Proposal

• Read through the instructions below.

• Your paper has to incorporate the feedback that you received on the outline and the method section.

• This paper is a proposal for a study. Thus, data collection is NOT part of this paper.

• All papers will be examined for plagiarism, so be careful with citations. When in doubt, ask me.

• I strongly recommend that you find a published article on your topic and follow it as an example.

Your paper has to include the following (Note that “Introduction” and “Literature Review” should not be used as subheadings: Use more descriptive subheadings instead, such as variable names or theories that explain the relationships among your variables – see below, for an example):

2. Abstract (no more than 120 words) and key words (1 page): A short summary of the proposed study written in present tense.

An abstract typically includes the following: (1) Purpose (1 sentence); (2) What kind of study is proposed? -e.g., an experiment (3) Where will your sample be from and how many participants do you expect to have? (4) What is predicted (i.e., what are your hypotheses/research questions)? (5) It usually concludes with the following verbiage: Expected results, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.

3. Introduction (no more than 2 pages): a. Purpose/goals of the study b. Theoretical and/or practical implications (i.e., why is your study important?) c. What kind of study is proposed (an experiment/survey/participant observation)?

4. Literature review: (3 pages) You may have done stand-alone literature reviews in other classes before, where you’re just summarizing the state of knowledge about a topic. This is a little different. In this case, you are building a rationale for your study predictions. In this type of literature review, you are only discussing articles that are directly relevant to your hypotheses and research questions.

a. Make an argument that explains the relationships between the variables that you are studying. Your argument has to be grounded in existing theories and empirical work on your topic.

b. Cite relevant literature: It should be clear that you’ve done a thorough literature search, backing up the argument that you are developing.

c. If a variable is NOT part of your RQs or Hs, it should not be discussed in your paper.

d. Your literature review should be written as an argument or a rationale for your hypotheses and research questions. Recall that your argument should not represent a mere retelling of a bunch of articles. For example, if you study the effects of the amount of self-disclosure on perceptions of immediacy, the following represents an example of an argument:

"The amount of self-disclosure has been shown to affect perceptions of interpersonal immediacy (here you can cite as many articles as you found that support this point). Research indicates that moderate self-disclosure levels lead to an increase in interpersonal immediacy as compared to low and high levels of disclosure. Smith (2007), for example, conducted a study in which .... (here you can describe this study and the findings). Her results indicated that individuals with moderate levels of self-disclosure were perceived as more interpersonally warm, friendlier, and more approachable as compared to those who disclosed either not enough or too much information."

e. Make sure that the variables discussed in your literature review overlap with the variables described in your method section.

7. Discussion: In a finished study, this would discuss the findings and explain how (and why) your results are similar to (or different from) what other studies have found. You, of course, don’t have results because you didn’t actually gather data. But you can address these other things that are commonly found in discussion sections.

a. Summary of your RQs and Hs

b. Theoretical importance/implications/practical applications of your hypotheses

c. Limitations of your study (these often deal with things like sample representativeness or size, limits on claims of causality, unproven measures, etc.)

d. Future research directions (What should researchers study next to build on your study?)

e. Conclusions

Note that starting from the title of your paper, your proposal should represent a

continuous text: That is, there should not be any section or page breaks.

8. References a. Follow the APA guidelines b. List all the research you cited, but don’t list research you didn’t cite. c. You should have at least 15 references (for a study in an underexplored area; you probably will have about twice this number).

9. Appendix a. Append your surveys/study materials, etc. – Note that you do not have to have appendixes if you do not need to. Use any format you wish for you appendixes.