The final report should be a formal research report written in
the format/style traditional of a scholarly empirical paper. The basic outline that students would see in
research articles encountered in their literature review. This paper is scored holistically (as a whole) with close
attention given to the listed parts.
The paper should be a coherent whole that explains the specific subject, especially your dependent concept,
previous research about that concept, the theory you are testing, the variables used to test the theory, the
hypothesis of the relationship between variables, the research method and data source for those variables,
how you analyzed the hypothesis (cross-tabulation), what you concluded about the hypothesis from the
analysis, and what we learn about the theory and general subject from your research. Finally, you should
explain how future research could be done that would improve the testing of your theory in terms of research
design, sampling, and measurement.. In it, you compose a refined
and edited account of your project in a traditional research manuscript format using the information that you
have developed throughout the CIA project. It will be in a form typical for empirical research reports. As you
read research articles for this class, pay attention to the order and content of the various sections so you will
be familiar with this.
Use APA format for the final paper
including cover page style, abstract, tables, and especially citations and references. Double-space the
manuscript (not tables) and use 12 pt font.
Cover Page
• Should include an original title that describes your research topic; then the normal identifying
information for a college paper (author(s), date, class….)
Abstract
• Although first in the paper, the abstract is written last. It is the brief summary of your project,
approximately 100 words.
Introduction
• Generally short, one to two pages. Summarizes the subject, your research question, and why it’s
important.
Literature Review
• Summarizes the past scholarly research most closely related to your own theory and hypothesis. Task
2 should have provided a start, but you may need more or different articles to explain current
knowledge of your topic. Start by explaining how your searched for literature (e.g. the databases that
you searched via the library). Use APA style citation. Summarize in your own words, not copying or
close paraphrasing. Do not rely solely on sequential summaries of the research reports that you
found; instead, synthesize their findings overall. Reading literature reviews in other research articles
should help you understand what this means.
Theory
• Explain the theory that you expect is the best explanation for your subject matter. In particular, what
explains differences or changes in your dependent concept. Be sure to include concepts that will be
represented by your independent variable and your control variable. Your literature review should
help you with a more comprehensive theory, although you are testing just a narrow portion of it.
Place your causal model diagram here as well.
Research Methods
• This section explains in detail how your data was collected and where it came from (sample). Since
you are using a secondary data source, you essentially are using the explanation provided. You should
also explain precisely what questions were asked for your variables, and the responses available. This
section also includes an explanation of how you believe your variables (DV, IV, and CV) represent
major concepts in your theory. Plus, explain to your reader what kind of analysis technique you are
using.
Hypothesis
• This short section should concisely articulate your hypothesis. Your hypothesis is not a generic
statement that may have been used early in the semester. It should be stated in terms of the
categories of your variables. For example, a larger percentage of respondents in one category of your
IV will report higher values for your DV compared to other categories of your IV.
Analysis
• You state again what kind of analysis you are using and the variables. If you recoded the variables,
explain the recoding. Then you provide the descriptive statistics for your variables (e.g. central
tendency, dispersion, or frequency distribution). Next, explain and provide the zero-order
crosstabulation table, and identify whether it supported your hypothesis. Finally, provide the first-
order crosstabulation tables, and identify whether each of those supports the hypothesis.
Discussion of conclusions
• This section should briefly explain three things. (A) Was your hypothesis supported, and if so, strongly
or weakly? Is the conclusion contingent on some values of the control variable? (B) Does it lend
support to the theory or not? (C) What does it suggest in the bigger scheme of science, society, law, or
policy? In other words, why does it matter?
Recommendations for future research (see Task 5, 7, & 8
• Do your findings suggest other research questions that should be pursued in the future to better
understand what this topic in broad terms?
• Because you were constrained to use the GSS data, explain how future research on your theory could
be improved. Refer to your suggestions about design, sampling, and measures for the basis of this
material.
Works Cited
• Using APA style, you will include a works cited list with complete references for the literature review as
well as any other material used in this research document to include a reference for the SDA and GSS.
I included the citations I am supposed to use and also we are used the sda.berkley.edu aka SDA and GSS data sets.
I used natcrime and INCOME as my two variables and did a crosstab narrowing down the income ratios to 0-25,000; 25,001-50,000; and above 50,000.