Writing Homework Help

Part 1: Introduction:

Research Problem: This section is the introduction to your paper and your topic. Discuss your topic in general terms including the importance of studying this topic and prevalence rates. Also, discuss the need for research related to your topic (citing articles you have reviewed in your annotated bibliographies). This should lead to a broad statement indicating the purpose of your research study.

Part 2: Literature Review

Literature Review: The literature review should summarize the current research and knowledge related to your topic. This summary will put the research problem in context and identify gaps and/or weaknesses in prior studies to justify a new investigation. For this assignment, you should discuss a minimum of 4 studies. Hopefully, you will be able to use the scholarly articles you found for your annotated bibliography. The literature review is not simply a copy of your annotated bibliographies- it should begin with an introduction, transition well between studies, identify limitations of previous studies, and end with a conclusion working up to the purpose of your study. It should address the following kinds of questions: What have others said about this area(s)? What theories (if any) address it and what do these say? What research has been done (or not done) previously? Are there consistent findings or do past studies disagree? Are there flaws or gaps in the previous research that your study will seek to remedy?

Part 3: Current Investigation

Research Question(s): The research question is a clear statement (or question) of the specific purposes of the proposed study. You may have between 1 and 3 research questions related to your topic that you will answer using the study you propose in the rest of the paper (you can use all three research questions you have submitted or selected one or two of them). Questions include the variables in your study. This section should be in paragraph form- not only a list of the questions.

Variables: The variables section should clearly describe your independent and dependent variable(s). Describe the independent and dependent variables to be explored in the study in paragraph form (one short paragraph for each variable). Operational definitions should be given for variables as needed. For example, demographic variables such as gender, race, and age do not need an explanation, but variables that are abstract such as cognitive development or marital satisfaction need to be defined.

Hypotheses: This section should state your hypotheses or predictions about the relationships between two or more of your variables. You should have the same number of hypotheses as you do research questions such that you are predicting the answer to each question. State these as “It is hypothesized that….” and support your hypotheses with the existing research and/or theory. Hypotheses state the expected direction of the associations.

They should also connect to how you plan to measure the variables. For this assignment, you don’t need your methodology yet but start thinking about how you will conceptualize and measure the variables you are interested in.