Quanty Methods

Description

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COMM311: Fall 2020

Paper Assignment 1: Literature Reviews and APA Style

Due date for Part I: Tuesday, September 29

Due date for Part II: Thursday, October 15

This assignment has four goals:

1. To give you practice in reviewing the literature

2. To give you practice in APA style

3. To give you practice in constructing a research rationale

4. To provide you with an opportunity to work on the skills needed to write a formal research paper

The paper assignment has two parts.

Part I

You need to search the literature for scholarly, empirical research articles relevant to your topic. For this part of the assignment, you need to find four such articles and construct an APA style references page. Follow these guidelines: two of your articles must be on imagined interaction, and members of the same group must not cite the same imagined interactions articles; the other two articles must be relevant to your research context and once again, members of the same group must not cite the same articles.

For this part of the assignment, you will turn in an APA style title page with all of your group members listed as authors (with yourself as first author) and following all other guidelines for a title page (including a running head), and an APA style references page with all four references cited according to proper APA style.

NOTE: a main purpose of this assignment is ensuring that your 4 articles are empirical research reports. You will lose points if they are not empirical articles. Also, you may not use the Honeycutt and Hatcher article that was discussed in class as one of your sources for this part of the assignment.

Part II

The paper itself is a literature review. At a minimum, a good literature review should address the following:

1. What is the problem/issue/question that you are addressing? Why is it important?

2. Demonstrate that you have some knowledge/familiarity with your topic by placing your study in the context of other research studies (i.e., some kind of review of the literature)

3. Provide conceptual definitions of all your variables

4. Provide the theoretical explanation for the relationships between your variables

5. Statement of need (what is the gap in knowledge that your research project will address?)

6. The specific hypothesis or hypotheses that you would like to test

The general structure of a literature review is as follows:

The first section of the paper is the introduction. It introduces the topic, clearly lays out the issue, and establishes its importance. This section, in most cases, should also include the statement of need. You should plan on citing relevant sources in this section.

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The second section is the literature review itself. This part of the paper offers conceptual definitions of each of your variables. You will need to go beyond the four articles you examined for Part I and find at least 6 additional scholarly sources.

The third section should be your theoretical explanation and should end with a clearly worded hypothesis.

ALSO NOTE: VERY IMPORTANT!! You will need to use section headings; I will leave it you as to how you title them. Consult your articles for examples.

Be sure to properly cite all sources. Every source mentioned in the text should be cited in the References page and every reference in the References page should be cited in text.

Your paper must also include the following:

1. An APA style References page with your minimum 10 scholarly/empirical references

2. An APA style Title Page; once again, put all group members’ names but list yourself as first author

Guidelines

You may also find the following checklist handy:

_____ double-spaced all the way through? _____ 1-inch margins?

_____ typed? _____ complete sentences?

_____ pages numbered in upper right hand corner? _____ stapled?

_____ 12-point font

_____ Uses correct spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc.? (it is advised that you take advantage of the Writing Center)

_____ text starts at top of page 2?

Your paper should be approximately 7-8 pages: Title page + 5-6 pages of text + References page(s)

NOTE: It is advised that you save your paper and keep a back-up copy for yourself.

Part I should be turned in via TurnItIn on WesternOnline.

Part II should be submitted via TurnItIn on WesternOnline.