Description

Research Paper Instructions

Assignment Summary

Your assignment is to undertake a content analysis in which you answer a research question of interest to you and of importance to the public and/or to scholars. You will research a topic, develop a coding scheme, undertake the coding, check intercoder reliability, and write a paper detailing your analysis. This paper is required to be 6-8 pages (double-spaced, 12pt font, 1-inch margins), plus references and appendices.

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Research Procedure

1. Decide on a research question (or questions) that you think is (are) interesting. The topic is up to you, but it should be (a) important enough that it has received some public and/or scholarly attention and (b) addressable via a content analysis that you can complete in the allotted time.
2. Research your topic. Find a minimum of 5 sources (at least 3 of which must be articles published in academic journals) that speak to your research question in some way (e.g., an academic journal article addressing a similar question, a news story discussing the importance of the issue, a poll reporting public feelings about the issue). Please note that these 5 sources are not what you will be coding. These are sources you will cite to justify the need for your study and frame your research question(s).
3. Based on this research and your own interests, create a codebook and codesheet (see example provided on the Resources page) that will allow you to undertake a content analysis addressing your question(s). Your codebook must have a minimum of 6 coding categories, at least 3 of which must be designed to track latent (as opposed to manifest) content.
4. Generate a sample of content that you will code. Be sure to consider appropriate sampling strategies when drawing this sample. The sample should be large enough to offer a reasonable answer to your research question. As a guideline, the sample should be at least 25 units if the units are fairly long (e.g., full news stories) and at least 50 units if the units are short (e.g., brief social media posts). If you have questions about whether the scope of your sample is adequate, consult with Prof. Coe. Remember that this sample is completely separate from the 5 sources above. Those are sources to research your topic. The sample is the collection of texts that you will actually content analyze to answer your research question.
5. Perform the coding on the entire sample of texts.
6. Find someone (e.g., a friend, classmate, relative) who is willing to code a small percentage of your sample (roughly 10%) so that you can check intercoder reliability. Please keep in mind that you do not have to achieve adequate reliability. You just have to demonstrate that you know how to check and report reliability for each of your coding categories. (You do this via the online tool
7. which is described on the the Resources page.)
8. Write up your research paper carefully following the guidelines below.
9. Introduction (roughly 1 paragraph): Briefly describe your research question, procedure, and findings. Preview the rest of the paper.
10. Rationale (1-2 pages): Citing the sources you found in your research (see above), explain your research question(s) and justify the need to answer it (them). It should be clear to the reader what your question(s) is (are), and why it (they) need(s) answering. If your research has led you to a certain hypothesis about the answer to the question(s), you can explain that prediction as well.
11. Coding Scheme (1-2 pages): Explain each of the variables in your coding scheme, highlighting why they are useful to answer your question(s). For each, identify whether it tracks manifest or latent content, provide at least two examples from your texts to help illustrate the variable, and note the intercoder reliability coefficient using Krippendorff’s alpha. Keep in mind that the number of variables described here should be the same as the number in your ReCal output (i.e., each variable you code should have an intercoder reliability check).
12. Sample (no more than 1 page): Describe your sample, how it was collected, and why it is appropriate to answering your question. Practical constraints (e.g., I only had X weeks to complete the coding) can be mentioned here, but should not be the entire justification for the sample you chose.
13. Results (1-2 pages): Explain your findings, using counts and/or percentages to help illustrate the general trends you found. You are welcome to use statistical tests in reporting your results, but doing so is not required.
14. Discussion (no more than 1 page): Discuss the significance (or lack thereof) of what you found, any surprises, and consider what future research would be needed to further address your question. You should also briefly discuss a few limitations of your study.
15. Reference List: Cite any sources you referenced in the paper (see above), using APA style (7th edition). Help with APA style can be found on the Resources page. Keep in mind that the units of content you code do not need to be cited in the Reference List because you will have described them in the Sample section.
16. Appendix: Include your full codebook here.
17. Your complete codesheet with all codes entered (as an Excel file or PDF).
18. The coding done by the person who did the intercoder reliability check (as an Excel file or PDF).
19. The output file from ReCal showing the results of your intercoder reliability check (as an Excel file or PDF).

RESOURCES

Papers in this class require citation in APA style (7th Edition). If you’re unfamiliar with that citation style, you can find good resources here and here.

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/a…

https://apastyle.apa.org

ReCal: This site https://dfreelon.org/utils/recalfront/ has a tool to easily calculate intercoder reliability, something you’ll do when you undertake the Research Paper in Module 4. The examples below might be useful as you prepare to use ReCal. (These files are better viewed by downloading than by previewing on this page.) Note that there are multiple versions of ReCal on the site. You should use ReCal2 https://dfreelon.org/utils/recalfront/recal2/

Codebook Example 1 – Incivility.pdf

Codesheet Example 1 – Incivility.xlsx

both are attached in file^^

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS CONTACT ME I WILL GET BACK TO YOU< PLEASE FOLLOW EVERY INSTRUCTION ABOVE THIS WILL BE GRADED TOUGH AND I NEED A GOOD GRADE.

Thank you