The Final Portfolio Assignment is where you pull together the research you’ve been working on the first seven weeks of class. Using your weekly Discussion posts, and the feedback from your classmates and instructor on your posts, construct a 5 page paper that fully explores your research topic in a way that provides the context and explanation surrounding the analyses provided in the paper. Your project should display you understand what you are writing about holistically, not simply going through the motions.
Citing literature about your research topic, be sure to set the stage for the data and analyses that you present. Briefly describe the General Social Survey as your survey instrument. Provide the questions, verbatim, that were asked in the survey which became the variable which you chose to use. You will also need to include the answer choices for each of them. This portion can be a table if you choose. Share and explain frequency table(s) an histograms or graphs to describe your data. Using the statistical tests you ran each week in class (crosstabs, tests of significance, measures of association), present the tests and your findings. Clearly identify and explain your hypothesis and the five steps of hypothesis testing as they apply to your paper. Explain the results of the statistical tests and pull in some literature to provide context, demonstrating how your results and research fit into the larger body of literature on this topic. Be sure to use proper APA formatting for citations and references. However, you do not need to include an abstract or table of contents. You can find guidance in APA by clicking here to access the Purdue Online Writing Lab.
Because the project is a formal, you should include a title page and reference page. You may organize the paper based on the following headings:
Introduction – Introduce the topic based in current literature (briefly – show why it is important to study). Discuss why you chose the topic and what the purpose of the paper is. Give a brief overview of what you will cover.
Literature Review – Review 3-4 peer-reviewed sources that provide a background on your topic. These sources don’t have to specifically address the relationship between your IV and DV, but should address the topic and be somewhat related to your variables.
Methods – Briefly discuss the GSS (information you included in Assignment 1) as your data source. Identify and describe your specific variables, including the name, question, and responses (categories). You may state your hypothesis here, but do not go through the hypothesis testing steps until the next section.
Findings – Begin with a discussion of each variable individually, utilizing your frequency tables and charts/graphs. Then discuss your other analyses in logical order. Crosstabs are your first look at a potential relationship. Next, discuss the steps of hypothesis testing. Include the table of your significance test. Last, discuss the strength and direction of the relationship using measures of association. (Be sure you are thorough here. Include all of your analyses done in the discussions!)
Discussion – Discussion what you learned from the various analyses and draw any conclusions you found. Talk about any further research you think may be needed on your topic.
