Assignment Question
Guidelines for Research Paper: The research paper is a semester long project in which you will write on a topic of your own choice. You should think of this project as a mini research paper. This means the following: First: You will introduce the reader to the topic of interest (E.g. prostitution). You need to provide definitions (if multiple and conflicting ones exist). You may also provide a brief history, if necessary. Second: You will conduct a literature review on the topic of interest. What have others written on the field? What are some arguments/points of debate?
A common error in the literature review is to list the articles and to provide a brief synopsis on each of them. You should avoid it. Instead, you must try to present the literature in an orderly fashion by grouping together research findings that reach similar conclusions. Third: Usually, at the end of literature review, it is customary to argue about the importance of your topic. What specific angle are you focusing on?
What themes are you exploring and why? After all, what is the benefit? What do we gain? As a professor of mine used to say, you should be prepared to answer if the reader asks: “so, what?” For example, if the topic is prostitution, you may choose to focus on prostitution on college campuses. You may choose to specify the topic further by emphasizing the experiences of male prostitution on college campuses. Typically, this is the section where you can specify your hypotheses and your main themes of the study. Fourth: Now, you are ready to move into the methods section. Here, you should concern yourself with the data you will use to obtain the information. Who/what is the population of interest? What is the study sample? What types of data collection will you use – surveys, experiments, fieldwork, interviews, or historical collections? For the purposes of this class, the data you will collect will be based on interviews, surveys, or a combination of the two. (For example, you may choose to rely on surveys or interviews with young adolescents in college settings who engage in gambling). Fifth: This is the last section and will cover the results and conclusions of your research. You should discuss the relevance of your findings and the potential implications. Do your findings align with any theoretical stance? Do you find support for your hypotheses/themes? Are there any surprises? At the end, you may conclude with a discussion of limitations of your research and a guide for future studies.
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