Final Paper and Presentation
For your final paper, you will turn in a 5–6-page paper. The paper should be written in APA
student paper format.
1. Introduction (about 2 pages, 20 points):
a. Start out by introducing your topic of interest – say why this issue is important to
society and detail why it is important to study this topic.
b. What are your independent and dependent variables of interest and/or concepts
that are related to the topic?
c. Discuss at least 3 scholarly articles related to your topic: what did the
researchers find ?, what questions were left unanswered? How might your study
begin to answer some of these questions?
d. Write out your hypothesis(es) – why do you think your independent and
dependent variables or concepts will be related in the ways you describe in your
hypothesis(es)?
2. Methods (about 1 page, 20 points):
a. Participants: Who are the participants in your study (e.g., HCCC students)? What
is the total number of people who responded to your survey/interview? If you
collected data regarding demographics, indicate the breakdown of your sample
by race, gender, etc. (e.g., what percent of your sample was women? men?). In
general, offer a description of the participants.
b. Design and procedure: Describe each step of the study and the nature of the
study (i.e., this is a correlational study that relied on survey or interview data);
restate your independent and dependent variables/important concepts.
c. Measures: write out the survey/interview questions that you used, along with
the answer options; indicate with question(s) measured the independent and
dependent variable(s)/important concept.
3. Results (about 1-2 pages, 20 points):
a. Write out your findings:
i. If you conducted a survey, what percentage of people provided which
answers (e.g., 20% of people said they strongly agree with X. Of the 20%
who strongly agreed, 50% were women and 50% were men)? Be sure to
report percentages that are related to your hypothesis(es).
ii. If you conducted interviews, write out the themes that you found and
include quotes to illustrate the themes.
4. Discussion (about 1-2 pages, 20 points)
a. Paraphrase your hypothesis(es)/expectations.
b. Discuss your results: Based on your results, was your hypothesis(es) supported?
Were your independent and dependent variables related in the ways you
predicted? If not, why might your hypothesis(es) have been incorrect? Did you
find anything unexpected regarding how the variables/concepts were related?
c. Discuss the strengths and limitation of your study: what was strong about it (e.g.,
you had valid measures)?, what are limitations of it (e.g., you only talked to
HCCC students)?
d. Discuss the implications of your study: what should future studies look at? how
can your results be applied to your real-world topic?
5. References (5 points):
a. Include references for scholarly articles, books, or other materials you accessed.
b. Visit the Purdue Owl website for APA citation highlight the information below.).
Answer the following:
– What was your topic?
– What were your independent and dependent variables/important concepts?
-What was your hypothesis(es)?
– What were your results?
– Was your hypothesis(es) supported?
– What implications do your findings have for your topic? What implications do your findings have for your topic?
