Topic: Social Effect of Policing on Campus
(attached is a copy of the poster and information gathered for each section and a guide for you to go by)
REFERENCE LIST ATTACHED AND THE REFERENCE FOR PAST STUDIES IS HIGHLIGHTED
This is a research paper, and it should be written in a formal manner. The specific format of your paper (e.g., headers, whether or not there is a title page) is not important, as long as your writing is organized/coherent, has appropriate style for your audience (i.e., an academic audience), and has proper mechanics. In general, use the scholarly articles you have been reading for your paper outline and literature review as a guide! Your paper should be a mini-version of one of those.
Use 12 point, Times New Roman font.
Use 1 inch margins.
Double-space your writing.
Use APA style for citations in the text and in the reference section.
If you have any questions about citations in APA format, a good resource is our course LibGuide: http://libguides.radford.edu/CRJU385Pate
Avoid the use of quotes. If necessary, minimize use to 2-3 short quotes (i.e. a quote that is less than 39 words). Be sure to properly cite a direct quote; failure to do so is plagiarism.
Paper should be a minimum of 5 total pages in length. This means that your writing goes to the end of the fifth page. The reference list does not count towards the page count.
Literature Review
This should be approximately 5 pages in length of research and 1 page can be results of graphs which can be found on poster attached, not including references. It should include: should be 6 pages not including the title and reference page.
Introduction This is your chance to make readers interested in your chosen topic, so telling a story or providing statistics about your problem of interest might be a good way to begin. This section should be a general introduction that points readers to the main question you will attempt to answer and should be no longer than 1 page. An introduction should:
Present the question you plan to answer in an interesting/compelling manner (You want to hook the reader in your first sentence)
Tell the readers why the question you are answering is important and interesting,
Provide a one or two sentence overview of your question (if you have not provided that yet) AND how you plan to answer your question (i.e. your research project).
Literature Review This should provide the reader with a detailed overview of the state of research on the topic and/or research question that will be answered. This section focuses on past research findings and issues that specifically relate to the question you want to answer. In the literature review, you should cite your minimum of five relevant and important research articles that have been published in peer-reviewed journals that have addressed your issue(s) of interest. In this section you should:
Provide an overview of the field related to your specific research question.
This should include:
A summary of other research that has been conducted related to your specific research question (which should be related to your concepts)
A description of any unanswered questions/controversies related to the research that has been conducted on your research question
Should include the following.
Do not just cite one paper and describe what was found, followed by citing another paper and describing what was found, and so on and so forth. Your writing should be organized by ideas as opposed to by specific author (think back the paper outline). You will again be required to use your three topic specific subheadings in the literature review. These can be the same or updated from the paper outline.
ONLY A EXAMPLE OF WHAT TO INCLUDE NOTHING TO DO WITH TOPIC
ALSO ATTACHED IS A EXAMPLE OF WHAT ALL TO INCLUDE STARTING WITH INTRODUCTION
Binge Drinking among College Students
In-depth discussion of the correlates of binge drinking
Consequences of binge drinking
Self-Control as Predictor for Deviance
Describe theory of self-control
Summarize research on self-control
Binge Drinking and Self-Control
Describe how self-control should be related to binge drinking and research conducted on this topic.
Conclusion – Statement of hypotheses Smoothly transition from past research into what
you did for your research study. If we consider a full manuscript as an
hourglass, this should be where you get the sand (aka, the readers) ready to head through the middle of the hourglass and to the other side. In this final paragraph of the literature review, you should include:
A brief reminder of your research design for your specific study, including how you measured your variables and your sample.
State your specific hypotheses in terms of the variables involved and whether the data supported these hypotheses or not.
References You should include a full list of citations for anything you have cited in the paper. This will be the on very last page of the paper.
Book chapters, websites, blogs, and newspapers do not count towards your five because they are not peer reviewed. You should know by now if the sources you have been using are peer-reviewed and relevant to your specific topic.
Be sure that your references include all papers you have cited in the main text, and be sure that your references DO NOT include papers that you have not cited in the main text.
There must be a minimum of 5 peer-reviewed articles in your paper.