Child welfare and poverty
Your final assignment is where you will weave the elements from a few of your early assignments (research question assignment, literature review assignment, and methods section) together and continue to build upon them. In addition to these early sections you will also need to incorporate your research analysis to create a coherent research paper that is 10-15 pages in length. While it is inappropriate (not to mention a violation of university policy) to cut-and-paste from past assignments in old courses into new ones, this research project is evolutionary and builds itself up from a research idea to a completed product. For this reason, in this class it is permissible to paste the information (as appropriate and as it makes sense) from your early assignments in this course into your final assignment.
Format: Your research paper should include a title page, body, and reference page. Your paper should have 1-inch borders on all four sides, use times new roman-12 point font, be double spaced, and not have an extra space in-between paragraphs. (You may need to turn this off in MS word by going to “paragraph” and clicking “Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style”). Please use APA parenthetical citation style with a references page.
Your research paper should include the following sections:
Introduction:
Please start with an abstract of between 150-200 words on a page of its own.
The introduction section should be written last and should pull from some of the elements of your week 2 assignment. You will need to clearly provide an overview of the topic you are writing about, a concise synopsis of the issues, state your research question, and discuss why the situation is important to investigate. Writing the introduction last is helpful in ensuring that you’ve incorporated any changes that may have taken place over the course of your research. This section should be 2 pages in length.
Literature Review:
Your literature review section should be a synthesization of the current state of research on this topic. Here you will need to discuss the information that is important to understanding your research paper. If you are still struggling with this section take a look at this video on how to write a literature review from the NCSU Libraries. This section should be 4-6 pages in length.
Methodology:
This section will pull from and enhance your qualitative methodology assignment. Methodology sections are another standard element in research papers as they provide the reader with a clear understanding for how the research was carried out. In this section you should discuss your case study methodology and explain the validity of your approach. In your explanation be sure you explain how you chose the case to investigate, your data collection method, your data analysis (i.e. the questions you asked to help guide your research and thus answer your primary research question), and any potential data limitations and biases that pertain to this specific project. In your discussion of the studies limitations you should keep in mind that its always best to end on a positive note, so be sure you discuss your plan to mitigate the limitations and biases, if any. This section should be 1-3 pages in length.
Analysis and Findings:
This section and the conclusion discussed below are essentially the two newest components of your research project. Your analysis and findings section should provide a narrative of your research and the analytical arguments that you will make as a result of your findings. In this section you will discuss the results of your analysis. Make sure you provide the evidence that proves or disproves your research hypothesis. This section should be 4-5 pages in length.
Conclusion:
This section will contain the concluding analytical arguments based on what the research has revealed. Here you will discuss your policy recommendations for moving forward with the issue.
Like any conclusion, it should provide a synopsis of the project, the strategy, the results, and what the research adds to our body of knowledge. Within your conclusion you should also offer suggestions for avenues of future research for other scholars as all knowledge is evolutionary. This section should be 1-2 pages in length.
References:
This section will contain all of the references that you have cited within your paper. They should be listed in APA Reference format and arranged alphabetically. Entitle this section as “References”, each source notation should be single spaced with one space between each source in hanging format.
At this level your references should fall within the 15-20 sources range and include primarily of peer-reviewed content.
As you proof read your assignment I encourage you to work with Belcher, Wendy Laura. (2009). “Editing Your Sentences” In Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success. Sage. This resource has a nice step by step process for enhancing your writing.
