Writing Up Your Term Project
Criminology 320 / 2002-3
The basic process we're following in the term research project is a very generic one: you (a) decide on a question; (b) gather information to address the question; (c) make some conclusions on the basis of what you've found; and (d) take a step back to examine the strengths and weaknesses of what you've done.
Your report will be much like a journal article, and
should follow that basic format. The one slightly different twist is to remind
you that you're doing this project as part of a methods course, so
remember that our interest is less in the findings per se, than in the
methodological issues you encountered, how they were addressed, the research
choices you made and why, and a rationale for why you came to the conclusions
you did.
Your final paper will be no more than 20 pages of
double-spaced, size 12-font; the 20 pages excludes title page, abstract,
tables, figures and appendices. Only 20 pages will be read, so please do not
exceed the maximum.
Your paper should include the following sections:
1.
A Title Page, with a title that conveys the
subject matter in 15 words or less. Do not call it anything like "Crim 320
Project" (this gives no information about content), or "Racism and
Discrimination in Burnaby" (not specific enough). A title like
"Racism and Discrimination: Comparing Experiences of Post-War and more
Recent Immigrants" is much better: right away, the reader can see what
it's about. Your name, student number, tutorial group number and/or time, and
the name of your TA also should appear somewhere on this page.
2.
An Abstract. This first page after your title page
will summarize your project -- it’s central focus, your research question,
basic results, and main conclusion(s) -- in 100-175 words. It should be a
logical summary that reflects the flow of your paper. If your abstract is not
concise, easy to read, and does not “tell a story,” then your paper probably
isn’t very well done or organized either. [A Hint: Most people write the
abstract last, after the paper has been written, so that it ends up being a
précis of what you've already done.]
3.
Introduction.
Your introduction does exactly that -- it introduce us to your research
project: what it is, why it is important, what some relevant literature says on
the topic, what your objective was, and, depending on the type of project you
did, will end with a statement about what your research question or objective
was, or what your hypotheses were. If you tell your story well enough, by the
time we get to your research question, it should be obvious that what you did
your research on is an important thing to do. You should give enough of the
literature to contextualize your project, but, for this project, it needn't be
an exhaustive literature review. A basic reference list might include something
like 6-10 entries (articles, books); we will expect a minimum of 6. As is the
case with the title, be quite specific about the research question you decided
to address in your paper, as the marking of the paper will be influenced highly
by how well your research decisions served to actually answer that question,
address that objective, or test that hypothesis.
4.
Methods. This
section will include a description of how you went about answering your
research question (your procedures), some of the research decisions you
had to make, and why it made sense to you to make the decisions you did. This
would include mention any exploratory work you did to formulate your research
question or that shaped your methods. Also to be included would be a
description of your sample, and the sampling procedures you followed to
obtain them. Who, in general terms (e.g., university students, retail clerks in
a mall, people who attended self-defence classes) was your sample? Why were
they appropriate to the answering of your research question? How did you
acquire their cooperation? Were there any important ethical issues that arose?
A copy of the research instruments (survey, content coding scheme, etc)
should be included in the Appendix. You should explain your methods well enough
so that the tie between your research question and your methods is clear, i.e.,
you are describing how you operationalized your question and why.
5.
Results. The
first thing to do here is describe your sample in more specific terms: How many
completed surveys or completed interviews or archival documents, or whatever,
are you basing your results on? Describe the sample using whatever demographic
or experiential data you feel will give the reader a good sense of who your
participants were. Use narrative, table(s) or graph(s) as appropriate -- and
try and summarize information into as few of these as possible.
Remember, space is important, so try and make your presentation as simple and
economical as possible. Dozens of graphs showing univariate distributions will
not impress anyone. Use the graphs/tables/figures to help your reader make
sense of the data; present them because they are an important part of making a
point you want to make, not because you have the data and thought you might as
well graph it. Avoid redundancy -- if the information is in a table or graph,
don't then describe all the information again in the body of the paper.
Make sure your tables
and figures are well presented. Every table and figure will have a number
(e.g., Table 1), a title (e.g., “Cross tabulation of attitudes about
immigration by version of survey completed”), and be cleaned of redundant
clutter. See a text like Research Decisions or any journal article for
the proper way to format a table or figure.
In a more quantitative
paper, you would start describing distributions on "key" variables of
interest to you, via narrative, table(s) or graph(s) as appropriate. I say
"key" variables here because you should choose a small, focussed part
of the data to write on, and then connect up with other related variables of
interest as they come. Do not attempt to describe all the data you have, or
your paper will end up being as interesting as a laundry list.
Give the results that bear
on the research question you posed in your introduction (#3 above) by showing a
crosstabulation, or reporting a correlation, or making a comparison (or
whatever), and/or that includes quotes from participants (e.g., if you
incorporated any open-ended questions) that bear directly on your research
question. If you have gathered data that do not bear on the focus of your
paper, do not include them simply for the sake of including them; be focussed,
reduce clutter.
6.
Discussion.
Begin with a statement that summarizes your main findings in relation to your
research question (e.g., "I set out to determine why people do X, and
discovered that the main reasons are …"; or "I started this research
believing that people do X because of Y, but found out that most of them do it
because of Z"). In the process, you will reconnect with the literature in
order to place your paper/research back into the broader context that got you
interested in this topic in the first place.
Once your basic conclusion has been stated, now is your chance to take a step back and examine the strengths and limitations of what you've done. In what ways is your project/analysis a good one in giving you an answer to your question. What did you do right? But also, what are some of the limitations that should be taken into account, for example, in deciding how far your results can be generalized? Included here should be a consideration of the rival plausible explanations of the results you observed; what other interpretations could be made of your data, and/or what other inferences could be drawn. And why was yours the most plausible explanation that could be offered?
Finally, if you had to do it all over again, knowing what you know now, what could you do better, i.e., what lessons did you learn that would allow you to create a better piece of research? Also, if you were now going to start on another research project in this same general area, where would you go next? Any good piece of research will raise as many questions as it answers; what are some that arose from your research?
The Title Page, Abstract, Introduction, References, and Appendices all begin on new pages. The other sections (Methods, Results and Discussion) begin on the same page as the preceding section if there is space. All sections of the report are double-spaced except for the references, which are single-spaced.
Although it may sound like a lot, 20 double-spaced
pages is not very long. You will in all likelihood find it very challenging to
consider all you need to consider in that space. Doing a good job of it
requires that you reduce clutter and needless frills, have a good sense of what
is important and what is not, and stick to what is important to telling your
story. Although the above structure will be appropriate for most papers, in
some cases it may impose a structure that gets in the way of, rather than
facilitates, the telling of your story. If that's the case with your research,
then you should always feel free to adapt structures -- the main objective is
to tell your story in an effective way, not to fit some predetermined mould of
what a paper has to look like.
A few last admonitions:
·
When writing
your paper in the paper-writing frenzy of the last two weeks of class, always
keep an updated back-up copy on disk, and keep occasional hard copies. "I
accidentally deleted my file," or "The computer ate my disk" are
not excuses that will gain you a sympathetic ear. It happens to someone every
year; make sure you're not this year's victim of the computer gods.
·
Use double
spacing throughout the paper (except for references), and leave enough of a
margin for comments (at least 1.25 inches all around);
·
Use a decent
size font (like 12);
·
Staple your
paper together so that pages do not get lost;
·
Number all
your pages;
·
If you want
to do well, do not hand in a first draft. Expect to do at least two drafts
[a characteristic of effective writers is that they are compulsive about
getting it "right"]. Get a friend to read it in exchange for you
reading theirs -- there's nothing like a new set of eyes looking at your paper
to help you find things that are redundant, not explained clearly enough, or
omitted, that will make your paper a better paper.
·
And last,
when you hand in your paper, feel free to use any sort of folder you want if
you're someone who likes to make it look pretty, but please do not use
those ones with the plastic spines and plastic cover sheets. When you get a
stack of 50 or 100 papers to mark, the plastic is too slippery and they end up
falling all over the place.
As noted in the course syllabus, papers are due by no
later than 4:02 P.M. on Friday, 29 November 2002, and must be handed in
directly to Dr. Palys, Rob Tillyer, or the Criminology General Office, so that
they can be dated. Late papers lose 10% per day. Do not stick a paper directly
in anyone's mailbox or under an office door; if you do so, it will be dated on
whatever day the person whose door you stick it under picks it up.