Note: the expectation is you write a paper in a research methods style. This means using citations to support claims, statements, facts or
opinions you present. When you write the paper do not write anywhere about the ‘assignment’ or ‘course/class’ – although you are writing
this paper because of the course you should not mention this in the paper.
Also, do not use the prompts listed below as questions/subheadings in your paper. For example, don’t write ‘Justify why you selected this
issue’ in the paper and then answer this question. You answer this question in the course of writing your page 1 just as the articles in
the readings you read answer this question without specifically writing ‘justify why you selected this issue.’
The paper should be written in APA style. In this paper and other papers in the course you should avoid personal stories about your
personal experiences. An abstract is not needed for this paper.
Page 1 and 2: Intro
Present a general surface-level description of the issue the paper’s content will examine (references).
Explain why understanding this case is important (references).
Justify why you selected this issue (references).
What specific question(s) are you trying to answer?
Page 3: Method
Use the attached method template (Word) to format this section.
You should include a copy of your survey in the appendix of your paper but this does not count toward the 5 page total. The appendix does
not need to be in APA style.
Page 4: Results
Analyze the results from a college athletics survey.
Use statistical analyses you deem appropriate to analyze the data produced by the content analysis.
Present the results of the statistical analyses in APA style.
Do not forget to analyze the open-ended questions as well.
The analysis of the data from the survey can be completed as a group, pairs, threes, or individually.
You do not need to analyze all the questions in the survey. Analyze only what is sufficient to meet the page space of the results section
as outlined in the paper instructions.
It is important to make sure the question/topic you pose in the introduction (pages 1-2) is answered at least in part by the results
presented in the results section.
Page 5: Discussion
Explain what your data means.
Offer some tentative explanations as to why you think you found the data you did.
Provide some suggested practical implications from your results.
List two things you recognize as being wrong with your survey and identify how you would resolve these problems if you were to repeat the
survey.
Note: Remember that margins should be set to 1 inch, the default for Word is typically 1.25 inches.
