Homework: Full-Sentence Outline
Length: 4 pages.
• Introduction:
o What are the purpose/goals of your study?
o Why does the proposed study matter? (i.e., what are the theoretical and/or practical implications?)
o How are you going to study your idea? Is it an experiment/a survey/participant observation?
• Literature review:
o Outline the argument that explains the relationships between the variables that you are studying. Your argument has to be grounded in existing theories and empirical work on your topic.
o Cite relevant literature: From your outline, it should be clear that you've done a thorough literature search, backing up the argument that you are developing.
o If a variable is NOT part of your RQs or Hs, it should not be discussed in your paper.
o Note that there are two different types of literature reviews. First, a review of literature can be done to synthesize research in a particular area of studies. In this case, you summarize articles and draw conclusions based on them. Usually, book-chapters are a good example of this kind of literature review. Second, a review of literature can also be done as a part of an empirical study (which is what you are proposing). In this case, you are building a rationale for your study predictions. In this type of literature review, you are only discussing articles that are directly relevant to your predictions. For example, if your proposal is about the effects of socio-economic status (SES) on communication competency, and you found an article on SES and child mortality rates, this article will not be central to your study. You can briefly mention this article to demonstrate that SES affects many facets of people's lives, but discussing it at length will detract from the goals of your study. Essentially, what you should be trying to do in your literature review is to build the best case for why your predictions are warranted, and your literature review should only review research that is relevant to your study.
• Hypotheses and Research Questions: List your Hs and RQs.
• Because you have already submitted a draft of your method section, I am not asking you to provide an outline for it.
• Discussion:
o Summary of your RQs and Hs.
o What is the significance of the proposed study? (i.e., theoretical importance/implications/practical applications).
o Limitations: What factors may potentially undermine your results? For example, if you selected college students as your study participants, and your results are expected to generalize to the U.S. population at large, using college students is a limitation.
o Future research directions: What is the next step? What research questions should be addressed next?
o Conclusions
• References:
Format your homework according to the give formatting requirements:
• The answer must be using Times New Roman font (size 12), double spaced, typed, with one-inch margins on all sides.
• The response also includes a cover page containing the student's name, the title of the homework, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
• Also include a reference page. The references and Citations should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.