Research Project

Choose a question not specifically addressed by our book. Your choice of topic should reflect your interests and/or any focus in your major.

Write a hypothesis, which represents the results or answer you believe you will find.

Construct a plan of action using quantitative research to attempt to prove your hypothesis (answer the question).

Present your results using the format that best represents your interests and/or any focus in your major. If you would like to be a newspaper journalist, your format should be a newspaper article. If you would like to be a field journalist submitting raw video to a broadcast station, your format should be a video. If you would like to be a TV show anchor or talk show host, your format should be a video of you presenting the findings on your show. If you would like to be a vocal artist, your format should be a song, etc.

Whatever the format, your presented results should incorporate the following sections:

Introduction (including your hypothesis - what you think your survey will find, and a brief summary of the existing literature on the subject - i.e. who has already written about it?)

Description of the Survey - how is your approach different from what has already been done?

Method - a description of your survey method (verbal questioning, paper, online, population, and sample size, etc.

Results Summary - a summary of the results of your survey - this can be in whatever graphical or table format makes most sense to you given the kinds of questions you asked, the kinds of correlations you drew from the responses, and the format of your presentation

Conclusion - What do your results mean? Was you hypothesis correct? Incorrect? Inconclusive? So what?

DUE 11/4: A 2-3 page proposal outlining your research project. This will count as Reading Analysis #3
DUE 11:18: An interim draft of your research project write-up or other presentation format
DUE 12/2: Final Research Project & Presentation