Title of the Paper
Subtitle of the Paper
Your Full Name
School of Business and Graduate Studies
Trinity Washington University
Submitted to (**Instructor title and name) on behalf of the faculty of the School of Business and Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the degree requirements for the (Full name of your ***degree program)
Semester Year
Abstract
150 to 250 words covering the Background, Objective, Research Design, Data Analysis, Results or Findings, Conclusions and Recommendations.
Keywords:
The author acknowledges she/he completed this assignment in the spirit of the Trinity Washington University policy regarding academic honesty and plagiarism.
Table of Contents
Page
Introduction 6
Statement of the Problem 6
Objective 6
Research Questions 6
Research question one 6
Research question two 7
Research Method 7
Population 7
Example 8
Ethical Considerations 8
Research Design 9
Theory 9
Theoretical Perspective 10
Theoretical Framework 10
Youth decide to not use synthetic Marijuana. - Dependent variable 10
Access - independent variable one 10
Price - independent variable two 10
Role models - independent variable three 10
Peer pressure - independent variable four 10
Moderating variables 10
Analysis 11
Sample 11
Example 11
Example 12
Data Sets 12
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration data 13
Centers for Disease Control data 13
Data Analysis and Coding 13
Tests and measures 13
Example 14
Measures of association 14
Analysis by research question 15
Multiple regressions 18
Discussion 19
Research Questions 20
Research question one 20
Research question two 20
Conclusions 20
Recommendations 21
Implications 21
Summary 21
References 22
Appendices 24
Appendix A: Recruitment Materials 24
Appendix B: Informed Consent 25
Appendix C: Data Collection Instrument 27
List of Tables
Page
Table 1. Frequency: Year of birth. 13
Table 2. Frequency: Gender. 13
Table 3. Frequency: Race. 13
Table 4. Crosstabulations: Future as a volunteer. 15
Table 5. Correlations: Social media fundraising * How you would give. 15
Table 6. Independent sample group statistics for young alumni giving. 16
Table 7. Independent samples t- tests for young alumni giving. 16
Table 8. Cross tabulations: My future as a volunteer 2 17
Table 9. Correlations: social media fundraising * How would you give 2 17
Table 10. Independent sample group statistics for young alumni giving. 18
Table 11. Independent samples t- tests for young alumni giving. 18
Table 12. Model Summary BA 19
Table 13. ANOVA BA 19
Table 14. Coefficients BA 19
List of Figures
Page
Figure 1. The theoretical model of teenagers who choose not to use synthetic marijuana. 12
Introduction
This is your rhetorical argument leading to the discussion of the research problem below. See the Argument to Abstract to Introduction document for assistance. This section builds from general knowledge to the more specific details and context that your research problem exists within. It should be written in an academic voice, be logical, and be heavily supported with citations. The argument should lead the reader to acknowledge or agree with your determination of the research problem. This should take 2-4 paragraphs.
Statement of the Problem
Discuss your research problem and then narrow your research focus to a segment or fragment of the problem, which is manageable in the scope of a one-semester research project. Then discuss your working hypothesis of the problem. Do not forget to support this problem with citations. Then finish with your thesis statement (IF, THEN, and THUS) concerning how the problem might be resolved or explained and the ramifications of implementing the resolution, or knowing the explanation.
Objective
Discuss your purpose and what you will deliver based on the results of the study. The deliverable is important in an applied research. Deliverables might include models, lists of practices, policy recommendations, etcetera. Think of impacting your targeted population with your deliverable and facilitating your THUS part of the thesis statement. Discuss these with your instructor.
Research Questions
Discuss how you will investigate your working hypothesis by asking the questions that follow. It is advisable to limit yourself to 2-3 research questions to limit the scope of your study. You might list further questions as limitations of the study below in the Assumptions and Limitations. Remember, these are the general questions you ask to investigate your research hypothesis.
Research question one
List the question.
Null hypothesis one
List the null hypothesis.
Alternate hypothesis one
List the alternate hypothesis.
Discuss your intent in asking the question in a separate paragraph.
Research question two
List the question.
Null hypothesis two
List the null hypothesis.
Alternate hypothesis two
List the alternate hypothesis.
Discuss your intent in asking the question in a separate paragraph. And so on for each research question. It is good to limit the research questions to 2-3 for a study of this scope.
Research Method
Begin the chapter with a discussion of the worldview or philosophy that guides your research and provide a general discussion of your methodology, citing Creswell (2015), Remler and Van Ryzin (2014), Szafran (2009), and others as appropriate. Include how it informed your choice of a quantitative interview strategy, and why it is appropriate to what you are trying to learn or accomplish. This is a good place to cite related research studies for their use of quantitative methods and interviewing. Then discuss your research method (your strategy) for collecting data, informing your readers of how you will ensure the replicability and trustworthiness of your strategy. Then discuss why you are using the forms of structured questions you have chosen (nominal, ordinal, and scaled), and what they bring for response and data. You are establishing why this choice is appropriate to the study and how it will work, in general. This sets the stage for the full discussion of your research design (data collection strategy) in the section further below.
Population
Who are you including in this study and why. It is important in a quantitative study to restrict participation by qualifying your population to a manageable size that will yield a sample of 100-200. Next, narrate how you get to the population total, and then calculate the representative sample from your total population. These calculations are important, and must be narrated clearly. You will find it helpful to find a proxy or representative population to start with, which will limit your sample size, include the margin of error (ME) and the confidence intervals (CI) it was calculated with. It is important to understand most SPSS tests require more than 100 responses to calculate results. Those who qualify, agree to participate, and sing the informed consent are your participants. Then discuss where you will find potential participants to recruit them, this is known as your setting. Remember this is where you will encounter potential participants to recruit them, it is not where they will take your survey.
Example
The intended population is residents of the District of Columbia. These residents will consist of individuals of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and races. Participants will be asked if they are 18 or older and must be at least the age of 18 to participate in the survey. Individuals under the age of 18 will not participate due to their inability to vote in local and national elections. The study is solely an examination of voting age adults. The sample size for this study is calculated based on the nearly 400,000 registered voters in the District of Columbia, since this sample is too large to effectively survey a standard population of 20,000 was used. The sample size is 369 participants with a 5.0% margin of error, a 95% confidence interval, and a 40% response rate (RAOsoft, 2016). Individuals will be recruited using random sampling. Participants will be recruited at various public places, including but not limited to, Metro stations, coffee shops, and grocery stores in all four quadrants of the city. Recruitment materials are found in Appendix A.
Potential participants will be recruited using the Internet as a recruitment tool. The recruitment script (see Appendix A) will be posted on Facebook group page created for this study and LinkedIn professional groups. The recruitment script will have a link to the informed consent document, created in Google Docs. If a participant does not give consent they cannot proceed. Those who give consent will be taken to a second Google Doc form, which contains my contact information. I will make appointments with potential participants to conduct the interview at the local library, making use of a small meeting room.
Thomas, W. C. ( 2013). D.C. Voting Rights and Budget Autonomy: The Impact of Denied Voting Rights and Budget Autonomy on the Residents of the Nation’s Capital, Trinity Washington University, Washington, DC.
Ethical Considerations
In this section, you have three important areas to discuss,
· How you will gain informed consent,
· The participant’s rights, and
· The risks the participant might encounter, including how you as the researcher will avoid or limit those risks.
You might write this section in three separate paragraphs, which then can be transferred to the IRB application.
Research Design
Discuss in narrative form the detailed step by step process of how you will conduct the entire research study (the collection of your data). Think of this as the operator’s manual for your experiment that you might share with others so they can be assured that it is replicable and of the rigor of your experiment. Give a step by step how to description that another would follow to replicate your methodology. The section needs to have enough good detail to eliminate assumptions or the need to ask questions, and without becoming so granular in detail that no one will read it. It is a balancing act between too much information and not enough information. Use the language of next, then, last, or first, second, third. I recommend starting on a blank page of a new document. Then, write your steps in a bulleted list and review the items for order, consistency, and correctness. Next, write the bullets in narrative form below the bulleted list and review it for order, consistency, and correctness. Last, paste it into my capstone paper.
Theory
Discuss the logic that leads you to choose the theory below in investigating and analyzing your research problem. Then discuss how you will proceed through the chapter. This might only be one paragraph. The section below uses Albert Bandura’s (1972) social learning theory. He later superseded this with social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1972) so there is little available beyond the citation to a publication in the UK. Please seek out a theory your own from more current sources. The purpose is to have head start in explaining what you find, or a departure point for further analysis. What you are building to is the theoretical model, which will be named based on the research method. You are trying to develop in your readers a deep and thorough enough understanding of the theory that the more concise model makes sense. See the ADMN 699 Capstone Resources Moodle page section, Preparing Yourself and Your Paper, Developing a Theoretical Perspective. There you will find advice and fields of theory to explore.
Theoretical Perspective
Discuss the theoretical perspective that guides the study, or is used to explain the phenomena of your research problem or the hypothesized resolution or explanation. This might be an established theory or proposition, or best practices, principles, or guidelines. Cover some of the history and background, how scholars and practitioners currently use the theory to explain the phenomena, and how the theory might be used to explain your problem, or a resolution to your problem. For example, social learning theory (SLT) is a part of the social cognitive theory (SCT) of Albert Bandura (1977). In this case, you might discuss SCT in general, and the why and how if its development. Then move to SLT; what it is and its factors (access, price, role models, and peer pressure). Next, complete the discussion by adding and critique or commentary. Finish with a discussion of why this theory, proposition, or these guidelines might explain or respond to your research hypothesis. Note that in the dependent variable state the outcome you are investigating or testing for, then describe it.
Theoretical Framework
Describe the framework and its relationship to the working hypothesis. In other words, how it might explain the problem or the resolution – explanation. The discuss each variable.
Youth decide to not use synthetic Marijuana. - Dependent variable
Discuss the dependent variable. Be sure to cite your references.
Access - independent variable one
Discuss independent variable one. Be sure to cite your references.
Price - independent variable two
Discuss the independent variable two. Be sure to cite your references.
Role models - independent variable three
Discuss independent variable three. Be sure to cite your references.
Peer pressure - independent variable four
Discuss independent variable four. Be sure to cite your references.
Moderating variables
Positive relationships with adults – Discuss the possible moderating effect of positive relationships. Be sure to cite your references. Knowledge of the effects of drugs – Discuss the possible moderating effect of Knowledge of the effects of drugs. Be sure to cite your references. Continue to discuss each proposed moderating variable in this paragraph. It is advisable to have only 2-4 moderating variables in a study of this scope.
Figure 1. The theoretical model of teenagers who choose not to use synthetic marijuana.
Analysis
Describe what you will accomplish in this chapter and how you will proceed.
Sample
Discuss who participated in your study. This section is written differently for quantitative and qualitative studies, use the correct format. Quantitative studies often use frequency and or cross tabulation tables to develop an aggregate (overall) understanding of the participants.
Example
The data was collected from a total of 95 participants, 64 female (67%), and 31 (33%) male. The participants were age 60 and above, and they all resided in the Ward 5, Washington, DC Metropolitan Area. Of the 95 participants, 58 (61%) were boomers and 37 (39%) traditionalists (see Tables 1-2). Ward 5 has an ethnically diverse group of seniors. The racial breakdown of the participants was not representative of the ethnic diversity of the population of Ward 5’s seniors. The breakdown of respondents was 92 (97%) African-American, 2 Hispanic, and 1 American Indian (see Table 3). Also, of the 58 boomers who took the survey, 37 (64%) own or have access to a computer, 18 (31%) an iPad, and 32 (55%) a smartphone. This compares to the 37 traditionalists who took the survey, of whom 11 (30%) own or have access to a computer, 2 (5%) an iPad, and 5 (14%) a smartphone (see Tables 4-6). All participants completed the informed consent form and the survey online and manually between the dates of November 18 and November 24, 2014.