Structuring your Final Project

In your final research design project, you will be required to produce the following elements. Your total word count should be around 2500 words. You should write each section separately, single-spaced using the following headings.

Abstract: (10 percent)

An abstract summarizes, usually in one paragraph of 300 words or less, the major aspects of the entire paper in a prescribed sequence that includes: 1) the overall purpose of the study and the research problem(s) you investigated; 2) the basic design of the study; 3) major findings or trends found as a result of your analysis; and 4) a brief summary of your interpretations and conclusions.

Here are some resources on writing an abstract:

https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/abstract

Introduction (10 percent); 500 words

Includes dependent and independent variables

In this section (which you will read more about in Powner) you will answer the ‘so what’ question: Why should people care about this topic, and what contribution will this research make?

This is also where you explain what you will NOT do – you explain the limitations of your proposed research (i.e. I will be interviewing ONLY people who lived in cities which were ‘locked down’ – these cities are..)

Literature Review (10 percent): 1000 words

Here you need to explain how YOUR research question fits into what we as researchers already know about this topic. This will involve discussing what researchers have already found out about the relationship between stress and political behavior. In this section, you will present the major debates in the field about this particular topic, citing relevant literature which you will encounter throughout this semester. You will describe the relationships which researchers have found between different independent and dependent variables, how these variables are conceptualized of and measured, and the critiques which have been put forth of the existing theories.

Here is where you SITUATE your research question within the existing literature. You need to tell me if your research has been done before and what your contribution to the existing debates and knowledge base will be. Be sure to tell me: What is the conventional wisdom on this topic? Does your proposed research build upon or attempt to refute a particular finding within the literature?

Hypotheses to be Tested (20); 500 words

In this section, you are to:

Define a SPECIFIC hypothesis which you might investigate which contributes to the academic conversation about the relationship between STRESS and voter turnout.

For example, you might look at states which HELD presidential primaries during the pandemic and those states which postponed their primaries; here you might want to compare turnout rates for the two groups. You could investigate this question using quantitative analysis – through comparing turnout percentages compared to previous elections or comparing turnout percentages to other states where primaries were held prior to the pandemic.

You might carry out a comparative analysis, looking at electoral turnout in different nations, depending on whether they were also experiencing a stressful event like a pandemic, earthquake, etc.

You might consider how a variable like voter confidence in the president affects their PERCEPTION of a crisis and how that affects turnout; Here, you might also wish to consider how much NEWs people watch and how informed they are; what their news source is, etc.

You might consider the relationship between the AGE of voters and their PERCEPTION of risk and stress.

You could also choose a sub-group of those affected – for example, those people who lost their jobs. You might then choose to collect data about these people’s attitudes, or even to conduct a focus group or a survey or a set of structured interviews.

Key Concepts, Operationalization and Measurement (20) 500 words

In this section you will define the key concepts which you will rely upon in your research proposal:

Here you want to show me that you are aware of how OTHERS within the field have defined these concepts (like socioeconomic status, education level, etc.) and how YOUR definition and operationalization either COMPARE or BUILD UPON their work. That is, it is valid to use OTHER” S definitions here. If you do so, use language like the following:

I.E. In my project, I will consider how habitual voters, as defined by Brody and Sniderman (1977, p. 352) are likely to react to an event like a pandemic. Pandemic is defined by the World Health Organization as: . . ..

Some variables you might consider are:

Habitual voter

Personal problem

Locus of concern

Minority Voter

First generation immigrant, etc.

Description of Research Methods: (20) 500 words

In this section, you need to tell me HOW you are going to investigate your hypothesis. REMEMBER: You are not required to actually conduct the research! You will not be interviewing anyone, conducting a focus group, etc. But you need to think what you WOULD DO if this were your semester-long research project: How would you identify and select participants for your study? What questions would you ask? How would you organize and analyze the data, etc.

Here you might choose to utilize ONE of the following methods. For the method chosen, be sure to consider the following questions:

EXPERIMENT: What is the treatment? What is the control? How will participants be assigned to groups? How will you address issues of validity and reliability?

b. Survey-How will your participants be recruited and chosen? How will ensure that your sample is representative of a population and what population is that? If you choose to administer a survey, you need to furnish at least 5 sample questions with answers. For each, describe what TYPE of variable you will be producing (nominal, ordinal, etc.) If you plan to run statistical tests to search for correlations between variables, tell what tests you will run and what sorts of findings you might arrive how and what they would mean.

STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS

Describe who you will interview (elite interviews vs. interviews which are representative of a population) and how participants will be recruited and chosen (snowball sample, convenience sample, etc.)

Provide at least Five interview questions you might use, tell whether they are open-ended or close-ended; how you will safeguard against issues like priming and bias in the questions. (NOTE: Here again you do not need to ‘reinvent the wheel’. You may re-use questions which you have encountered in readings throughout this course, reproducing the wording. Think about WHY re-using a question might be a good approach – and how it allows you to COMPARE your findings to those which others have produced in similar situations. For example, are there surveys which were carried out which interviewed people who survived an event like Hurricane Katrina which you might re-use in talking to people who were affected by the pandemic?)

FOCUS GROUP: How will your participants be recruited and chosen? How will ensure that your sample is representative of a population and what population is that? If you choose to administer a survey, you need to furnish at least 5 sample questions with answers

DATA ANALYSIS: What surveys will you use, if preexisting and what questions? What statistical tests will you run?

For whatever method you choose describe any anticipated issues or problems and how you might correct for them.

CAUTIONS: (At least three paragraphs) (5)

See Brody and Sniderman’s CAUTIONS Section. This is the section where they describe possible issues with methodology and data gathering that might arise. Will your results be generalizable? Will there be problems with question wording, the people who respond to your survey, their representativeness?

This is the section where you ANTICIPATE the problems that others might point out in your work and respond to them.

Conclusion/Implications (5) 250-500 words

Here you want to be able to tell me: are the results from your study GENERALIZABLE to other life events – or do you feel that there is something inherently different about the pandemic and its effects on voter turnout?

You will produce some of these elements or a related element in your weekly assignments. You can then edit this assignment or copy this assignment into the canvas for your final project.

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