Abstract

An abstract is a brief statement (usually a paragraph or two) that is placed at the beginning of a paper. Its purpose is to briefly explain what the paper is about; thus, it lets the reader know what will be discussed (commonly so the reader can decide whether he wants to continue reading it). It also sets a frame of reference for the reader if he or she decides to continue.

For this assignment, you are simply setting a frame of reference for the reader.

Observation and Models

In this section simply insert what you are supposed to do for the third homework assignment. If what you did for that assignment is perfect, all you need do is include it here. If it is not perfect, you need to fix any problems that exist.

Findings and Results

This section is asking how you would interpret certain results.

What is the data that you would collect and how does it relate to your research question? In the previous section, you described critical experiments, but the description may have been somewhat vague. In this section, you are being asked precisely how you would do these experiments.

In the above section, you described critical experiments, and you described the data you would collect to do these experiments. You now need to describe how you would interpret the data. This should have been touched on in the above section. If what you did in the previous section was very complete, all you need to do is repeat it. For others it is another opportunity to get it complete. To remind you of what you need to do, let's revisit the example discussed in class: if you find that people respect lawyers more than professors, that will mean something different from finding that people respect professors more than lawyers.

For each model:

Describe what results you would need to find in order to support the model.

Describe what results would contradict or fail to support your model.

If the data failed to support your model, what other models might these data support?

References

Note: You are not being asked to write a literature review. This is a list of references. Because this is not a true, complete research paper, you may not have actually used any references. Thus, you need to find books, journal articles, electronic sources, etc. that are (at least slightly) related to what your paper is about. The purpose of this section of the assignment is correctly using APA format, not doing in-depth research.

Cite at least six sources (books, newspapers, internet, etc.). You will earn more points, if they come from a wide variety of sources (e.g., one book, one journal, one newspaper, one website, etc.) If the nature of your question makes it difficult to find a wide variety of sources, talk to you TA about getting an exemption from this requirement.

The citations need to be in APA format and alphabetized. (See the syllabus for links to webpages that can help with APA format.)

Well Written

Required: Turn in two copies of your paper: an electronic copy in a drop box (TA discretion) and a printed copy to your TA.

For model building, remember all the wisdom from March and Lave.