Anything shorter than four pages will reduce your score Homework Help

Custom The final project for this class is an APA proposal paper.
It is an ‘APA’ paper because you will use APA style to write your paper – more on that below…
It is a ‘proposal’ paper because you will not actually do the research, you will only describe a proposal for a research project that you think would be a good one if you had the time, money, and other resources needed to actually do it.
Appendix A in your textbook is about writing an APA style research report and should be used as a model for writing the paper.
A proposal is a paper a researcher would write to propose a research study. Your proposal paper will be identical to an APA paper except that it will not include a “Results” section (since you won’t do the research) and the “Discussion” section will be very limited (also because you are not actually doing the research). Also, in sample papers in your textbook or in the literature, the past tense is used (X was done…; the participants were…etc.), However, the method section of a proposal should

be written in the future tense since you haven’t yet done the research (the participants will be recruited from…; each participant will complete the Beck Depression

Inventory, etc.)
You are writing a proposal paper rather than doing actual research yourself because high quality research takes time, money, and materials that you don’t have. For

this project you should write as if you were conducting the study at UCF and had access to grant money and other materials such as a lab and equipment and research

assistants.

Your paper will include the following sections:
Title page
Abstract:
Introduction
Method
Discussion:
References: paper and references must be APA style
The Details
So, what you have to do for this final paper write a research proposal in APA style. To do so you need to complete the following steps:
Preliminary tasks – APA style and references
You must write your paper including citing your sources using APA style. You must have a minimum of six references in your introduction and five of them should be

primary rather than secondary sources. Primary sources are firsthand reports of research findings. Secondary sources are books, book chapters, review articles, and

other sources that summarize others research findings (note – the six references are for your intro only – you will probably have additional references for your method

section).
• You may not use Wikipedia as a reference! It can be helpful to look at a Wikipedia page for ideas, and it is not a scientific source that you should cite in a paper.

More on APA format below.
• You should not use popular magazines and newspapers, such as Men’s Health or Psychology Today, you should use peer reviewed journals. If it is not in psychINFO or

Pubmed it is probably not an appropriate source.
• You should not use websites as references, e.g., WebMD, or psychcentral or any web site with one exception; you may use a national database website (such as the

National Institute of Mental Health or World Health Organization) to report statistical data (e.g., the prevalence of schizophrenia, or the percentage of the

population that is elderly), and these will not count towards your five primary sources.
• In short, most if not all of your references should be peer reviewed journal articles.
Methods Section
In a methods section you describe exactly how you are going to conduct the research. The methods section has several sub-sections including:
• participants (or subjects if non-human): what is your sample, what are their demographic characteristics such as age, sex, ethnicity (or genus/species if animal) and

other characteristics as they may be related to your study such as IQ, education, socioeconomic status, depressed, non-drinker, religious affiliation – anything

relevant to your specific study.
• procedure: how will you recruit participants, what is your sampling procedure, will participants be compensated for their participation, are there any ethical or

safety concerns, how were participants assigned to groups (if applicable), where will the research take place, who will administer treatments and how were they trained

(if applicable) what is the research design, what will participants be doing, what are the independent and dependent variables how are they being operationalized? This

section should be very detailed.
• apparatus or materials or measures. The name of this section depends on the details of your study. You might have a diagram or detailed description of an apparatus

or complex equipment, for instance, what a computer screen a participant sees might look like, a diagram of a course they will drive on after drinking, the arrangement

of cameras and computers in a room, the type of eeg machine or blood pressure monitor, and etc.. If your study uses questionnaires or other assessment instruments – as

most psychology studies do – then these should be described in a materials or measures section. For example, a measure of depression, the formula you used to calculate

Body Mass Index (BMI), an IQ test, a measure of alcohol expectancy, a questionnaire you made up for your study on how likely participants think it is that they will

get a flu shot and how likely it is that they will get the flu in the next six months. For any measure you should provide a full citation in APA format, provide a

brief description of it, and say something about its reliability and validity. Say a sentence about why you selected each measure such as, it is widely used to measure

PTSD, it has better reliability than other measures of depression, it only takes participants five minutes to complete, research suggests that you can ask participants

their weight without having to weigh them, etc. You will need to provide citations to do this. If you make up your own questionnaires you should explain why it was

necessary (for example, it would be very poor practice to make up your own measure of depression when there are several quick, reliable, and valid measures out there;

it would be more reasonable to create a measure when there are none available in the literature). Your grade will be lowered if you say you are using your own

questionnaire for a measure when reliable and valid means of measuring the variable are available.
• Finally, your method should include a statement about how you will analyze the results, for instance “a repeated measures t-test comparing scores on measure X before

and after treatment Y will be conducted,” or a single factor ANOVA comparing men’s and women’s scores on measure X following exposure to condition Z will be

conducted.”
Discussion
Your discussion will not be the same as an actual report since you are not actually doing the project and for this section you should write about a page discussing the

following:
• why you selected the particular research design and procedure you wrote about
• what results you would hope to find if you actually did the study
• what you see as the biggest strengths and limitations/weaknesses of the study you proposed (and hopefully, there are not too many limitations – if there are, then

you should probably modify your method)
Helpful Resources
1. See Appendix A for more details about writing a research paper. And I also urge you to look at how it is done by reading articles in APA journals – you should be

reading them for writing your introduction anyway, so it won’t mean extra literature searching!
2. Since this paper is a proposal, there is NO “results” section.
3. For your discussion section, do not use the suggestions in Appendix A since you are not actually doing the research. Instead write a page or two about (1) why you

selected the particular research design and procedure you wrote about (2) what results you would hope to find if you actually did the study, and (3) what you see as

the biggest strengths and limitations/weaknesses of the study you proposed.
4. Though the abstract comes first you should write it last after you have written the above sections. It will appear near the beginning of your paper, and it is a

good idea to actually write it last so you make sure it adequately summarizes your paper. Follow the guidelines in Appendix A, except you will not mention results in

your abstract. Put your title and abstract and your name on the first page
5. Finally, references. List every source you cite using APA format.
APA Style
You can find detailed information on APA style in the APA style manual which you can purchase as a hard copy or e-book or find in the reference section of the library.
The UCF library also has some helpful online materials including a tutorial on APA style.
Check out the website below for UCF library resources on APA style

http://guides.ucf.edu/content.php?pid=63545&sid=468776

Many other universities also have online guides to APA style that you can access online. My personal favorite is at Purdue University (No, I am a Michigan alumna not a

Purdue alumn, and Purdue has the better website…). Their guide can be found at:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

You can find others if you do a google search on APA style citation
Paper Details
How long should my paper be?
Quality will matter more than quantity. A rough guide is 10 – 13 pages (not including title page, and including references).
Title page
abstract: one page with about half a page of text.
Introduction: four to five pages – anything shorter than four pages will reduce your score
Methods section will be the most variable from student to student, and it could be about three to five or more pages depending on your research design, variables, and

sample.
Discussion should be about one or one-and-a-half to two pages.
References should be one or two pages.
How will my paper be graded?
Title and Abstract: 5% of grade. Does that abstract include all the information it should? Does the title make sense given the nature of the project?
Introduction: 20% of grade. Is it thorough? Is all information accurate and up to date? Is the information from relevant sources? Does the intro explain the issue you

are researching and why it is important? Does the intro say what type of research has already been done on the topic?
Research Question and Design: 40% of grade. Is the research question feasible, timely, important? Most important, is the design appropriate for answering your

question? Do the variables make sense? Is the design ethical? Is the sampling procedure appropriate? Does the sample make sense given the research question? Are the

dependent and independent variables correctly identified? Are all materials and meaures described? Also, writing about a very simple design is easier than writing

about a more complex design and will be graded accordingly. (But don’t make it too complex or you are likely to make mistakes or do unnecessary work).
Discussion: 10% of grade. Are the expected results reasonable given what is proposed and known about the topic? Are strengths and limitations described?
References: 10% of grade. Are references correctly cited in APA format? Is all non-original material cited?
Writing quality: 10% of grade. Is the paper well-written and free of grammatical errors, spelling errors, and typos?
Creativity: 5% of grade. Is the proposed research original? Is the question and/or the approach to answering it thoughtful and reflect original thinking?
Your own work: you will submit your paper via turnitin and it should be your original work.