Research Benchmark Assignment
September 26th, 2018
- Objectives: To integrate a research topic/question with a review of existing literature
- To produce a draft of an “introduction” section of a research paper
- Assignment:
- Drawing upon the research topic/question that you have been revising and learning about in assignments #2 and 3, write a draft of the “introduction” section of your final research project.
- An introduction section presents the research topic/question and hypothesis. It should set up a “theoretical framework” from which the research question can be conceptually thought about. It also reviews previous literature and discusses how your research project is new or different and how it complements or contradicts the existing knowledge on the topic. In general, this section needs to discuss the importance of the topic, as well as the theoretical rationale underlying the hypothesis.
- The draft will probably be 2-4 pages of double spaced text or 1.5-2 pages single spaced.
- You must formally cite existing research, perhaps the 5 articles you identified in the previous assignment if they are still relevant to your topic. A citation within the text should be placed in parentheses, immediately following the text you want to reference. The citation has the authors name and publication year, plus page number if you are using a direct quote. Again, please adopt a formal bibliographic writing style for in-text citations (APA, MLA, Chicago style).
