Sociological history of the lawn and why people treat their lawns

Final Research Project-Due December 17

This is your final assignment for APSS 301, and it will include a brief literature review and build upon any of the assignments that are appropriate for your topic (content analysis, interview, observation).  For this assignment you will conduct a qualitative research project that addresses the topic of interest to you that was articulated in your IRB proposal and literature assignment. You can do interviews, focus groups, observations, or content analysis/traditional research paper (or any combinations of these methods of inquiry).Please follow the procedure that we have already covered for any of those methods. A sample PowerPoint presentation and sample final paper are provided on Canvas.

You need to turn these items into me on Canvas:

1. Your PowerPoint presentation
2. Your Final Paper, including bibliography
3. Your analysis, in some format. For interviews this should be your coding spreadsheet (you keep your transcripts and notes). For focus groups, this should be your moderator’s guide and coding spreadsheet (you keep your transcripts and notes). For observations, this should be your notes where you “put scenes on a page” (you keep your “jotting” notes). For content analysis, this should be your protocol sheets and paragraphs summarizing each category/theme/code.

Final Research Presentation (100 points)

You will give a formal PowerPoint presentation in class that will have several components, as follows.  These do not need to be necessarily labeled in these ways, but it should be clear that each exist in your presentation:

1. This typically provides something to gain the audience’s attention followed by a short summary of the need for your research and what your research did. Things you need to include in this are your topic, your project goal(s), your research question(s), and a brief description of the research you conducted. Finally, you need to include a general argument or thesis you believe your researchproduces. This may take one or two slides.
2. Literature Review. This includes an overview of most recent and relevant research on your topic followed by a description of the “hole” in previous research that your research addresses OR a description of the major insights and concepts that relate to your research project. This may take one or two slides. You should also include a discussion of any theories that came up in your literature review.
3. This provides a description of the theory or concepts used in your analysis and why the theories used are so valuable for framing your research. This should involve descriptions of those theoriesand a description of how they offer a more holistic and generalizable story about your findings. In other words, what theories help you understand your data and how do they help you explain the patterns you found. This may be part of your literature review section or build from your literature review.
4. This includes a description of method(s) used, justification of method(s) used, and description of your role as the researcher in terms of influencing data collection and analysis. This may take one or two slides.
5. This includes a description and illustration of patterns found in your research, including dominant themes and meanings and links among themes and meanings. This may take three or more slides. Make sure all findings relate in some way to how you framed the study in your Introduction and Literature Review sections. Each finding does not have to address everything framed by your Intro and Lit Review, but each finding should contribute to an overall thesis or argument you want to make in your presentation.
6. This includes a brief description of what your research tells us in terms of addressing holes in previous literature, how it supports and/or refines theories used, and any potential applied uses of your results. This may take one or two slides.

Remember that in a PowerPoint presentation you do not want to provide too much information, but just bullet points to elaborate on verbally. However, you may want to provide full quotes or pictures, if they are particularly instrumental for showing your results. The Final Research Presentation is worth 100 points.  The sections will be worth 10 points each, and the actual presentationitself will be worth 40 points. This does not have to be a long presentation to be good (as a matter of fact, concisenessis best).  Presentations should be no longer than 10 minutes.

Final Paper (200 points)

In this paper you will combine the Introduction, Literature Review, Theory, Methods, Results, and Conclusion sections from your presentation into one professional paper.  Remember that the sections do not need to be labeled exactly in these ways, but each component should exist in some way in the paper.  Blend everything together (with transition sentences, etc.) so there is a clear topic being addressed throughout.  Everything should be presented cogently and should remind the reader of the main argument(s) without being overly repetitive and redundant.  As always, a visit to the Writing Center is recommended on the final paper before turning it in, and you are welcome to bring in a copy for me to review and provide feedback on as well (just needs to happen earlier thanDecember 7^th).  This will likely be around 10 pages in length.  This needs to be well written, in APA format.  The grading rubrics for this assignment are as follows:

The quality of your Final Paper will depend on these rubrics:

180-200 points: The student clearly and logically links all components.  The paper is based on meaningful research that utilized one of the methods learned during the semester. The topic, the way the topic has been addressed, the results, and the conclusion are all clearly and logically presented throughout the paper.  The paper is well written, without grammatical, stylistic, or structural errors that make it difficult to understand.

160-179 points: The student links all components, but not clearly and/or logically.  There are some gaps in logic (or at least presentation of logic used) between different components in the paper, but no components are poorly done by themselves.  Redundancy may exist.  The paper is well written but has a few grammatical, stylistic, or structural errorsthat make it difficult to understand. The research contained some minor flawsthat jeopardize the quality of the paper; the conclusions drawn are not effectively supported by the research.

140-159 points: The student links all components, but not clearly and/or logically.  There are major gaps in logic (or at least presentation of logic used) between different components in the paper, and some sections may be poorly done, but no sections are left out of the paper.  Redundancy may be a major problem.  The paper has many grammatical, stylistic, or structural errorsthat make it difficult to understand. The research contained some major flawsthat jeopardize the quality of the paper; the conclusions drawn are not supported by the research.

120-139 points: The student does not link all components.  There are major gaps in logic (or at least presentation of logic used) between different components in the paper.  Many sections are poorly done and/or some sections are left out of the paper.  The paper has many grammatical, stylistic, or structural errorsthat make it difficult to understand. The research contained some major flawsthat jeopardize the quality of the paper; the conclusions drawn are not supported by the research.

119 points or less: The paper is illegible and/or components are left out; meaningful research was not conducted.