Research Question & Hypothesis – Week 2

Instructions

Start this assignment with an introduction about your research topic and why it is of interest and a research “puzzle” (about 1-2 pages). You want to guide your reader from your research area to your research topic, then on to your specific research question. Note: This will be the first draft of your introduction of the Week 8 paper, so be sure to write it in an academic voice (avoid first person and contractions).

While there are many ways to frame a research question, at the graduate level, your research questions should be 1) open-ended and start with “How,” “Why,” “What,” or “To what extent;” 2) should incorporate the variables you seek to assess and their relationship; and 3) should indicate how you intend to test the nature of that relationship. You want to make sure that your question has an appropriate amount of complexity so that it requires a significant amount of research and analysis. A simple Google search should not be able to answer your research question.

Pull out the dependent (DV) and independent variable(s) (IV) that you are interested in looking at. This needs to be specific and you need to discuss ideas for how you might go about measuring the impact that the IV as on the DV. You need to focus in on one or two specific variables, otherwise your research will quickly spin out of control as you will not have the capacity to effectively address the relationship between all the variables.

From here develop a hypothesis that reflects your educated guess as to the relationship between those variables. You may use an “if” “then” statement or you may formulate it as a narrative statement.

Hypothesis: A statement for how a change or condition in one or more independent variables cause(s) a change or condition in a dependent variable.

To recap what is needed in your submission for this assignment:

Introduction to the overall paper due in week 8Research QuestionDependent (DV) and Independent Variables (IV)Hypothesis

Technical Requirements

Your paper must be at a minimum of 1-2 pages (the Title and Reference pages do not count towards the minimum limit).Scholarly and credible references should be used. A good rule of thumb is at least 2 scholarly sources per page of content.Type in Times New Roman, 12 point and double space.Students will follow the current APA Style as the sole citation and reference style used in written work submitted as part of coursework. Points will be deducted for the use of Wikipedia or encyclopedic type sources. It is highly advised to utilize books, peer-reviewed journals, articles, archived documents, etc.All submissions will be graded using the assignment rubric