Does a person’s level of education increase their likelihood to vote

Does a person’s level of education increase their likelihood to vote

HYPOTHESIS: The more education a person has the more likely they are to vote.

One of the main contributors to your grade in this class is the completion of a research assignment. I will be giving you tips during the entire semester as to how you might use a particular research skill or technique or paper. With that said, most of you have never done the type of research where you produce your own results before (even with data that already exists). You are probably used to research assignments that require you to find information that someone else has already discovered and to put that information into your own words. This assignment is much different.

Let me start by saying that your paper should be six to eight pages long not including cover pages or citations. The paper should be double-spaced (except for footnotes and citations) and be in 12 point font with one-inch margins.

First, you will be required to develop a research question. We will go over in class what good research questions look like. For now, simply recognize that a good research question is one where there is at least some possibility of finding a definite, empirical answer. Hence, questions like “Should the U.S. outlaw handguns?” are not great research questions. A question such as “Do states with fewer restrictions on handguns experience more gun-related violence?” is a question that, at least potentially, can be answered using the methods you will learn in this class. We will talk about more specifics for this section during class. In a final paper, you normally devote about ½ of a page to talking about your research question and telling me why that question would be important to answer.

Second, you must conceptually and operationally define your key terms. We will talk about some ways to do this in class. Basically, an operational definition tells me how you plan to measure something. For example, education is often a key variable in political analysis. How do you measure the amount of education that a person has? Sometimes, you will combine answers to survey questions into one big measure of something (like political activity). In addition, we will be doing informal exercises using the “formulae” in your book almost every day starting in week three. Be sure to be prepared to defend the reliability and validity of your operational definitions in your paper. This section of your paper will be about 1-2 pages long.

Third, you will develop at least one research hypothesis and be able to specify the accompanying null hypothesis. By the time you start writing your paper, you will be able to develop well-worded hypotheses and null specifications in your sleep. At the beginning, it will be more difficult. We will practice in class. In the paper, you will present your hypotheses, null hypotheses, and a brief explanation of why you expect things to work out the way you do. This should take about one page.

Fourth, you must determine and specify the correct statistical method for testing your hypotheses. After the first two weeks of class, we will spend each week going over different statistical techniques and strategies. First, you will learn about descriptive statistics and how to use them. Then, you will learn about inferential statistics and how to use and interpret them. It takes a while to get used to correctly interpreting SPSS output. I will give you interpretation examples for each type of statistic that we learn about. Normally, you present your descriptive statistics first. This will take about 1-2 pages.

Fifth, you will give your results in both written and tabular form. You want to show your results in tabular form, and then talk about what they mean substantively. This will take 1-2 pages. You should use the table editor in Word to make your own tables. Cutting and pasting from SPSS results in tables that are very hard to read and take up multiple pages.

Finally, you want to write a short conclusion where you talk about the implications of your research. This should be about ½ of a page long.

Normally, research papers are quite a bit longer than the one assigned in this class. However, for this class, we are going to focus on the essentials you need to become acquainted with the research process. As a result, we are skipping some sections of the research process (like the literature review). When you get to Senior Seminar later in your academic career, you will learn to put all of your skills together.

Degree of Difficulty: I want you to try harder statistical techniques in class. To provide an incentive, any paper that integrates regression techniques will be scored off of a 110% basis (your score starts at 100% and goes down when I take off points). A paper that uses chi square will be scored on a 100% basis. A paper uses some sort of difference of means test (see your syllabus and books) will be scored at a 90% paper. Your paper must use one of these three inferential techniques.

Please see the syllabus for information about due dates for some of the individual steps in the process, along with the final paper.