Title Page

Self-explanatory. Include your name, my name, the course (PAD 6833), the university, the semester and a title. Even “Research Paper- First Draft” is a good title. This does not count of one of the 10 pages lol

Abstract

Give me a one-paragraph summary of your research and your preliminary findings. [It’s the first thing in the paper but probably the last thing you write]

Here is the abstract from my capstone paper:

Charter schools are theorized to have fundamentally different labor conditions for teachers
compared to public schools, specifically in regards to teacher turnover and attrition. Turnover in public
schools is theorized to have negative effects upon student achievement, while turnover in charter
schools is theorized to have positive effects on student achievement, due to the vastly different labor
conditions present in these organizations. The purpose of this paper is to answer the question, “Does
teacher turnover have a positive effect upon student achievement in charter school organizations?” .
Statistical comparison of charter school organizations and public school districts in Texas for the 2012-
2013 school year reveals that, contrary to findings predicted by this theory, teacher turnover has either
no effect on some measurements of student achievement (such as standardized test pass rates) or has
profoundly negative effects upon other measures of student achievement (specifically, graduation
rates), even when numerous variables that routinely affect student achievement and organizational
competence are accounted for. This paper concludes by noting that there are likely other, overlooked
variables in determining student outcomes and suggests further research in this topic, along with more
research into potential ways to reduce teacher turnover and develop career educators.

This might be a bit longer than needed, but you get the idea. Try to devote at least one sentence to each of the following ideas:

  1. What is this paper about? What question are you attempting to answer? research question, hello!!
  2. Why is this important?
  3. What is the general thrust of what the literature says about the question?
  4. What data and (briefly) methods did you use to answer the question?
  5. What are (briefly) the preliminary results of your methods?

These can all be one or two sentences each.

Introduction

Here you can expand on #1 from the abstract above: What is this paper about? What question are you attempting to answer?

Now instead of doing this in one or two sentences, give me a page or two. This may seem challenging but try this: assume that I don’t know anything about your topic beyond what a regular adult might know. If your topic is, say, car crashes, you don’t need to explain what a car crash is. However, it might be a good idea to include things like:

  1. What is the major problem or concern about this topic? (“Car crashes continue to be responsible for thousands of fatalities…”)
  2. Why is this important? (“Understanding car crashes may lead to reduced fatalities…”). Expand on #2 from the abstract.
  3. What research question/hypothesis do you have about this problem or concern? (“Do lower speed limits reduce car crash fatalities?”)
  4. What is a brief overview of the research on this subject? (“The scholarship on this topic suggests that number of fatalities is not connected to speed limits…”). This is an expansion of #3 from above.
  5. What do you expect to be the outcome of your test? Why? (“I believe that lower speed limits WILL reduce car crash fatalities”)
  6. Does your hypothesis agree or conflict with the other scholarship? How does your research direction relate to the current scholarship?

Literature Review

You probably want to write this first [lit review, methods, conclusion, introduction, abstract is Erik’s preferred order]

Here you will continue to expand on #3 from the Abstract. Your literature review should be a bit more fleshed-out now than when you turned in the initial literature review.

  1. Expand your initial five sources to at least ten
  2. What do other scholars say about this topic, and how does it relate to your research
  3. DO NOT: just reprint your annotated bibliography. Expand on it in full paragraphs that flow from one to another.
  4. What are the general findings of each scholar? How do they relate to your research question? Be specific.

can also discuss the specific variables they use in their research and how that influenced your own research

Methods

Here you will detail the data and statistical methods you have undertaken to answer your research question and prove/disprove your hypothesis.this is what he pays the most attention to

  1. Describe your dataset. Where is it from? What does the data represent? Explain it to me like I’ve never seen it before.
  2. Describe the dependent variable. What does it represent? How many observations are there?
  3. Describe the independent variables. What do they represent? Again, explain it to me like I’m unfamiliar with it. [also include what type of variable it is numeric, percentage, categorical, binary]
  4. Describe your statistical method (it’s probably linear regression). Describe the formula for your method.
  5. Does your data and your model meet the assumptions for linear regression? If not, how did you mitigate the violation of those assumptions? – Describe the statistical tests you performed to check the assumptions. You don’t have to write or include the actual numbers. Just mention if the data or model passes the assumptions, and why. (“The variable Car Crash is not linearly related to weather, therefore I applied a logorithmic transformation to car crash…”, etc.) if you want to use a linear model even if it doesn’t meet the assumptions and run with it for now– interpret it as if it’s true. try and explain what you have. One option is to run a LM and then a GM and then interpret the results that way You don’t need to include the p-values or plots– you can just say if it met the assumptions or not
  6. Describe any cleaning or other procedures used to make the data ready to analyze.

Results (brief)

  1. provide some descriptive statistics for your dependent and independent variables.[min/max/mean/median/range/standard deviation]
  2. provide the results for your statistical method.
  3. interpret the results in your own words.
  4. do the results seem to support – or refute – your hypothesis?
  5. how would you answer your research question with these results?

Bibliography

APA Style

Other notes

Title page and citations do not count towards word count

include link to Rpubs/Rmarkdown with work shown in paper

really really try not to copy and paste information from your literature review you previously turned in

Methods- cleaning procedures in methods includes removing NA values, moving columns around. You’re basically taking someone through your r-markdown through words

Stargazer is great for descriptive statistics

Stargazer


``` r
library(stargazer)
## Warning: package 'stargazer' was built under R version 4.5.2
## 
## Please cite as:
##  Hlavac, Marek (2022). stargazer: Well-Formatted Regression and Summary Statistics Tables.
##  R package version 5.2.3. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=stargazer
library(tidyverse)
## ── Attaching core tidyverse packages ──────────────────────── tidyverse 2.0.0 ──
## ✔ dplyr     1.1.4     ✔ readr     2.1.5
## ✔ forcats   1.0.0     ✔ stringr   1.5.1
## ✔ ggplot2   3.5.2     ✔ tibble    3.3.0
## ✔ lubridate 1.9.4     ✔ tidyr     1.3.1
## ✔ purrr     1.1.0
## ── Conflicts ────────────────────────────────────────── tidyverse_conflicts() ──
## ✖ dplyr::filter() masks stats::filter()
## ✖ dplyr::lag()    masks stats::lag()
## ℹ Use the conflicted package (<http://conflicted.r-lib.org/>) to force all conflicts to become errors
library(ggplot2)

thecars <- mtcars
table(thecars$mpg, thecars$am)
##       
##        0 1
##   10.4 2 0
##   13.3 1 0
##   14.3 1 0
##   14.7 1 0
##   15   0 1
##   15.2 2 0
##   15.5 1 0
##   15.8 0 1
##   16.4 1 0
##   17.3 1 0
##   17.8 1 0
##   18.1 1 0
##   18.7 1 0
##   19.2 2 0
##   19.7 0 1
##   21   0 2
##   21.4 1 1
##   21.5 1 0
##   22.8 1 1
##   24.4 1 0
##   26   0 1
##   27.3 0 1
##   30.4 0 2
##   32.4 0 1
##   33.9 0 1

Ew! That’s not great to look at.

#note the change in the code at the top

model1 <- lm(mpg~hp, data=thecars)
stargazer(model1, type="html")
Dependent variable:
mpg
hp -0.068***
(0.010)
Constant 30.099***
(1.634)
Observations 32
R2 0.602
Adjusted R2 0.589
Residual Std. Error 3.863 (df = 30)
F Statistic 45.460*** (df = 1; 30)
Note: p<0.1; p<0.05; p<0.01 
#you can also use type= "text" to have it print correctly in R markdown 
stargazer(thecars,type="text")

============================================ Statistic N Mean St. Dev. Min Max
——————————————– mpg 32 20.091 6.027 10.400 33.900 cyl 32 6.188 1.786 4 8
disp 32 230.722 123.939 71.100 472.000 hp 32 146.688 68.563 52 335
drat 32 3.597 0.535 2.760 4.930 wt 32 3.217 0.978 1.513 5.424 qsec 32 17.849 1.787 14.500 22.900 vs 32 0.438 0.504 0 1
am 32 0.406 0.499 0 1
gear 32 3.688 0.738 3 5
carb 32 2.812 1.615 1 8
——————————————–

Statistic N Mean St. Dev. Min Max

mpg 32 20.091 6.027 10.400 33.900 cyl 32 6.188 1.786 4 8
disp 32 230.722 123.939 71.100 472.000 hp 32 146.688 68.563 52 335
drat 32 3.597 0.535 2.760 4.930 wt 32 3.217 0.978 1.513 5.424 qsec 32 17.849 1.787 14.500 22.900 vs 32 0.438 0.504 0 1
am 32 0.406 0.499 0 1
gear 32 3.688 0.738 3 5
carb 32 2.812 1.615 1 8
——————————————–

CITATIONS

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Style and grammar guidelines. American Psychological Association. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines (Accessed Nov. 11, 2024)

Pan, S. C. (n.d.). Research Paper Structure. University of California - San Diego. https://psychology.ucsd.edu/undergraduate-program/undergraduate-resources/academic-writing-resources/writing-research-papers/research-paper-structure.html (Accessed Nov. 11, 2024) ```