Due Date: Tuesday, 10/31 in class
Assignment:
This paper will be somewhat more in-depth
than Paper #1, and a bit longer as well (though I can't really give you
number of pages it will be-- plan on 1 or 2 more pages than Paper #1).
You were in on the planning of the study, so you should have more to
talk about when you set up your hypotheses and then discuss your results.
Your paper should include the following sections (note that the hints beneath
each section are just that, hints; they do not comprise an all-inclusive
list of what to include in each section):
Title Page
* You must have page #s and a shortened header on the upper right of
each page.
Abstract
* A one-paragraph summary of your paper (150 words or less) should
be the first page after the title page. This should be the only paragraph
on p. 2, and you should label it "Abstract" (see APA manual and Stangor
appendix for details).
Introduction
* You must cite Gaertner & Dovidio's article from the coursepack
(the full reference is provided on the coursepackís first page), which
you can use to introduce/discuss research on racial attitudes and aversive/modern
racism.
* You must cite Gordon's article from the coursepack. One way
to do this would be to mention how previous researchers have considered
how race and racial attitudes are related to perceptions of the legal system.
Your paper then deals with two specific legal opinions.
* No outside readings besides the coursepack are required.
* You must present two hypotheses, each involving the correlation between
one legal opinion and the racism score.
* You must explain why you are making each prediction by using the
coursepack readings, your 380 knowledge, or just common sense. But
make your reasoning explicit-- your hypotheses should not seem to appear
out of thin air.
Method
* Using the demographic information from the questionnaire, you should
describe the racial and gender breakdown of our participants, as well as
the range and mean of their ages.
* Describe the entire questionnaire (e.g., "the questionnaire consisted
of 12 legal opinion questions followed by..."), but provide the exact wording
only for the two legal attitude questions related to your hypotheses.
* The six racial questions are from the Modern Racism scale (McConahay,
1986). Full reference: McConahay, J.B. (1986). Modern racism,
ambivalence, and the modern racism scale. In J. Dovidio, & S.
Gaertner [Ed.], Prejudice, discrimination, and racism. (pp. 91-125).
Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
* Any decisions we made about the order/wording the questionnaire can
be explained here if you deem them relevant. You can also bring this
up again in the discussion if you have reason to (future directions/weaknesses).
Results
* Go through your two hypotheses one at a time; were they supported?
* You have two different correlations to report
* Means and SD for the two legal opinion questions and the Modern Racism
scale belong in Table 1
Discussion
* This should be much more sophisticated than in Paper #2.
* What were the findings?
* If they supported the hypotheses, what are their real-world implications?
* If they didn't support the hypotheses, why not? Did the study
have weaknesses and/or was the hypothesis flawed?
* You might very well find that one hypothesis is supported and the
other isn't. Thatís fine. Address them one at a time, and be
specific in your analyses and speculations.
References & Table 1
General Note
* It is not unusual to write a paper with more than one hypothesis.
Your two predictions will be related somehow, seeing as both relate a legal
opinion to racism, and this is why they are included in the same study.
So you can have one introduction that leads to both of them by focusing
on the general issue of legal opinions and racial attitudes. Then
you will address them separately in the method, results, and discussion,
though you can also end up with broad observations about the legal system
and racism.
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