Following this link to a research abstract that can help you shape your introductions for Paper 1. 

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797611429709

Please carefully see how the authors propose their problem of interest clearly and to the point. Note. The last sentence of this abstract describes the study’s findings. Because this paper assignment is the first step of the paper project and thus you describe your topic only, you do not need to report any results in your own paper yet.    

Other recommendations for Part 1

Short Research Paper Part 1 Guidelines

            This is the first step of the main assignment for this class. Students will work on this paper individually but feel free to ask for the instructor’s help in any aspect as many times as needed. 

            The requirement is that you choose a topic related to communication in relationships (i.e., topics about interpersonal communication) that you would like to study in depth and describe it (1-1 ½ double-spaced pages, Times New Roman with 1” margin all around). As for the style of writing, please write from the third person point of view (e.g., The goal of this paper is to examine…) rather than from the first person point of view (e.g., I want to study…). 

You are expected to provide a description of your topic which should include the followings; 

Introduction (5 points) 

            Begin your paper with an introductory paragraph that explains about the topic. Be specific when you describe what you are going to study. To do so, try to contextualize the phenomenon of your interest. For example, rather than saying you aim to examine “long-distance relationships,” you may elaborate this phenomenon with more details including who, what, why, and how; “how providing social support to children with divorced parents influence the children’s psychological well-being?” Feel free to use some examples to describe your topic. Most importantly, propose a question of interest in the introduction (e.g., will using social media improve offline romantic relationship?).

Importance of studying the topic (10 points) 

            Explain why studying this topic is important in individual, relational, and social levels. Can information about this topic be applied to help people become better communicators? Can studying this topic contribute to understanding human communication behaviors in various relational and social contexts? You will find that, in every peer-reviewed article, researchers deliberately analyze practical and theoretical importance of their study. In developing your arguments, try to position yourself an academic scholar and make some good rationale behind why studying the topic is important. 

Please upload word document of this assignment to “Short Research Paper Part 1” under “Assignments”. You DO NOT need to hand in a hard copy of this assignment.  

Important notes on this assignment

Following this link to a research abstract that can help you shape your introductions for Paper 1. 

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797611429709

Please carefully see how the authors propose their problem of interest clearly and to the point. Note. The last sentence of this abstract describes the study’s findings. Because this paper assignment is the first step of the paper project and thus you describe your topic only, you do not need to report any results in your own paper yet.    

Other recommendations for Part 1

While you are not required to cite research when writing this paper, you should realize that a certain amount of reading and research would be necessary and helpful for clearly describing your topic. Therefore, I recommend you spend some time to read one or two scholarly articles (or abstracts of scholarly articles) and try to build your research idea based on findings of these articles. 

Without doing some research about previous findings; 

1. You will not be able to determine the right words/phrases for describing the topic. Sometimes we think of our topics using words we use in everyday life but those are not the same words that scholars have used to write about the topic. So the first level of research you need to do is to make sure that your terminology matches with what is used in the literature. If you find articles that resonate with your interest, you know you are using the right words. 

2. You will not be able to determine whether your topic is too broad or too narrow. If you read a couple of research papers you will get clues on how to narrow it down. For instance, when you study parent-child relationship, you might find that scholars differentiate between step families and intact families (where there has been no divorce/death). You might then want to narrow your topic down to one type of family. 

NOTE. Your grade on this paper will depend on the quality of thinking you put into it and not on whether I like your topic or not.