Description
For your final two assignments, your task is to create an original research paper concerning the politics of the economic foreign policy of your choice. This research paper should pull together all the assignments from the semester. As such, it should
Include a description of the policy which identifies an interesting puzzle
Provide a brief literature review of important current theories, which culminates in an explanation for why more research is necessary
Offer a twist, update, or an explanation based on current theories
Identify hypotheses (predictions) that logically arise from the explanation
Propose a research strategy to test these observations, and
In the final version, display, describe, and analyze the evidence collected
Instructions
To get started, students should open up all prior assignments and decide what can be imported and what needs to be revised. This is not the time to start with a blank page. Instead, it is time to benefit from your prior work during the semester.
Each component above links back to prior assignments to create a scaffold for this first draft. Students should look at comments on those assignments and consider necessary adjustments. In particular, for the research strategy section, make sure to provide adequate detail about the concepts to be used, how they are defined, operationalized, and measured; the types of data to be gathered and where and how it can be obtained, and how the data will be analyzed. (See Research Proposal assignment for more detail.)
Students are encouraged to include in the draft a table or figure or chart that helps guide the reader. You must include such an illustration in the final research paper. The table or figure or chart:
Could serve to illustrate theory (esp. variation in outcomes)
Could serve to describe data (esp. variation in data)
Could present data (esp. relationship between two sets of data)
How much is “enough” evidence? Students should have gathered a sufficient variety of observations to show variation in the cause and outcome clearly. Evidence could be the details needed to develop contrasting case studies or a dataset of the last 6 Presidential administrations or coding of 50 randomly selected environment focused campaign ads from 2020.
As a general rule of thumb, the discussion of evidence (the method of collection, a summary, and analysis) should fill at least two pages of your research paper. The amount should be sufficient to convince a general audience.
Students should expect to spend a minimum of a day collecting necessary data and a second analyzing it and organizing it for display in the text. Students should summarize their data in the text and provide more detail in attachments (for example, a spreadsheet with coded data or the survey instrument could be attached separately or placed in an appendix.)
Note that the analysis and presentation must be original to the student. While it is acceptable to use initial materials collected by others (for example, Census data or PEW opinion data), the organization, presentation, and analysis must be done by the student. Using other’s analysis – even if referenced – does not constitute original research. Using other’s analysis without reference constitutes plagiarism.
The final paper should take the form of a 5 to 7 single-spaced (10-15 doubled spaced) page paper, not including the reference section and attachments such as survey instruments, coding data, or similar.
Use standard Chicago in-text citation (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.). If you need a refresher: see the “How To Cite” tutorial in the student resources module.
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