SOSS3001

General Instructions: You will write a research report based on any related dataset available
online or generated by you. You must include your rationale for the research, research aim/s
and hypotheses, a brief literature review, methodology, data analysis (tables and figures),
interpretation of results, discussion and conclusion. The write-up of the findings and the
discussion should constitute the bulk of the final report.
Based on your research question(s), you are required to present descriptive statistics and
conduct, present, and interpret at least three techniques for hypotheses testing such as: 1) chi-
squared test/crosstabs; 2) t-test; 3) ANOVA; 4) correlation; and 5) regression.
Your report should consist of 2,500 to 3,000 words (no 10% leeway) excluding the references,
tables, figures, and appendices (you must include your SPSS output in the appendix).
Suggested Outline
Your research report should include the headings and sub-headings in the list below—feel free
to use additional headings that are specific to your report for better organisation and readability.
General instructions and an approximate word count for each section are also provided below:
1. Title (not included in word count). Your title should reflect your aim. Be creative—don’t call
it SOSS3001 Research Project. Include your name, student number, and word count on the
title page.
2. Abstract: ~150 words. Include a structured abstract with the following four headings at the
beginning of your paper. Write this last; it will be easier to summarize your report when you
are finished a full draft. a. Aim b. Methodology c. Results d. Conclusion
3. Brief Literature Review: ~400 words. Provide a brief summary of background information
and summarise previous research findings on your topic (use references). Define any key
concepts. Your literature review should provide a clear and logical rationale for your
hypotheses. The hypotheses may be novel or may be conceptual replications of past research.
4. Aims and Hypotheses: ~100 words. Include an overall aim of your paper and your specific
paired hypotheses. You must include the null hypothesis and the research hypothesis for each
statistical test. You can present this as a list or as a table.
5. Method: ~400 to 500 words
a. Dataset description: Introduce the dataset and why you choose to use this dataset.
b. Sample: Report demographics and size of the sample.
c. Measures: What are the independent and dependent variables? Are they categorical or
continuous? How were the variables measured? Did you recode your continuous
variables into categories, and if so, how was this done? You could use a table for this.
b. Statistical analyses: Identify and describe which statistical tests you will be using for
each hypothesis and why it is the appropriate test for these variables. State the
statistical software package you used (e.g., SPSS 26).
6. Results: ~500 to 600 words. Present the findings of your analyses. What was statistically
significant and what was not? Did you reject or retain the null/research hypothesis? What
was the effect size or the strength of the association? Refer to your tables/figures. Do NOT
redundantly report statistics in both text and tables.
a. Descriptive statistics: Include at least one table with your descriptive statistics (e.g.,
%, frequencies, mean, SD, min-max) for ALL of the variables used in your analyses.
Provide the correct measures of central tendency and dispersion for your variables.
For ALL of your continuous variables discuss whether they are normally distributed
and how you checked for normality. Make sure to provide the graphs showing the
distribution (e.g., a histogram with normal curve or a Q-Q plot) in the appendix and
refer to these.
b. Chi-squared test/crosstabs: Include a table with the findings from chi-squared
test/crosstabs and describe the findings. Was the association statistically significant?
Which group(s) were higher/lower? What was the strength/effect size of the
association?
c. T-test: Include a table with the findings from your t-test and describe the findings. Was
the difference statistically significant?
d. ANOVA: Include a table with the findings from the ANOVA and describe the findings.
Were there statistically significant differences between the means you are comparing?
What were the results of the post-hoc test (i.e., which groups had means that were
significantly higher/lower than other groups)? What was the effect size?
e. Correlation: Include a table with the findings from your correlation and describe the
findings. Was the relationship statistically significant? What was the direction of the
relationship? What was the strength of the association (effect size)?
f. Regression: Include a table with the findings from the regression and describe the
findings. Was the relationship statistically significant? What were the coefficients of
the predictor variable(s)? What was the strength of the association (effect size)?
7. Discussion and Conclusion: ~700 to 800 words. Interpret your findings. Do not simply
repeat the information from the results section. Instead, you must explain the meanings and
implications of your results. Start by discussing whether or not your research hypotheses
were supported by the analyses. Refer to the past literature: How did your findings compare
to what has already been found? Do your results converge with the past literature? Do they
show something new? This section should relate to the ideas introduced in your literature
review and perhaps include additional literature that relates to your specific findings. Include
a paragraph on the limitations of your study (generalizability, data, sample, variables,
analyses, or other)? What are the conclusions or any policy recommendations you would
make based on your findings? Propose future research that should be conducted to further
understand the topic, based on the results you found.
8. References (not included in word count).
9. Tables and Figures (not included in word count). These formatted tables and figures should
be integrated into the text of your results section. Place them near the paragraph(s) that refer
to the results that are found in the table. You can include some figures if you want to (e.g.,
bar chart for the descriptives). For the tables and figures that you present in the main text,
DO NOT copy and paste the outputs from SPSS; make your own tables in Word.
10. Appendix (not included in word count). All of your SPSS output should be pasted into
Word in an appendix. You must include your histograms with normal curves or Q-Q plots
for your continuous variables.