Final Research Report

This should be a highly polished document in the correct format with no spelling or grammatical errors.  It represents the culmination of your research.  Use active voice. 

The entire document is double-spaced (one column, no right justified).

The proposal is proofread with attention to the logic of your argument. The organization of the paper permits the reader to follow the argument.

The proposal is proofread and checked for clarity, spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Articles to which you refer are NOT quoted directly. No plagiarism.

Each sentence has content and specificity.

The paper is organized into the following sections:

Title:

Introduction- Describe what question(s)/hypotheses you are addressing and the rationale for addressing them.  Put your research in the context of prior research, citing relevant primary literature (at least 5 papers). Opening sentence should have specificity.  As an example of what NOT to do: “There is a great deal of literature on memory and learning in mammals.”

Materials & Methods – Describe how you attempted to answer the question(s) raised in introduction. Describe how you gathered your data and how you analyzed it.  Persuade the reader that your methods are appropriate for addressing your questions.  Diagrams may be appropriate (e.g. test arenas or maps of field sites).  Describe data analysis in terms of independent and dependent variables where appropriate.

Results- What happened? You must persuade the reader that your data analysis is appropriate and logical.  Quantitative and qualitative results are appropriate.  Include tables and graphs where appropriate with associated Figure Legends and Table Legends.  Be specific. For example: “As the mass of the animals increased the copulation time decreased.”  Not, “There was a relationship between mass of the animals and copulation time.”  Don’t say, the data are skewed; rather, describe the direction in which the data trend.

Discussion- What do the data mean? How do they relate to your original hypotheses? Support your arguments; describe other hypotheses that might be consistent with your results.  Which do you favor and why? Be specific. How do your conclusions relate to other relevant studies? Do next-be specific: not, “It would be interesting to study the relationship between mass and duration of courtship call,” but rather, “Given the results from my study, I would predict that the greater the mass of the toad, the longer the duration of its courtship call.”

Literature Cited - You should be citing relevant literature all through your paper; this section is an alphabetical listing of all of the papers and books you directly referred to in the body of your paper.  Be consistent in your referencing format (the papers should be cited within the text as Jones et al., 2015; but all names should be listed in the literature cited).

.