Abortion In Young Women

Instructions for the Abstract, Method, Results, and Discussion sections:

Method
The Method section should include a description of how you plan to carry out your research.
– Since your Method section needs to include a description of your respondents and how your data were collected, you may use the following narrative in the Method section of your research paper. This paragraph explains procedural how you obtained the GSS data. Please include information about the specific questions/variables that you used in your study. Feel free to use this paragraph and edit the information as it pertains to your research variables.

“Data were drawn from the General Social Surveys (GSS) (Smith, T. W., Marsden, P., Hout, M., and Kim, J. 2013) questionnaire collected from 1972 to 2014. The GSS collects data on demographic characteristics and attitudes on United States residents. It is conducted in face-to-face interviews by personnel from the National Opinion Research Center; the survey takes about 90 minutes. Participants are randomly-selected adults over the age of 18. Survey data was collected every year from 1972-1994 (except in 1979, 1981 and 1992). Since 1994 it has been collected every other year. As of 2014 there are 30 national samples with 59,599 respondents.
GSS data were archived at the University of Berkeley [University of Berkeley. (2014). SDA – GSS 1972-2014 cumulative datafile. Retrieved from http://sda.berkeley.edu/sdaweb/analysis/?dataset=gss14 (Links to an external site.) ]. Variable coding and quick table statistical analysis were available at the University of Berkeley SDA (Survey Documentation and Analysis) website, which is made available for students and researchers for any variety of opinion research projects based upon the GSS data. The specific question asked of respondents was “. . . .”
– In the Method section you will describe the respondents themselves (the quantitative statistics that you select will provide you with that information, depending on what you select, e.g., gender, race, age, political affiliation); your sample size will be very large (in the thousands). Get this information from the tables (as described above).
– You should describe the questions that you are using from the data sets, as well as the question response categories (e.g., “the respondents replied yes or no;” or “the levels of education were measured this way…”).
– In order to report how many participants you will have in your study (e.g., when you combine your two variables, you won’t have the same amount of people who were in the original GSS study, as not everyone answered every question in the GSS study), you can “click” your two variables into the statistics tables at the GSS site and run them (put your dependent variable in the row, and your independent variable in the column). If your dependent variable is about “gender,” then you can describe your participants in terms of “gender,” as well (etc.). A description of participants is always required in APA journals. Some students with better statistical ability can run demographic crosstabs such as SEX, AGE or EDUC with their study variables in order to further describe their participants for the Method section; this is not a requirement.

Results
In the Results section of the paper, describe your analyses. Explain your statistical findings, and whether they support your hypothesis.

– In your Results section you will describe how the respondents answered the question that you selected (e.g. “Seventy-five percent of Democrats supported gun control, but only 45% of Republicans supported gun control”). Report the Chi-Square (LR) or other statistical outcomes and probability level for each test that you ran and whether your hypothesis(es) was accepted or rejected based upon the statistics that you ran at the site. Here is an example of how you would report your statistic: “The hypothesis that Democrats would be more likely than Republicans to support gun control was supported (χ2 = 3.81, p < .01)." - Familiarize yourself with the statistical software that is available at the site. There are hot-links at the site that explain what statistics will be run, based upon the level of measurement of the question that you have selected (e.g., nominal, interval). Most of the GSS questions are written at a nominal or ordinal level of measurement, hence most students will use Chi Square to test the statistical significance of their hypothesis. The Chi Square results and its probability level are automatically included in the statistical printout at the GSS site, if your variable/questions were both written at a nominal level of measurement. - Please be sure to include your statistical results in a format that is APA acceptable such as (χ2 = 3.26, p < .001). - Please review the screen shots with instructions for interpreting a GSS output table:How to Read a GSS Output Table.pdfPreview the document . - Please review the instructions on writing up your GSS analysis:Writing up Your GSS Chi Square Table Output-1.pdfPreview the document - Do NOT explain your findings – just describe the analyses. Discussion In the Discussion section, you will discuss the significance of your results. - Begin this section by summarizing your original purpose and expectations of the study, and then state whether the results were consistent with your expectations. - If your results supported your original ideas, you can discuss how your findings contribute to knowledge of the problem you investigated. - If you did not obtain the expected results, you can discuss possible explanations. - Also include possible limitations or possible criticisms of your study. - Be sure to provide suggestions for other researchers who might want to replicate your study. How can those other researchers improve upon your research design? - In a final paragraph discuss future directions for your research and how it might help society, practically, providing closure to your paper. Abstract Write your Abstract last (even though it will appear before your introduction in your paper), as a brief summary of your paper. - While APA guidelines allow between 150-250 words, please try to keep your abstract below 150 words, as your study will not be very complex (and only certain journals allow up to 250 words). You can check the number of words in your word processor's "tool" function. - The abstract should start on page 2 of your report. - The word "Abstract" is centered at the top of the page, and is not bolded. - The first line of the abstract should be even with the left margin (no indent; block style). - Abstracts usually include information from each of the four main sections of the article. Please check on page 26-27 of the APA manual for the specific information that should be included in an abstract for an empirical report. Note: many researchers who use GSS data report in their abstract that "data from the General Social Survey was used." This explains a lot about their data collection and methods. - Your abstract should be written at the completion of the paper.