Posted: December 11th, 2022

FINAL PAPER GUIDE FOR SUMMER 2022 Dr. Hayes

For your Final Paper, please use the following subheadings. If everyone is using the same
basic template, this will help me provide feedback for the upcoming assignments including the
prospectus and the rough draft.
For the Prospectus, you can submit a rough outline or bullet points that specifically apply to your
topic under each subheading. You can use RR3 for the first heading and then roughly outline or
provide bullet points for the remaining sections.
1. Introduction and Statement of the Problem
● Explain the issue you are examining and why it is significant. (Most of you will be able to
use Reading Response 3 to help fill this in.
● Describe the general area to be studied, then focus on the specific problem you plan to
address
● Explain why this area is important to criminal justice research. Policy can also be
discussed, but first and foremost, this proposal is about adding to the body of scientific
research on this topic.
● DO NOT make the claim here that your general topic or specific problem has a lack of
research here. Especially since your next section is about reviewing previous literature
on your topic. Instead, explain what *your* approach is and why it adds to the existing
literature.
2. Background/Review of the Literature
● For this heading, discuss previous journal articles/research projects in this area, and why
each are important.
● There are two ways of organizing a literature review. You can go through each study in
its own paragraph(s) or you can organize the previous literature by subtopic, then
discuss studies that produce findings or study areas related to that subtopic. Either
approach is permissible.
● You need to summarize and critique past literature in this section. Tell me what they did
find, but also what their limitations were, and areas that they were not able to study.
● A literature review in itself is not a research proposal. You need to do more than this.
3. Rationale/Research Questions/Hypotheses
● Here you need to provide a description of the questions you are examining or
hypotheses you are testing. Discuss any theoretical models you plan to use here. Don’t
just name them, provide detail.
● Explain how your research questions or hypotheses are related to the statement of the
problem from your introduction.
● Remember, research questions are not the questions you propose for a survey. They
are general questions that your research will answer. They are, in a sense, your
hypothesis in question form. Often they discuss the who, what, when, where, why, how,
etc. of your project in some way.
● For example, if you propose an evaluation of a local drug court, one research question
might be “What are the demographics of local drug court participants?” or “Does
completion of the local drug court program improve recidivism rates for drug related
crimes?” These are likely not what you will be asking specific participants, but they may
be more general questions that your study aims to answer.
4. Method and Design
● How would you collect the data and why? How will you distribute a survey? What is
your sample? How will you recruit participants?, etc. Are there any participants that you
would exclude? Why? What is the participant required to do?
● One important tip: Not everything has to be mixed methods. Will a simple survey of
participants work? Will simply looking at a 3-year reconviction rate of participants work?
Will qualitative interviews alone give you the information you are looking for?
● What data do you plan to collect? You can talk here about what questions you plan to
ask people in a survey, or an interview, etc.
● What comparisons do you plan to make when examining the data? Do you plan to
compare outcomes by gender, race, age, etc.? What would your analysis of data look
like? What specific statistics might be used?
● Keep this part as simple and straightforward as possible. Do not aim to examine a
problem using the entire population of the United States. Select a sample that is
feasible.
● IMPORTANT: You are not required to collect data for this paper. Further, you are
not *allowed* to collect data for this paper. This means do not recruit subjects
and do not interview or survey anyone. If you have questions about this, please
email me and we will discuss it further.
5. Significance and Conclusion
● Discuss, in general, how your proposed research would lead to a significant
improvement over the original studies, and how it would benefit the field.
● Relate this back to your original problem from the beginning of the paper.
● In other words, why should someone care? If you were applying for money to do this,
why would someone fund you?
● If you wanted to publish your results, why would they be interesting?
6. References
● Include all references in APA style.
FINAL PAPER GUIDE FOR SUMMER 2022 Dr. Hayes
The research paper assignment for this class is split into several smaller assignments.
These assignments are described in detail below. You are required to choose a topic in
Module 2 by posting it in a discussion, and ideally stick with that topic as you move through
other stages.
Generally speaking, your goal is to choose a topic related to criminal justice policy and
provide a general overview. This should be a lengthy descriptive essay on a specific policy
or policy proposal that is ideally not covered by the module readings or your textbooks.
You must use APA format for this paper. If you do not have a current APA manual, I suggest
you acquire one, as they are relatively inexpensive. Most major booksellers (Amazon,
Barnes and Noble, etc) have it priced around $20 the last time I checked. Minus any
references, figures, tables, etc., your paper should be a minimum of 10 pages of text. I
would say no more than 15 pages of text if you were looking for a maximum. I tend to want
to move on to a new topic at that point.
A note on sources: Wikipedia is not allowed as a reference (this should not have to be said,
but I am saying it anyway). You can, however, use Wikipedia to find sources, since some
articles on Wikipedia have a list of source information from academic journals and other
acceptable sources at the bottom of the page. Websites that are used as sources generally
must end in .org, .gov, or .edu, and the content must be approved by me. There are some
good research and governmental reports online, but your primary sources should be
scholarly books and journal articles. Most nonfiction books and academic journals are
acceptable content and will not need approval. I will let you know if any sources do not
meet approval as long as you submit a list of sources with the earlier assignments. You are
allowed to use a reading or two from the course in your list of references, but the bulk of the
references need to come from outside sources.
The Prospectus: The Prospectus is a short plan for your paper and includes the following:
A title page, a summary OR outline, and an optional list of references (about 3-5
preliminary references for now). If, for example, you plan to write a paper on violence in
the South, you would tell me in your abstract that this is your topic and follow that up by
giving me the theory you plan to use to explain this phenomenon. You would also want to
tell me if you are going to focus on any particular time period. Are you going to be
discussing the present, pre- or post- Civil War, the Civil Rights Era, etc. (following the
example of violence in the South)? There is no minimum word count for the prospectus,
but it should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 to 2 pages of text, plus the title page
and references. The file for the prospectus should include a title page with your name
and a preliminary title in a standard format, followed by the summary, and optional
references (so, around 4 pages total). The prospectus is due at the end of Module 4
The Rough Draft: The Rough Draft of your paper needs to be a 60-70% complete
version of your paper. You should have your sources finalized at this point, even if you do
not cite them all in your paper. I want to see a list of at least 10 sources. A maximum of 2
can be web pages (as long as they are approved by me). Sources can be journal articles
(peer reviewed), books, reports from government agencies, web pages (2 max.) and other
content with my approval. The file for the outline should include the title page, the text
of the rough draft, and the reference page in that order (all in one file). The rough
draft is due at the end of Module 6.
The Final Paper: This should be the complete product, revised to reflect any changes I
suggest in the final draft. The final paper must meet the guidelines set in the syllabus with
regards to word count and follow all guidelines in the syllabus, on the research paper guide,
and for all previous paper assignments. The final paper needs to have a title page, an
abstract, the text, and a reference page, all in one file. The final paper is due at the
end of Module 8
It is not appropriate to submit a paper used in another class for this assignment. If
you plan to use the same topic you have used for another class paper, this version
must be substantially different from the one used in the other class, and you must
inform me that you are using a topic from a prior assignment, and tell me the
Professor / Instructor to contact regarding the previous assignment. The policies
regarding Academic Dishonesty and Plagiarism apply to this assignment.
POSSIBLE TOPIC AREAS: Here is a list of general topical areas derived from past papers I
have graded in this area. This may be helpful in developing a topic for your paper. If this is
not particularly helpful, feel free to email me. You are not required to choose from this list.
For Police and Society: For Rural Crime and Justice
Agencies use of social media
Policing and Technology
Intelligence Led Policing
Crime mapping to improve patrol strategies
Police – Community Relations
Community Based Policing
Militarization of Police
Rural homicide
Domestic Violence in Rural Areas
Meth Production and Clandestine Labs
Agricultural Theft and Rural Crime
Poaching and Illegal Hunting in Rural Areas
Rural policing strategies for small agencies
Migrant communities and crime in rural areas
Rural culture and crime

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