Term Paper
The purpose of this paper is to display your new knowledge of advanced statistics within the context of your own research interests. Think about this paper as the beginning on some major graduate project -- your MA thesis or your Ph.D. Qualifying Paper. (Each of these is expected before the end of your second year in residence so why not start now.)
I would like you to provide me with a paragraph identifying the research question you wish to address or hypothesis you wish to test by February 5th.
Data collection should begin quickly, especially if you intend to collect new data or integrate data sets from multiple sources. Final data sets should be available for preliminary analysis by February 26th. You may choose to analyze or reanalyze data collected by other political scientists. The Institute for Behavioral Science at CU maintains many data sets distributed by the national data archives of the Institute for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan. Other data sets are available via ftp transfer from Michigan or directly from the original investigators. Lists of IBS data archives are available in the Data Lab. ICPSR can be reached via the internet link on the "Resources" page for this course.
The paper is due April 29th and should be ready to be presented to the class on that date. (Powerpoint slide shows are commonly expected.) Each paper should be approximately 20-25 pages in length. It should be checked for spelling and grammatical errors before you turn it in! Please present professional quality tables and figures with your work. They may be integrated within the text or placed at the back of the paper with reader guides (e.g., [Insert Table 1 Here]) placed in the text.
No plastic covers or fancy binders are necessary. Please submit a diskette containing your data (adequately labelled so your analysis can be reproduced) and a copy of your paper for my records.
Not all results need to go into the paper. Some preliminary or secondary
analyses may be attached as an appendix. References to these results should be
clearly noted both in the text of the paper and in the appendix.
Sample Papers: