10.4 Final Paper
Your final paper should be formatted carefully based on the guidelines described in the “Draft Paper” section. Papers that do not follow the formatting criteria will not be graded, just as papers submitted to a journal without regard for their formatting standards will receive a “desk rejection” and will not be sent out for review.
At the final submission stage, papers should include as a minimum:
- A cover page (again, see the “Draft Paper” section for details),
- an abstract not exceeding 100 words,
- a body that includes:
- Introduction
- Background
- Data and Methods
- Results
- Discussion (with Limitations subsection)
- Conclusion
- a works cited section,
- expository end-notes,
- tables,
- and figures.
All numbered sections (and each table and figure) should begin on their own page. The Background, Data and Methods, and other paper sections should not begin on their own page.
As I noted under “Draft Paper”, the Data and Methods section should contain greater detail than a typical journal article manuscript. Please be sure to reference and cite all packages that you use, and to describe extensively the process you followed cleaning and analyzing your data. Be sure to dedicate space in this section to describing the distribution of your dependent variable, and to describe what types of model fit and assumption checks were conducted.
Additionally, the Results section should report the results of all bivariate tests as well as your regression models. Finally, the limitations section should also provide a description of any issues identified in the model assumption checks phase of data analysis.