The Cover Page:
This is a single page that includes your project's title and the names of the people who worked on it.

The Introduction:
Your introduction should have at least four paragraphs. The first should provide a description of your question, to what factors you think your dependent variable might be related, and why you think that. Your second paragraph should describe your first hypothesis. Your third paragraph should describe your second hypothesis; and your fourth paragraph should describe your third hypothesis. If you have more than three hypotheses, you should have a paragraph in your introduction for each one. You could complete your introduction with a summary paragraph, but it is not strictly necessary.

Your introduction should take between .75 and 1.75 pages.

The Methods Section:
The methods section of a paper generally informs the reader of the scientific procedure employed by the study and the methods employed in the study. You should describe the make up of the study group. Under the methods section, you should specify the kind of observational procedure used. You should also specify any special rules used to handle the data, the kind of statistics you used, and the statistics program you used. The essence of this section is informing the reader what was done, who the subjects were, and how it was done.

Here are the specifics. The first few paragraphs of everyone's methods section should look alike. The first paragraph should tell me 1) who your subjects were, 2) when did you collect your data, 3) how did you collect your data. If you have time, calculate the average age of your respondents and provide a breakdown of the ethnicities and/or religious affiliations.

The next section of your methods describes your operationalization (only attempt to say that word while sober) of your variables. In your introduction you described your latent variables (e.g., what you were trying to measures). Here you describe your manifest variables or what you actually measured. You should describe in this section what your dependent and independent variables attempt to measure.

For example, one variable I might have used was access to resources. The survey used five questions that attempted to measure income. Access to resources is my latent variable; my manifest variable includes the five ways I measured income. I may have created my own measure of, say, self confidence. In this section I want to describe how I created that measure. In some cases, this is more straight forward. If I was looking at sex differences, my latent variable (sex) is the same as my manifest variable (sex), and I made no changes to the sex variable. In this case, a simple sentence saying that no changes were made provides sufficient information.

The last section of the methods involves your statistical methods. At the beginning of the first paragraph you should tell me what statistics program you used. You should proceed to include a paragraph for each analysis you did that describes the statistics used. This paragraph should include not only what statistics you used, but what data you excluded and why. If you used five analyses, you should tell me what test each analysis used and you should tell me what data you excluded.

Your methods section should take between 1 and 3 pages.

The Results Section:
Your results section should include only one written paragraph and a series of forms. The paragraph may consist of one sentence. In it, I want you to tell me how many of each form you used. An example sentence: "I used two forms for ordinal and nominal variables, two forms for interval variables, and four analyses forms." I describe the forms below.

You have three forms available to you:
1) The Form for Ordinal and Nominal Variables: For each ordinal or nominal variable you used in an analysis, you will fill out a form. For the "response variable name", please include the survey question number as well as the name. If you derived your variable, please give all of the relevant survey question numbers in addition to the name. The number of observations will vary according to the data you excluded. In the "description" blank, please provide a brief description of the variable. If applicable, describe how you derived it. Each one requires that you make a histogram and a profile in Jump-In.

In the blank for "description of anomalies", describe any outliers that you may or may not have excluded. Is there anything else weird about the data?

In the blank for "scaling" provide a description of what a low value is and what a high is. For example, if your variable is "how often do you use a condom", 1 may indicate never and 4 may indicate always; a 5 is not applicable. The value in this case is the propensity to use a condom. In the meaning blank in this example, include complete sentences similar to: A low value indicates that the respondent never uses a condom and a high value indicates that the respondent always uses a condom. The average value for this variable is 2.1 indicating that on average, people tend to avoid using condoms.

2) The Form for Interval Variables: For each interval variable you used in an analysis, you will fill out a form. Note that some forms are labels "Continuous"; this is the same as "Interval". For the "response variable name", please include the survey question number as well as the name. If you derived your variable, please give all of the relevant survey question numbers in addition to the name. The number of observations will vary according to the data you excluded. In the "description" blank, please provide a brief description of the variable. If applicable, describe how you derived it. Each one requires that you create a histogram and a boxplot in Jump-In.

Provide the mean, median, minimum and maximum. Also include the standard deviations. These values should not include 99999's. Skewness refers to how the normal distribution leans. For instance, does the curve have a long tail to the left? What does that indicate?

In the blank for "scaling" provide a description of what a low value is and what a high is. For example, if your variable is "number of sexual partners", 0 may indicate none and high values may indicate many. One or two people may have reported hundreds. The value in this case is the number of sexual partners people have had in their lifetime. In the meaning blank in this example, include complete sentences similar to: A low value indicates that the respondent has had few sexual partners and a high value indicates that the respondent has had many. The average value for this variable is 2.1 indicating that on average, people in this sample tend to have had about 2 partners in their life so far.

Imagine how you would do this if you created a variable such as number of sexual partners per year. Creating this variable would involve dividing the reported number of partners by age.

3) The Analysis Form: For each analysis you executed, you will fill out a form. The predictor variable is your x (independent); the response is your y (dependent). As on the other forms, provide the name, type and description of the variable. Adjustment refers to what you excluded or otherwise changed. If you changes the 2's to 3's and the 3's to 2's, for example, you should mention that here.

For the section called "Kind of Comparison", please print out your graph. (A contingency table is the mosaic plot). Circle the graph type you provide.

Under "Qualitative Evaluation" describe in your own words what the graph means. What does your y variable do as your x variable increases? What does that mean? If you want to type out a paragraph and tape it into the space, that is fine with me.

Under "Problems", provide any source of bias that you can imagine. For instance, one group suspects that respondents might have misinterpreted their question. They should describe possible misinterpretations and discuss what that means for their analysis. Other problems might be that only three people answered the question, no males answered the question, etc.

When you fill out the forms, make sure that the handwriting is neat and the spelling is correct. If you want to type something up on the computer and tape it into the space, please do so.

The Conclusion Section:
The conclusion section is a concise summing up of the report. Here you present the conclusions drawn from the results of the earlier section. Your formal hypotheses must be evaluated here. The essence of the conclusion is that it winds everything up; it does not leave loose ends hanging without resolution, and it serves to summarize the findings of the project. It may also provide the space where new questions arising from the results may be presented and new hypotheses generated.