Your Capstone project report will consist of a written document with a minimum of 30 pages including supporting materials (reference list, maps, appendices, graphs, etc.). It should reflect primary research. Your paper will be appropriately titled, double-spaced, have numbered pages, and have one-inch margins all around, and will use a conventional 12 pt. font. Your paper should be concise, well-written, and free of grammatical and syntactical errors. Your writing should be directed to a professional audience, but not necessarily specialists in your subfield.
Each capstone paper must have the following sections:
Abstract: An approximately 250-word synthesis and summary of your
Introduction: Clearly and concisely introduce your research question(s). Tell us what motivated you to do this research, and what the significance of this research could be.
Research Context: Locate your project in research that has already been done in your area. This is called “locating your research in the literature” and is the same as a literature review. This means positioning your work in existing research that is not necessarily directly related to your topic. So, if you were interested in voting patterns, your literature review could compare how geographers analyze this topic compared to political scientists, and your literature review would reflect this. You must analyze and cite at least 20 refereed sources in this section.
Data and Methods: Explain and justify the appropriate methods you will adopt to answer your research questions. This includes the manner in which you will select, gather, and interpret suitable data. Provide a rationale and/or theoretical basis for choosing your method(s).
This will require at least 3-5 methodical references separate from the refereed materials you included in the research context section above.
Results: Present your results in this section. As much as possible, this will consist mainly of cartographic and/or graphed and/or table formats. Present data and map it out here.
Discussion: Discuss, critically analyze, and interpret your results. Tell what you found out. Compare your findings to related studies in the literature.
Conclusion: Tell what you did, why and how you did it, and what you found out. Remind us why this is significant, and what it contributes to your major field. Please also discuss limitations you have identified in your research and methods, and also suggest how you might proceed if you were to continue this project in the future.
Supporting materials: Provide a bibliographic reference list, using a standard American Psychological Association (APA) formatting. This means the works actually cited by your study. Acknowledgements are also appropriate here, or on the title page. Many of your maps and tables, etc. might be best located in an appendix; these could go here.
