Student Success Research Project
The purpose of this project is for students to understand and demonstrate the rudimentary steps in the process of social science research. Our research will be focused on identifying and overcoming barriers to college student success. Students will select a topic that examines multiple perspectives on issues related to college student success; locate, analyze, and write a brief literature review summarizing research on that topic; and write a proposal for a research project in your area of interest. The project will proceed in three phases:
1: Select a Research Focus.
You will begin by selecting from one of the following broad topic areas. You can choose to focus on student success issues for a specific target population of students, or focus on student success issues in a particular discipline or major (e.g. student success in STEM disciplines), or, if none of these areas is appealing, you can select “other” and propose an alternative topic related to college student success.
● Student success and social class/socioeconomic status
● Student success and race/ethnicity
● First-generation student success
● “Nontraditional” student success
● Undocumented student success
● Veteran student success
● Discipline-specific student success issues
● Other (requires pre-approval)
A. Do some background reading to understand your topic.
B. Submit a one-paragraph topic proposal by October 22.
2: Research
Using the tools you learned in our Library Skills module, you will locate and summarize five peer-reviewed journal articles related to your topic.
A. Submit a list of five citations (formatted in APA style) by October 29
B. Submit five completed Article Summary Worksheets by November 19
C. Submit a draft of your research question and a description of your proposed methodology by November 24.
3: Paper
Your final product will be a ~5 page paper that includes a literature review, research question, and a description of a proposed research project that builds upon what you have learned in the literature. (This is only a proposal, you will not be doing any research.) Your finished paper should include the following sections:
1. Literature Review. Discuss what you already know about the issue. Here you will synthesize the material from your Article Summary Worksheets, summarizing them in your own words and explaining the major ideas or issues about your topic. Your literature review must incorporate all five of your scholarly sources (peer-reviewed articles). You may also incorporate non-scholarly sources from your background research, but this is not required.
2. Research Question. Provide a brief overview of the specific research question you want to answer in your proposed study. You should explain how your proposed research project builds on or extends the body of research you summarized in your literature review.
3. Project Description: Using what you learned from “Doing Research on Social Problems” (see especially Social Problems section 1.4), describe what type of study you would want to do. End by explaining what you hope this research will accomplish and what you believe it would contribute to our understanding of college student success.
Your paper should have a separate Works Cited page with citations formatted in APA style