Paper Guidelines:

Paper should generally have the look/feel of one of our "thicker" assignments in terms of assessing and summarizing the assumptions and the statistical techniques you applied.  Also include all output (or most output), syntax, and annotate your output.

It should also have a typical APA research paper flow...Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion, References.  APA format generally should be followed, but minor 'misses' on formatting are okay. If you are using secondary data, do not plagiarize, but check the APA manual on how to appropriately summarize secondary data methods.  If you collected the data yourself, provide typical Procedures section, etc.

Make sure you cover the following:

1 - overview of the substantive issue you are exploring (i.e. - the topic area)...if you are investigating Romantic Jealousy using factor analysis, the substantive area is Romantic Jealousy, so you need to write a few pages at least on the topic including references.

2 - introduction/summary of the statistical technique you are applying to solve or evaluate the problem/issue from #1

3 - decisions you had to make in the analysis

4 - how things could go wrong (probs with the data, caveats, etc.), maybe
some diagnostics

5 - assumptions

6 - application of the technique, and interpretation

7 - Discussion of the Results as they pertain to your substantive area.

In essence, you are writing a research article that is applying or investigating some substantive issue.

Q: How long should be paper be?

A: Expect at least 10-20+ written pages (excluding Tables/References/Statistical OUTPUT).  What will end up being turned in will be a packet that is inclusive of everything, including your annotated output, and syntax.  With tables, references/stat output, its possible your packet could be 40+ pages.