Report Formats

There are a variety of different report formats that can be used to present the findings of a FG. These range from a verbal presentation in a meeting, to a top-line report (a condensed two- to three-page summary of main findings) through to a detailed report with every minor finding from the FG presented and analyzed. Your assignment is to write a five-page paper on the results of just the 10 minutes or so of focus group you moderated in the format outlined below. Do not write up results for the 10-minute focus groups moderated by the other students in your group. The grade you receive on this paper is not determined by how well or poorly you moderated your 10 minutes of the focus group. If you write less than 4.5 pages, you are not making use of the space available to you and will be deducted points. If you write more than 5.5 pages, you are writing too much and you will be deducted points. Your paper is therefore expected to be between 4.5 and 5.5 pages in length. This page count does not include the title page, reference page, or any appendix. Note: the expectation is you write a paper in a research methods style. This means in the same style as the typical paper you have been reading in the readings for each week so far in the course. This means using citations to support claims, statements, facts, or opinions you present. When you write the paper do not write anywhere about the ‘assignment’ or ‘course/class’. Although you are writing this paper because of the course, you should not mention this in the paper. Also, do not use the prompts listed below as questions/sub-headings in your paper. For example, don’t write ‘Justify why you selected this issue’ in the paper and then answer this question. You answer this question in the course of writing your page 1, just as the articles in the readings you read answer this question without specifically writing ‘justify why you selected this issue.’ You should stay close to the page specifications below, but it is okay if a section is a few (two to three) lines shorter or longer than stated. In some cases, your method may be much shorter than the specified length in which case add additional text elsewhere in the paper to compensate. Do not make up statistics or information. The paper should be written in APA style. (Remember, this means double-spaced!) In this paper and other papers in the course, you should avoid personal stories about your personal experiences. An abstract is not needed for this paper or any papers in the course. You should not cite course materials (this includes live sessions). Page 1: Intro Present a general surface level description of the issue the paper’s content will examine (references). Explain why understanding this case is important (references). Justify why you selected this issue (references). What specific question(s) are you trying to answer? Page 2: Method Use this method template (Word), also found in the Instructional Materials for this week, to format this section. For the method section, and method section only, you need not worry about plagiarism. Method sections are supposed to be very formulaic and all follow the same structure and very similar text. As you read more FG studies, you will start to realize this. For some FGs you instructed your fellow students to role play a character (e.g., a teenage female). In this scenario, your method section describes who your fellow students pretended to be (e.g., teenage females), not who they actually are in real life. You should include a copy of your moderator guide in the appendix of your paper. The moderator guide you include reflects the questions you asked in the FG it is ok if additional questions you intended to ask but did not ask are listed. The appendix does not need to be in APA style. The appendix does not count toward the page count of this paper or other papers in the course. The appendix is the last thing in the paper and goes after the reference page. Pages 3–4: Findings Write a detailed analysis of the findings from your FG. Page 5: Discussion Explain what your data means. Offer some tentative explanations as to why you think you found the data you did. Provide some suggested practical implications from your results. List two things you recognize as being wrong with your focus group and identify how you would resolve these problems if you were to repeat the focus group.