Essay Instructions: The topic of this paper will be usage of electric/hybrid cars vs. gas powered (combustion engine) by society. The EV1 released by GM in 1996 can be used as an example of an electric car which was short lived. There was a movie released in summer of 2006 titled "Who Killed the Electric Car?" that details the rise and fall of the EV1. The following are guidlines that should be met when writing this paper:
Each point is a heading. You may have sub-headings if you want, especially if they could help in organizing your paper.
1. Start with purpose and overview of proposed research: Explain why you are interested in the research. Does the existing issue or problem affect any group of people? How is the research going to be useful to society, the country, the world, etc?
2. Literature Review: This is perhaps one of the most important and deeply-discussed section of your paper. What have previous scholars and researchers done in this subject? What are their theories? If there are opposing views, include them in. Your research may be supporting one side or taking both sides and coming up with something new from it. This section of the paper will illustrate the depth of your knowledge of on the research topic. You must also be aware of plagiarism. You need to cite any quotations and ideas that came from someone else. Example: John Gall warns that systems are like babies. Create a system and it sticks around. Worse yet, Gall notes, systems keep growing larger and larger [footnote/endnote or citation e.g. (Gall, 1975:12)].
3. Research design: In this section, you need to explain, in an organized way, what your research would look like. If it is quantitative or qualitative, deductive or inductive. What would its hypothesis be? Are you going to conduct a survey, participant observation, content analysis, etc.? Conceptualization -you need to specify meanings, definitions, terms, and most importantly, the variables of your research. All these need to be addressed so as to tie up any lose ends in your proposal, which would make it look incomplete and eventually reflect uncertainty on your part regarding your propose research. In this section, it would be good if you divide it into further sub-headings.
4. Also, how would you measure your variables - operationalizing your variables? Even if your proposed research is a qualitative type research, you still need to identify both the independent and dependent variables. In inductive-type research, you may need to identify the possible independent variables (whatever your literature review leads you to). If you are to conduct a survey or interview, please include some (if not all) of the survey questions asked and also an interview schedule. Explain why you would construct such questions – what are you measuring, and how does it help attain the research goals? In comparative-historical research, you need to identify the variables through your literature review, and explain how you are going to measure them using either first hand data or secondary data, or bot. A further extension of the literature review is necessary in this section if you’re doing this type research (comparative historical), especially if there have been similar-type researches done in the past.
5. Data analysis – how would you go about analyzing your data? Knowledge of basic statistics is essential here for measuring survey results. If it is qualitative, how would you analyze your observations and/or qualitative data?
6. Summary. In this section, you will need to address any potential weaknesses in your research. Also, if your research requires huge financial and human resources, where so you think you will need to seek aid for your research. Tie this back in with why would the research valuable to the ‘funders’ or to society in general. This helps with the justification of the research.
Only extensive reading on research methods as well as on your topic of interest can make your paper a quality scientific paper.
Please use a standardized reference system. You may use any – Harvard,, ASA, MLA etc, just be consistent. Internet references should have web page address. I would personally like to see more book reference than internets. NO WIKIPEDIA! Wikipedia can be used to find information, but such info should be backed by more reliable sources.
There are faxes for this order.