2 page research paper sample
Faster and secure way to pay. Are you staring at the blank page on your screen and have no idea how to approach your challenging research paper? If you are not sure where to start, read this article to learn about effective strategies that make this process as painless as possible. Sometimes college students are assigned with their research paper topics , but if you are fortunate enough to have such an option, choose your topic wisely. First of all, think about choosing a challenging topic you are interested in. If your topic is too broad, your research paper is unlikely to be successful because it will look like a general overview.
Research Paper Example
This paper should be used only as an example of a research paper write-up. Horizontal rules signify the top and bottom edges of pages. For sample references which are not included with this paper, you should consult the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 4th Edition. This paper is provided only to give you an idea of what a research paper might look like. You are not allowed to copy any of the text of this paper in writing your own report.
Note especially that there are three formatting rules you will see in this sample paper which you should NOT follow. First, except for the title page, the running header should appear in the upper right corner of every page with the page number below it.
Second, paragraphs and text should be double spaced and the start of each paragraph should be indented. Third, horizontal lines are used to indicate a mandatory page break and should not be used in your paper.
This paper describes the psychosocial effects of a program of supported employment SE for persons with severe mental illness. The SE program involves extended individualized supported employment for clients through a Mobile Job Support Worker MJSW who maintains contact with the client after job placement and supports the client in a variety of ways.
The resulting cases were randomly assigned to either the SE condition treatment group or the usual protocol control group which consisted of life skills training and employment in an in-house sheltered workshop setting.
Significant treatment effects were found on all four measures, but they were in the opposite direction from what was hypothesized. Instead of functioning better and having more self esteem, persons in SE had lower functioning levels and lower self esteem. The most likely explanation is that people who work in low-paying service jobs in real world settings generally do not like them and experience significant job stress, whether they have severe mental illness or not. The implications for theory in psychosocial rehabilitation are considered.
Over the past quarter century a shift has occurred from traditional institution-based models of care for persons with severe mental illness SMI to more individualized community-based treatments.
A central issue is the ability of a person to hold a regular full-time job for a sustained period of time. There have been several attempts to develop novel and radical models for program interventions designed to assist persons with SMI to sustain full-time employment while living in the community. The most promising of these have emerged from the tradition of psychiatric rehabilitation with its emphases on individual consumer goal setting, skills training, job preparation and employment support Cook, Jonikas and Solomon, These are relatively new and field evaluations are rare or have only recently been initiated Cook and Razzano, ; Cook, Most of the early attempts to evaluate such programs have naturally focused almost exclusively on employment outcomes.
However, theory suggests that sustained employment and living in the community may have important therapeutic benefits in addition to the obvious economic ones. To date, there have been no formal studies of the effects of psychiatric rehabilitation programs on key illness-related outcomes.
To address this issue, this study seeks to examine the effects of a new program of supported employment on psychosocial outcomes for persons with SMI.
Over the past several decades, the theory of vocational rehabilitation has experienced two major stages of evolution. Original models of vocational rehabilitation were based on the idea of sheltered workshop employment. Clients were paid a piece rate and worked only with other individuals who were disabled. Controlled studies of sheltered workshop performance of persons with mental illness suggested only minimal success Griffiths, and other research indicated that persons with mental illness earned lower wages, presented more behavior problems, and showed poorer workshop attendance than workers with other disabilities Whitehead, ; Ciardiello, In the s, a new model of services called Supported Employment SE was proposed as less expensive and more normalizing for persons undergoing rehabilitation Wehman, The SE model emphasizes first locating a job in an integrated setting for minimum wage or above, and then placing the person on the job and providing the training and support services needed to remain employed Wehman, One of the more notable SE programs was developed at Thresholds, the site for the present study, which created a new staff position called the mobile job support worker MJSW and removed the common six month time limit for many placements.
Time limits for many placements were removed so that clients could stay on as permanent employees if they and their employers wished. There are two key psychosocial outcome constructs of interest in this study. The first is the overall psychological functioning of the person with SMI.
This would include the specification of severity of cognitive and affective symptomotology as well as the overall level of psychological functioning. The second is the level of self-reported self esteem of the person. This was measured both generally and with specific reference to employment. The population of interest for this study is all adults with SMI residing in the U.
The population that is accessible to this study consists of all persons who were clients of the Thresholds Agency in Chicago, Illinois between the dates of March 1, and February 28, who met the following criteria: 1 a history of severe mental illness e. The sampling frame was obtained from records of the agency. Because of the large number of clients who pass through the agency each year e.
This resulted in a sample size of persons over the two-year course of the study. In terms of illness history, the members in the sample averaged 4 prior psychiatric hospitalizations and spent a lifetime average of 9 months as patients in psychiatric hospitals.
Participants had spent an average of almost two and one-half years 29 months at the longest job they ever held. While the study sample cannot be considered representative of the original population of interest, generalizability was not a primary goal — the major purpose of this study was to determine whether a specific SE program could work in an accessible context.
Any effects of SE evident in this study can be generalized to urban psychiatric agencies that are similar to Thresholds, have a similar clientele, and implement a similar program.
All but one of the measures used in this study are well-known instruments in the research literature on psychosocial functioning. All of the instruments were administered as part of a structured interview that an evaluation social worker had with study participants at regular intervals.
Two measures of psychological functioning were used. The Global Assessment Scale GAS Endicott et al, is a single 1-to rating on a scale where each ten-point increment has a detailed description of functioning higher scores indicate better functioning. Two measures of self esteem were used. The total score is simply the sum across the ten items, with five of the items being reversals.
The final ten items were selected from a pool of 97 original candidate items, based upon high item-total score correlations and a judgment of face validity by a panel of three psychologists. This instrument was deliberately kept simple — a shorter response scale and no reversal items — because of the difficulties associated with measuring a population with SMI. The entire instrument is provided in Appendix A. All four of the measures evidenced strong reliability and validity.
Test-retest reliabilities were nearly as high, ranging from. Convergent validity was evidenced by the correlations within construct. For the two psychological functioning scales the correlation was. Discriminant validity was examined by looking at the cross-construct correlations which ranged from.
A pretest-posttest two-group randomized experimental design was used in this study. In notational form, the design can be depicted as:. The comparison group received the standard Thresholds protocol which emphasized in-house training in life skills and employment in an in-house sheltered workshop. All participants were measured at intake pretest and at three months after intake posttest. This type of randomized experimental design is generally strong in internal validity. It rules out threats of history, maturation, testing, instrumentation, mortality and selection interactions.
Its primary weaknesses are in the potential for treatment-related mortality i. Because these rates are low and are approximately equal in each group, it is not plausible that there is differential mortality. Staff were debriefed at several points throughout the study and were explicitly asked about such issues.
There were no reports of any apparent negative feelings from the participants in this regard. Nor is it plausible that staff might have equalized conditions between the two groups.
Staff were given extensive training and were monitored throughout the course of the study. Overall, this study can be considered strong with respect to internal validity. For those selected, the purpose of the study was explained, including the nature of the two treatments, and the need for and use of random assignment.
Participants were assured confidentiality and were given an opportunity to decline to participate in the study. Only 7 people out of refused to participate. In addition, all study participants were given the four measures at intake. All participants spent the initial two weeks in the program in training and orientation. This consisted of life skill training e.
At the end of that period, each participant was assigned to a job site — at the agency sheltered workshop for those in the control condition, and to an outside employer if in the Supported Employment group.
Control participants were expected to work full-time at the sheltered workshop for a three-month period, at which point they were posttested and given an opportunity to obtain outside employment either Supported Employment or not. The Supported Employment participants were each assigned a case worker — called a Mobile Job Support Worker MJSW — who met with the person at the job site two times per week for an hour each time.
The MJSW could provide any support or assistance deemed necessary to help the person cope with job stress, including counseling or working beside the person for short periods of time. In addition, the MJSW was always accessible by cellular telephone, and could be called by the participant or the employer at any time. At the end of three months, each participant was post-tested and given the option of staying with their current job with or without Supported Employment or moving to the sheltered workshop.
There were participants in the final sample for this study, in each treatment. There were 9 drop-outs from the control group and 13 from the treatment group, leaving a total of and in each group respectively from whom both pretest and posttest were obtained. Due to unexpected difficulties in coping with job stress, 19 Supported Employment participants had to be transferred into the sheltered workshop prior to the posttest.
In all 19 cases, no one was transferred prior to week 6 of employment, and 15 were transferred after week 8. In all analyses, these cases were included with the Supported Employment group intent-to-treat analysis yielding treatment effect estimates that are likely to be conservative.
It is immediately apparent that in all four cases the null hypothesis has to be accepted — contrary to expectations, Supported Employment cases did significantly worse on all four outcomes than did control participants.
The mean gains, standard deviations, sample sizes and t-values t-test for differences in average gain are shown for the four outcome measures in Table 1. The results in the table confirm the impressions in the figures. Note that all t-values are negative except for the BPRS where high scores indicate greater severity of illness.
The results of this study were clearly contrary to initial expectations. The alternative hypothesis suggested that SE participants would show improved psychological functioning and self esteem after three months of employment. Exactly the reverse happened — SE participants showed significantly worse psychological functioning and self esteem. There are two major possible explanations for this outcome pattern.
The abstract starts on the next page, page 2. The text starts at the top, left flushed, double-spaced. Abstract [Abstract here]. Body Text. Full title, authors, and school name are centered on the page, typed in uppercase and lowercase. Page 2. The abstract summarizes the problem.
Outlining your first draft by listing each paragraph's topic sentence can be an easy way to ensure that each of your paragraphs is serving a specific purpose in your paper. You may find opportunities to combine or eliminate potential paragraphs when outlining—first drafts often contain repetitive ideas or sections that stall, rather than advance, the paper's central argument. Additionally, if you are having trouble revising a paper, making an outline of each paragraph and its topic sentence after you have written your paper can be an effective way of identifying a paper's strengths and weaknesses. The following outline is for a page paper discussing the link between educational attainment and health.
With all the things you have going on as a student, writing a paper can seem like a daunting task.
In high school, you probably wrote a lot of personal essays where your goal was to demonstrate you were engaged and a lot of info-dump paragraphs where your goal was to demonstrate you could remember and organize information your teacher told you to learn. The assignment description your professor has already given you is your best source for understanding your specific writing task, but in general, a college research paper asks you to use evidence to defend some non-obvious, nuanced point about a complex topic.
Sample Papers in MLA Style
The average length of your school essay is around two pages. It usually contains words. Hence, not too much space left for creative thought in 2 page essay examples you may find. It is essential to be able to express your thoughts comprehensively and coherently. Sounds intimidating?
Writing a Paper: Outlining
This paper should be used only as an example of a research paper write-up. Horizontal rules signify the top and bottom edges of pages. For sample references which are not included with this paper, you should consult the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 4th Edition. This paper is provided only to give you an idea of what a research paper might look like. You are not allowed to copy any of the text of this paper in writing your own report. Note especially that there are three formatting rules you will see in this sample paper which you should NOT follow. First, except for the title page, the running header should appear in the upper right corner of every page with the page number below it. Second, paragraphs and text should be double spaced and the start of each paragraph should be indented. Third, horizontal lines are used to indicate a mandatory page break and should not be used in your paper.
A research paper is any kind of academic writing based on original research which features analysis and interpretation from the author — and it can be a bit overwhelming to begin with!
It includes some key parts of the paper such as the Abstract , Introduction , Discussion and References :. Text center-aligned and placed at the middle of the page, stating the title of the paper, name of author and affiliation. By [Author], University of the Philippines. The abstract starts on the next page, page 2.
How to Write a Research Paper
If your instructor has specific requirements for the format of your research paper, check them before preparing your final draft. When you submit your paper, be sure to keep a secure copy. Except for the running head see below , leave margins of one inch at the top and bottom and on both sides of the text. Always choose an easily readable typeface Times New Roman is just one example in which the regular type style contrasts clearly with the italic, and set it to a standard size, such as 12 points. Do not justify the lines of text at the right margin; turn off any automatic hyphenation feature in your writing program. Double-space the entire research paper, including quotations, notes, and the list of works cited. Indent the first line of a paragraph half an inch from the left margin. Leave one space after a period or other concluding punctuation mark, unless your instructor prefers two spaces. Months may be spelled out or abbreviated. On a new, double-spaced line, center the title fig.
2 Page Essay Writing Guide with Example
What is a research paper? Writing a research paper can be a little intimidating at times. Students, especially those new to the rigors of academia, often feel anxious about the process especially that the paper often gets assigned a big chunk of the final grade by a conscientious professor. This article provides a detailed guide on how to navigate the challenge of writing a reliable research paper. It talks about recommended steps to be followed and elements to be covered in the paper. It offers tips on selecting a good topic and gathering the right information which can set research up for success. Finally, this article provides some guidelines on citation as well as on how to use free online tools, which can help deliver a sharp and clear final copy. Get Help with Paper.
