Do Campaigns Matter?
Overview
We have been building all semester to take on our final project
Do Campaigns Matter? You will be, in teams, trying to answer
a question which is ongoing in political science: do the
activities of politicians leading up to elections have a
measurable, and important, impact on vote choice? Despite
years of research political scientists have not yet been able to
identify positively a campaign impact on voter choice. Your
goal will be to undertake this question answering it with
quantitative data from one specific state. The purpose is to
prepare you to write in the scholarly discourse.
POS 2041
Final Capstone Project
articles that don’t meet the minimum technical requirements
don’t get read.
Assignment Requirements
All papers must contain the following items:
Introductory literature review
Testable hypothesis(es)
Systematic methodology
Discussion of results
Discussion of limitations
Conclusion
Audience and Genre
Technical Requirements
This project is not primarily aimed at your QUANTA professors.
Instead this is a scholarly article intended for publication and
must conform to those conventions. These projects will be sent
to the Florida Honor’s Conference. As a result, your team is
writing for a multidisciplinary audience. Your audience is
scholarly, but may or may not be completely familiar with your
subject matter. This means it will be necessary for you to pay
careful attention not only to the content, but to the
requirements for a successful submission. In the real world,
Font: Calabria, Helvetica, Times New Roman
Size: 11 - 12 pt
Spacing: 1 1/2 Spaced
Length: 10 - 15 pages
Citation Style: APA, in-text citations, no footnotes.
Margins: 1 inch all sides
Submission: to the dropbox in PDF format
Your article must have all of the following elements and meet
testable hypotheses. Use a systematic methodology to assess
all the technical requirements in order to receive a grade
the validity of those hypotheses. Convey the meaning of the
higher than a ‘C’
methodological findings and appropriately explain how that
data was derived. Discuss the implications of the findings.
Evaluation Criteria
“A” Papers
Conduct an extensive literature review on the topic of
campaigns. Pose testable, meaningful, and useful hypotheses.
Accurately use appropriate methodologies to assess the validity
of those hypotheses. Concisely convey in scholarly english the
meaning of the methodological findings and appropriately
explain how that data was derived. Discuss the implications of
all findings, indicating where the study has limitations, and
point to possible future research.
“D” Papers
Conduct a literature review on the topic of campaigns. Pose
hypotheses. Use a methodology to assess those hypotheses.
Convey the meaning of the methodological findings and
explain how that data was derived. Discuss the findings.
“F” Papers
Do not meet the above.
Grading Rubric
Criteria
Points
“B” Papers
Literature review
10
Conduct a literature review on the topic of campaigns. Pose
Hypotheses
30
testable, meaningful and useful hypotheses. Use a systematic
Methodology
30
methodology to assess the validity of those hypotheses.
Findings
15
Convey in scholarly english the meaning of the methodological
Implications / Limitations
10
findings and appropriately explain how that data was derived.
Conclusion
Discuss the implications of the findings.
“C” Papers
Reminder: articles which do not meet all the technical
Conduct a literature review on the topic of campaigns. Pose
requirements can receive no more than 75 points.
5