Introduction

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How to Write the First Section of your Research Paper
 

Your introduction should state the problem you are going to address. It will likely pose the research question as well. This is sometimes referred to as identifying a gap in the disciplinary knowledge. Briefly discuss what the discipline (your audience) already knows about the subject. Background information such as summaries of current practices within the field, histories, and/or theories that help your reader “get up to speed” on the problem should go here.

Briefly explain how you will fill this gap in the knowledge. State the principle results of the study and the principle conclusions. What did you do to get to this conclusion? The rest of the paper will discuss your findings and add to the information. Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Does your clearly identify the problem or state the research question and its answer?
2. Does it tell your reader why you will be discussing it?
3. Do you establish why your audience should listen to you?

Background Literature

This is an expanded discussion of what the discipline (your audience) already knows. This may include more developed discussions of definitions, histories, and/or theories. It may also make connections between similar research and display any contradictions that you found. It establishes for your reader that you understand the topic and that your contribution is valuable. The object of this portion of the paper is to explain the research thoroughly enough to allow your audience to understand the material without having to do any additional reading.

 

Stereotype Effect on Gender Performance

Stereotype Effect on Gender Performance Stereotyping can affect a person’s performances negatively. People are directly and indirectly influenced by the norms people and culture dictates towards them. We usually hear “women are not as good as men at sports,” “women are not as good as men in science or math” that might justify why we don’t see rates of women on those fields as highas in men. Researchers have claimed on their studies that the influence of a negative stereotype about a person’s group lead them to perform more poorly than they could do without the effect of stereotype (Steele and Aronson 1995). For example, in a recent meta-analysis of stereotype threat effects among the same age group we investigate, Flore and Wicherts (2015) report evidence of a small effect of stereotype threat undermining female adolescents’ math performance in the published literature (d = −.22). Based on these findings a hypothesis was developed to find out if whether the influence of stereotype on a person’s mind before the beginning of a task, will impact the scores for the task. We hypothesized that Stereotype produce a negative effect on the scores of the task (low scores), Stereotype boost will produce positive effect on the scores of the task (high scores) and No stereotype will not show either positive nor negative effect on the mental rotational tasks.