For our term research paper, you will have to find, read, understand, summarize, and synthesized at least 6 peer-reviewed articles–paraphrasing complex ideas and findings. This is skill that takes researchers many years to master (knowing what to include or trim out when paraphrasing). Students who have never worked with scholarly journal articles typically struggle on this part of the paper more than students who have higher levels of exposure to research.

This assignment is designed to prepare you for the research paper by giving you an opportunity to read and summarize an empirical study.

Read the article attached to this assignment and paraphrase the author’s rationale, the study’s methodology, their findings/conclusions, and limitations. Include your own analysis of the paper as well but ground it in the empirical work/work from the course and with appropriate scientific nuance. Make the majority of your paraphrasing the study, not your opinions.

Avoid getting too into the weeds about the methods (e.g. machine learning predicting names). Stick to what you understand. Primarily use the information you need to paraphrase given your level of scholarship at this moment in your career. Try to keep in the mind your term paper’s max page limit (6 pages) when paraphrasing this Lauderdale study.

Use APA formatting. Do not say "the study" (say the author, researchers, or Lauderdale [year]) or things like proved (say suggest, strongly suggest, indicate, provide overwhelming evidence, support, compellingly demonstrate, etc.). Use proper in text APA citations– Lauderdale (2006) argued/investigated/whatever.

Because this is a paraphrasing practice exercise, there are no peer replies this week.

Don’t worry about any other type of APA formatting or reading the statistical analysis (feel free to do if you enjoy statistics), Keep the same discussion format we always use for our discussion prompts—this assignment will be (un)graded like it’s a discussion post. Do not make it more than a page.