Expectancy Violation Theory and Drinking Habits of College Students

1. State of the art literature review: This paper should review, in depth and in detail, the literature relevant to a relatively specific topic within family and health communication. Part of the lit review should involve defining concepts in question and other important variables. Beyond the definitions, the primary task is to describe what we know (and what we do not know) about the topic you have chosen. Moreover, your review of the literature should lead to a specific prediction (or predictions) or question (or set of questions) that you feel are important as directions for future research. Your task is to clearly demonstrate your mastery of this particular area of scholarship (think in terms of a handbook chapter).

2. Research proposal: If you choose to write a research proposal, you will be writing a literature review and predictions that are providing the context for a proposed study. In this proposal you will be using literature to make an argument for your predictions. You will also need to provide several hypotheses and/ or research questions. Finally, you will need to provide a brief methods section. If you are doing qualitative you need to explain how you would collect your data, what questions you would ask, and how you would analyze your data. If you are doing a quantitative study you need to discuss what participant population you would recruit, how you might recruit them, how many you might need, and what scales you would use. Basically, at the end of this assignment you should have a document that is prepared for an IRB submission.