Query + Analysis: An Undergraduate Research Journal

Any currently enrolled Bellevue College students or alums within one year after their last course ended are welcome to submit

Students will fill out the form below to submit their paper to Q+A. The submission components (see below) must be attached at the time of submission. A panel of reviewers, including one from the discipline(s) of the project, will review the submission. Reviewers can accept the paper as-is for publication, suggest edits (starting the revise and resubmit process (R&R)), or reject the paper. For the R&R process, the Editor will summarize these suggestions and send them to the student to address. The student will resubmit the final draft via email to the Editor. Once enough submissions have been approved, the issue will be designed and published online.

1. A completed research paper
2. An appendix that includes any consent forms or IRB approval
3. A signed letter of recommendation/support from a current BC professor indicating 1) they have overseen this project as your instructor or given you direct guidance on this project and 2) would recommend it for publication
4. An unofficial transcript
5. A statement indicating that the submission was written by you without any writing assistance from a generative-AI platform outside of reviewing your grammar and spelling or checking for alignment with the rubric

The inaugural issue of Q+A will be published in the Spring, with annual or biannual issues depending on the volume of submissions. Submissions will be accepted on a rolling basis.

While some papers may be submitted as-is after receiving a grade from your professor, most papers should be checked for alignment with the rubric below as well as formatting guidelines. Papers missing required sections or improperly formatted will be rejected before the review stage begins. Before you submit, please ensure your paper addresses all the areas of the rubric (note: the rubric below may differ from what your professor used so you may need to add or remove sections) as well as meeting the section and formatting requirements.

The overall length of the papers should be between 6-18 pages; reference page(s) as well as tables or figures do not count toward that limit. Papers should be written in 12 pt Arial font with 1.5 line spacing and 1-inch margins all around.

Each paper should have the following sections:

1. Title and Author(s)
2. Abstract (250 words max; need help writing an abstract?)
3. Keywords (4-6 keywords that describe key aspects of your paper, written in lowercase other than proper nouns, separated by a comma)
4. Introduction
   • Present the problem or questions being investigated
   • Present scholarship that currently exists on this or similar topics including any theoretical or practical implications (the majority should be from scholarly sources). Cite at least five previous fundamental studies (from five unique citations)
   • Provide a clear and concise hypothesis or thesis statement
5. Methods (tell us what you did and how you did it)
   • Study design: what materials or sources of data were used (if human subjects, see below) and how were they prepared? What kind of qualitative or quantitative measures did you use? If you adapted one from another source, make sure you attribute that source in your citations. Were any manipulations or controls/conditions used in your study?
     • For research with human subjects: include details on participants – data collection methods and dates, participant demographics, sample size, etc. – as well as any Institutional Review Board (IRB)-related information around informed consent, ethics, anonymity and confidentiality, etc. as well as IRB approval
   • Data collection: what variables were you studying and how did you capture that in your study? How were your results analyzed?
6. Results
   • Present your findings without interpretation or analysis in regard to your hypothesis
     • For quantitative data: discuss any descriptive statistics, tests conducted
     • For qualitative data: discuss themes that appear within the data
   • Note any issues with the parameters of the study that may impact the study’s validity (ex: a variable was operationalized differently within the sample than expected)
   • These results should be in line with what you have learned thus far in your college career – high-level statistical analyses or extremely large sample sizes, for example, are not expected nor accepted
7. Discussion
   • State whether the data supports your original hypothesis or not
   • Discuss the similarities and differences between your results and the results of the studies you discussed in the introduction/literature review
   • Interpret your results: what do your results mean in terms of your research question?
   • Limitations: where could your study have improved? Were there aspects of bias or threats to validity and reliability? Could there be improvements to your sample size or sampling technique, the source of data or materials?
   • Implications: thinking beyond your study, what could a follow-up study ask? How could your findings impact policy or programs?
8. References (in APA format) (need help with citations?)
   • Any outside source used for this paper should have both an in-text citation where applicable (short form) as well as a corresponding line in the reference list (full citation); sources not used should not be referenced in either manner
   • References should be positioned flush with the left margin (not centered) with a hanging indent for each citation

Section heading notes: Section headers 3, 5, 6, and 7 should be bolded and positioned flush with the left margin, with the first letter of each word capitalized. The References section header (8) should be centered. There is no need for a section header for sections 1, 2, and 4.

Grammar and style: the paper should be free of errors. Work on writing clear and concise sentences. Avoid being too wordy.

Tables and figures: any tables or figures need to be properly titled, numbered, and descriptively captioned. Axes and/or legends should be clearly labeled. Please limit to one table/figure for each 8 pages of your paper.