Since I am a Psychology major I was only used to writing manuscripts tailored towards research in Psychology. Taking this class has expanded my writing abilities to include social research. The only part of the process of looking for articles and writing a paper was including quantitative and qualitative analyses. I learned a lot while writing these two sections of my final paper. The Results and Discussion sections of a psychology geared paper are similar to the previous mentioned analyses. Because of this similarity I was able to successfully write these two sections.

When searching for articles to use in my paper, I used key words revolving around parental involvement and factors that can influence the involvement. I chose the five articles used in my paper because they were scholarly, peer-reviewed articles that included the necessary information to help me form my hypothesis. I needed articles about Head Start, parental involvement and socioeconomic status, and parental involvement and race/ethnicity. The only challenge I found when researching articles was the year of publication. This was not a major issue because I was able to find other articles that fit what I needed. I also had to use different phrases of key words in order to find these specific articles.

I am not a fan of conducting research and writing manuscripts based on my research. After this class, I found myself interested in the results of the study more than the studies I have conducted in the past. As I was writing the final paper, I found myself enjoying writing the last few sections. I was surprised at this because that has never happened before. To me “Think Like a Researcher” means to look at information not in the eyes of a regular person, but in the eyes of someone who is finding a change. Social research is necessary to create ways that will change society.