The write-up about the results of my exploratory survey will appear in an upcoming issue of Composition Forum.

In the meantime, I thought I’d provide a snapshot of some of the results here, fyi.

Among the population of respondents to this survey: 90% require first year writing/composition (FYW/C); 73% require a research paper assignment in FYW/C.

Typical research assignments in FYW/C: 6% traditional research paper assignment; 94% alternative research assignment.

April 20, 2009 is the last day to submit your completed Exploratory Survey on the Status of the Research Paper Assignment in First Year Writing/Composition Courses.

So if you are interested in participating in this project, please send your survey as an email attachment to hoodc@stockton.edu. If you are interested in participating but have misplaced the survey, I am happy to send you another. Please just contact me, and I will send you the survey document asap.

I will begin sending out the Exploratory Survey on the Status of the Research Paper Assignment in First Year Writing/Composition Courses to Writing Program Administrators' email addresses this week. I will send both the cover letter, which contains confidentiality and informed consent statements, and the survey electronically, as email attachments.

However, if you prefer to access these materials through the web, I have created a website for you to do so.

The url is: http://researchpapersurvey.wetpaint.com.

The survey on the status of the research paper is complete and has been vetted by the IRB. I will begin sending it out electronically by the end of November.

This brief survey will be emailed to WPAs at all four year public and private colleges and universities across the U. S. in an effort to collect the most representative data about the status of the research paper assignment in first year writing/composition courses.

If you have any questions/comments about the survey, please either post to this list or send me an email at: hoodc@stockton.edu.

This message is just a heads up.

I am currently working on a (brief) survey on the status of the research paper in first year writing courses. I plan to send this survey out to WPAs at all four year public and private colleges and universities across the U. S. Surveys of this sort have been done before; however, they have been generally created as instruments for random or regional sampling. With this one, I aim to collect information about as many first year writing programs as possible. So your responses are really important.