Critical Infrastructure Protection

For your final assignment, you will write an analytical research paper addressing a major issue of your choosing from among the topics covered in this course. As a research paper, your paper will have to answer a significant puzzle related to a course topic. For this assignment, you are essentially doing the first three elements of your research paper outlined below. Title Page of the Paper: The title of your paper should be brief but should adequately inform the reader of your general topic and the specific focus of your research. Keywords relating to parameters, population, and other specifics are useful. The Title Page must include the title, name, course name and number, and Professor’s Name. Introduction, Research Question, and Hypothesis: This section shall provide an overview of the topic that you are writing about, a concise synopsis of the issues, and why the topic presents a “puzzle” that prompts your research questions, which you will include. This section will be 1-2 pages. End your introduction with your research question. Review of the Literature: All research projects include a literature review to set out for the reader what knowledge exists on the subject under study and helps the researcher develop the research strategy to use in the study. A good literature review is a thoughtful study of what has been written, a summary of the arguments that exist (whether you agree with them or not), arranged thematically. At the end of the summary, there should still be gaps in the literature that you intend to fill with your research. It is written in narrative format and can be from 4-6 pages depending on the scope and length of the paper. As a literature review, this section should identify the common themes and theories that the prior research identified. In this section, what you do is look at the conclusions of prior research and identify what the common themes are you see in those conclusions. You then identify those themes. The APUS online library has some helpful information on writing a literature review. Technical Requirements Your paper must be at a minimum of 5-9 pages (the Title and Reference pages do not count towards the minimum limit). Scholarly and credible references should be used. A good rule of thumb is at least 2 scholarly sources per page of content. Type in Times New Roman, 12 point and double space. Students will follow the current APA Style as the sole citation and reference style used in written work submitted as part of coursework. Points will be deducted for the use of Wikipedia or encyclopedic type sources. It is highly advised to utilize books, peer-reviewed journals, articles, archived documents, etc.