Everything in the params hash is a string when it comes through the controller. If you’re passing the entire params hash to AwardingBody.new, the params hash looks like {‘these’ => ‘params’}. Thus, if you change your expectation to {‘these’ => ‘params’}, it will be satisfied.
In the future, it’s probably best to post RSpec questions to the rspec-users mailing list: http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users .
Regards, Craig
