Your final paper combines (and expands) your literature review (assignment 3) and your research design (assignment 2). It may also use applicable design (such as survey or interview questions) from either the qualitative data assignment (4) or quantitative data assignment (5) and any existing statistics found from a reputable source. You are to combine the literature and the methodology to write a proposal to examine your research question. The purpose of a research proposal is to inform the reader of the research question, other literature on the research question, and propose how you will study your research question. Because you completed assignment 2 so early in the course, it is reasonable for you to have developed new methods to study your research question.
Please note: Since the instructional team has access to your literature review online (assignment 3), we will be using it to see how your final proposal improves from the literature review, if necessary. A 10% point deduction overall (4 points) will occur if the majority of the suggested changes from the literature review assignment feedback are not made.
Basic Requirements:
• Double-spaced, 12 pt Times New Roman or 11 pt Calibri, 1-inch margins in a Word document.
• Page requirement (not including title page and references): 6 – 9 pages
• You must incorporate at least 5 scholarly sources (peer-reviewed journal articles or books from scholarly
presses).
• Use APA 7th edition style for your academic writing tone, headings, in-text citations, title page and reference
page. An abstract is not required.
• Use headings/subheadings to help organize the paper.
• This final paper must be grammatically clean, the content well-edited, and your sources referenced correctly.
You also need to demonstrate that you can present an argument in a professional and coherent manner.
• Required Sections:
o TitlePage
o Introduction(1-3paragraphs)
o LiteratureReview(3-5pages)
o Proposed Hypotheses (1 paragraph or bullet points)
o Proposed Methodology (1-2 pages)
o Research Implications and Applicability (1/2 to 1 page) o Conclusion (1-2 paragraphs)
o References
Recommended Outline:
Introduction: The introduction should draw the reader into your topic. I recommend looking at the first paragraph of the introduction you wrote for your literature review, and using that as a starting point for writing this introduction.
• Introduce the concepts that you are examining and your research topic – draw the reader in with examples/statistics from literature, real-world examples, etc.
• Establish the importance of your topic. Why is understanding more about this topic important for society?
• Cleary state your research question. Do not use first person: it is good practice to avoid using first person in academic writing.
• In addition to establishing the importance or your study, it is also important to establish the need for your proposed study. How is your study unique? How does it contribute to research that has already been done on your topic? You may want to use existing statistics here to support the significance.
• Briefly tell the reader what methods you plan to use in addressing this research question (alluding to your methods section).
• Describe the organization of the paper – this is a roadmap for the rest of your proposal
Literature Review: (These instructions come from your literature review assignment; review those instructions again if needed for more details).
1. Connect your concepts:
• Identify any landmark or applicable theories that apply to your research.
• Look for trends in the literature – is there any consistency among the studies?
• Are there certain things that most researchers agree upon? Are there opposing
theories/frameworks that most articles reference?
• Are there gaps in the literature – what didn’t their research cover? This is how you create ‘need’
for your research project.
• Are there other factors or common variables related to your dependent and independent variables
in the literature?
• If your research topic connects two concepts that have not been previously connected (or the
connection between the two concepts is not firmly established) you will need to focus on that
relationship, saying that little research has been done.
• Identify the major trends or patterns in the results.
2. Methodologies Used in Past Research: Take this from your literature review assignment. However, you should modify it so it portrays why you will be doing the particular method you propose to do in your own study.
Note:
• Focus on synthesizing the results/conclusions of the studies.
• Do not annotate, or give summaries of each source.
• You should briefly conclude or summarize the above two sections.
Hypotheses: This section may come from the hypothesis that you wrote for assignment #2 if your topic has not changed or been modified. Briefly state your hypotheses for the relationship(s) between your concepts.
Methodology: This section highlights the proposed methods to be used in this study. You should talk in future tense, as if you will be carrying out the research. Remember this is a proposal: you are proposing to do the research in the future. (Use subheading: Methodology). Some of this may come from assignment #2. It may also be helpful to read the methodology section of articles that are relevant to your research topic. Some things to highlight include:
• How will you actually collect the data for your study? (Research method/design, sampling frame, sampling method)
• Whom or what will you study in order to collect data? (Population).
• What are the key variables in your study? How will you specifically define and measure them? • What specific questions will you ask? (Operationalization)
Societal Implications and Applicability: Much of this section comes from your literature review. However, you need to expand this section more than you did in your literature review, and put more emphasis on the implications of your research.
• Similar to the introduction, talk about the importance of your topic. Expand on this here (the intro is just a few sentences or short paragraph). Why is understanding more about this topic important for society? Example: Studying X and Y is important because they tell us more about __________.
• Again, it is also important to reiterate the established need for your proposed study. How will your proposed study contribute to research that has already been done on your topic? What gaps does it fill?
• Suggest a couple ways that activists, social workers, government policymakers, school administrations, or others could use your research to help ‘fix’ the societal problem your research question addresses. Spend more time on this if the literature you cite focuses on the activist component or if this is especially applicable to your topic.
• This is an opportunity to be creative. Think about the knowledge you’re creating – the information your proposed study is generating, and then think about who could use that information to help solve the problem. Dedicate at least 1-2 paragraphs to this – explain each possibility in a few sentences.
Conclusion:
• Briefly restate your research topic, and fit it into the literature you outlined in previous sections.
How will your research contribute to what has been done in the past?
• Recap the methods you’ll use to address this research question.
• Briefly restate the societal implications of your research project.