Research design: This is often the longest part of the research proposal. It could be 3-4 pages long. It is where you lay out how you will use research to study the questions you have proposed.
You may use any of the research methodologies we discussed in class, and if your questions warrant, you may use more than one. More and more, researchers today use "multiple methods" so that they can validate the findings from say a survey with a set of more in-depth interviews with a selected set of respondents. In the research design section, you should have three main parts.
• Data collection. What forms of data will you plan to use? Are you using primary or secondary data? Is it qualitative or quantitative (or both)? Tell the reader a little about the data.
For instance, if you are using an existing survey, what kinds of questions do it ask about? If you are conducting interviews, give some example questions you might focus on or some topic areas you will cover. Talk about any community engagement in your data collection plans.
• Research subjects. Who are your research subjects or what population will your research cover? If you are collecting your own data, how will you recruit these subjects? Is the study voluntary?
Will you pay them for their time? How much? If you are using secondary data, what was the sample and when were the data collected? If you are doing a survey, how will you ensure that you have a large enough sample size and response rate for your analysis?
• Ethical concerns. What ethical protections will you put in place for your research subjects? Are your data anonymous (you don't know who the subjects are - data are de-identified)?
Are you promising confidentiality (you know who they are, but you won't share their names or any individual-level information in your reporting)? Are you going to file an IRB? Are there ethical considerations in terms of how you are doing the research, like if you're doing an experiment will people be denied services that could help them? How do you justify that?
Data analysis plans: This section should be 2-3 pages talking about your plans for data analysis. What kinds of analyses do you plan to do? Think about the data you've collected and what are the best ways to analyze it. This would be a good place to talk about things like subgroup analysis, reliability and validity, and any limitations of your approach. For instance, if you're studying people in one community, a limitation might be that your findings are not generalizable to other communities with different characteristics.
Dissemination plans: This should be about a page. This is where you sell why it is that different audiences would be interested in learning about your findings. Who might benefit from seeing the results of your research? Would policymakers learn from it, or possibly service providers or practitioners? Do you plan to write a long report, a short brief, a series of short briefs, offer presentations (for whom)?
Reference List: At the end of the proposal you should have a section called References that includes a full citation to every source material you use in your proposal.
The list should be alphabetized by last name. If you use two sources from the same author, put the more current one first. We will be using the American Sociological Association's manual of style for the citations (see link above). Here are some examples:
For a book:
Bursik, Robert J., Jr. and Harold G. Grasmick. 1993. Neighborhoods and Crime: The Dimensions of Effective Community Control. New York: Lexington Books.
For a journal article:
Aseltine, Robert H., Jr. and Ronald C. Kessler. 1993. "Marital Disruption and Depression in a Community Sample." Journal of Health and Social Behavior 34(3):237-51. [Note: that is volume(number):pages]
For an article with an online location:
Schafer, Daniel W. and Fred L. Ramsey. 2003. "Teaching and the Craft of Data Analysis." Journal of Statistics Education (11)1. Retrieved December 12, 2006
For a website:
American Sociology Association. 2006. "Status Committees." Washington, DC: American Sociological Association. Retrieved December 12, 2006