Assignment: Social Research
Purpose: A research proposal is both a synopsis and plan. It gives the reader a glimpse of a problem, its significance, and the objectives, approaches, and methods of an investigation of the problem. It explains the background of the problem to the reader, describing present understandings and knowledge, as well as your proposed solution (s). It also contains the vital elements of a research investigation, and is often persuasive, as well as informative, in its purpose. The goal of the proposal writer is not only to persuade the reader to believe in the credibility of the investigation, but also to make the reader believe that solutions and methodologies are practical and appropriate.
General Paper Formatting Guidelines:
• The minimum word count for this paper is 3500 words. It is expected that your final paper will be between 3500-4500 words (or approximately 12-15 pages in length). This word count includes the title page, abstract, and reference page.
• All papers are to have one inch margins (top, bottom, sides).
• Times New Roman, 12 point font is the required font for the entire paper.
• Students willutilize an APA citation style.
• The text or body of the paper must be double spaced (not triple or single). This includes when separating topical headings from text.
o The reference section must be single spaced.
1) Title Page: To be submitted in Times New Roman 12 point font. Please follow this format:
Submitted to the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice
The University of North Carolina at Pembroke
In partial fulfillment for the Degree of
Bachelors of Arts
*On the last line of cover page include and type the following statement*
"I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid in the preparation or completion of this manuscript. _(Student's Name)__ "
2) Abstract Page: An abstract is a self-contained, short, and powerful statement that describes a larger work.You will write an abstract between 100 and 200 words, with 200 words being the MAXIMUM LENGTH. HINT: This should be the last thing you write. Immediately following the abstract you should list FIVE key terms (that would be used to categorize your proposal in a search engine).
3) Introduction: In the real world of higher education, a research proposal is most often written by scholars seeking grant funding for a research project or it's the first step in getting approval to write your doctoral dissertation. Even though this is just a course assignment, treat your introduction as the initial pitch of an idea. After reading the introduction, your readers should not only have an understanding of what you want to do, but they should also be able to sense your passion for the topic and be excited about its possible outcomes.
Think about your introduction as a narrative written in 1-2 pages that succinctly answers the following four questions:
1. What is the central research problem?
2. What is the topic of study related to that problem?
3. What methods should be used to analyze the research problem?
4. Why is this important research and why should someone reading the proposal care about the outcomes from the study?
The introduction should be 300-600 words in length (600 words MAXIMUM).
4) Review of the Literature: Connected to the background and significance of your study is a more deliberate review and synthesis of prior studies related to the research problem under investigation. The purpose here is to place your project within the larger whole of what is currently being explored, while demonstrating to your readers that your work is original and innovative. Think about what questions other researchers have asked, what methods they've used, and what is your understanding of their findings. Assess what you believe is still missing, and state how previous research has failed to examine the issue that your study addresses.
Since a literature review is information dense, it is crucial that this section is intelligently structured to enable a reader to grasp the key arguments underpinning your study in relation to that of other researchers. A good strategy is to break the literature into "conceptual categories" [themes] rather than systematically describing materials one at a time.
Your literature review should be 1200 to 1800 words in length.Students must include scholarly citations that support the need for your study. This excludes magazines, newspapers, the Bible etc. However, scholarly citations MUST be included. Web pages are NOT permitted to be used as a citation unless approved by the professor. They will ONLY be approved if the web page is used to extract current data.
5) Statement of the Purpose of the Study: This describes the goals and objectives that are the targets and desired outcomes of work done by you to find answers to the problem or issue under investigation. The purpose often starts with a single goal statement that explains what the study intends to accomplish. A few typical statements are:
The purpose of this study is to...
... overcome the difficulty with ...
... discover what ...
... understand the causes or effects of ...
... refine our current understanding of ...
... provide a new interpretation of ...
... understand what makes ___ successful or unsuccessful
It is then followed by a paragraph which describes the objectives that support the goal of the research investigation.This should be approximately 100-300 words in length.
6) Statement of Research Questions & Hypotheses:Questions and hypotheses are testable explanations that are proposed before the methodology of a project is conducted, but after the researcher has had an opportunity to develop background knowledge (much like the literature review that you just finished). Although research questions and hypotheses are different in their sentence structure and purpose, both seek to predict relationships. Deciding whether to use questions or hypothesis depends on facts such as the purpose of the study, the approach and design of the methodology, and the expected audience for the research proposal. It is expected that this portion of your paper will be 100-300 words in length.
7) Research Design & Methods:This section must be well-written and logically organized because you are not actually doing the research. As a consequence, the reader will never have a study outcome from which to evaluate whether your methodological choices were the correct ones. The objective here is to ensure that the reader is convinced that your overall research design and methods of analysis will correctly address the research problem. Your design and methods should be absolutely and unmistakably tied to the specific aims of your study.
Describe the overall research design by building upon and drawing examples from your review of the literature. Be specific about the methodological approaches you plan to undertake to collect information, about the techniques you would use to analyze it, and about the tests of external validity to which you commit yourself [i.e., the trustworthiness by which you can generalize from your study to other people, places or times].
Keep in mind that a methodology is not just a list of research tasks; it is an argument as to why these tasks add up to the best way to investigate the research problem. This is an important point because the mere listing of tasks to perform does not demonstrate that they add up to the best feasible approach.
When describing the methods you will use, be sure to cover these issues (1200-1500 words total; about 300 words per issue):
• Research Design: Specify the research operations you will undertake in your proposed study (i.e. will you use a survey, secondary data analysis, interviews, etc.)
• Sample: Be sure to address both the desired sample size, as well as the manner in which the sample will be produced.
• Measurement of Key Variables:If applicable, you should categorize your variables (as Independent, Dependent, or Control variables) and discuss how each variable will potentially be measured.
• Human Subjects Protections: You should discuss the potential threats to human subjects that may result from your research, and what you would do to mitigate these threats.
• Study Limitations:Be sure to anticipate and acknowledge any potential barriers and pitfalls in carrying out your research design and explain how you plan to get around them.
8) Preliminary Suppositions & Implications:Just because you don't have to actually conduct the study and analyze the results, it doesn't mean that you can skip talking about the process and potential implications.
• Strengths of the Study:The purpose of this section is to argue how and in what ways you believe your research will refine, revise, or extend existing knowledge in the subject area under investigation.
• Directions for Future Research Depending on the aims and objectives of your study, describe how the anticipated results of your study will impact future scholarly research, theory, practice, forms of interventions, or policy. Note that such discussions may have either substantive [a potential new policy], theoretical [a potential new understanding], or methodological [a potential new way of analyzing] significance.
This section should be approximately 300-600 words in length.
9) Conclusion: The conclusion reiterates the importance or significance of your proposal and provides a brief recap of the entire study. This section should be approximately 300-600 words in length, and should emphasize why your research study is unique, why it advances knowledge, and why the research problem is worth investigating.
Someone reading this section should come away with an understanding of:
• Why the study was done.
• The specific purpose of the study and the research questions it attempted to answer.
• The research design and methods used.
• The potential implications emerging from your proposed study of the research problem.
• A sense of how your study fits within the broader scholarship about the research problem.
10) Project References: You must include a full reference for any sources listed in your proposal. As stated in the literature review description, you should have a MINIMUM of 10 academic sources. These should be peer-reviewed sources, primarily articles from scholarly journals. The following elements are generally found in a citation: author(s), title of article, journal title, volume, pages, & date. References should be single spaced.
Helpful Advice: Keep a running list of all references as you work through the proposal. You will need to have this list to avoid plagiarism and chances are you will need to go back to certain references throughout the entire research experience. This includes all textbooks, reference books, journal articles, etc.
Your final paper is due on Thursday, April 27th
Final Paper Checklist
- Title Page (Formatting Guidelines found Above)
- Abstract Page (100-200 words MAXIMUM; 5 key search terms; on separate page)
- Introduction (300-600 Words)
- Review of Literature (1200-1800 Words)
- Statement of Purpose (100-300 Words)
- Statement of Research Questions (100-300 Words Paragraphs)
- Research Design & Methods
o Research Design
o Sample
o Independent & Dependent Variables
o Human Subjects Protections
o Study Limitations
- Preliminary Supposition & Implications (300-600 Words Total)
o Strengths of the Study
o Directions for Future Research
- Conclusion (300-600 Words)
- Project References (10 Resources Minimum; APA Formatted).