Research Proposal

PROPOSAL

o 4-5 double spaced pages, 12 pt. font, standard margins (no spaces between paragraphs)

o Title page (title, name, school, date)

o Professional objective writing style (“Based on evidence A, we can determine that…”) as opposed to subjective writing style (i.e., “I believe that…” “In my experience…”)

o Properly cited paper and reference page in APA or MLA format (w/ 6 academic sources), cited in the text but used anywhere

o All of the formatting & professional writing details from above

o Any survey materials, interview questions, or experimental materials necessary to carry out your study (the ideal is to be clear enough that someone can replicate your research without you being there)

o PLEASE READ OVER YOUR LITERATURE REVIEW AND MAKE SURE THAT IT GOES ALONG WITH YOUR RESEARCH PROPOSAL SECTION

Phase 2: The Proposal

1. OVERVIEW: This “Proposal” half is meant to be a continuation of your previous “Literature Review” paper. With the literature review you were able to explore your communication idea within the given academic knowledge (reflected by searching the databases and reading articles). You then developed a question (or hypothesis) that explores some issue of significance that the literature didn’t answer (or didn’t answer well). This “Proposal” is your attempt to answer the question or confirm or reject the hypothesis.

2. SELECT A METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH: For this proposal, I want you to develop your familiarity with methods that have practical utility and acceptance in today’s professional world. Different methods should work better with whatever you are studying. They also may be useful to you in your thesis. You may propose one (or two combined, if appropriate) of these three different methods:

1. Survey: Usually a packet of questionnaires that list questions or statements that require ratings of agreement that ultimately address your IV & DV.

2. Interview & Content Analysis: Develop a list of questions that you’ll ask participants about, and then recruit another “coder” to help you interpret the answers by amount and types.

3. Experiment/Intervention: Most common form would be to look at your DV and say “Does the IV make a difference?” Have at least one situation or group where you include the IV, and one you don’t. If you make the two situations or groups of people similar, and control (limit the influence of) outside factors, the IV should explain any differences in the DV. Usually these are pre-test, post-test designs.

3. THE STRUCTURE: To start I recommend just creating an outline with the following labeled sub-sections represented: Participants, Procedures (& Measures), Analysis Strategy, Discussion of Expected Results, Limitations of the Study, and Conclusion. Use the articles we’ve been reading all semester to get a sense of what details are supposed to be in each sub-section. Most articles will feature a similar or derivative structure. Since you are doing a proposal, obviously you will have slightly different section labels than a full, completed article.

4. Proofread. Exhale. Turn it in!