1. Analyzing the Business Decision or Problem
In this section you should in write in your own words a brief description of the business and the decision or problem that needs to be addressed. You should then describe your analysis of the decision or problem (you may use a diagram to assist in this explanation) and identify and describe the information that you would need to address it. You should finish with suggestion with a set of general research questions that you would need to answer to get this information. This section should be approximately one page in length.
2. What is Already Known about the Decision or Problem
In this section you should report on the steps you have taken to search for existing information about the decision or problem. These should include a review and search of reports and papers available through internet or your organization's intranet search engines. For each step you must summarize the type of information found and any key conclusions that you can draw from that information relevant to the decision or problem. You could use a table to do this which lists the full references. At the end you should have a section summarizing the gaps and limitations in the information you have found and a few sentences describing your overall conclusions and what these mean for conducting further research to answer the questions listed in the previous section. The minimum requirement for a pass in this section is 3 academic papers and 2 reports or webpages. Students are encouraged to search for and summarize more material but be aware it is the relevance of the material to your research questions and the quality of your summary that matters more than simply the number of reports or papers used. The length will depend on the number of references used but it should be at least 1 page and no more than 3 pages.
3. The Overall Research Design - Evaluating Options
In this section you should give details of your research design and how well it fits your research questions and why you think this is the best option. This section should be approximately 1 page in length.
4. What are the Key Variables, How Will you Measure Them and How the Project will Contribute to the Workplace/Industry?
In this section you will use the information and conclusions from all the previous sections to identify and describe the main variables that you need to include or consider in your proposed research. You should then take each of these variables and describe how you will measure them. This section should be approximately 1 page in length.
5. Sample Requirements & Sampling Options
In this section you must describe the details of the sample that you would require to answer your research questions and describe options for accessing this sample. You must explain your decisions in detail. Where appropriate you should also discuss what sample size might be needed and why. This section should be approximately 1 page in length.
6. Ethical Issues
In this section you must identify and discuss the ethical issues associated with research design and sampling procedure you have chosen for your proposed research. You should also suggest options for dealing with these issues. You must explain your decisions in detail. This section should be approximately 1 page in length.