Additional Question: What are your research and null hypotheses?

Excercise 1.1: Discovering the Subject of Your Interest or Issue of Inquiry

1. What is your personal interest or issue?

2. What are the component parts of this interest?

3. Why did you become curious about this question?

Excercise 1.2: Understanding the Personal Viewpoint

1. What previous knowledge do you have about your interest?

2. What personal experience do you have that influences you about this issue or interest?

3. What are your beliefs, biases, and opinions about this interest or issue?

4. What predisposes you to certain conclusions about the issue or concern of study?

5. How will you identify and isolate your personal bias, opinion, feelings, and intuition to preserve your neutral position as a researcher?

Excercise 1.3: Selecting the Focus of Your Study

Remember to write out your answers in detail so that you end up with a useful reference page.

1. Clearly identify the focus of the study interest.

2. Are you looking at individuals, groups, or organizations?

3. Specifically name the individuals, groups, or organizations that you plan to study.

Excercise 1.5: Developing Your Interest Statement

This exercise combines and patterns the information gathered from your free writes. Reflect on and analyze the written information produced by the earlier exercises, and develop a specific statement of interest. Initially, this statement could be a single question or a declarative sentence. Make it clear and concise. Develop a second statement that defines the significance of the research. Finally, write a statement that clearly defines beliefs, values, biases, and opinions, noting how you will neutralize them when following your research.

Using the information you have developed through your introspective work produced in Exercises 1.1 through 1.4, answer the following three questions.

1. What is your specific research interest?
The interest, issue, or concern of my research is (answer in seven sentences).
Cross out the two least important sentences without changing the key idea.
Cross out any words or phrases that can be removed without changing the meaning.
Reduce your remaining draft to three sentences.
Be sure your final three sentences identify the subject (What are you studying?), perspective (How are you looking at it?), and vantage point (What academic field will you use?).

2. What contributions to the field make this research important?

3. What are your beliefs, values, biases, and opinions?

How will these beliefs, values, biases, and opinions help you in conducting your research?
How will you prevent the tendencies contained in your personal viewpoint from affecting the necessary neutral stance of a researcher?

Assignment 2

An annotated bibliography is a reference list in which each entry is followed by an annotation or description of the source. For this assignment, do the following:

Use the same format as the University of Phoenix Material: Annotated Bibliography Formatting Sample.

Include four to six peer-reviewed sources.

Include a one-paragraph annotation in your own words for each source.

This will be the basis for your literature review in the Research Proposal assignment.

Assignment 3

Assessment Worksheet

Using the Mental MeasurementsYearbook, identify three measures of the constructs you are studying for your research question

1. What is your research question?
2. Write a testablehypothesis for your research question.
3. What constructs is your research question investigating?
4. Using the Mental Measurements Yearbook, provide the following information for three measures of the constructs:
5. What is the test? Include the name and authors.
6. How is the test used? Include the target population, how the test is administered, and what information it provides.
7. What is known about the test's psychometric properties, such as reliability and validity?
8. Why would the test be useful for your study?

Assignment 4

• Steps for Creating Methodology
• Using Figure 1.2 in Ch. 1 of Exploring Research, create a flowchart using Microsoft® Word or a similar program that helps you identify what research design to use for your research question.

Assignment 5

Ethical Standards Summary

• Write a 500- to 750-word summary of the ethical issues that affect your selected research question and methodology, including the following:
• Write a brief statement of the research question.