Assignment

Developing a research proposal is a good way to experience research aspects firsthand without conducting an actual research study.

In this assignment, you need to develop a research proposal. Your research proposal must be a 10-12-page document and include the following sections:

• Introduction
• Literature Review
• Methodology
• Discussion and Conclusion
• References

The Methodology section will be based on either of the two major research designs, quantitative and qualitative.

Create the Introduction section of the research proposal. Include the following:

• Select a topic for your research project.
• Explain why this topic is of interest to you.
• Explain the topic and describe the potential research areas in the topic.

You will develop the Literature Review section. Use the following guidelines:

• Find at least TEN articles on the selected topic. Scholarly and peer reviewed sources are the only acceptable sources. Textbooks, Wikipedia, or any other Web source will not be accepted for this assignment. Do the following:

• Write a short summary (one to two paragraphs) for each article.

• Write a brief analysis (one to two paragraphs) for each article and relate each analysis to your course and textbook readings.

• For each of the documents provide some insight into to gender/cultural diversity issues that may or may not impact the study being reviewed.

You will be creating the Methodology section of your research proposal. In this section, you will review the research methodologies used in research. To gain a better understanding of the methods used, review the methodology sections of the articles you found for your literature review.

Include in your work:

• Create the research hypothesis for your proposal

• Detailed description of the methodology used in your research, including, but not limited to, participants (if relevant), time frames, and materials or resources required. Also include the proposed statistical analysis that would be used for the research. This will include but will not be limited to the correct statistical procedures to evaluate your results.

You should then be working on the development of the introduction section of your research proposal.

• Title page of your research proposal.

• Introduction to your research proposal. The introduction is not part of the literature review. The introduction provides a general overview of the topic being covered. To gain a better understanding of what an introduction is comprised of, review the various introductions in the journal articles you used for your literature review.

• Include in the introduction the purpose and research hypothesis of your project.

Next is the Discussion and Conclusion section of your research proposal. In a proposal such as this, what you will also need to include are your expected results. The expected results are based on a number of factors including what you learned from your literature review on similar research as well as what you learned from your course readings thus far.

The difference between a great research paper and a marginal one is the depth and originality of the discussion and conclusions section. The discussion/conclusion section is where you bring together what you learned from the literature review (as well as through the course) in your concluding remarks regarding your topic.

• Provide an overview of the expected results
• Develop a conclusion of your research proposal
• Include information on the ramifications of the study, its limitations, and the potential for future research studies

Make sure your research proposal adheres to the following structure:

• Title page
• Abstract (see APA guide for format)
• Introduction
• Literature Review
• Methodology
• Discussion and Conclusion
• References

In addition, these sections should include the following information:

Abstract: An abstract is a summary of the paper. Review the abstracts of the articles used in your literature review for examples of detailed abstracts.

Literature Review: The literature review is not a copy of that material. Rather, it is a synthesis of the material you found into a cohesive review of the literature on your chosen topic. Make sure to include all the articles that you used for your literature review.

References: In this section, you should include all of the articles you collected for the literature review. In addition, take care to cite all the references in the APA format.