In your work at a residential treatment center (RTC) for adolescents, several problems related to the delivery of group and recreational therapy services to the residents have become evident. The following represents the issues:

• Residents are not opening up during group process meetings (there seems to be a lack of trust or cohesion in the group).

• When reporting during individual therapy sessions, residents find it difficult to describe how the recreational therapy activity for the week has helped them with resolution of their issues.

• The boss has observed that during the group process meetings, many of the residents are not paying attention (i.e., they are not engaged in the flow of the session).

• The boss reports that he or she has noticed that when residents return from recreational therapy activities, many of them are complaining about being sore (pain in their muscles).

Although the program director would like to have all of the questions answered, he or she has asked that you select 1 of the questions (the one that would be most interesting to you). The assignment he or she has given you is to propose a research process that will answer your selected question. The organization is committed to answering these questions, so it will fund the study that you propose. Not only will you be able to answer the question for your RTC, but the corporate office has also committed funds to send you to a conference focused on residential treatment center effectiveness to present your findings. These facts emphasize the need to ensure a well-designed study that will lead to accurate, reliable, and valid results.

Your proposal needs to include the following sections:

• Introduction: Describe the current issue (the focus of the proposal should be 1 of the items from the list above) and how you developed an understanding of it.

• Research Question: Describe the process that you used to arrive at the question that you are proposing, and clearly state the actual question.

• Literature Review: It is here that you describe what is already known in the general literature about the issue and the question that you are proposing.

• Methodology: In this section of your proposal, you will describe the type of research design (i.e., quantitative or qualitative) and the method that you will use to answer the proposed question. This should also include information related to who will participate, the materials that you will need to complete the study, and the procedure that you will follow.

• Conclusion: This section should summarize everything that you proposed (1 paragraph) and hypothesize what you anticipate the study will find (i.e., what you believe the outcomes of the study will be).