Selected Topic for Research - School Psychology - prevention of bullying among adolescents
Milestone: Problem Statement and Literature Review
Prepare a Final Project Proposal.
After the Abstract a research proposal begins with the Introduction to "set the stage" for the research proposal. In this course, your Introduction consists of two parts: a) Problem Statement, and b) Literature Review. The purpose of the Problem Statement is to discuss why the research is important and necessary. The purpose of the Literature Review is to discuss what is already known about the topic and articulate a research "gap" that justifies your specific proposal.
Problem Statement
The first task of writing a research proposal is justifying the need for research. First, why is this research study necessary? What is the actual "problem" that needs to be addressed through research? You selected a topic back in Module 1, and this section briefly covers why there is a need for research on that topic. Often, citing statistics is helpful to provide context, such as, "Depression affects more than 7 million Americans a year" or "Fewer than half of American employees are satisfied with their jobs." The idea is that you start out by stating the "problem" that is being addressed in your proposal.
The problem statement should be brief (2 paragraphs). You will get to the details in your Literature Review below. Often, students find it easier to write the Literature Review first and backtrack to the Problem Statement once they have a better understanding of the scope of the problem covered in the Literature Review.
Literature Review
Your Literature Review builds upon your Module Milestone 2 Initial Research and Annotated Bibliography Worksheet. Your task here is to review your four scholarly articles related to your selected topic. What is already known?
Refer to Salkind (2017) Chapter 3A for tips on writing literature reviews. One way to organize your literature review is chronologically. "Author A found this...then Author B found that...the Author C disagreed and found this..."
At the end of your literature review, you want to articulate the "gap" in the literature that leads to your research question and hypothesis (Module 4 assignment). In the Annotated Bibliography homework, you were asked to pay particular attention to "future research" and "study limitations" of articles to help you find your own proposal gap. At the end of your literature review, clearly state the research gap, which flows directly into the next section of the proposal.
With four empirical articles to cover, along with articulating a gap, your Literature Review section should be not less than 2 and no more than 3 pages in length. Now is a good time to also start building your Reference List at the end of the Proposal. Both sections can include information from your annotated bibliographies, but the Literature Review will should cover all 4 of your annotated bibliographies concluding with the research gap.