The Effects of Youth Social Capital on Educational Outcomes in Australia

Your task is to use what you have learned about social research methods this semester to design your own social research project. You are not required to actually do this research.

Rather, you just need to write about what you plan to do. This means that, without the real-world limits of time and budget, your project can be ambitious and imaginative

Alternatively, those of you considering doing social research in the honours program might consider using this assignment to think through how and why you could pursue a particular project that is based on empirical research.

Suggested structure

1. Outline of general area of study: What is your research topic or research field? You can draw on the knowledge you learned from other subjects or can be inspired by curiosity in your daily life (including the ‘Observational Research Exercise') to propose a topic.

We provide a few examples here to inspire your ‘sociological imagination': ‘The barriers to higher education in Australia', ‘Socio-economic status and health inequalities in developing countries', ‘The impact of video game culture on children', ‘Political participation of immigrants: a survey in Australia', ‘The division of labour at home: a comparative analysis across generations', and ‘Youth attitudes towards marriage in OECD countries'.

2. Rationale: Why is it worth studying? Do you think this research topic is of any theoretical and/or practical implication? If so, what is it?

3. Sense of problem: What is the intellectual/sociological problem or question under investigation? You should specify your research question(s) clearly. The above research topic identifies a general area of interest while your research question(s) should be more specific and concrete.

4. Identification of theoretical/conceptual framework(s) to be used. This should be based on a sociological theoretical perspective. What are the main concepts in your research questions? What are the relationships between these concepts? Would you use or generate any theory to explain the phenomenon you are interested in?

5. Literature review: identification of a relevant body of literature. At least five references on your topic of investigation must be reviewed in this section. This should be presented as an argument rather than just a summary of literature. Think about how the existing studies can be used as evidence or supporting materials to back up your argument or develop your theoretical framework.

6. Methodology: How the problem will be investigated and why this is the best design all things considered. You'll need at least five references on your chosen method(s) and indicate in some detail how you plan to research the problem. Including information about your timeline of data collection, data analysis and reporting can be helpful in this section.

7. Ethical considerations: If your proposed project involves human participants, you should consider whether there are any potential issues of research ethics. For example, do you know how to obtain informed consent from the participants or relevant organisations? For the major questions you plan to use in survey questionnaire, interviews or focus groups, would they have adverse consequences? What would you do to avoid causing harm to research participants? How will confidentiality of your research results be maintained?

8. Expected findings: A few lines of what your hunch is that your results would be. If you formulate hypotheses in your proposal, you can discuss if your research findings would support or reject the hypotheses.

9. Reflection on team work (only for a joint proposal)

Two students (maximum) may work together and submit a joint proposal if they choose to do so. In this case, you agree to receive the same grade and must write a brief reflective section (approximately 300 words in total; 150 words for each student) in your proposal, discussing the teamwork process (e.g. why you are interested in choosing this topic as a team, what you learnt about the teamwork, how your group worked, and what you might do differently in your future teamwork).

Please reference Harvard style, And please do read the requirement before starting the task