What is a Research Proposal?
A very common assignment college Psychology professors give to students is to
write a research proposal.
The research proposal is just that, a proposal to do a research project. By
proposal we mean that the document is a description of a research project that
will be — or could be — completed in the future. The research proposal is very
similar to a manuscript experimental report except for the following exceptions:
1. The method section is written in the future tense.
2. The results section describes the statistical methods intended to be used.
3. We will not do a discussion section.
For example, in college I wrote two research proposals. One was for my
Sensation & Perception class (Caffeine Intake and Caffeine Habituation on the
Perception of Time) and the second was for my senior seminar (Effects of
Articulatory Suppression on the Picture Superiority Effect). For both classes I had
to conduct a study also. I had to turn in the research proposal and have it
approved before I could collect data.
You will need to write research proposals in many situations:
• Psychology majors across the country write them for classes as a final
research paper (without actually conducting the experiments) or
• a senior thesis (usually with collecting the data),
• the ethics review board application to run an experiment is a research
proposal,
• to receive a grant for research you will need to write a research proposal
and
• to conduct a master’s thesis or doctorial dissertation you will need to write
a research proposal!
Two important things about your research proposal!
1. The research you propose will need to be original. You can’t redo
research already done.
2. There must be a scientific rationale for your hypothesis and method.
All that this means is that you can cite a scientific reason (usually in
another study) as to why you proposed the hypothesis and why you
chose the methodology you chose.
Fall, 2018
The key to meeting both of these goals is look for research threads and
programmic research and think in terms of designing an extension of a previous
study.
Draft Research Proposal
The draft of the research proposal should be a completed document with all
sections (except a results section) which has been proofread and edited before
being submitted. You do not need an abstract or discussion section for either
the first or final draft.
Don’t get a bad grade – do this instead:
1. Use the grading rubric for the first draft as a checklist (of
course use the ‘excellent’ category for a checklist)
2. Don’t forget the present study section – see the’ 2 trivial and
important things’ video on youtube
3. You better be able to say which (from the Saylor text) design
you are using to describe the design you are using.
4. Your extension should be supported by research articles.
Final Research Proposal
In grading this draft, I will take into account how well you responded to my
feedback and your peers’ feedback to your draft.
The final draft should be at least 10 pages of text (a normal range is 10-20) and
contain at least 10 references (a normal range is 10 – 20).
The final draft will need to include a results section with the following material:
• identify which statistical tests you plan to use,
• for each, identify which one of your study’s variables will serve as the
IV/predictor variables (this should be done clearly enough so that there is
no question as to specifics, such as what are the levels in an ANOVA)
• for each, identify which one of your study’s variables will serve as the
DV/criterion variables.
• For each, identify if you wish the test to be significant or not,
• For each, identify the degrees of freedom (based on our sample size)
and present the critical value for the test. Research Proposal
A research proposal is just that, a proposal to do a research project. By proposal we mean
that the document is a description of a research project that will be — or could be — completed in
the future.
The research proposal is very similar to a manuscript experimental report except for the
following exceptions:
1. The method section is written in the future tense.
2. The results section describes the statistical methods intended to be used.
3. There will not be a discussion section.
Both the draft and the final versions will have the sections described above. The draft will allow
students to receive feedback from myself and other students to improve the final draft.
If students would like to work in groups (of 2-4 students) on a similar topic, they can. However,
the students in these groups will submit individual papers and these papers must propose different
hypotheses. Also, students in a group cannot copy text from one person’s paper to another. The
benefits of these groups are that students can share the work during the preparatory phases of the
research proposal project (e.g. finding research articles) and also help each other understand the
material.
Finally, two content requirements:
o Students are required to do research proposals on the Fundamental Attribution Error
Previous answers to this question
This is a preview of an assignment submitted on our website by a student. If you need help with this question or any assignment help, click on the order button below and get started. We guarantee authentic, quality, 100% plagiarism free work or your money back.
Get The Answer