SCS312

Social Research Methods and Applied Statistics

Following are the steps in the research proposal process with applicable questions to be addressed.

Introduction

General area of interest

§ What are the important, relevant, and timely issues?

§ What is your topic of inquiry?

§ What is your research problem?

More specifically . . .

§ What is your research question?

§ What is the purpose of your study?

§ What are the objectives of your study?

From your general research question, develop more specific questions.  These sub-questions will lead to your hypotheses and establish a means to an end.

Literature Review

§ What other research has been done in this area of inquiry?

§ What are the predominant studies in this area?

§ How can the literature help you with your topic?

§ How can the literature facilitate your design (e.g., theoretical, conceptual, contextual, methodological, comparative, and explicative)?

§ How does your study relate to the existing research?

§ What sets your topic apart from other research with a similar topic?

§ How will your study contribute to this area of inquiry and to the literature?

Methodology

Design

§ What mode of inquiry will be employed (e.g., exploratory, etc.)?

§ What type of research design will be used (e.g., quantitative or qualitative)?

Research Hypotheses

Your hypotheses can be posed above in the introduction section or in the methods section.  Placed in the methods section allows for support by the literature (above).  For quantitative studies, hypotheses, unverified testable statements, should be posed for empirical verification.  Ideally, hypotheses should correspond to the above research questions in order to establish a progression through your design.

Data

§ What data will you need?

§ What mode of data collection (e.g., survey, interviews, experimental, secondary, etc.) will you use?

§ Do you foresee any data access issues?

§ If secondary data are to be used, where will you find the data and in what form will it?

§ What variables will you need?

§ What are the operational definitions of your variables?

§ What is the level of measurement for each of your variables?

§ What are the relationships among your variables (e.g., differences, association, causation, etc.)?

§ What are your independent and dependent variables?

Sampling

§ What is your population?

§ What sampling technique will you use?

§ What will be your sample size?

Subject for Study

§ What will the effects on human subjects be?

§ What issues with your human subjects do you foresee?

§ How will you overcome such difficulties?

Analysis

§ How do you expect to analyze your data?

§ How will you examine the relationships between variables?

§ What statistical techniques will you use?

Resources and Timeline

In addition . .  .

§ What are the resources (e.g., computer, software, staff, etc.) for your study?

§ What are the budget requirements for your study?

§ What is the timeline for your study?

Appendices

You may want to include a sample survey, interview instrument, etc.