Guideline # 4: Inquiry 1SS3 RESEARCH/PAPER PROPOSAL

PRINCIPLE: The purpose of a proposal is to communicate your intentions for the main research paper to others so that they can give you feedback and assistance. Therefore, a good proposal communicates to the reader in as much detail as possible the research question that you are interested in and the line of investigation that you intend to pursue. The clearer you make this to the reader, the better the help they can give to you, and the better your proposal will be.

There are several areas your proposal needs to cover.

1. 1. Pose your central research question. Your question should be a “why” statement seeking an explanation of a social phenomenon, rather than a “how”, “what”, “when”, or “where” statement that merely seeks a description of a phenomenon.
   1. Your central research question must be asked within the framework of the more general question contained in the box at the beginning of the course outline. It is permissible to follow your main question with one or two supporting statements.
      
      
   2. Your central 'why’ question should be written in one or two sentences focussing on a contradiction, puzzle or dilemma. The contradiction or dilemma may be:
      1. between two ideas (e.g. “Racism is explained by biological differences” v. “Racism is explained by social and cultural differences”).
         
         
      2. between two knowable facts (e.g., “Sexual harassment against women is increasing” v. “Sexual harassment against women is decreasing.”), or
         
         
      3. between an explanation and a piece of evidence that contradicts the explanation (e.g., “Disabled persons have low levels of computing skills because educational institutions have not provided special computing facilities adaptable to disabled persons’ needs.” v. “There is no difference in the computing skills of disabled persons at universities with adaptive computing facilities and those that lack such facilities”) .
      
      
      
   3. Your statement(s) must pose a question in such a way that there are three or more alternative outcomes or answers to it. These must be outlined. They must be realistic alternative answers to your central question. A major purpose of your research paper is to gather evidence for and against each possible answer or outcome. You are not allowed to organize your paper as an exercise in gathering evidence in support of a central argument or thesis. You have to consider countervailing evidence that challenges each possible answer to your central question. You will then weigh or assess the evidence for and against each possible outcome to finally arrive at an overall assessment of your central research question.
   
   
   
2. As background, briefly describe the general area of investigation, the topic you intend to pursue. It often helps the reader understand your personal interest in this topic so you may want to describe this briefly. Also, you may wish to describe to the reader your assumptions as to the answer of your question.
   
   
3. Provide “operating definitions” (the definitions you will be using) of the key words in your research question.
   
   
4. List any secondary questions that you need to answer in order to move toward answering your main question. The development of your research paper can contain secondary descriptive questions that help develop your central ?why’ question.
   
   
5. Describe your plan for finding evidence. How are you going to collect your evidence. Where do you plan to obtain your evidence. What kind of evidence do you plan to collect? How are you going to assess the evidence you find, and decide what evidence is relevant assessing your central question, and what is irrelevant?
   
   
6. Provide an bibliography of at least 10 pertinent references (library, internet and other) using APA format (as outlined in Hubbuch 1996; Appendix C; see also the APA electronic referencing style elsewhere in the coursepak). Annotation means that you include one or two sentences outlining the main idea or thesis of each reference.

DUE: Week 6, February 16th at 6:30 p.m. (Late penalty in effect)

LENGTH: no more than 500 words + a bibligraphy

WEIGHTING: 10% of final grade

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