Assignment (230 points)
o Prompt: Complete Research Proposal, including Abstract and Title Page
▪ This is the final version of your research proposal, so make any changes
you need from your previous submissions and include the following
section for a total of at least 10 pages. Be sure to include a reference page
at the end. See Appendix B for further instructions to complete the paper.
o Requirements: Total of at least 10 pages. Be sure to include a reference page at
the end.
APPENDIX B
Research Proposal Project
Objectives
The idea behind this research proposal is I would like to see whether you are able to identify
outstanding issues that more research could help to clarify. Writing the proposal will then help
you achieve four important objectives:
(1) to expand your knowledge of psychology by focusing on a topic that is of particular interest
to you,
(2) to further develop your skills as a critical reader of psychological research,
(3) to develop your scientific writing skills, and
(4) to further your creativity.
General Requirements
In this research proposal, you are asked to demonstrate your ability to integrate information
across topics covered in the course. In the proposal, you should critically review an area of
psychology and then propose an experiment that would help to address an integrative
question or issue.
You are free to choose any topic related to psychology. I guess you will find that
there are a great number of potential topics you could pick. The best way would be to take
something that interests you. You should then try to define what you picked narrowly. You need
not deal with the entire topic area (e.g., all eating disorders), but choose smaller, more
manageable topic (e.g., eating disorders of first-year college students). If you define your topic
too generally there will simply be too much relevant research, making it very difficult to decide
which the most relevant papers are.
My recommendation is that you work on your proposal as you study the different chapters in our
book.
Required sections of the proposal
Your research proposal should be a minimum of 2,500 words and APA compliant.
The proposal must contain the following sections: Title page – Abstract – Introduction –
Methods– Predicted Results – References.
• Title page
• Abstract: One (1) paragraph that briefly describes the area of interest and the research
question that will be addressed in the proposal. Put the abstract on a separate page, immediately
following the title page.
• Introduction: This section should describe the research area and findings from previous
studies. Write in a goal-directed manner. By this, I mean you will eventually be proposing some
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experiment in your proposal. Therefore, the literature review should be designed so that it
discusses an issue or question that needs to be addressed in that area and provides a rationale
for your proposed study. Moreover, you should structure your Introduction so that the motivation
for your proposal becomes clear. To achieve that you should begin with a relatively big issue
(e.g., a related example from daily life) and then focus down to the specific issue you are
interested in, highlighting the aspects of previous research (e.g. some methodological flaw in
previous approaches) that your proposal is meant to address. By the end of the Introduction the
reader should have a very good idea of what the central issue of your proposal will be. Your
Introduction should reference at least five scholarly research articles [see the section about
references]. (Minimum length of the Introduction: 750 words)
• Method: Now you are actually talking about what you are proposing. Again, be sure that this
follows naturally from the Introduction in which you should have set up and highlighted some
critical issue that needs to be resolved. What you should do now is to tell the reader how you
would resolve this issue. The Method section should describe the proposed method for the
experiment, including who the participants will be (ages and where they will be recruited from),
what equipment will be used, and the procedure that will be followed. You should specify the
variables (independent and dependent) that will be used in the experiment. You do not have to
format this section with separate subject, apparatus and procedure sections, but having that in
mind can help to guide your thinking and writing. A clearly structured Method section is very
important. (Minimum length of the Method section: 500 words)
• Predicted Results: This section should describe the results you expect from your proposed
experiment. (Minimum length: 250 words). Please note: You should use the future
tense. Do not create fake data and write the paper in past tense as if the experiment has already
been conducted. Also, you may want to think about alternatives. That is, what if the results
would turn out differently? Would there be any alternative interpretations?
• References: You must have at least five (5) primary sources. At least two (2) of the references
should be from the last two years. You must format your references using the guidelines
developed by the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA).
Evaluation of Research Proposals
This form is what will be used to both grade your proposal and give you feedback about your
proposal. For each of the following, you will be given a 1-10 score, where 1 is very poor and 10
is very well (perfect really). There are ten (10) different issues outlined below. Thus, your final
mark on the proposal (out of 100) will be calculated as your total score on these questions.
Writing
1. How well did the author lay out the argument in the opening section of the paper? And,
how obvious was it where the author was going with his/her argument. That is, was the
information presented in a very scattered manner with no apparent direction, or was the
argument (and the relevance of the sections of the paper to it) obvious throughout?
2. How clearly did the author structure the Method section?
3. How well did the paper conform to the APA writing standard?
Research
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4. How appropriate was the chosen research papers with respect to the argument the
author was suggesting?
5. How well did the author explain the relevant aspects of previous research? Was the
research understandable, and what point it makes with respect to the author’s argument?
Proposed Experiment
6. How well would the experiment, as proposed, deal with the argument the author
suggested in the introduction?
7. How well did the author use the introduction to motivate reasonable predictions about the
potential outcome(s) of the proposed experiment?
8. Was the experiment well designed? Are there any obvious design flaws?
9. How clever was the suggested experiment? That is, did the author simply suggest
looking at some existing issue as a function of some other variable with no apparent
motivation, or did the experiment represent a real attempt to either confirm or deny some
theory, or discriminate between existing views or theories? Let’s say, there is a lot of
research on how quickly we respond to circular spots popping up on a computer screen.
Then an experiment would be less clever if it just looked at how quick we are when the
spots are square-shaped.
10. How realistic is the predicted outcome of the experiments? Does the author mention any
alternatives?
For your assistance, I have include an example and a checklist to evaluate your research
proposal.