Guidelines for Research Design
Paper
The purpose of this assignment is twofold: (1) to allow you to explore a given topic of
your choice in more depth than is otherwise possible in a seminar, and (2) to
help you hone your research skills in making the transition from a consumer of
knowledge to a producer of knowledge.
Try to think of the paper, not as just another written assignment, but
as an opportunity to make the course more relevant to your interests, and to
develop a research paper that will eventually result in a convention paper, a
publication in a scholarly journal, or a dissertation topic.
Think about the assignment as writing a slightly more
detailed version of the first half of a journal article or an NSF proposal
requesting for funding for your research.
In other words, you have limited space to convince me (or a panel of
reviewers at NSF, or a journal editor and three anonymous reviewers) of the
importance of your research, your ability to complete it, its contribution to
the literature, theoretical motivation, conceptual development, and the
rationale behind your design for carrying out your research. I’m a very busy
guy who reads tons of proposals and journal submissions. Frankly, very important people like me have limited time, money and journal space
to devote to authors who fail to get directly to the point and convince me that
I should read your proposal rather than doing something more important and
rewarding. In truth, of course, I enjoy reading proposals, but just pretend for
the sake of the assignment that I don’t.
1) Introduction
a) Thesis: What is the
central research question that you are investigating? Some statement like, “The
primary purpose of this paper is to...” (Or, the purpose of this paper is
twofold…). The thesis of the research should be stated early in the paper—the
first few paragraphs, the first page or two.
b) Include in your introduction a brief statement describing
the importance of the topic and the thesis.
What are the political, theoretical, and normative implications of your
research? How does your research improve upon the existing literature? What
contribution will the proposed research make to the literature? What new,
exciting directions will you take the literature? Like a journalist, you need
to convince the reader that the paper is worthy of careful consideration.
c) Plan of the paper: In a brief paragraph, give an overview
of your arguments and how the paper will be organized.
2) Past Research (review
of the literature). Please be
especially vigilant about keeping the review relevant to the central
thesis of the paper, which should be the central organizing theme of your
paper. I don’t want a bibliographic
essay, but an evaluation of relevant prior research on the topic that will
describe how you intend to improve upon existing studies.
a) Strengths and weaknesses of prior research (see page 1 of
the syllabus for ideas here); you might discuss one or more of the following:
i)
How existing research has
overlooked or given inadequate attention to your topic, for whatever reason.
ii) You might critique existing studies on a number of grounds,
including inadequate measures, inappropriate design, fuzzy concepts, lack of
theory, contradictory findings, puzzles in the literature that need to be
solved, and so on. You’re obviously going to focus on those problems that you
intend to correct in your research.
b) Describe briefly how you propose to correct the above problems.
3) Expectations: What do you expect to find? What are your expectations? Your expectations or hypotheses will flow from
theory and prior research.
4) Design, Measures, Data: The actual design or your proposed
research. What basic decisions are you
making about your research design and how do you justify them?
a) What general type of research design is most appropriate
for your study? Survey research, field
research, panel design, time-series, experimental, or some other way of
collecting observations?
b) Define important concepts and describe how you plan to
operationalize (measure) important variables.
c) What type of observations, at what level of analysis, how
they should be made, and so forth?
5) Conclusions: Reflect
back on your thesis and the contribution of your proposed research.