Sociology 302 Social Research Methods I Prof. J. Badagliacco

Final Assignment: Proposal

This assignment is worth 100 points toward your overall grade, and is due by Thursday, December 16th by 5 p.m. in my office or mailbox. Late papers will not be accepted without an emergency medical excuse. Of course, expect your paper to be word processed, with 1” margins, and proofread. Remember that the quality of written expression is very important to research, and how you say something as well as what you say is important.

For this assignment you are required to examine, evaluate, and synthesize all your previous work into a coherent whole. Using much of the materials you have already written, produce a paper according to the guidelines below and that is approximately 10-12 pages. Please number your pages. Good luck.

Remember that you have already done the majority of this work. Here you are asked to pull it all together into a complete and coherent whole. Do not just merely retype or cut and paste what you have done previously. Instead, examine and evaluate your previous work, decide what needs to be included in the proposal, rewrite parts if you need to, shorten or lengthen sections as appropriate based on the comments that have been provided to you.

Final Project:

You are a student at the University of Kentucky, a Research I University, and you have been invited by the National Science Foundation to write a competitive proposal on sociologically studying the attitudes of college students in the United States regarding a particular aspect of poverty. Your aim is to convince the NSF to fund your project for a larger national study on the attitudes of college students. You will explain to them in this proposal that you have done a pretest (pilot study): your focus group; and you have designed a questionnaire. In this proposal we will not be concerned with a budget and a timetable, but recognize that were this an actual proposal you would be expected to provide a budget explaining what you need the money for, how you will spend it, and a time frame for getting the work done. Be sure to use appropriate headings and a neat format for all sections of the proposal. The NSF wants you to write a brief proposal that includes the following:

COVER PAGE (not included in the overall number of pages)

Title (centered; middle of page)

Your name (centered just below the title)

Course information: (lower right hand corner)

Sociology 302-002, Fall 2007

Dr. J. Badagliacco

Date

ABSTRACT (not included in the overall number of pages)

100 word summary, emphasizing results

Goes before the proposal (i.e., right after the cover page on its own page)

Write it after you have completed everything else

INTRODUCTION

Introduce your research topic (be brief; 1 page)

What is your topic? (first be general about welfare or poverty, then very specific about your own particular slant on how to study these broad issues.

Why is it sociologically important?

LITERATURE REVIEW (about 2 pages)

What others have found regarding your research?

Discuss why your work is fundable (i.e., why should they give you money

if the research has already been done? Here's where you can point

out the shortcomings of what's already been done.)

PROPOSED RESEARCH (about 3 pages)

Full Discussion of your topic

Research questions

Theoretical Perspective regarding this study

Dependent and Independent Variables

Hypotheses

Discussion of hypothesized causal relationships

RESEARCH PLAN (about 2 pages) (Note: Appendices do not count in total pages and should be numbered with Roman Numerals)

Exactly how did you carry out the preliminary research?

Discuss chosen method (survey questionnaire)

Attach Appendix A -- your SAQ

Attach Appendix B -- informed consent document

Discuss using Focus group methodology as pretest for SAQ

Discuss time dimension (cross-sectional or longitudinal?)

Discuss sampling for pretest and proposed study (who will you sample and why?)

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS (about 4 pages)

Results of your Focus Group Interviews

Draw some preliminary conclusions about your research

Summarize your Focus Group and discuss how it informed your

thinking regarding survey research (SAQ)

Attach Appendix C -- Focus Group Transcript

SIGNIFICANCE AND CONCLUSION (1 or 2 pages)

End your proposal in a convincing manner

Discuss how your SAQ was guided by the focus group interview

What is the significance of this research?

Why should they give you funding?

Policy Implications

BIBLIOGRAPHY (not included in the overall number of pages)

Book and journal articles you used in your literature review

Do not include texts (e.g., Babbie), nor cite them in your paper

Proper citations: Lastname, Firstname. Year. "Title of Journal Article." Name of Journal: Vol. Page #-page#.

APPENDIX

Attach Appendix A -- your SAQ (mark as Appendix A)

Attach Appendix B -- informed consent document (mark as Appendix B)