You can check the attached instructions and grading rubric before placing your bid.
Background
This assignment is designed to teach you how to write a short research proposal. Rather than
write a full research proposal, this assignment is a good outline or executive summary for what
a full proposal might look like in research.
Section 1: Your Research Proposal Outline
A) General Research Topic and Questions:
B) Association Claim:
C) Research Strategy:
D) Operational Definitions:
E) Participants:
F) Ethical Implications:
Section 2: Previous Peer-Reviewed Research
In this section, report on two peer reviewed (scholarly) articles that are related to your research
hypothesis. Answer the following questions for each article:
1. Explain in 2 or 3 sentences how the article is related to your topic and why you selected
this particular article (there are most likely hundreds of possible articles why did you
pick this exact one?). Please note that answers such as it was the first one I found,
or I liked the title are not well founded arguments and will be marked accordingly. To
be clear, a logical and convincing justification to use any particular article should require
you to read multiple abstracts and articles before deciding on one for this section.
2. What is the most important finding from this article? This needs to be in your own
words (no copy pasting what the article says).
3. How does this article specifically relate to your hypothesis or research proposal more
generally? In 2 or 3 sentences write how you would discuss this article in the
introduction of your research proposal.
Outline of the Research Proposal
Your research proposal needs to present a correlational design on a topic of your
choosing that is related to psychology (i.e., understanding people). The proposal needs to be
feasible in that the project could theoretically be done (you can assume large budgets,
resources of technicians, a vast supply of research assistants, long periods of time to complete
the study, etc.). One additional requirement for this proposal is that it needs to be ORIGINAL.
This means that you are not allowed to propose exact replication research (i.e. do exactly
what another researcher has already done). A proposal can be on topics that have already been
studied (this is fine and expected) but your proposal must be different from other conducted
research (different research design, different procedure, changing a variable, etc.).
Section I is broken down into the key components and decisions that should be contemplated in
designing a research proposal. Section II asks you to find two peer-reviewed articles that could
be used in writing your research proposal.
The information stating the number of sentences for each section is a guideline (not a rule).
Depending on how you structure your sentences, there can be some variety in what may be
needed for a section.
Section I: Research Proposal Outline
In the top part of the Worksheet table: list the Area of Study (developmental, social, health,
etc.)
A) General Research Topic and Questions: List your research topic (general area) of your
research interests. What types of questions would you be interested in researching/trying to
understand.
This section needs to list the topic you are interested in and include at least 3
different related research questions on the selected topic (this helps markers
understand your overall interests)
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For example: Topic: depression and food (this would fall in the Health area of study)
Here are some possible research questions based on the topic. Is eating junk food
associated with depressive symptoms? Are eating habits of those suffering from
depression related to recovery rates? Does eating chocolate correlate with lower
depression levels? People have comfort foods. Would eating these comfort foods
more regularly be related to lower depression?
As students sometime struggle at thinking of different possible questions, here are a
bunch of questions each on a completely different topic: Is attending cognitive
behaviour therapy (CBT) associated with better treatment outcomes in treating
people? Is physical training linked to peoples reflexes? Does the size of a dinner
plate correlate with how much we eat? Is shyness during childhood linked with
increased loneliness as an adult?
B) Association Claim: Based on the information in part A, write a testable, specific
association/research hypothesis for one of your research questions. Be sure to include all
possible associations hypothesized. This section should be 1 or 2 sentences long.
Example hypotheses based on above topics: There will be a positive relationship
between eating junk food and depressive symptoms such that participants who eat
more junk food will report more depressive symptoms and participants who eat less
junk food will report fewer depressive symptoms. There will be a negative
relationship between attending CBT and symptoms of anxiety such that participants
who attended CBT will report less anxiety whereas participants who did not attend
CBT will report more symptoms of anxiety. There will be a positive relationship
between physical training and reflexes such that higher physical training will be
related to faster blink reflexes whereas lower physical training will be related to
slower blink reflexes. There will be a positive association between plate size and
amount of food eaten such that eating meals on large dinner plates will be
associated with eating more food whereas eating meals on smaller plates will be
associated with eating less food. There will be a positive relationship between
childhood shyness and adult loneliness such that more shyness during childhood is
associated with more loneliness during adulthood whereas less shyness during
childhood is associated with less loneliness during adulthood.
C) Research Strategy: This section should be 3 or 4 sentences long. The following components of
your study design need to be noted in this section.
What is your correlational design (e.g., cross-sectional, longitudinal, etc.)
What variable(s) are you measuring?
What is the setting/context for the research (for example, is the study taking place in
a hospital, in an elementary classroom, in a psychology lab, at a bar, etc.)?
D) Operational Definitions: All correlational studies require at least 2 variables. In this section,
fully operationally define your key variables. Each operational definition should be 1 to 3
sentences. Please indicate what scale of measurement your variables will be (i.e. nominal,
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ordinal, interval, or ratio). If your study design is more complex (more than 2 variables), the
worksheet has space for an additional third variable.
E) Participants: In a few sentences (3 or 4) explain the following
What is the population you are interested in?
How you will gain access to the population?
What sampling technique you will use (Random or non-random sampling and which
form of it)?
F) Ethical Implications: For this section, list 2 or 3 ethical concerns and what you could do to
reduce or eliminate the concerns listed (thus possibly get ethics approval to conduct the study).
What are the major concerns that a board of ethics would have/be concerned about (i.e., the
different possibilities for why they would say no)? How would you address/reduce the concerns
(i.e., what could you do with the design or procedure to help get approval). If you do not
believe there are any ethical concerns, then how would you increase the benefits associated
with the research (the benefits must outweigh the risks to get approval).
Section II: Previous Peer Reviewed Research (Submit the two PDF articles with your assignment
submission)
In a research proposal, the introduction should explain to readers why your hypothesis is
important and how your research adds to the field. To be able to explain how your research
adds to the subject area, you first need to summarize what has already been done. In this
section, you are asked to find two peer-reviewed research (journal) articles that are related to
your topic/hypothesis. This does not mean that you need to find an article on exactly your
hypothesis but an article that helps justify why your research is important.
For example: If my hypothesis was There will be a positive relationship between eating junk
food and depressive symptoms such that participants who eat more junk food will report more
depressive symptoms and participants who eat less junk food will report fewer depressive
symptoms I could find and describe an article that looks at the drawbacks of junk food for
mental health or an article on how different foods are related to depressive symptoms or any
other mental health aspect (e.g., anxiety). Ideally, I might be able to find an article that
compares junk food and depressive symptoms. If this study does exist, I would want to make
sure that my proposed design is somehow different (different operationalization of variable,
different participant population, different timeframes, etc.). I may then need to adjust my
hypothesis and operationalization of variables so that my study proposal would still advance the
knowledge in the field.
In this section, report on two peer reviewed (scholarly) articles that are related to your research
hypothesis. Answer the following questions for each article:
1. Explain in 2 or 3 sentences how the article is related to your topic and why you selected this
particular article (there are most likely hundreds of possible articles why did you pick this
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exact one?). Please note that answers such as it was the first one I found, or I liked the
title are not well founded arguments and will be marked accordingly. To be clear, a logical and
convincing justification to use any particular article should require you to read multiple
abstracts and articles before deciding on one for this section.
2. What is the most important finding from this article? This needs to be in your own words (no
copy pasting what the article says).
3. How does this article specifically relate to your hypothesis or research proposal more
generally? In 2 or 3 sentences write how you would discuss this article in the introduction of
your research proposal.
Remember, the purpose of finding and responding to the questions above is so that these
articles (and your responses to the questions) should assist in writing a research proposal
introduction. The quality of the association between the article and your proposed research is
taken into consideration in marking this section (grabbing the first article that pops up in a
search will most likely result in a poor association, you should expect needing to read multiple
abstracts before reading a selection of full articles. After reading a handful or more of articles,
then select two for this section and answer the questions.
Format and Important reminders
1. Paper should be no longer than 4 pages double spaced (not including title page and
reference list). Approximately 2 pages for section 1 and 2 pages for section 2.
2. APA 6 th edition must be used to cite references and format the paper (i.e., 12-sized Times
New Roman Font, 1 inch margins, double spaced, appropriate in text citations etc.).
3. The title page should be in APA format with a running head, header, page numbers, student
name, student number, date, and course code. A reference list should appear at the end of
the document
4. This project is to be completed independently and plagiarism rules apply.
5. Submit the two PDF journal articles with your assignment submission.
