Assignment 2: Group Research Proposal

Assignment Description and Requirements

Submit Monday, October 14th by 12 pm on Canvas

In this assignment, you are required to work in a group to come up with a research proposal for the research question you will explore through this course.

Research proposals should include the following:

1. Overview. Provide a brief summary of the purpose of the research. Provide 3‐5 sentences describing your general area of interest, your hypotheses, and how you plan to operationalize and test these hypotheses.
2. Discussion of Sample. Give details of procedures that relate to subjects' participation. BE SURE TO ADDRESS EACH OF THE FOLLOWING:
1. What is your inferential population?
2. Who is your target population?
3. What are characteristics of the target population for this study?
4. What sample frame do you intend to use?
5. How will you draw a sample from the population?
3. Discussion of Field Protocols. Provide a short description of the field protocols and methods you intend to implement for your survey. Provide 1‐2 sentences for each of the following: 
1. What mode or modes will you use to conduct the survey?
2. What are the benefits and drawbacks of this approach?
3. How will respondents be identified and contacted?
4. What incentives or inducements, if any, will be offered to respondents?
5. How will information be gathered from subjects? How many surveys will you conduct /send out?
4. Discussion of Survey. Please provide a short description of the survey questionnaire that you would like to develop.
1. What concepts do you intend to measure in your survey?
2. How will you measure these concepts in your survey?
3. How will these items help you to answer the research questions you are interested in?
4. What other information will you need to collect in your survey?
5. What demographic information will you collect?
6. How long will the survey take respondents to complete?
7. How will you explain the research to subjects? Include the two or three sentences that you will either include (or perhaps say) at the beginning of your survey explaining the survey and who you are to the respondent.
5. Discussion of Ethical Considerations. Provide a short discussion of the ethical considerations involved in conducting this project:
1. Are respondents all capable of providing informed consent?
2. Will you ask any questions about behavior which might be illegal, or ask about anything that might embarrass the respondent if it were revealed?
3. Are subjects deliberately deceived in any way? If so, what is the nature of the deception? Is it likely to be significant to subjects? Is there any other way to conduct the research that would not involve deception, and, if so, why have you not chosen that alternative?
4. How are confidentiality and/or anonymity assured? At what stage are identifiers removed from the data? If identifiers must be retained, please explain why.
5. Will research data (written or otherwise recorded) be destroyed at the end of the study? If not, where and in what format and for how long will they be stored?