Research Proposal

Research Proposal

Purpose: The purpose of your research proposal is to map out – both for yourself and for your audience – where you think your initial research this semester might be taking you. It’s an opportunity to test out ideas, methods and potential hypotheses for your ethnographic research before you get started. It’s a document that will guide your initial research, but in the end you may find doesn’t describe what you end up discovering at all.

To those ends, you will write a 3 to 5 page double-spaced polished paper that does the following:

• Identifies your subculture and your relationship to it. Are you an insider or an outsider?
• Describes what you already know about the subculture and identifies questions/tells your reader what you want to find out by observing the culture more closely. What issues within this culture might you explore with your research?
• Identifies potential questions you have about the cultural mythologies/value systems/beliefs held within the culture. Justifies why you think this is an appropriate topic to research for an ethnography for this class. Why is this a good line of inquiry?
• Lists any hypotheses/expectations you have about what you might find out.

Focus: The focus of this essay is both descriptive and persuasive. When you propose research – whether it be for a grant or an academic assignment – you need to convince your audience (the grant-giving association, your instructor) of the importance and legitimacy of your proposed research.

Development for Audience: Your writing group will be reading and evaluating your proposals. So will I. You’ll need to convince us that you are on the right track. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to revise if you need to.

Research: By the time you write a research proposal, you should have done some preliminary work on your topic. For this assignment, this includes work you did on your community briefs as well as brainstorming in class.

I’m also requiring that you do some initial reading for this assignment. You will be required to staple an article – of any type – to your proposal showing your audience what you have already read on the topic.

Organization: How you choose to organize your paper is up to you. You should have a clear map for your reader in the beginning about what you expect to accomplish with this paper/your research. If you decide that subheads are the best form of organization, then try subheads.