writing a research proposal

There are several ways to obtain copies of articles. Some listings in PsycINFO contain a link to a full text version of the article that can be printed directly from your computer. Sometimes, you will need to go to the library to find the journal and make a copy of the article. If the journal is not available, you can request a copy through inter-library loan.

Formulating an idea
Once you have read one or two research articles, formulate a tentative research question you would like to address. Consider several ways that you might expand on a study about which you read. You could address one of the limitations of the study. Or, investigate an additional variable that was not considered in the study. Or, address a question that was raised in the study. Or, attempt to replicate the general findings of the study using a different method or a different population. Or, consider a hypothesis that was implied by the theory or the findings of the study. In formulating your research question be sure that it seems interesting and important to you. You should also focus on questions that you could feasibly investigate. It would be unrealistic to propose conducting a random clinical trial of a new treatment for domestic violence, but you could distribute a questionnaire to college students or conduct an analysis using an existing observational dataset.

After formulating a tentative research question, the next step is to read more research articles. You should be able to identify some important studies from the reference list in the research articles you already read. If the articles were well written, they should have cited several important studies. At this point, you also may have a better idea of what to search for using PsycINFO. As you consider each potential article to read, ask yourself if the article is directly related to your research question. Does it answer some aspect of your question? Does it support the importance of your question? Does it provide information that is essential for formulating your question? In this way, your research question should provide a framework for your reading. It should guide you in deciding which articles to read and which articles to skip. Moreover, it should provide a framework for deciding what aspects of each article are important and what aspects are trivial.

In this way, you should be reading with a clear purpose and not merely reading to collect additional information. Specifically, your purpose is to clarify and build your research question. When college students read research articles, they often believe the goal is simply to learn “about” a particular topic. However, this goal will make your reading dry, meaningless, disorganized, and difficult to remember (which in turn, will make your resulting paper dry, meaningless, and disorganized). When you read, always keep in mind the questions you need to answer. What information do you need in order to build your research question? If you start reading an article, but discover that it is not helping you formulate a research question, you may want to simply stop reading and move on to another article.

Although there are many types of articles you could read, the majority of the articles you read should be empirical, quantitative research articles. You can recognize a quantitative research article by the fact that it will have a “methods” section. In this section, the article will describe a sample of participants, describe how the sample was obtained, and describe the types of assessment procedures that were used. In addition, it will provide a statistical analysis of the data. If an article lacks these components, it is probably not a quantitative research article. In addition to quantitative, research articles, there are other types of articles that may be useful. Sometimes you will find a “review article” in which the authors only review past research and the authors do not report collecting any new data of their own from live research participants. While review articles are not the same as quantitative research articles, if used in moderation, they can be useful. Review articles can point you to important research for further reading and help you formulate a theoretical model for your hypothesis.

As you read additional articles, there should be a kind of dialogue between your research question and the articles you read. Your tentative research question should provide a framework from which to view each article. Conversely, each article you read should contribute new information to your understanding of the research question. Consequently, you are likely to find it necessary to alter your question after you have read a few articles. Your research question influences the way you select and read research articles, and the articles, in turn, influence your question.

Finalizing your research question
After reading several research articles you are ready to finalize and clarify your research question. The heart of your research question will be a set of hypotheses that you wish to investigate. Each hypothesis should be a statement regarding how you expect two or more variables to be related to each other. For example, you may have a hypothesis that people are likely to express emotions to a romantic partner when they feel securely attached to that partner. In this example, one variable (emotion expression) is expected to be positively correlated with a second variable (secure attachment).

For each hypothesis you propose, you will also need to address three issues. First, how will each variable in your hypothesis be operationalized? Second, what is the theoretical model supporting the hypothesis? Third, what is the existing research supporting the theoretical model?

To address the first question, you need to clarify how you will operationalize each variable. In other words, you need to explain how each variable will be defined and assessed. For example, if one of your variables is “secure attachment,” how will you measure it? Are you going to observe participants as they engage in an interpersonal activity, or interview their friends, or give participants a questionnaire, or assess the variable in some other way? In the present example regarding attachment, there are many self-report questionnaires available for assessing this variable, and you may simply specify a particular questionnaire you plan to use.

The second and third questions pertain to your theoretical model for the hypothesis and the existing research that supports your theoretical model. To address these issues, you need to keep in mind the distinction between theory and research. Both theory and research are important. A theoretical model is the logical line of reasoning that provides a rationale for a hypothesis. For example, if a researcher is testing a hypothesis that young children are likely to have behavior problems when their parents argue, the theoretical model explains WHY these two variables are expected to be related. Is there something about arguing that makes parents likely to neglect their children, which in turn elicits behavior problems? Or are children likely to experience some kind of negative emotion when they observe arguing, and this negative emotion, in turn, leads to behavior problems? The theoretical model, then, provides an explanation for the hypothesis. As such, it makes the hypotheses interesting and important. In addition to developing a theoretical model, you also need to discuss research findings. Where the theoretical model provides a rationale for your hypotheses, research provides evidence that supports (or fails to support) the theoretical model. For example, a degree of support for the latter hypothesis mentioned above would be provided by a research study finding that young children show more signs of anxiety after watching a video of two adults arguing than they do after watching video of two adults agreeing on an issue. This would support the idea that children experience negative emotion when they observe arguing. Without research, the theoretical model is not credible. Without a theoretical model, the research is not important.

When students first begin learning about an area of research, they often find it difficult to formulate a theoretical model for their hypotheses. Students sometimes propose an excellent and interesting hypothesis, but then are not able to answer the question, “why do you expect your hypothesis to be true?” A good theoretical model is essential, because without a theoretical model, any findings from your proposed study will be pieces of mere trivia, unrelated to anything important in the world. Your theoretical model will be the key factor that determines whether or not your hypothesis is worth investigating. After you complete a study, the presence of a good theoretical model will determine if your final research report is worth reading. To develop a good theoretical model, you can draw from several sources. The easiest method is to simply use a theory that you read in a review article or in a quantitative research article. In developing the theoretical model, you can also do your own thinking. Take a moment to sit down in a comfortable chair, stare at the ceiling, rub your chin, and ponder. Ask yourself, “why do I think these variables are related or not related?” A good theoretical model often includes a blend of ideas from other authors as well as some of your own ideas.

In summary, your research question should articulate a set of hypotheses. For each hypothesis, you should also explain how each variable will be assessed, describe a theoretical model that supports the hypothesis, and identify some research findings that provide a degree of credibility for your theoretical model.

Writing the Proposal

A research proposal will have two basic sections. The first section is the introduction, where you provide a rationale for your study. The second part is a methods section, where you describe exactly what you plan to do in your study. These two sections generally follow the same format as the first two sections in any good, published research article. The primary difference is that, in a proposal, you should describe what you plan to do rather than what has already been accomplished. Thus, you can review the introduction section and methods section in a few of the published studies you have read to get a feel for how to write your proposal.

Purpose of Introduction
The primary purpose of the introduction is to present the hypotheses that you plan to investigate in your proposed study. However, you need to do much more than simply list your hypotheses. Specifically, you need to provide a persuasive argument that convinces your reader of three things. First, you need to convince the reader that your hypotheses address an important area of inquiry. You don’t want the reader to look at your hypotheses and then say, “so what?” For example, consider a hypothesis that people who enjoy bubblegum blow bigger bubbles than people who dislike bubblegum. It would be difficult to convince a reader that this bubblegum hypothesis addresses an important area of inquiry. Second, you need to convince the reader that your hypotheses are reasonable. In other words, you need to demonstrate that both logical reasoning and findings from past research lead to a conclusion that your hypotheses are likely to be true. For example, consider a hypothesis that depression in adults is caused by childhood experiences chewing bubblegum. Although the topic of depression is important, this particular hypothesis seems highly unlikely. It is not logical, and there is no existing research supporting it. Finally, you need to convince your reader that you are qualified to conduct the proposed study. You convince the reader of you qualifications by demonstrating that you are knowledgeable, that you have read the relevant literature, and that you have considered all the important issues. In addition, you demonstrate your qualification by using good writing skill. If the introduction is poorly written, the reader will wonder if you are capable of conducting good research. For example, the reader will doubt your qualifications if you write, “As Dr. Dobbleson said on his radio shoow, researchers have proved that child is better off when they isx find high sports.” This poorly written sentence with typos cites an untrustworthy source (a radio pop-psychologist) and shows poor understanding of the scientific method (by use of the word “proved”). A person that writes such a sentence would not appear qualified to conduct good research. Taken together, the goal of the introduction is to articulate a set of hypotheses, to convince the reader that the hypotheses are important and reasonable, and to demonstrate that you are qualified to investigate them.

One way to demonstrate that your hypotheses are both important and reasonable is to describe a solid theoretical model that provides a rationale for your hypotheses and to describe previous research that supports the theoretical model. Most academic people will readily see value in investigating a good theory. Thus, your introduction should articulate a solid theoretical model, provide supporting evidence for that model, and explain how your proposed study (and your proposed hypotheses) will play an essential role in testing the theoretical model. To the extent that your hypotheses help test a good theoretical model, they are important. To the extent that the theoretical model is supported by previous research, your hypotheses are reasonable.

In addition to discussing the theoretical model, it may be useful discuss strengths and limitations of previous research. Any strength you discuss should be something you plan to incorporate into your proposal. Any limitation you discuss should be something that you will address in your proposal. In this way, a discussion of strengths or limitations of previous research will serve to support the importance of your hypotheses. Potential strengths or limitations of previous research that you may want to consider include: (1) how variables have been assessed, (2) what sizes and types of samples have been used, (3) what procedures have been used, (4) what types of statistical analyses have been conducted, or (5) what variables have been investigated.

Organization of Introduction
In general, the introduction should begin by clearly identifying the topic, and it should then lead the reader, step by step, through a logical argument that concludes with an overview of what you plan to do in the proposed study and a list of your hypotheses. The first paragraph of the introduction should clearly identify the basic topic of the proposal and highlight the general importance of the topic. You can highlight the importance of a topic by discussing research and theory.

The bulk of the introduction will consist of the logical argument in support of your hypotheses. As discussed previously, this will include a discussion of theory, previous research, and some of your own ideas. This section should include all the important details that are necessary for convincing the reader that your hypotheses are important and reasonable, but it should omit any trivial or unnecessary details. The paragraphs that comprise your argument should be organized so that they follow a logical sequence.

After providing a logical argument in support of your hypotheses, you conclude your introduction by providing a brief overview of your proposed study and then listing your hypotheses. You may even want to include a heading in your paper that reads: “Overview of proposed study.” Notably, when you begin the overview, there will be a switch in the focus of your introduction. Prior to the overview, you should focus on telling the reader why it is important to investigate certain issues, but prior to the overview, there is no need to tell the reader what you actually plan to do. This is because, before you tell the reader what you plan to do, you should first convince the reader that it needs to be done. Thus, the body of your introduction will tell the reader why it is important to investigate certain issues, and then the overview at the end of the introduction switches to telling the reader that you actually plan to investigate these issues. Your overview should only be one or two paragraphs (save a detailed description of your study for the methods section). The purpose is to give the reader a basic idea of what you are proposing and to highlight the important features. After providing an overview of your proposed study, conclude your introduction by listing your specific hypotheses.

Methods section
The purpose of the methods section is to provide a detailed description of exactly how you plan to conduct the proposed study. Unlike the brief overview of your study in the introduction section, the methods section should be highly detailed. The methods section needs to provide the reader with a vivid picture of exactly what will happen in your study. Give the reader enough information so that he or she could actually carry out the study exactly as you intend it to be done. For example, consider the statement: “questionnaires will be distributed to students at Baylor.” By itself, this statement leaves many questions unanswered. How will questionnaires be distributed? When will they be distributed? Who will distribute them? Where will they be distributed? Will they be given to any particular type of student? What will potential participants be told when questionnaires are distributed? How will you encourage people to complete the questionnaire? How will you ensure that people do not feel pressured into participating? To provide the reader with all the important information on your study, the methods section should include the following sections: (1) participants, (2) procedures, (3) measures, and (4) data analysis. It is best to provide a separate heading for each of these sections. A brief description of each section is provided below.

The participants section should describe the nature of the sample you hope to collect. Describe how you plan to recruit participants and make it clear that your recruitment procedures are ethical. Also specify the target population. For example, will your sample include students, psychology majors, children, young adults, married people, people in romantic relationships, people representing particular ethnic or cultural groups, or people from particular religions? This section should also mention how many people you hope to recruit.

The procedures section should describe exactly how you plan to carry out the study. From start to finish, what will participants do? Provide a step by step description of the sequence of events. In addition, describe how you will protect the rights of your participants and how your procedures will adhere to ethical guidelines. How will you obtain informed consent? How will you protect confidentiality? What are the risks of your study? Are you asking any personal, or potentially upsetting, or unpleasant questions? How will you insure that participants are both maximally protected from risk and aware of any potential risk?

The measures section should provide a description of how you plan to assess every single variable in your proposed study. I would recommend using a separate paragraph for each variable. If you are using a scale that was created by someone else, describe the scale and cite the authors of the scale. Also provide some information from previous research regarding the reliability and validity of that scale. If the scale involves questionnaire items that are discussed in a previously published article, it is not necessary to list all the items, but it may be helpful to list a couple items as examples. If you are making up your own scale, provide a complete description of your scale and explain how you created it. If you are using your own questionnaire items, list all the items and also describe the rating scale participants will use to rate each item. Even a simple variable such as age needs to be defined. For example, the following statement would describe one way of assessing age: “Age was assed by a single questionnaire item that read: “what is your age?” Alternatively, age could be assessed by asking people to write down their birth date and the present date, and then the researcher could calculate a precise age (in days, months, and years) for each participant. Because the validity of a research study depends on the validity of the measures that are used, it is essential to be clear and specific in describing how each variable will be assessed.

The data analysis section should explain what types of statistical analyses you plan to conduct. The easiest way of doing this is to simply go through each hypothesis, one by one, and state how each hypothesis will be tested. This section does not need to be long. The purpose is to make the reader aware that you have a plan for testing each hypothesis.

Dos and Don’ts of Writing Style

As previously discussed, your research proposal needs to convince the reader that you are qualified to conduct the study. One way of doing this is to use good, scientific, writing style. The following section provides several suggestions on how to write using this type of style.

Cite your sources
Your introduction section will include three types of information: (1) results from empirical research, (2) the opinions of other authors, and (3) your own opinions. Overall, you should devote more space to discussing results from empirical research than you devote to discussing your own opinions; however, all three types of information are necessary. Most importantly, when you write, it should always be clear to the reader which type of information you are presenting. When discussing research, cite the authors of the research study. When discussing the opinion of another author, cite the author. When discussing your own opinions, make it clear to the reader that you are describing your own original ideas. However, you do not want to do this using a personal pronoun (e.g., do NOT say “I think,” or “My opinion is”). Rather, phrase your statement in a way that indirectly indicates that it must be a product of personal reasoning. For example, you can do this by using words and phrases such as, “it appears that,” “in summary,” “overall,” “presumably,” “it seems that,” “it is likely that,” “it is reasonable to conclude that,” “conventional wisdom would suggest that.” A sentence or paragraph including words and phrases such as these would sufficiently clue the reader into the fact that you are expressing your own ideas. If you absolutely must refer directly to yourself, refer to yourself as “this author” (for example, “this author has observed”).

By clarifying the source of each piece of information you discuss, you will make it clear to the reader when you are citing findings from a previous research study and when you are merely making an assertion. In this way, you will avoid a common mistake that student’s make: phrasing an assertion so that it sounds like a fact. If you are not actually citing empirical research, then do not make a statement that sounds like a fact. For example, if you claim, “when people feel depressed, they don’t enjoy spending time with their family,” you must also cite research that supports this claim. If you have no research to cite, then change the phrasing of the statement so that it sounds like a product of your own personal reasoning. For example, if you have no supporting research, it would be appropriate to state, “it is likely that when people feel depressed, they don’t enjoy spending time with their family.”

Don’t make claims of proof
Don’t make statements that are stronger than you can support. In science, nothing is ever proven and you can never be 100% certain of anything. Thus, you need to make sure that you don’t give the reader the impression that you are naively making grandiose claims of proof or claims of 100% certainty on a matter. For example, it is appropriate to say that a particular research finding “supports” a theory, but not appropriate to say that the study has “proven” something.

Paraphrase sources with NO direct quotations
When you describe research studies, it should be evident that you have read the study and that you understand it. I will assume you don’t understand the results of a study if you (1) omit important aspects of the study, or (2) describe trivial details. I will also assume you don’t understand the study if you use a direct quotation (i.e., where you quote the author word-for-word and use quotation marks). I have found that when students don’t understand a study, they are unable to paraphrase it using their own words, and when they are unable to paraphrase, they use direct quotations. When I see direct quotations in a student’s paper, I assume the student does not understand the study and I don’t waste my time reading the quotation.

Don’t include irrelevant information
The hypotheses for your proposal should guide you in determining what to include and what to leave out. Every single word you write should be essential to your argument regarding the importance and reasonableness of your hypotheses. Obviously, it will be essential to provide an explanation of your theoretical model and to discuss research related to that theoretical model. It is also likely that your argument will make the most sense if you provide some background information on the topic. In addition, depending on your hypotheses, you may be able to strengthen your argument by discussing and/or critiquing the ways in which variables have been assessed in previous research. Your task is to include all the important information, and to omit everything else.

It is not uncommon for students to make the mistake of including information in a paper simply because they want to discuss every single article they read (or because they want to make the paper longer). This simply makes the paper incoherent. If you read an article related to the general topic of your hypotheses, but the article is not useful for your argument supporting your hypotheses, do not waste the reader’s time by discussing the article in your paper. Every sentence you write should be important. If someone points to any given sentence in your proposal and asks you, “why is this sentence necessary?” you should be able to explain why that sentence is important for supporting your argument. If you cannot explain why the sentence is important, then cut it from your paper. Place yourself in the position of the reader. Imagine you are reading a chapter in a textbook for a class, but unfortunately, the chapter is twice as long as it needs to be because it includes a large amount of nonessential and tangential information. You would probably prefer reading a chapter that is concise and that omits a discussion of useless material. Write your proposal from this perspective. Part of good writing is being able to make a point using as few words as possible.

Never surprise the reader
In good scientific writing, you should not surprise the reader. Rather, keep the reader one step ahead of yourself so that the reader can anticipate what your are going to say next. For example, before you even tell the reader what your hypotheses are, the reader should be able to guess what they are, and moreover, the reader should be thinking that the hypotheses are important. In addition, always make sure the reader understands the relevance of what you are saying. Never give the reader a chance to wonder, “Why is the author discussing this?”

There are several ways to prevent reader surprise. Most importantly, organize your paper so that it follows a logical sequence. Your paper should follow a series of orderly steps that leads the reader up to your hypotheses and that convinces the reader of the importance and reasonableness of your hypotheses. Plan your steps carefully. What should come first? What should come last? What can be omitted? Your task is to arrange your argument so that the reader finds it easy to follow.

In addition to making your proposal follow a logical organization, you can prevent reader surprise by using “guiding statements,” sentences or phrases the help the reader know what is important and where you are going. One way of doing this is to make transitional statements when you shift from one topic to the next. A transitional statement alerts the reader to the fact that you are changing topics and tells the reader how the new topic is relevant or how it is related to previous discussion. For example, if you have been discussing a research study that was based on data from questionnaires and want to transition to a discussion of a different study based on observational data, you might write, “Although results based on self-report data indicate a strong correlation between anger and defensiveness, it is also important to consider observational research.”

Another type of guiding statement is an introductory statement that clarifies how something you are about to discuss is relevant to the argument you are making. For example, before discussing specific findings of a particular study, you might introduce the study by saying, “Initial findings from research on dating couples is consistent with the theory that expressions of soft emotion are beneficial for relationships.” This guiding statement prepares the reader so that the reader now expects you to discuss the actual findings of this study. This guiding statement also tells the reader why the results of the study are important. Thus, the reader is never left wondering why you chose to discuss this particular study in your paper.

In addition to providing guiding statements prior to discussing specific studies, it is often helpful to place guiding statements at the end of each point you make. For example, after discussing findings from a particular study, it may be useful to provide an interpretive statement that summarizes the important points and that reminds the reader how the findings pertain to the ideas you are discussing in your proposal. If you are discussing the findings of a study regarding emotion and cognition, you might conclude your discussion by stating, “While this study did not directly assess the extent to which participants experienced sad feelings, it did demonstrate a strong correlation between negative emotion and attributions.” Notice that this particular summary communicates two bits of information to the reader. First, it highlights what you think is important about this study (it found a strong correlation between negative emotion and attributions). Second, it foreshadows something that will be coming later in your paper. That is, the summary suggests that there is something important about directly assessing sad feelings, and it makes the reader expect to hear more about sad feelings. It hints that you are either planning to discuss a study that directly assessed sad feelings, or planning to propose a hypothesis in which you will directly assess sad feelings.

Paper should conform to APA format
You should use APA format to write your paper. One important component of APA format is that you should write using inclusive language (i.e., don’t use the word “he” as a general term for a person who could be male or female). Your paper should also follow APA style when citing journal articles in the text and when listing references at the end of the paper. For students unfamiliar with APA style, there are several ways to learn about it. You can get a copy of the APA publication manual in the bookstore, or simply follow the format used in just about any academic, psychology journal article. All of the journals mentioned earlier (under the heading “finding a research article”) use APA format.

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