Outline for Research Proposal (2024)

When writing, please use section headings to indicate where theinformation can be found. Subheadings need not be used, though in longsections they may facilitate organization.

1. Introduction
Explain the issue you are examining and why it is significant.

Describe the general area to be studied

Explain why this area is important to the general area under study (e.g.,psychology of language, second language acquisition, teaching methods)

A description of what has already known about this area and short discussionof why the background studies are not sufficient.

Summarize what is already known about the field. Include a summary of thebasic background information on the topic gleaned from your literaturereview (you can include information from the book and class, but the bulkshould be outside sources)

Discuss several critical studies that have already been done in this area(citeaccording to APA style).

Point out why these background studies are insufficient. In other words,what question(s) do they leave unresolved that you would like to study?

Choose (at least) one of these questions you might like to pursue yourself.(Make sure you do not choose too many questions)

A description of the questions you are examining and an explorationof the claims.

• List the specific question(s) that you are exploring.
• Explain how these research questions are related to the larger issues raisedin the introduction.
• Describe what specific claim, hypothesis, and/or model of psycholinguisticsyou will evaluate with these questions.
• Explain what it will show about the psychology of language if your hypothesisis confirmed.
• Explain what it will suggest about the psychology of language if your hypothesisis disconfirmed.

4. Method and Design

A description of how you would go about collecting data and test thequestions your are examining. You are not required to come up with a newor original method (though you can try!). Look journal articles to determinewhat methods are standardly used to assess knowledge of language in yourchosen area and adapt one of these for your needs.

Method: How would you collect the data and why?

Describe the general methodology you choose for your study, in order totest your hypothesis(es).

Explain why this method is the best for your purposes.

Participants: Who would you test and why?

Describe the sample you would test and explain why you have chosen thissample. Include age, and language background and socio-economic information,if relevant to the design.

Are there any participants you would exclude? Why, why not?

Describe what kinds of manipulations/variations you would make or testfor in order to test your hypothesis(es).

Describe the factors you would vary if you were presenting a person withstimulus sentences.

Explain how varying these factors would allow you to confirm or disconfirmyour hypotheses.

Explain what significant differences you would need to find to confirmor disconfirm your hypothesis(es). In particular, how could your hypothesis(es)be disconfirmed by your data?

Controls: What kinds of factors would you need to control for in your study?

Describe what types of effects would be likely to occur which would makeyour results appear to confirm, or to disconfirm your hypothesis(es).

Describe how you can by your design rule out or control for apparent effects.

How are you going to present the stimuli?

What is the participant in the experiment going to do?

How will you analyze the results?

What kind of results would confirm your hypothesis?

What kind of results would disconfirm your hypothesis

5. Significance and Conclusion
Discuss, in general, how your proposed research would lead to a significantimprovement over the original studies, and how it would benefit the field.(In other words, why should someone care? If you were applying for moneyto do this, why would someone fund you? If you wanted to publish your results,why would they be interesting?)

6. References
Include all references in APA style.

© Lynn Santelmann, 2001