A. Introduction
1. In very general, abstract terms, what are you studying? What are you looking at?
2. What has been done on this topic? What do you know about this topic? (Here you should cite at least three published research articles on the topic) What is wrong with previous work on this topic?
3. What are you going to do to address problems with prior work? How is your work going to add to the current state of knowledge about this issue? That is, how will your proposed study improve on prior work?
4. If your study involves testing hypotheses, this is where you introduce them and take your reader through the process of deduction, how you arrived at your specific hypotheses.
B. Method
1. Begin with summary of your proposed method and why you selected that particular approach. You should explain to your readers exactly what you would do to conduct your study. Address issues in the following order:
a) Participants - who will participate in your study? How will they be recruited? Will they be assigned to conditions and if so, how and on what basis? Will they be paid for participating? Do you have any concerns about response rates? If so, how will those be addressed? Are there any specific requirements regarding the demographics of your participants? If so, explain.
b) Procedure and ‘instruments' -- What exactly will happen in your study? What will participants be asked to do? If you propose to conduct fieldwork, where will you conduct the study and how did you decide on the location? How will you gain access? Who are the likely gatekeepers? If you plan to use/ develop instruments, which ones and why? Or, how will you go about developing the instruments? What will be included in the instruments? For example, if you plan to provide participants with information, what will it entail, what topics will be addressed? Will you write up a scenario? How long do you anticipate it will take respondents to complete the tasks? Did you manipulate an independent variable? If so, how? How was the dependent variable operationalized? ...
C. Results
How do you propose analyzing the results of your study? How will you know if you have something "meaningful" to report?
D. Discussion
1. Begin with a summary of why you conducted the study in the first place.
2. Summarize what you expect to find but be sure to address possible inconsistent findings, that is, findings that you do not expect.
3. What is good and bad about your project? How does it improve on previous work and in what ways is it limited?
4. What might be the next logical steps to take in the research process?
5. What are applications and implications of your proposed study? Who might benefit from learning about your study, in what way?