In this project you are to write a detailed and formal research proposal.  This will take advantage of material you developed in your research flowchart, and include your literature review.  Note, you are not supposed to carry out any research project (unless you have IRB and my approval).  Rather, you are to further develop your hypothesis, refining your operational definitions, and fleshing out your design.  Please take advantage of the feedback given to you on your flowchart.  Also, be sure to attach your flowchart to this report.

Your report should follow the guidelines for reporting research as outlined in Chapter 15 of your text.  Additional information on the style of the report can be found in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association: Fourth Edition.  (See also, Appendix C in your text, and/or check out the online links).  Each of the parts of a research report listed below should be included.  I have also included some specific guidelines to help you write your report.

General comments:

a) Generally, research reports are written in the past tense.  Use the past tense in describing previous studies you discuss in the introduction.  However, since this is a research proposal, you should write the methods section in the future and/or future perfect tenses.  That is, "in this experiment, subjects will be told...", or "at this point in the experiment subjects will have been told...."

b) Have your report typed double-spaced.

c) I expect that the average length of the reports will be 8 pages (see below).

d) Graduate Students: Your proposal should look more like a thesis proposal.  That is, your reports should be more like 12 pages long, and your introduction should include references to 3 to 5 related research articles.  Also, I would hope that your method section would be very explicit, and maybe include actual experimental materials.  Remember that this paper is what distinguishes graduate and undergraduate credit in this course.

Parts of the report:

For further details, see your class notes, the textbook, or the APA manual.

1.   Title page

2.   Abstract  (less then 100 words, on a separate page)

3.   Introduction:  Briefly describe your hypothesis in general terms, and briefly describe how you propose to test the hypothesis.  Incorporate your literature review into this section.

4.   Method:  describe the participants, materials, design, and the procedure that you propose to use to test the hypothesis.

5.   Results:  Describe what should happen.  How will the data be analyzed?  You may include sample or fictional results to help explain the pattern of results you expect to obtain.  For example, a figure summarizing fictional results may be included.  If you include such fictionalized data, be sure to make it clear that these are hypothetical results!

6.   Discussion:  What do these hypothesized results imply?  Return to your original hypotheses.  Do you think your results will be the same as the previous studies you mentioned in the introduction?  Why or why not?

7.  References:  Start a new page and list any material you used specifically in reporting your research.

8.  Tables/Figures: For the purpose of exposition, you might find it useful to put your hypothetical results into a table or figure.  These appear on separate pages after the reference section.