“The goal of your first assignment is to present a clear research project. Your research proposal should be between 4-5 pages in length not including title page, your preliminary source list and references (of the sources you cite within your proposal).

The research proposal must be submitted as a Word Document Attachment in the Assignments section of the classroom by Sunday, 11:55pm EST at the end of week 2.

You will need to:

1) Present the research problem you intend assess and provide some contextual information that helps demonstrate your understanding of the nature of the problem.

2) Clearly state your single SPECIFIC and academically-rigorous research question and your hypothesis. [Note – ONE academically rich research question].

3) Explain why this is important to investigate. What can we learn from this situation? How will the knowledge we gain through your research help our understanding of the topic?

4) Discuss your theoretical framework. Here you’ll summarize/synthesize some of the theories/models and concepts you’ll use to assess your research question. You will also need to clearly state your research hypothesis.

5) Discuss your case study research design. Your research design should discuss how you plan to carry out your analysis.

6) Preliminary Source List. – You will need to include a list of at least 8 preliminary sources, 6 of which must be from peer-reviewed journals. These should be listed using Chicago style formatting. As you might remember from INTL 500 there are two Chicago styles including the author-date style, and bibliography-notes style. Make sure you references are consistent throughout. APUS students have access to the official version of the 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style Online (CMOS). To access the full CMOS, use this link: Chicago Manual of Style Online. Go here for the Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide.
Format: Your proposal should include a title page, proposal body, reference page, and a preliminary source list (title, references page, and source list are not included within the page count). Your paper should have 1-inch borders on all four sides, use times new roman-12 point font, be double spaced, and not have an extra space in between paragraphs. (You may need to turn this off in MS word by going to paragraph and selecting “Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style). Since this is an INTL course you need to use the Turabian parenthetical citation style with a references page.

This information is from the Master’s Capstone Manual and it should help you develop your research proposal. Students taking the capstone option are required to submit a 5 page research proposal prior to moving forward on their research. These are some of the sections they are required to include within their proposal, they have been included in these instructions as they directly relate to the goals of this assignment.
Introduction. Identifies your specific research question and sets the general context for the study.

Statement of the problem or general research question and context leading to a clear statement of the specific research question.
Background and contextual material justifying why we should study this case or topic.
Purpose statement and hypothesis
If you are having trouble developing a good academically rigorous research question consider this link from George Mason University: The Writing Center
Theoretical Framework. The theoretical framework section develops the theories or models to be used in the study and shows how you have developed testable research hypotheses.

-Introduction discussing gaps in the literature, how this study will help fill some of those gaps, and justification for theory or model to be used in study.

-Summary of the theory or model to be used in the study, including a diagram of the model if appropriate.

-Statement of hypotheses to be tested.
(Here is a helpful explanation on Theoretical frameworks)

-Research Design. Describes how you will test the hypothesis and carry out your analysis. It describes the data you will use to test your hypothesis, how you will operationalize and collect data on your variables, and the analytic methods that you will use, noting potential biases and limitations to your research approach. It should include:
Identification and operationalization (measurement) of variables.