This section is the most formulaic and technical of the proposal. First, you beg
This section is the most formulaic and technical of the proposal. First, you begin by describing the data that will be used in your study. Who will be the participants? Where will the data be collected? How (questionnaire, interviews, participant observation, ethnography, content analysis) will the data be collected? Will the data be publicly available (if so, describe the original data collection), or will you have to independently collect your own? If you are collecting your own data, describe the procedures that will be involved to get the data (for example, if you are conducting a qualitative study, how long will you be interviewing your participants? How many times will you observe them? How many people will be observed?). What is the unit of analysis (i.e., individuals, groups, social artifacts, etc.) ? What is the target population? How will you sample the population, given that you cannot access the entire population? How generalizeable will the results be, coming from this sample? Discuss potential advantages and disadvantages of this research design.
In the methods portion of the data and methods section, students should begin by restating their hypothesis. Next, offer a clear, explicit articulation of the procedures (operationalization strategy) that will be employed to measure your independent and dependent variables, as well as 5 control variables (usually demographic variables like sex, age, class, education, race).
Lastly, you need to include a brief section on the analytic strategy that will be used in your research. For instance, will you be conducting quantitative research, and if so, what types of statistical analyses will be conducted?
Note: I realize that these recommendations/suggestions are ideal types (best case scenarios), but in general this is how these sections should be structured.
The independent variable for this study will focus on individuals who have disclosed that they have experienced sexual assault.
The dependent variable will measure mental health such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD. from individuals who have experienced sexual assault. I would like the controlled variables to be race, gender, anger scale, social class, victimization, and religiosity.