Begin this assignment with a brief paragraph introducing your topic. This paragraph should include your tentative research question and hypothesis.
Description of the literature review in the proposal assignment:
This section is a presentation of the background of the problem and includes a theoretical as well as an empirical methodological review (this means your literature review should describe what theories are referenced in the articles you found, and also the details of how each study was conducted). You must briefly review a minimum of 3 RESEARCH-focused peer-reviewed articles that relate to your topic.
This review should be focused on the question you are researching, and the variables to be tested in your study, if possible. Give emphasis to studies that: a) justify your statement of the problem and research hypotheses, and b) support your selection of important research variables. Try to search for articles that test for relationships between the variables you want to test. If you can’t find any study that tests exactly the relationship you are interested in, that’s OK! Write about the sources that relate to some parts of your topic, and explain how your proposed topic is distinct from any of the research you found.
The review should be written like a cohesive essay with an opening paragraph that summarizes the collective significance of all of the studies included. Then, discuss what has been studied and found in terms of each of the variables you think are related to your study, citing previous research throughout and including appropriate in-text parenthetical citations. Use subheadings where necessary. Then summarize once more the collective importance of these studies and suggest what “new ground” your own study would examine. The research that you are proposing does not have to be cutting edge, but you do have to make a case for why the research you propose is a contribution to the literature. Remember, you will not actually complete the research, but the proposal should be plausible as a plan for a capstone project or an independent study.
At the end include a section titled either Bibliography or Works Cited with citations in ASA format of all of the research you cite. This section should contain only bibliographic entries, no annotation.
