Discuss strengths and limitations, which can be tied to your discussion of validities.

Research Proposal Assignment
Assignment: Overview
This assignment asks you to produce a research proposal describing a psychological research project. This proposal needs to be feasible in that the project could theoretically be done. A research proposal explains why and how a study will be conducted. Developing a strong research proposal is a process – as you design your study, you will be guided by the review of literature and will need to make revisions to the original idea/research question. A key to doing well on this assignment is to give yourself sufficient amount of time to think through your answers and to go over the relevant material from the textbook.
Assignment Goals:
Develop competency in evaluating a body of research evidence on a particular topic.
To help you learn how to design an effective research plan, considering context, research questions, and larger implications.
To provide experience in writing up a formal research proposal.
To allow you to practice questioning validities for research design.
To provide an opportunity to write and format a document following basic APA rules.
The Research Proposal
The text (excluding abstract and references) must be a maximum of 10 pages; the page recommendations below are guidelines. You will receive 5% off per page for each page above the limit.

Sections to be included are:
Abstract (150 words)
Introduction (2-4 pages)
Methods (3-4 pages) with the following subsections: Participants, Materials, Procedure, Planned analyses
Discussion (3-4 pages)
References (no specific page limit)

Assignment instructions
Topic of research proposal. Your research proposal needs to present a correlational, experimental or quasi-experimental design on a topic of your choosing that is related to psychology (i.e., understanding people). The proposal needs to be feasible in that the project could theoretically be done (you can assume large budgets, resources of technicians, a vast supply of research assistants, a lengthy timeframe to gather data, etc.).

One additional requirement for this proposal is that it needs to be ORIGINAL. This means that you are not allowed to propose exact replication research (i.e. do exactly what another researcher has already done). A proposal can be on topics that have already been studied (this is fine and expected) but your proposal must be different from other conducted research (different research design, different procedure, changing a variable, etc.).

Additional information and requirements for each section

Abstract
Maximum of 150 words, on a separate page, does not count towards page limit. Summarizes the research proposal.

Introduction
This section needs to include a brief explanation of your research topic and make the case for why it is important (psychological implications, unaddressed research question, theoretical implications, personal concern, etc). This section should interest your reader in your topic and provide context for your proposal. There needs to be information listed from peer-reviewed articles (5 as a minimum) with proper APA citation included. List your specific research question and hypotheses in this section.
Previous peer-reviewed research: To be able to explain how your research adds to the subject area, you first need to broadly describe/summarize what has already been done.
This does not mean that you need to find an article on exactly your hypothesis but an article that helps justify why your research is important.
For example: If my hypothesis was There will be a positive relationship between eating junk food and depressive symptoms such that participants who eat more junk food will report more depressive symptoms and participants who eat less junk food will report fewer depressive symptoms I could find and describe an article that looks at the drawbacks of junk food for mental health or an article on how different foods are related to depressive symptoms or any other mental health aspect (e.g., anxiety). Ideally, I might be able to find an article that compares junk food and depressive symptoms. If this study does exist, I would want to make sure that my proposed design is somehow different (different operationalization of variable, different participant population, different timeframes, etc.). I may then need to adjust my hypothesis and operationalization of variables so that my study proposal would still advance the knowledge in the field.
Research question and Hypotheses: Start with a broad research topic (e.g., depression, romantic relationships, etc). Given that research topic, state a specific question that you are interested in answering. Examples: i) Does eating junk food change depressive symptoms? ii) Is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) more effective than motivational interviewing (MI) in treating people with gambling problems?
For the hypotheses, phrase your question as a specific research prediction (a good research hypothesis should be logical, testable, and refutable). Be sure to include all possible associations hypothesized. Examples: i) There will be a positive relationship between eating junk food and depressive symptoms such that participants who eat more junk food will report more depressive symptoms and participants who eat less junk food will report fewer depressive symptoms; ii) Cognitive behavioural therapy is more effective than motivational interviewing in treating people with gambling problems, such that participants who assigned to the CBT condition will report fewer symptoms of gambling 2 months after treatment than those who were in the motivational interviewing treatment.

Method
This should include 4 subsections: participants, procedure, materials, planned analyses. First, specify the study design/research strategy, and your research variables. Remember, the method must be appropriate for your hypothesis (e.g., if your hypothesis is causal, you cant propose a correlational study).

Participants: In a few sentences explain the population you are interested in and how you will select a sample (make sure you include the technical sampling term). Justify your decisions.

Procedure
What will the participants be doing (in chronological order)? Include enough information that someone can actually conduct your study.
Address potential ethical concerns: If you were to going to submit an ethics application to do this proposed research, what concerns do you think ethics would raise and how would you attempt to address/reduce these concerns (i.e., what could you do with the design or procedure to help get approval). If you do not believe there are any ethical concerns, then how would you increase the benefits associated with the research (the benefits must outweigh the risks to get approval).

Materials
How will you operationalize your variables? What are the instruments you will use?In this section try to use a previously published measure instead of making up your own. A good place to find previously published measures would be to look in the methods or materials section of peer reviewed articles. Just make sure to include a reference for the article that you found it in.

Planned analyses
What statistical analysis will you use (correlation, regression, ANOVA, etc)? What will you look at to determine statistical validity, what is the effect size of interest (d, r, etc.)? I know that you havent taken a statistics course yet, so this needs to be very basic, 1 or 2 sentences just enough for you to demonstrate that you are thinking about it.
See your textbook pp. 457-504 for more information about statistics

Discussion
As this is a research proposal, there are no results to discuss per-se. Instead, note the possible implications for your research. Discuss construct, internal, and external validity of your study your study will not be perfect, there are always trade-offs, its important to recognize what those are. Discuss strengths and limitations, which can be tied to your discussion of validities. You can also note what you would learn (and what it would mean in light of past research) if your hypothesis was or was not supported.

References
Make sure to include an APA style reference for each in-text citation.

Assembling and Layout for the Assignment

All assignments must have a cover/title page
The rest of the document (referred to as the body) should be typed double-spaced, 12-point font, standard 1-inch margins
Use appropriate subsections & headings (Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Participants, etc.)
Pages are numbered on the top right-hand side of the page (cover page does not need to be numbered but can be)
All writing should follow APA style (7th edition).

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