LUC Addressing Funding Disparities in Collegiate Sports Paper

For the draft, submit your proposal in narrative or outline form, but with all sections (below) addressed and at least halfway completed. If you submit in narrative form, the draft should be about 3 pages or 1000 words; an outline will be longer, 4-5 pages but with a slightly lower word count (around 800 words).  
A proposal for research explains the object and objective of the research, how you will do it, the question(s) you will try to answer, and why it matters. There are generally several components/sections in a proposal (explained more below): arrive at a question/direction for your research; explain how you got there (through preliminary background research); indicate a gap you found, a new context to which you will apply existing ideas, or how your research will extend existing research and our knowledge in this area; why it matters to do this work (situating your work in the existing research/literature); and how you will answer the research question(s). 5-6 pages (2000-2100 words, not including references), 1.5 spaced, Times New Roman, 12pt font, 1″ margins. Use any style/format guide (such as ASA or APA suggested; Chicago and Harvard are fine as well; MLA is not typically used in the social sciences).

[Click here for the course goals and learning outcomes]

Instructions

Format/what to include 

There are many ways to organize a research proposal (see samples here). Below is a suggested format to follow, but you are free to adapt it as long as all of these things are included, regardless of how your order or organize the proposal. (Here is another basic outline, just ignore the ‘draw conclusions’ part.)

Cover page. Include your name, the title of your project, and a brief explanation of the revisions you made since the first draft you submitted. Be specific re: the feedback you received from the professor and after your presentation and what adjustments you made, things you added or clarified, and anything else you changed or improved upon from the initial draft. Explain why you made the changes, and how those changes impact the research design and improve the likelihood of this being a successful research study.

The following pages come after the cover letter. Include the title at the top of the first page of the proposal/research design plan.

Title. Give your project an apt title.

Introduction. This is a brief section, 1-2 paragraphs. Sometimes it’s helpful to write this last but, at the very least, be ready to revise it after you’ve completed the rest of your proposal. What to include in the introduction:

General context, summary of what the project is, purpose of doing the research

Research questions/goals

Background. 2-3 pages. This section situates your questions/goals within the broader literature. You need to know what ‘conversations’ your work is/will be a part of. This is also a section that helps to justify why your research matters. Keep an annoying voice in the back of your mind that asks, “Why does this matter and for whom?” Who is your audience? The audience is made up of other scholars doing work in similar areas. Establish your place. Make clear that you know about the concerns and stakes of the arguments. Are there foundational/key texts or thinkers you should know and reference? What are the current interests in the field, the most recent research being done? Where do you fit? Your work matters because it’s building on all of the other work that’s come before. The “original” part of “original research” doesn’t mean coming up with an entirely new thing that no one’s ever thought of or done; it means creating new data and knowledge about something, often something with which we are already familiar, but getting us to think of it in a new way, applying ideas to a new context, or creating a new, small slice of data that didn’t exist before.

How many sources? 15, including at least 10 articles from peer-reviewed sociology journals.

You might directly reference (i.e. name the author and quote) a few, maybe 4-5, that are especially relevant, and then indirectly reference (i.e. parenthetical citations) a bunch more, maybe 8-10, but this depends on your style choices and the field you’re working in. Those sources are the ones you don’t always read as closely but that establish some background and context, often to show that a bunch of stuff has been done in an area and then to point out what is missing that you will add. 

• There might also be sources that influenced some of your thinking or helped generally inform your research plan, the background, perspective, etc, but that you don’t directly or indirectly reference. Include those in your reference list anyway, even if you don’t cite them. You might have a few of these or maybe none, but you could also have quite a lot more. Again, having these in the references shows a reader where you’re establishing your place in the literature and that you know what the “conversations” are. This can also help show more clearly which conversations you’re bringing together, and how you’re crossing disciplinary boundaries in new and interesting ways.

Things to consider: How many sources do you need to establish the important ideas in a field or conversation? Are you covering the most recent work? Do you have to go back further? Ask yourself if you put in effort to find sources, or if you stopped when you found a few that said what you needed. 

What kinds of sources? Articles from peer-reviewed journals, primarily sociology journals. Reports, white papers, news articles, etc can be used to establish relevance or how something is talked about in the media, but they are not the same as peer-reviewed literature that establishes the field that you’re working in. They can be included, but only in additional to the journal articles.

Methodology/methods. 2-3 pages. What is the plan for doing your research? You’ve explained the questions and why you’re doing it, situated yourself in existing literature, so now you have to explain what your overall methodological approach is (macro or micro, qualitative or quantitative (or both) and what methods you will use.

• The methodology is like the strategy (need to talk to people, observe, create new datasets, use existing datasets, analyze what people think about something or maybe how they about, analyze macro level trends, etc). This explains what approach is needed to answer your questions.

The methods are like tactics; they are more specific and get into the details of what you’re actually going to do.

• For example: 20 interviews with a specific group of people over a period of 6 months with follow up interviews with each participant 3 months after the initial interview.

No matter the method/tool (interviews, surveys, observation), if there are people involved, you need to explain the rules/guidelines—the eligibility or inclusion criteria—for participation and recruitment into your study (e.g. single parents employed at private universities, under the age of 40 and with 2 children under the age of 10). How will you recruit people? Do you plan to have a representative sample (even if small)? Why type of interviews will you do? Where and for how long will observation sessions last? How long are the surveys? Will you collect demographic data? Which data points matter and why? What do you questions measure? How will you analyze qualitative data from interviews? Why are these the best methods for answering your questions, and why kind of knowledge are you creating? What is your contribution and how do these methods allow you to make it? 

For all sources of data (interviews, surveys, observation, media like social media posts or movies or advertisements, documents or archives) be clear what the source is exactly. Answer the who, what, where, when, why and how. Be specific regarding media and document sources (if you will create a database, say what will be included; if you’re using archives, say which)

Your proposal must be primarily focused on qualitative methods and data; if you want to include quantitative analysis, you will need to identify your data sources. You need to be specific. “Census data” is not enough – which years, which variables, how will you analyze it, does it need to be cleaned, are you creating new data as well or combining it with another dataset? There are a lot of publicly available datasets, but you need to confirm that the raw data is available and accessible, and then explain what of it you will use and why.

• Time line. How much time will you spend doing each part of the research (background, collection, analysis, etc). Use specific (but hypothetical) amounts of time.
• Example (choose the amounts of time appropriate to your project): 
• Month 1: collect preliminary data about [specific thing you need to know more about] to refine interview questions

Months 2-3: recruit 25 participants and conduct first interviews about [these things at this place for this reason], conduct on-site observation 1x/week [at this place for this reason to learn this]

Months 4-5: conduct second interviews [to learn more about this and see if something else is happening], continue observations [because of this thing that will matter], begin analyzing data [using this method or approach or to find these things going on]

Months 6-8: fieldwork complete except for follow-up interviews [with these participants in order to learn something], transcribe interviews and code data [for these ideas and things], begin to analyze data [through analysis of meaning or concepts or from this sociological perspective]

• Months 10-12: write up results [in order to do this with them]

Summary/expected findings. 1 page. Reiterate and sum up your proposal; emphasize why it matters and that it’s feasible and important. You can mention additional doors your work will open (i.e. “suggestions for future or other research”). If applicable, explain what you expect to find based on the existing data (confirmation, refutation, combination of both).

References. Not included in page or word count. See above for more info re: sources. 15 total with at least 10 being from peer-reviewed sociology (or sociology adjacent / sociological) journals.

Appendix. All submissions should have one appendix (it is not included in word count total) related to your proposed methods. If you are doing multiple methods, you only need to include one appendix. Create an appendix for the main method (the central source of data to be analyzed).

Surveys: 5 questions that establish eligibility and 10 potential questions to ask participants

Interviews: 5 questions, each with 2 follow-ups (sub-questions)

• Media analysis: source(s) and a sample of potential data to be analyzed; 15 examples/data “objects” (tweets, posts, images, films, etc)
• Participant observation: a list of locations, your notes template, and one sample session of data collection (i.e. fill in the template with notes—imagine the data you would collect, what you would observe, etc)