Research Proposal Guidelines
Florida Atlantic University
ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY SYD 4510
Research Proposal Guidelines
The proposal must be submitted via the Assignments link in Canvas before or on the due date listed in the syllabus.
Length: up to 600 words
To receive full credit, your research proposal must include the following:
1) Research Question. (15 pts.). To help you zoom in on exactly what you are going to do, please come up with at least one research question that relates to your topic. Research question will force you to think of what exactly you would like to know about some specific aspect of society and the environment. For example, if you are interested in peoples’ environmental attitudes, your research question may be: “What societal forces shape people’s attitudes toward the natural environment?” You can narrow it down to focusing on either race/ethnicity, gender, social class, age, etc. For example, you can narrow your question down and ask: “Does race/ethnicity influences people’s environmental attitudes?” You can narrow it down further by asking: “Do African Americans differ from whites in their attitudes toward climate change?” Of course, the number of possible research questions is limited only by your imagination. These are just few examples of the areas that you may think about when developing a research question: environmental activism, government environmental regulation, culture and resource depletion, globalization and the environment, technology and the environment, climate change, economy and the environment, environmental degradation and human health, etc.,
2) Societal importance. (10 pts.) A brief statement that explains why studying this issue is important,
3) Research Method. (10 pts.) Describe how you are going to collect the information to test your hypothesis. For example, are you going to use secondary data analysis (newspapers’ accounts, documentary films, peer-reviewed journals’ articles) or are you going to collect your own data (in-person interviews, participant observation, content analysis of documents on the website of different organizations), or a combination of the above methods,
4) Focus of the study. (15 pts.). Suggest on what specific aspect(s) of the issue you will concentrate (for example, if you are trying to research local response to an environmental problem in their location/neighborhood/city, you may want to focus on the strategies/tactics of the group or the strategy/tactics of the polluter, or the role of government in exacerbating or solving the problem. Or you may focus on the role of social class and/or race and/or gender when it comes to pollution/environment (for example, are racial minorities more or less likely to be exposed to environmental hazards?) etc. Remember, this is a sociological course, so please make the paper sociological in orientation by linking environmental problems to society’s culture, politics, social structure, inequality, etc.),
5) Sociological Theory. (10 pts.). Propose a specific theoretical approach you will use to develop/test your hypothesis/argument (consult the textbook chapters, sociological theory textbooks, or other readings),
6) Hypotheses. (20 pts.) Formulate two specific hypotheses with clearly defined dependent and independent variables (consult class notes and other research articles located in the Course Library in Canvas for examples of sociological hypotheses). Remember, your hypotheses must be derived from your research question.
7) Bibliography of 3 properly formatted preliminary sources you have consulted (your textbook or one of the assigned readings can count as one of the sources). (10 pts.)
8) Organization, clarity, grammar, punctuation. (10 pts.) Make sure you use paragraphs for different parts of the proposal. Make sure you write legibly and use proper grammar and punctuation.
Instructions for finding a sociological journal articles:
Start at the FAU home page. Click on Libraries, then click on Indexes/Databases, next use Databases A – Z to locate Sociological Abstracts, or JStor, or Social Science Index (or another social science database), click on it. Begin search using keywords.
You can also use other FAU Library databases, electronic journals link, or the web to located sociological journals. (NO CREDIT will be given for articles from business journals, psychological journals, medical journals, or law journals!)
To find newspaper articles, you can use Nexis Uni database
Important: ALWAYS EDIT your document before submitting it. Make sure you write clearly and there are no grammatical or punctuation errors. Remember, the better job you do on this research proposal, the easier it will be to write/develop the final paper or your presentation.
Remember: the better job you do on this research proposal, the easier it will be to write/develop the final paper.