- The Research Proposal
- Researchable question itself
- Why it’s important (i.e., the rationale and significance of your
research) - Propositions that are known or assumed to be true (i.e., axioms
and assumptions) - Propositions that will be tested (i.e., hypotheses or postulates)
- Goals and specific objectives of your research activities
- Methods you will use to test hypotheses and achieve objectives
- Expected results and scope of inference
2. Steps in the Scientific Method
- Define the researchable question
- Develop hypotheses, predictions, and objectives
- Develop materials and methods, including replication
- Gather data
- Analyze the data (contingency plans if things go wrong?)
- Draw conclusions (accept, modify, reject the hypothesis
3. The Hypotheses
- A new idea
- A statement to be tested – an ‘educated guess’ that needs more
study to be confirmed or disproved - A proposition that explains some phenomenon
- Stated as what you believe to be true – not what you want to
disprove (i.e., not a statistical ‘null’ hypothesis) - Must be testable (e.g., generate predictions)
- The most valuable hypotheses are simple, consistent with what is
already known, and have broad applicability
4. Methods and expected results
The materials and methods must describe the:
- Proposed experiments or investigations
- Materials and techniques that you will use, including their feasibility
- Statistical techniques and other methods used to analyze the data
Your expected results and interpretations must describe the: - Results that will lead you to conclude that the hypotheses are proved
or disproved - Scope of inference (i.e., to what extent are the results applicable to
other locations, times, or situations?) - Pitfalls that may be encountered
- Limitations to the proposed methods
