Guidelines for Research Design Paper

PS 711, Public Opinion and Political Communications                                             Professor Mark Peffley

 

           The purpose of this assignment is twofold:  (1) to allow you to explore a given topic of your choice in more depth than is otherwise possible in a seminar, and (2) to help you hone your research skills in making the transition from a consumer of knowledge to a producer of knowledge.  Try to think of the paper, not as just another written assignment, but as an opportunity to make the course more relevant to your interests, and to develop a research paper that will eventually result in a convention paper, a publication in a scholarly journal, or a dissertation topic. 

           Think about the assignment as writing a slightly more detailed version of the first half of a journal article or an NSF proposal requesting for funding for your research.  In other words, you have limited space to convince me (or a panel of reviewers at NSF, or a journal editor and three anonymous reviewers) of the importance of your research, your ability to complete it, its contribution to the literature, theoretical motivation, conceptual development, and the rationale behind your design for carrying out your research. I’m a very busy guy who reads tons of proposals and journal submissions.  Frankly, very important people like me  have limited time, money and journal space to devote to authors who fail to get directly to the point and convince me that I should read your proposal rather than doing something more important and rewarding. In truth, of course, I enjoy reading proposals, but just pretend for the sake of the assignment that I don’t.

 

 

1)       Introduction

a)       Thesis:  What is the central research question that you are investigating? Some statement like, “The primary purpose of this paper is to...” (Or, the purpose of this paper is twofold…). The thesis of the research should be stated early in the paper—the first few paragraphs, the first page or two.

b)       Include in your introduction a brief statement describing the importance of the topic and the thesis.  What are the political, theoretical, and normative implications of your research? How does your research improve upon the existing literature? What contribution will the proposed research make to the literature? What new, exciting directions will you take the literature? Like a journalist, you need to convince the reader that the paper is worthy of careful consideration. 

c)       Plan of the paper: In a brief paragraph, give an overview of your arguments and how the paper will be organized.

2)       Past Research (review of the literature).  Please be especially vigilant about keeping the review relevant to the central thesis of the paper, which should be the central organizing theme of your paper.  I don’t want a bibliographic essay, but an evaluation of relevant prior research on the topic that will describe how you intend to improve upon existing studies.  

a)       Strengths and weaknesses of prior research (see page 1 of the syllabus for ideas here); you might discuss one or more of the following:

i)         How existing research has overlooked or given inadequate attention to your topic, for whatever reason.

ii)       You might critique existing studies on a number of grounds, including inadequate measures, inappropriate design, fuzzy concepts, lack of theory, contradictory findings, puzzles in the literature that need to be solved, and so on. You’re obviously going to focus on those problems that you intend to correct in your research.    

b)       Describe briefly how you propose to correct the above problems. 

3)       Expectations:  What do you expect to find?  What are your expectations?  Your expectations or hypotheses will flow from theory and prior research. 

4)       Design, Measures, Data:  The actual design or your proposed research.  What basic decisions are you making about your research design and how do you justify them? 

a)       What general type of research design is most appropriate for your study?  Survey research, field research, panel design, time-series, experimental, or some other way of collecting observations?

b)       Define important concepts and describe how you plan to operationalize (measure) important variables. 

c)       What type of observations, at what level of analysis, how they should be made, and so forth?

5)       Conclusions: Reflect back on your thesis and the contribution of your proposed research.

 

(posted at: http://www.uky.edu/AS/PoliSci/Peffley/711ResearchPaper(9-24-00).htm)