Just because you thought of an interesting research question and have a desire to conduct research does not mean that your research will automatically be supported by faculty or funded by an organization. In order to gain stakeholder approval, you must submit a research proposal. Much like an outline of a paper or a treatment of a movie script, the research proposal contains several parts that begin with a research question and end with a literature review. For this Assignment, you compile a research proposal that includes a research problem, research question, and a literature review.
For this Assignment, choose between the case studies entitled “Social Work Research: Couple Counseling” and “Social Work Research: Using Multiple Assessments.” Consider how you might select among the issues presented to formulate a research proposal.
Be sure to consult the outline in Chapter 14 the Yegidis et al. text for content suggestions for the sections of a research proposal. As you review existing research studies, notice how the authors identify a problem, focus the research question, and summarize relevant literature. These can provide you with a model for your research proposal.’
Submit by Day 7 a 5- to 6-page research proposal stating both a research problem and a broad research question (may be either qualitative or quantitative). Use 6–10 of the most relevant literature resources to support the need for the study, define concepts, and define variables relevant to the question. Include a literature review explaining what previous research has found in relation to your problem and question. The literature review should also include a description of methods used by previous researchers. Finally, be sure to explain how your proposed study addresses a gap in existing knowledge.
Reports of Quantitative Studies
Most quantitative research reports, including journal articles (discussed later in this chapter), follow the same general format. The researcher is expected to address each of the following areas, although sometimes two or more can be combined under one heading.
Title. Developing a title for your study can be challenging. A good title reflects the main purpose of the study, often including information about the intervention and the population being studied. Titles often include a subtitle, which allows the researcher to share more information to interest potential readers. For example, Louden-Gerber’s (2009) dissertation title, “A Group Forgiveness Intervention for Adult Male Homeless Individuals: Effects on Forgiveness, Rumination, and Social Connectedness,” informs the reader of the study’s intervention, population, and outcome variables. When looking through a long list of article titles to select articles of interest, titles like this can quickly draw the reader’s attention.
Abstract. Most research reports, including journal articles and dissertations, include an abstract, which summarizes the research study. Thyer (2008) points out that the abstract will probably be read far more times than the complete article, and should include (a) the issue or problem under investigation; (b) information about the participants, listing age race, gender, and other pertinent features; (c) the research method, the intervention(s), and the outcome measures; (d) the results, including statistical significance and effect sizes; and (e) the conclusions and any applications to practice (pp. 40–41). The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition, recommends that abstracts be 150 to 250 words long.
Introduction. The historical background of the study is described, and the origin of the researcher’s interest in the topic noted. The research problem is specified and a description of its scope and significance is stated and documented. The broad research question that was the focus of the study is stated.
Review of the literature. A summary and synthesis of literature relevant to the research question is presented (see Chapter 4 for a more thorough discussion of conducting a literature review). The literature assembled is used to summarize what is already known about the research question and to identify how the current research study promises to build on and extend knowledge previously available. It provides the rationale for research hypotheses and/or more specific research questions and for the design of the research.
Statement of research questions and hypotheses. Related to the purpose of the study and following logically from the review of the literature, the specific set of research questions and/or hypotheses that were examined are stated. Operational definitions of key terms (also derived from the review of literature) may be included here, or may appear early in the methodology section.
Methodology. A detailed description of the research design is presented. It generally includes subsections that describe the setting of the research, the research participants, the treatment or program being evaluated (if applicable), the outcome measures, and the statistical analyses that were used. The subsection on participants should include a description of the research sample or samples as well as the methods of their selection and the rationale for that method. The outcome measures subsection should include a description of the methods for conducting measurements of the key variables and a discussion of the selection and/or development of any data collection instruments that were used. When describing previously published measurement instruments, there should be at least one reference in which the psychometric properties (reliability, validity, norms, cutting scores, etc.) are described. The methodology section reports in detail what was done, to whom or what, and by what method(s). The rationale for all major methodological decisions is presented (sampling, measurement, data collection methods, and choice of methods for statistical analysis). The section enables the reader of the report both to assess the credibility of the researcher and the research findings and to replicate the research, if desired.
Results. The principal findings derived from the research are presented. Outcomes of statistical analyses are summarized and interpreted. The findings section generally contains tables, graphs, or other methods of summarizing the results of analyses to help the reader visualize what was found.
Discussion. The findings are discussed in relation to the research questions and/or hypotheses. Answers to questions are proposed, and, if applicable, evidence of support or nonsupport for hypotheses is presented. Findings are also discussed in relation to the findings of others as reported in the literature. Findings that corroborate those of other researchers and theoreticians are identified, and findings that conflict with what has been reported elsewhere are discussed and, where appropriate, reconciled.
Limitations. The researcher lists and discusses the study’s methodological shortcomings of which he or she is aware. No research is perfect—all research tends to be limited somewhat by one or more inherent design constraints or obstacles encountered in attempting to implement the design. For example, an explanatory design may contain inherent problems because of the ethical impossibility of using a true control group or because of the researcher’s need to draw a sample from an available sampling frame rather than from the accessible population. Limitations also can result as a function of other methodological difficulties, such as the need to use a data collection instrument that had not yet been demonstrated to be reliable with the participants used in the research or because of constraints on the kinds of data that were allowed to be collected. There are many issues in research that prevent studies from being designed and/or executed flawlessly. The reader requires an honest description of these limitations to know how to interpret and evaluate findings. A useful format for the discussion of each major limitation consists of (a) a specific description of the nature and scope of the limitation; (b) an explanation of why the limitation was unavoidable; (c) the researcher’s speculation on how the limitation may have negatively affected the research and its findings; (d) a description of what, if anything, was done to minimize the potential negative effects of the limitation on the research; and (e) an assessment of how successful the effort was.
Conclusions and recommendations. A description of how the study is believed to have advanced knowledge in the problem area is presented. The researcher also identifies needs for further research and suggests ways in which it might be designed and implemented both to build on the achievements of the current research and to avoid its shortcomings. The implications of the findings for social work practice are an especially important component of this section of the research report. Generally, the researcher makes specific suggestions as to how the findings might be implemented to improve the delivery of services to social work clients, that is, what changes in intervention methods appear to be indicated on the basis the findings of the study.
References. The reference list is placed immediately after the body of the manuscript in most research reports. The writer of the report should ensure that the references in the text of the report as well as the references in the reference list follow the appropriate formatting style. It is also important that every publication referenced in the body of the report is included in the reference list, and every publication in the reference list is referenced at least once in the text of the report.
Appendices. Appendices, which may be of interest to just a few readers, also may be included in the report. They may contain, for example, copies of data collection instruments that were used or materials developed by agency personnel to describe the program that was evaluated.
Reports of Qualitative Studies
If the research was primarily qualitative, the same general format may be used. However, there are likely to be several important differences in the report:
➧The introduction section is likely to be briefer and contains fewer facts and numbers, since less is generally known about the problem than in predominantly quantitative studies.
➧The review of literature section is shorter, because (a) there often is relatively little known about the problem and (b) the literature may have been reviewed less thoroughly prior to data collection to avoid biasing the collection and interpretation of the data.
➧There are research questions but, very rarely, research hypotheses.
➧The methodology section is likely to be shorter than in a report of a quantitative study. Since replication of a qualitative study is not likely to occur, there is generally less need to describe the research design in great detail. A notable exception might be if the design employed grounded theory (see Chapter 8), which prescribes certain tasks and a specific sequence of events. The reader may want to know whether they were adhered to in order to evaluate the credibility of the research findings.
➧The results section may be quite long, often containing case vignettes or extended narrative descriptions with verbatim quotations from research participants. It may contain some descriptive statistics and rarely inferential statistics. In a qualitative study, the researchers are often looking for the deeper meaning of the phenomenon being studied, something that cannot be condensed into statistics, which are more characteristic of a report of a predominantly quantitative study.
➧The discussion section may be quite long and contain numerous references to the literature as the researcher attempts to relate his or her observations and conclusions to what was previously known about the problem. It may contain one or more story lines, theories, or hypotheses that have evolved from the research and are now proposed for testing by other researchers.
➧The limitations section may be shorter than in the report of a quantitative study, or even nonexistent. Since there are usually no claims to objectivity or, for example, sample representativeness or control of confounding variables in most qualitative studies, there is no need to speculate on their likely effects.
➧While there are conclusions and recommendations, they may be more tentative and cautious than in reports of quantitative studies. They often contain ideas for future research, both qualitative and quantitative, and suggestions as to how the insights achieved might help to inform social work practice.
➧In general, qualitative reports are likely to use more creative formats than quantitative reports. It is recommended that writers of qualitative reports look for outlets for their research that encourage submission of qualitative research.