MB 313
PROPOSAL GUIDELINES
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT
home> MB 313 > Qual Proposal Guidelines
The proposal should be a maximum of two double spaced pages covering the following points:
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
What do you hope to accomplish with this research? What is your research question?
HYPOTHESES AND EXPECTATIONS
Because this research is qualitative you may not have specific hypotheses. If you dont, what do you expect? If you are observing behavior, is it expected to vary between men and women, for example? Your hypotheses and expectations will give you guidelines for what data you want to collect.
METHODOLOGY
How are you going to conduct your research? You need to talk about:
Technique Are you doing interviewing or participant observation
or what?
You will need to do one technique from each of these two categories:
1. Freelisting/Pilesorting or Decision tree analysis
2. Participant observation or Open ended interviewing
Sampling how are you going to choose subjects?
Data Coding what are your plans for coding or describing the data?
Analysis how will you analyze the data?
EXAMPLES:
Here are examples of several student proposals:
Research Objective:
How do students behave when they see fund-raising tables in the McElroy and Lower Dining Halls?
Hypotheses and Expectations:
The lower the class, the more students will stop at the table and the more money they will donate compared to the upper class students.
We expect that men and women will vary in their behavior in terms of number of stops and amount of money.
We believe there may be a positive relationship between the fund-raisers displaying warm emotion and the amount of money donated.
Methodology:
We plan to use the technique of unobstrusive observation, and participant observation. We are going to take a random sample of the students coming into and out of the dining hall. For data coding we are going to describe eye contact, gender, distance avoidance, time spent looking at the table, whether the person stops on the way in or out of the dining hall, and the number of poeple who stop and donate, stop and don't donate, completely avoid, or stop and say they will donate later. We will also select a number of students to do decision tree analysis.
Here is another student proposal:
Research Objective:
How do males and females interact in public places?
Expectations:
Time of day, weather, interaction between different sexes may be a factor.
Methodology:
Observation at O'Neill Plaza, decision tree analysis of how one person meets another
Sample: Convenience Sample
Analysis: Time, number of people involved, weather, type of greeting (physical contact, eye contact, physical proximity, rating of emotional content, length of meeting
This page last modified on 9/28/09