This is a Reaserch Article by Jessa Reed/Kathy Hirsh-Pasek/Roberta Michnick Golinkoff.
The following areas are required:
Title Page: An APA Student Paper title page. Refer to section 2.3 and Figure 2.2 of the APA Publication Manual, 7th edition for more details.
Abstract: A brief summary (not more than 250 words) of the main points of your research proposal. See section 2.9 of the APA Publication Manual, 7th edition for more details.
*Problem Statement: Describe your general topic and its relevance to real-world issues.
*Literature Review: Summarize the existing literature. Describe the type of research designs, the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches, and the appropriateness of the statistical analyses used to address their research questions.
Make sure to identify how the studies aligned with the APA principles and standards for conducting research with human subjects. Next, identify what remains unknown in your topic that provides justification for your own study.
*Theoretical considerations: Identify a psychological theory that provides a context for your research proposal. As discussed in our text, a theory is a set of ideas that help form a framework for organizing and explaining data to generate new knowledge (Cozby & Bates, 2020).
Although the goal is to focus on relevant and up-to-date theories, most theories will be older than 10 years and it is appropriate to have a citation older than 10 years for this section of your paper.
*Research Question, Variables, and Hypothesis: After building a strong foundation for what has previously been studied and what gaps exist, present the research question you want to study.
Next, outline your hypothesis alongside your specific predictions, clearly delineating whether you will be setting up a correlational or experimental design (see Module 2, applied knowledge check for additional clarification on hypothesis and predictions).
Lastly, describe the independent and dependent variables you will use in your study.
Methods: This section should outline your intended research design, sample characteristics, procedures, and planned data analyses. Your method should be intuitively linked to your research question and hypothesis and should be justified based on past literature.
Please pay close attention to creating original work in this section. If you end up mirroring any portion of past studies, please make sure to appropriate cite those sources to avoid violating academic integrity policies. The following subsections are required:
Participants & Recruitment: Describe your sample characteristics and how you’ll go about recruiting them. Consider where you will find your participants and any advertisements you may distribute to aid with recruitment efforts.
Materials & Measures: Describe the measures that help you to operationalize your independent and dependent variables. Explain the types of questions contained on each measure to demonstrate construct validity and clarify the response options and procedures for scoring the instrument.
Include any additional materials that may be needed to complete the requirements of the study or any lab configurations if you are conducting an experiment.
Procedures: Explain in detail how you will go about conducting. As we have learned, clear procedures allow for replication to extend knowledge in our field.
Research Design & Planned Data Analyses: Clarify the type of research design and the necessary and appropriate descriptive and inferential statistics.
Explain how you will prepare your data for analysis and the types of statistics that will be appropriate, per variable. Lastly, indicate any visual aids or tables that you plan to include in your results.
