Final Research Proposal
Impacts of Workplace Discrimination on Organizational Performance
The research proposal should be at least 15 pages (but not more than 25 pages), double-spaced, not including your title page, abstract, Appendix, and references page, and should contain the following sections:
1) Title Page
2) Abstract
3) Introduction: Explain your topic. Make a case for why this topic is important to the field of psychology.
A. Research questions you have developed for your topic: Conclude your discussion of the research topic by identifying specific research question(s) about the relationships between two or more concepts.
4) Literature Review: A minimum of 8 pages on the 5-7 relevant articles you selected: Read your articles thoroughly and provide a literature review that synthesizes what was theorized and discovered about regarding your topic. Do not write separate “summaries” for each article; rather, find connected themes or relationships in the different areas you cover. Use these relationships to frame your discussion of how variables were indicated, samples were obtained, and research designs were constructed. Are there any gaps or weaknesses present in the literature that can be investigated further? You will not necessarily refer to all the information from each article; instead, relate only that which is relevant to your topic and research question. Thus, your literature review should justify your study and support why conducting your proposed study would answer a problem that is not already well understood. Information should be drawn from appropriate sources, such as professional journals, books, and dissertations. Information gathered from literature sources must be appropriately cited, following APA guidelines.
5) Hypotheses: Considering your research question or statement of the problem, formulate a null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis for each of your research questions.
A. Dependent and independent variables: Operationally define the dependent and independent variables for each hypothesis.
6) Method: Describe detailed information about how your study will be conducted.
Include the following in your method sections:
A. Participant Selection: Explain who your participants will be and what method you will use to select them. Be specific as possible as if you were giving directions to someone on how to choose and obtain the participants. Include instructions on how to get informed consent from the participants. Be sure to discuss how informed consent, privacy, anonymity, and confidentiality will be addressed in the study.
B. Data Collection Measure: Discuss how you will collect the data (observations, surveys, documents, etc.). Thus, who will be collecting the data, where will the data collection occur, what measures are you using to collect the data, how will the data be recorded, etc.? Include a copy of the survey or systematic observation you developed in an Appendix.
C. Research Design: Discuss the research design (either experimental, factorial, quasi-experimental, or non experimental), that you will use to examine your variables.
7) Discussion: Provide a discussion of the following information:
A. Validity: Describe any potential threats to the internal and external validity of your proposed study. Do you believe the results can be generalized to other populations?
B. Strengths and Weaknesses: Describe any strengths or weaknesses with respect to the proposed sampling, design, and data collection methods. What will not be “proven” though your study?
C. Ethical Considerations: What impact might participation in this study have on participants in the short and long-term? If there are relevant ethical issues, discuss them along with possible solutions.
