BLS 593/443 Education Policy and the Economy

Research Proposal Option.

1) Literature Review: Read broadly about a topic of interest. If you have knowledge of a field, your topic may already be caste as a working hypothesis. If you haven’t reached this stage, which most students won’t have done prior to a literature review, then you simply want to get a BIG PICTURE, from which you will later narrow your focus.

It is important to know the landscape of your topic.

What are common understandings?

What are the core issues?

What are the continuing debates?

This constitutes you review of the literature.

My strategies for conducting an initial literature review are to look for general books and articles (often called survey articles or literature reviews) on the topic. Often a relevant textbook chapter will point you toward specific writers and articles

That will be useful. It is important to read these as well, and not to rely upon the overview in the text or survey article. You will find that your reading of cited material is frequently different than that of the authors who cite it.

This review of the literature should probably take up about

2 or 3 pages of your proposal

2) Research Question: Given this, define a particular question you would like to investigate hat is related to your topic.

Such a question might be well developed in the literature,

Requiring only that you investigate the original sources

For yourself.

Or, that question might simply be one that you think would advance your understanding of the field.

In the proposal, explain why this question is interesting and/or worthwhile. This should probably take up about a page of your proposal.

3) Methodology. Having a research question, thesis or hypothesis, now allows you to define what you need to know or answer to be able to reach a conclusion. Often you will have a series of secondary questions for which you want answers, each of which will contribute to your ability to draw your own conclusion. In the methodology section you will stake our your strategy for answering your own research question. That strategy may simply be to read appropriate works on specific topics, or it might be a more elaborate experiment or form of field research. In any event, you should be aware of what has been attempted in this area before and should therefore be able to explain why your strategy is appropriate and worthwhile. Most students will want to read others research to reach their conclusions. If this is your approach, then you will want to make sure that a literature exists that shows promise in providing evidence or answers for the parts of the puzzle you want to resolve.

This methodology section should thus, be another 2 or 3 pages. And it should be accompanied by a preliminary bibliography that demonstrates

Some probability of being able to complete your work.

4) Bibliography. There is no fixed rule on the number of works that you should list, merely you must make a convincing demonstration that what you need to complete your research exists.