Recall from the front page that at the core, all proposals have three principal parts: a main research question, a context that motivates the research question, and a plan to answer the question. Communicate project ideas to professors in a structured manner using a “mini informal proposal” format, even if not explicitly instructed to do so! Create a mini-proposal by using the classic “A but B” problem statement in which contradictory, opposing, or conflicting states are shown to co-exist. The human mind dislikes unresolved conflict, and when presented with such a problem, craves a solution. Your proposed research question and plan fills the need, making for a happy reader.
Writing Problem Statements
Problem statements set up a logical argument that accomplishes two critical tasks at once.
- First, it clarifies motivation as it is figured in academic writing, which is not the same as answering “why are you attracted to/interested in this research?”. The latter is a personal question, and often provokes wonderful self-reflection and interesting conversation, but it is not what the reader is looking for. The reader views the proposed work as a contribution to knowledge. “Motivation” for the work must be clearly framed in discipline-specific knowledge.
- Second, it clarifies the question, which is critical to the reader — the proposal reader must be able to answer “what are we going to be finding out with this work?”. The writer cannot leave this to the reader to infer! Fortunately, being specific about the question also helps direct the writer by forcing an answer to that most irritating of questions: so what is your research about?
Set up the conditions motivating your research questions by identifying what events, actions, states, etc. are in conflict. Think of this simply as an “A but B” scheme where there can be more than one possible actor in either the “A” or “B” categories. At this point, include an explicit “conflict” word to overtly signal to the reader where the conflict is located. To finish the task, add your research question to the end. RQs can be written as either questions or statements. Rhetorically speaking, questions are more interesting for the reader, but are used by writers when the overall aim of the research is better specified by a set of related questions than a single large, exploratory goal.
Example || How does law matter for social movement networks?
Social movements have catalyzed change in the U.S. legal system by demanding more stringent enforcement of existing laws, the repeal of laws, and the creation of new laws. Much less research, however, has approached the interplay of law and social movements from the opposite perspective, that is, examining how the creation of law affects social movements. This research aims to shed light on these dynamics by examining how the movement opposing surface mining in Appalachia has evolved since the passage of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA).
Example || Nineteenth Century British Literature and the Problem of Thinking About Others
We tend to feel that thinking about people we love is the next best thing to being with them. But the history of ideas about the powers of the mind is full of strange accounts that describe the act of thinking about another as an ethically problematic, sometimes even a dangerously powerful thing to do. My project is designed to explain why, when, and under what conditions we find it possible, or desirable to believe that thinking about another person could harm him or her. When does a belief in our mental powers over another seem delusional, and when might holding such a belief seem in fact an essential part of being a moral person?
Analysis: The sentences in orange set up Side A of the problem; green shows Side B. The blue word/phrase is the overt conflict connector. The remainder is the over-arching research questions that will resolve the conflict.
Writing Tip: The proposal reader’s world is comprised of mile high stacks of papers, each written by a desperate writer crying “Pick me! Pick meee!!”. There is a lot of caffeine involved, and in high stakes proposals, the reader is interred in a hotel room with others suffering the same task. So, contrary to what might seem the better strategy for calling attention to your work, do NOT over-complicate your writing with every nuanced thought to have crossed your mind. In fact, you want the reader to be impressed with the clarity of your logic, however big or small your vocabulary. Be clear. Make it easy for the reader to say “Yeah, that’s the person who wants to do Z because they discovered a fascinating problem where A and B don’t line up”. It really needs to be that straightforward. Remember that the reader is not privy to the idiosyncratic logic by which you make sense of the world. The proposal reader needs a problem they can relate to: because you are asking permission to begin study or for money to fund the project, it must be clear that the need for the solution exists.
Completing the Mini-Proposal
Now that the motivation and research question have been established, all that’s left is the plan. The key concept driving evaluation of the plan is FEASIBILITY.
- Can you do the work? Do you have the required skills?
- Do you have access to all necessary resources, including materials and time?
Even for a class project, the reader should be confident that the plan is feasible. It’s pretty common for students to have wonderful ideas that cannot possibly be completed in the time frame of a semester (my all time fave? A student who wanted to create an international park system modeled on the U.S. national parks — in the 4 weeks left in class! Beautiful goal, but unrealistic time frame.)
For an informal “mini-proposal”, you only need a sentence or two indicating how you will answer the research question, e.g.:
“I was struck by the book’s statement that Ojibwa doesn’t have a passive construction. Given that most languages have some way of manipulating grammatical topics, it seems likely that Ojibwa has this, too, albeit in some form that doesn’t shout ‘I’m a passive transformation!‘ I would like to examine some Ojibwa stories published by Whozit and the grammar published by Howzit to see if I can identify the grammatical structure(s) that signal changes in discourse topics from sentence to sentence“.
Even if you are working on a big project, you need to be able to talk about your project (or any portion of your project) in this kind well-structured yet conversational manner. This entails identifying these portions of your project: what is the research question, what motivates the research question, and what is the plan for answering the research question. Here is how the above conversation looks when the parts are deconstructed and spelled out:
- Research question: How does Ojibwa signal changes in grammatical topic?
- Motivation: claim in book (Side A) is in conflict with a discourse-grammar structure that is supposed to be a language universal (Side B)
- Plan: use a grammar of Ojibwa to examine stories where the “active-passive” transformation (as it is understood in a particular model of grammar) appears to be happening and identify the grammatical changes that signal the transformation.
Occasionally, it is sufficient motivation to find that a piece of information does not exist, but more often, significance is also demonstrated by showing that the missing information is valuable to the field. Value is assessed on research OR practical merit. Scholarly gaps that fill in “research for knowledge” are sufficient. More often, we test the validity of models/theories by generating data and seeing if the model/theory accounts for the results because this is the kind of work that advances a field. Sometimes, a question also has practical value — some real world impact.
Also, the plan for answering the question must be appropriate to your field. The plan above has three parts: a grammar that already exists, a book of transcribed stories that already exists, and a method — comparative structure analysis — for using the two to tackle the problem. It would not be possible to answer the question unless both texts already existed — otherwise, the proposer would need to do field work. The plan is acceptable because it demonstrates that the proposer knows what is feasible and has access to resources. You will do the same in your mini-proposal — provide a feasible plan.
Examples || from student projects [get permission from June, Jessica-Jean, Petta-Gay, Grant]
An increase in cancer morbidity and mortality has stimulated anthropological research on cancer and the unequal distribution of its suffering (Csordas, 1989; Balshem, 1991; DiGiacomo, 1992; Chavez, et al., 1995, 2009; Jain 2007b). In light of growing attention to cancer disparities, many researchers have used culture to 1) understand variation in cancer experiences and 2) critique the under appreciation of lay experiences for the dominant voice of recommended medical “truths” about the cancer experience (Moore 1994; McMullin and Weiner, 2009; Perusek, 2009; Jain 2007). These critics argue that cancer and individuals’ understanding and experiences of the illness is a complex phenomena that does note easily map unto the current cancer discourse. This critique of the existing U.S. cancer discourse identifies a need for research that equally weights the multiple voices of cancer experience while examining the various factors that influence individuals’ varying cancer experiences (Moore 1994, Pasick and Burke 2008, McMullin et al, 1994).
This article-based dissertation takes advantage of developments in culture theory and systematic ethnographic methods research to provide a multi-voiced account of cancer experiences by 1) exploring both women’s and physicians’ cultural knowledge of breast cancer and 2) examining how their cultural knowledge interact with social-structural factors to influence women’s and physicians’ breast cancer experiences and women’s use of preventive services in Puerto Rico.
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Short-term medical missions (such as medical school health initiatives) supplement local and state health care services for the poor throughout the global south. Even with these additional providers however; the inability to access adequate health care largely continues to affect the poor. This research question builds from the idea that the influx of providers may fragment health care systems and change the way patients and providers use health services (Scott 2013). The proposed study aims to address this by explaining how patients use short-term medical missions (STMMs) and the role of STMMs in patients’ larger health networks.
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Transgender social movements literature suggests that a transgender movement exists online (i.e., websites and other supportive spaces online where transgender people interact with each other); however, scholars know little about the movement with sparse evidence to indicate the current state of online groups, their activities and levels of activism, if any at all. Therefore, the purpose of this grounded theory research is to understand the processes by which transgender people form identities, communities, and spaces online in an effort to gain a better understanding of the transgender movement.
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Currently over 50% of all treated wastewater is land applied in the state of Florida. In this state, where surface water nutrient pollution problems are common, new legislation has recently been passed requiring more careful monitoring of nutrient contributing landscapes. As the state is set to invest billions of dollars to control nutrient pollution, it is important to confirm and certify that previous assumptions and theories on the fate of nutrients in long-term effluent irrigated landscapes are correct. This research aims to confirm the long-term potential of phosphorus transport in Florida landscapes for improved cost effectiveness and efficiency of water quality improvements plans.
Writing the Informal Proposal
It may seem that “written” + “informal” + “proposal” is a type of extended oxymoron — how can anything written be that informal? “Informal” as it is being used here really means that a proposal or written account of a project idea has been requested, but no specific formatting instructions have been given. At the grad level, this kind of request is fairly frequent! The instructor wants your project ideas in writing, but doesn’t necessarily tell you how the writing should look. Or, the instructor uses the word “proposal” and assumes that you know what this means (or will look it up). In this case, even if the instructor does not use the word “proposal”, you help yourself and your reader by using the proposal format.
As in the spoken example, your proposal still has three main parts: the research question, the motivation for the research, and a plan. How those parts get written can vary tremendously from field to field, but here is a plan to get you started. Use the subheadings you see in bold as subheadings in the proposal itself, even if your field (i.e., the humanities) doesn’t really use subheadings very often in published works. The sentence lengths are rough estimations based on the informal nature of this document.
Significance/Objective — this is the introduction to the proposal — it is brief and contains the following, usually written as 1 or 2 paragraphs:
- Topic + General Significance (1-2 sentences, cite literature)
- Key Ideas leading to Gap/Motivation (2-3 sentences, cite literature)
- Research Question (1 sentence)
- Why RQ matters (1 sentence) OR Hypotheses (especially for experimental fields)
Literature Review — this is the larger context of the research question and may include both published literature and unpublished lab results for which documentation can be provided — overall goal of lit review is to justify necessity of proposed research, therefore must cover key ideas and must clearly demonstrate motivation for research — this is where the “story” is –organize using second-level subheadings — may be 3-5 paragraphs long (for an informal proposal, you shouldn’t need more than that!)
Plan — this is where you will lay out in clear language how you will “solve” the research question. Choose either chronological or logical order and use appropriate transition words or lists. If experimental, use subheadings for “participants/subjects”, “method”, and “procedure”.
References — bibliography of all literature cited in the proposal — a “tentative bibliography” may also be included here OR can be placed in the “Plan” section (a tentative bibliography are works you have yet to use but are pretty sure are important to your project)