Write a Research proposal: “What is the relationship between gender and mass suicide? Do men and women differ in their likelihood of participating in a mass suicide, and if so, what factors contribute to these gender differences?”
themes/variables, measuring aspects of the topic in a systematic way.
a) Discuss briefly why you choose in your research a survey instead of an interview or
vice versa, or why you choose to use both. Also, discuss what are the main dimensions of
the topic that you want to measure in this survey/interview.
b) Practice creating at least 4 questions for your survey/interview questionnaire. Make
sure you employ all types of question formats, that is:
– close-ended
– open-ended
– statements
– contingency questions.
**In this Methodological Design section, you will demonstrate your learning of the
methodological tools and understanding of the research process by applying it to your
own research design. In other words, in this part, the course content will be applied to
your own research proposal. Furthermore, it is also important to note the connection
between the “Literature Review” and “Methodological Design” sections of the research
proposal. That is, while the literature review presents your critical evaluation of the past
work by other researchers, methodological design presents your own research proposal
for a new research, which has its inspirations from the past work, but has also new
dimensions and reasons to offer a new research design.
The Methodological Design is broken down into four parts. Please read below carefully.
Note 1: All methodological design sections are expected to be answered in a Q&A
format, unlike the literature review which is written in an essay format.
Note 2: Each methodological design assignment is expected to be 1-2 pages (doublespace); hence, they are relatively short assignments.
Methodological Design I :
In this part, please answer the questions below for your own research topic and proposal.
a) What is your research topic?
b) What is your research question? What exactly is it that you want to investigate in this
research?
c) What are your hypotheses?
d) What are your units of analysis (i.e. who/what is the subjects of this study?)
e) What are your main variables and their attributes? How will you define and measure
them?
f) How do you relate those variables to each other? That is, in your opinion, what kinds
of cause and effect relationships exist among the variables? What is/are the dependent
variable(s)? What is/are the independent variable(s)? What type of positive or negative
correlation(s) do you identify among the variables?
Methodological Design II:
In this second part of the methodological design, please answer the questions below:
a) What types of necessary and sufficient causes do you identify in this study?
b) What type of a logical model are you following in this proposal? Deduction or
induction, and how?
c) At what different levels do you create your variables? i.e. nominal, ordinal, interval or
ratio? Describe how and why?
d) What kinds of spurious and non-spurious relationships could be noted among the
variables in this study?
Methodological Design III:
a) Discuss your variables and measurements in terms of validity concerns. That is, how
do you evaluate their face validity/criterion-related validity/construct validity/content
validity?
b) Sampling: -Who is the population and the sample in this research? Provide the
rationale for the number of subjects for the study. Discuss this in terms of generalizability
of your findings.
c) In order to create a representative sample, which type of sampling method do you think
would be a good fit to your research, a) non-probability sampling, or b) probability
sampling? Or both?
d) What specific type of either non-probability or probability sampling would you
choose?
Methodological Design IV:
In this fourth part of the methodological design, you will practice creating a Survey or
Interview Questionnaire. Please read the instructions below carefully:
A questionnaire should be a type of text which has a specific organization and inner
consistency. It is not a simple list of questions, but questions organized around certain
themes/variables, measuring aspects of the topic in a systematic way.
a) Discuss briefly why you choose in your research a survey instead of an interview or
vice versa, or why you choose to use both.