Assignment 4: IDEAs: Due Sunday 11:59 pm (EST)
Last week you narrowed your list to a specific few topics and you created brief elevator
speeches designed to elicit feedback from your colleagues as to the feasibility of each
prospective topic. For this week and with everyone’s feedback in hand, consider if you
want to keep, dismiss, or modify any of those topics. For each one, create an IDEA
paper. See attached for a sample IDEA paper from a different course and note the
headings and description for each section (below). In a separate document for each
topic, create corresponding IDEA papers that are about the length you see in the
sample.
– Title: This is a direct, engaging, and representative title, typically not more than 10-15
words.
– Problem Statement: This is likely to be the largest section, potentially taking up to
half of your paper. The first sentence should immediately grasp the reader’s attention.
Tell your audience immediately the core component driving the potential study. The rest
of the first paragraph should be a balance of basic reference material supporting your
assertion that what you said in the first sentence really matters. You will then use
another one or two paragraphs to go into some more depth about the topic with the
perspective that you need to convince your reader that this is an important topic. Keep
in mind that this isn’t intended to be a comprehensive literature review–just a highlight
of the main points with perhaps a small bit of historical context. In a full research
proposal, what you are putting in this section now will transform into a comprehensive
literature review.
– Project Goals: This section should be an itemized list of goals for the project. You are
conveying to your reader what you hope to get out of the process of potentially
conducting a study on this topic. If you can only come up with one goal, you probably
haven’t thought enough about the topic (or it’s a poor topic and you should consider
revising it). If you are identifying more than five or so goals, you might think about
combining goals that are similar or removing goals that might be valid, but not
necessarily helpful for the vision you are laying out for this potential study. When you
transition to a full research proposal, these goals can be used to help guide the formal
development of research questions and hypotheses.
– Relevance / Significance: Elaborating on the “why should I care” points for your
reader in this section and speak to how your itemized goals relate to a real-world issue
or concern. This should be about one, and not more than two paragraphs at most.
– Research Approach: This section is a brief statement that is likely to be a paragraph
at most that details how you might go about conducting a study on the topic you are
writing about and with the goals you indicated. This is not intended to be a
comprehensive overview of an entire sampling procedure and research methodology–
its purpose is to quickly explore opportunities to conduct this potential research. If you
cannot identify a research approach that seems valid and feasible now, consider how
difficult it will be to develop specific, objective, and measurable goals in the formal
research proposal.
– References: Format your references in APA format (according to the 7th edition of the
APA Publication Manual). Any in-text citation should have a corresponding reference in
the References section.
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Last week you narrowed your list appeared first on Scholars Hub Blog.
