Additional guidance for completing Section 3: Outline of a qualitative research proposal
This section should provide details of a proposed qualitative research project you could undertake in the future. You do not have to undertake the research for the assignment; just say how you would do it. You can choose any criminological, sociological, or social policy topic. Your proposal should include details of:
the title of the proposed research
details of the research topic;
research question(s);
an academic rationale for why the proposed research is worth undertaking;
details of your intended method (you should use at least one of the three presented in the module);
sampling;
ethical issues that may arise and how you would address them;
details of who might be interested in the results of the research;
and challenges or limitations of your proposed research design
You can structure this part of the portfolio as a Report and use sub-headings as detailed below. Under each subheading you address the following issues or questions:
• Title of proposed research: e.g. ‘A qualitative investigation of why mature students return to study’; or ‘An interview study of young people’s attitude to under-age drinking’
• Research question: What is your research question: what do you aim to do in your research?
• Academic rationale: Provide a statement of the problem to investigate. Why is this research important to undertake? Include here your background knowledge about the topic. What do we already know about the topic from academic sources and existing research? Aim to summarise this literature, making sure to reference key texts in the field.
• Details of your intended method: How will you conduct the investigation/collect your data?; What method will you use? ; Why are you choosing one method over another?; What makes your method the most appropriate? – what are the advantages of your method over alternatives?; Remember to include details of your method – if you are developing an interview, include an interview schedule (and prompts); ethnography, then discuss what role you would adopt and how you would access the field; documents then detail what documents you would collect and analyse. Outline how will you analyse the material/data? You may want to consider issues of epistemology. For instance, will you take an interpretivist approach in your research design? Or perhaps a different epistemology (such as feminism, structuralism etc.)? Justify why this approach is appropriate.
• Sampling and Recruitment: Who will be included in your research? How will you sample them? If your research involves recruiting individuals, how do you plan to do this?
Ethical issues: what are the ethical implications of what you are proposing? How will you
address them?
Who might be interested in the research? To whom will your findings be useful? Why?
Challenges and limitations of your proposed research: Discuss the limitations of your research (e.g. limitations of method; sample; ability to generalise etc.)
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