Global 224: Project Proposal
Global and International Studies
University of California Santa Barbara
[INSERT YOUR PROPOSAL TITLE]
By _____________
[academic department]
University of California [campus]
January 1, 2012
LastName, FirstName
Short Project Title
Abstract (300 words)
Insert a brief abstract here. The abstract should be one of the last things you write. It should be a
condensed version of your introduction. The abstract should very briefly cover:
(a) A thesis statement identifying the key issue or focus of the proposed project. What is the
project about? What argument are you making about this issue?
(b) The kinds of evidence you will need to address your thesis questions. What evidence do
you need and how will you collect it?
(c) How you plan to analyze the information and use it to address your thesis.
Writing a good abstract in just 300 words can be difficult. If you end up with something a little
longer the first time around don't worry.
i
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Project Title
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Table of Contents
1. Project Description
1
2. Research Question
1
3. Significance
2
4. Background
2
5. Methods
3
6. Analysis
5
7. Research Ethics
5
8. Bibliography
6
The page lengths and questions I have listed below are there as guidelines to help you.
You are not required to write a specific number of pages in any one section and you
should only answer the questions that make sense for your project.
LastName, FirstName
Short Project Title
1
Project Description (1-2 pages)
The project description is the second-to-the-last thing you should write. It provides your reader
with a brief overview of your proposed project. It should clearly state your central research
question (thesis) and map out the design of your project. Let your reader know where your project
is going and what steps you plan to take to get there.
The project description should be your best piece of writing. It should hit all the high points of
your argument. Lay out the best you have in the clearest possible way. Don’t hold anything back.
This is not a mystery story. There should be no surprise ending. If your reader doesn't see
something they like right here in the introduction they may not read any further.
A good introduction answers the following questions:
What is this study about?
Why is this issue important?
What is your thesis, your main research question?
How will you go about trying to answer your thesis question?
What evidence will you collect and how will you collect it?
How will you use the evidence to support your thesis?
What kinds of findings can you expect?
How might your findings address your research question?
What are the implications of this study for the larger issues involved?
Research Question
State your main research question or thesis as one complete sentence. We understand that your
thesis is probably a work in progress but state it as clearly as you can.
Your central thesis doesn't have to sound scientific or elaborate. It can be a simple
question that you use to organize your project. For example, you could ask "Why is it
important to plant canopy trees in the rainforest?" or "Why are polar bear numbers
declining in some areas and not other areas?" Then you can organize your proposal
around answering that one central question. If you don't have a central research question
you don't have a research project.
The catch is that you may not find the right formulation of your central question until you
are deep into the process of writing the proposal. Whatever research question you start
with you should be ready to let it change. It should evolve as your project develops.
It is okay to have more than one question or even groups of questions. Every issue has
more than one side and there can be different questions for each side of the issue. For
example, you may be interested in the impact of a policy on a certain industry. That
question is likely to lead to many other questions about the impact that policy may have
on other industries, on individual businesses, on employees, local residents and so on.
You may list sub-questions in the proposal as long as they are directly relevant and clearly related
to the main thesis.
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Project Title
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Significance or Relevance (1 page)
Why is it important to look into the issue you propose to look into?
What could your study contribute to our understanding of this issue?
What relevance does your study have to existing literature on the subject? Does your study seek
to confirm or contradict a particular theory or previous conclusions? Are you trying to provide a
new take or different point of view on this issue?
What impact could your findings have on people? Who is affected by the issues involved?
Are there implications for organizational practices?
What practical applications might your findings have?
Are there direct policy implications (development, health, environmental policies)?
Background (2-3 pages)
This section should provide your reader with the background information they need to understand
your proposed project. Make your assumptions clear, outline the analytical framework you plan
to employ, and develop your own working definitions of key concepts. In our line of work
complex concepts rarely have one simple definition. Different academic disciplines use the same
concepts in different ways. Complex and contested concepts such as poverty, development,
sustainability, rights and governance can be used in very different ways within the same field.
Draw on the literature develop your own working definition of the terms you use.
"For the purposes of this study I define the term sustainability as __________."
Depending on the type of project you are working on your readers might need any of the
following:
review different analytical approaches that have been used to study the issue
definition of analytical concepts, technical and industry terms
summarize the findings of key substantive studies on the issue
the development of the substantive issue over time
historical, cultural or regional context
important current events related to the issue
background on the major actors involved (people, agencies or organizations)
explanation of the relevant laws, policies, norms, standards and practices
discussion of long term statistical trends that shed light on the issue
You don't have the time or space to do an exhaustive literature review but you should
demonstrate that you can identify and incorporate key pieces of academic literature on your topic.
You may want to give some priority to current substantive journal articles. You may also want to
go beyond academic articles and books to include government statistics and industry reports. Find
and incorporate whatever you need but be sure to reference both your paraphrasing and direct
quotes taken from these works.
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Methods (3-4 pages)
The purpose of the methods section is to explain how you will go about collecting the information
and evidence that the design of your project calls for. What data collection procedure will you
follow? Explain the data collection strategy and the specific methods used to collect, store and
preserve your data. The methodology (your overall data collection strategy) should be appropriate
to the research questions you are trying to answer and the conditions you will be studying in. The
best methodologies are realistic, robust and flexible.
Data collection strategies can be very simple or complex. They may include community history,
life history, case study, event analysis, focus group, participatory rural appraisal, and many
others. The key thing is to be realistic and clear about the kind of information you need to answer
the kinds of questions you have. What do you hope to find? How do you plan to find it?
Assume for a moment that your project requires you to analyze pieces of refugee art. How are
you are going to go about defining the field of refugee art (sampling frame)? How will you
identify and select a number of individual works of art (sampling logic)? How will you interpret
the selected works (analysis)? Following the methodological procedures of selection and analysis
you outline, what kinds of representations should you be able to make about refugee art (results)?
By nature some studies tend to be more exploratory than explanatory. Exploratory studies often
require the researcher to use a flexible methodology. For example, field researchers need to be
ready to adapt to changing conditions they find in the field and employ different methods
depending on the situation. This means that field studies almost always rely on a mixed or multimethod strategy.
After giving a general sense of your overall methodological strategy discuss the specific data
collection methods you plan to use. Where do you plan to go looking for information? Why does
it make sense to go there looking for information in those places? What do you plan to do once
you get there? During your study you might observe behaviors and events, interview people,
administer a questionnaire, or search archives for data already collected by others.
If you are planning to use statistics or other secondary data then identify the sources of the data
and explain why this data is appropriate for your study. For example, if you plan to use time
series data there are a number of limitations and some rather serious issues of interpretation
around that kind of data. If your data set doesn't come from a standard source (US Census) you
may need to describe the data set, what organization collected and the data, how the data were
collected and why, along with any important limitations of the data that impact your analysis. For
example, some crime statistics may be unreliable in certain countries for any number of reasons.
Make it clear that you understand the limitations of the data sets you plan to use and how the
limitations may impact your analysis.
The following primary data collection methods are frequently used by students:
Method 1: Archival Research.
Researchers encounter many different sources of secondary information (information collected by
other people) in many different kinds of archives. University libraries, public libraries, museums,
galleries, news organizations, government publications are all frequent sources. There are also
churches, industry groups, political parties, NGO’s and many other organizations that regularly
collect information that may be relevant to your topic. There are other kinds of documents such as
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personal letters, literary works, and court transcripts. There are also non-textual forms of
representation found in art galleries, pop culture, street signs and performing arts that can provide
information for your study. Make sure your readers know what kinds of information you are
using from what sources. Provide enough information so that your reader can go and find the
same information if they need to.
Method 2: Observation and Participant Observation.
Both the natural and social sciences depend on careful observation as a primary means of
collecting data. Where biologists might observe plant characteristics or animal behavior, social
scientists observe social behavior. A great deal can be learned by participating in and observing
community celebrations, weddings, funerals, religious ceremonies or rituals, sports competitions,
organizational meetings, and so on. Be clear about why you selected a particular event to observe
and what you expect to learn from it.
Method 3: Interviews.
People are a crucial resource in nearly every kind of study. People in different positions can tell
you different things about your topic. Depending on your study you might interview local experts,
academics, government agents, farm laborers, female factory workers, tourists or business
owners. Each group has unique information and could require different kinds of interview
questions. What kind of knowledge can you expect each group to have about your topic? What
kinds of questions would you ask of the different people you interview? How might their job,
gender, age or other status shape their point of view? Why is their point of view important to your
study?
There are many different kinds of interviews. Interviews can be casual, informal or formal. They
can be structured like a questionnaire or spontaneous and unstructured. Make sure you are clear
about who you want to interview and why it makes sense to interview them about your topic.
Describe the kinds of questions you plan to ask and how they relate to the information you are
looking for and questions you are trying to answer.
Method 4: Survey or Questionnaire
Another method is a survey or questionnaire. We don't normally expect students to execute
formal statistical surveys. Doing a full representative survey requires significant advance
planning and more resources than most students have at their disposal. A simple, informal or
exploratory questionnaire may not be considered as scientifically valid as a probability survey but
it can be a valuable tool. Note that translating our questions into another language or culture is no
simple matter. Administering even a simple questionnaire in another culture requires some
forethought and careful field testing.
Depending on the kind of study you want to do there are dozens of other methods that you could
use. For example, you could use focus groups, create a field map, study land use patterns, sample
forest plots, measure water turbidity or survey species diversity. The number and types of
methods you deploy in your study will depend on your analytical framework, your research
design, the object of study, and in some cases the conditions you find in the field. You should
describe only those methods that make sense for your project design.
LastName, FirstName
Project Title
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Analysis (1-2 pages)
Explain how you will analyze the results of you project and any data/information/evidence you
plan to collect. In a qualitative study the issue may be how you will code and interpret the
responses you get to your more open ended questions. When analyzing secondary data the issue
usually focuses more on the statistical procedures used to analyze the data.
If you plan to use a specific quantitative procedures to analyze data, or lab procedures to analyze
samples, you should briefly describe these procedures in this section. Explain why these
particular analytical procedures are important to your project. If the procedure is described in
detail elsewhere you can give a brief overview and then reference that work. Any excessively
detailed technical discussions, such as the relative merits of one procedure over another, should
be moved to an appendix or left out of the proposal entirely. Again, the objective is to be clear
enough about your methods so that an interested reader could reproduce your study.
This part of the proposal forces you to think about what the products of your research design are
likely to be. It lets the granting body know that you have thought through the different kinds of
analyses that you could do.
There is always some tension between the kinds of questions you want to ask and the kinds of
evidence you are going to be able to find. Forcing you to think through the analysis helps you to
reconcile the differences between what you hoped to be able to say and what you are realistically
going to be able to do with your project. This in turn improves both the feasibility and relevance
of the entire project.
Think about the following questions:
If you did manage to collect the information called for in your methods section, would you end up
with anything worth analyzing?
If not, then adjust your project design so that it is more likely to produce the information you
need.
If so, then how would you go about analyzing the information?
Would the analysis of your results (observations/data/information/evidence) allow you to
say something interesting about your topic?
Research Ethics (1-2 pages)
The doing of research and the publication of research findings can do harm to people and
communities in ways that researchers don’t foresee. You should carefully consider the impact that
your research could have and, where possible, adjust our research design to minimize the
possibility of harm.
If your research involves individual people you will be required to submit your proposal for a
Human Subjects review and then follow the appropriate protocols. Researchers are often drawn to
subcultures, the homeless, gangs, delinquents, criminals, drug users and other marginalized
populations. Researchers are also sometimes drawn to the plight of survivors of catastrophes and
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victims of crime. These populations can be particularly vulnerable in different ways and great
care must be taken to protect their safety and respect their privacy.
The Human Subjects protocols focus our attention on protecting the individual people we study.
However, simply following research protocols to protect individual identities is not the end of our
responsibilities as researchers. Many of the most pressing global issues involve vulnerable groups
such as children, women, poor, minorities and immigrants. If your research involves one or more
vulnerable populations you should devote considerable attention to making sure you are not doing
harm to those populations.
Even if your project doesn't directly involve especially vulnerable people each type of person you
interview can pose their own ethical considerations. As a researcher you are likely to encounter
many cultural, gender and power differences. Are the people you talk to really free to talk to you?
Will the men of the village be happy when you publish your findings on gender discrimination?
Could factory workers be punished for revealing too much about their work conditions? Discuss
the different ways your study could impact the people you are likely to encounter during the
course of your research and how you plan to minimize those impacts.
Works Cited or Bibliography
Both direct quotes and paraphrasing should be cited in your text and a complete reference should
be listed here. You can use APA, Chicago, MLA or another standard format as long as the format
is used consistently throughout your report.
Full citations should make it easy for readers to find and verify materials written or otherwise
produced by others.
Example:
Darian-Smith, Eve. 2010. Religion, Race, Rights: Landmarks in the History of Modern AngloAmerican Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
In most cases priority should be given to current academic articles that directly address
substantive issues (rather than purely theoretical or methodological).