research propsal

You will be required to write a short proposal for your research paper. This proposal will be an expression of your thesis statement/guiding question to tell a bit more about your paper topic and present a few of the sources from which you plan to gather your researched material. This short proposal must include the following information:

1. Your purpose for writing this paper. What will you examine and why is it important? Why did you choose this topic and what do you hope to learn?

2. Your guiding question or thesis statement. As you do more research you will be able to develop a thesis statement. For your proposal, it is acceptable to not be sure what your thesis statement is. A guiding question is enough information for the proposal. For example, you may state that your topic is minimum wage. Your guiding question could be “Is it positive or detrimental to increase minimum-wage for all workers in this class?”
You may not yet know whether or not it is a good idea, but after completing research you should have an idea about whether it is a positive or negative concept and why. If you have already done a little bit of research and know which direction you plan to take the paper, you may already have a thesis statement. The thesis statement would read something like: “Increasing the minimum-wage for all employees who receive it is a positive decision because…” Or, “Increasing minimum-wage is a detrimental process due to the fact that…” Then go into detail about who you are choosing this guiding question and why, or which pieces of information you plan to use to prove your thesis through research.

Your overall proposal should probably take about a page or so and contain two paragraphs that answer all of the questions listed above. Your idea will not be rejected as long as you’ve provided the information asked in this proposal. I will accept any topic you choose to write on. This is more of a focusing activity to ensure you know which path you are taking for the paper and have some idea of what guiding question you will use to help you further your research.