Skip to content
- Find at least 3 external sources that address a topic relative to yours to produce a miniversion of a comprehensive literature review. Use journal articles, government documents, texts, testimony, official manuals, and other credible resources only.
- Provide each source’s bibliographic reference here in accordance with APA style guidelines.
- Summarize briefly what exists—or does not exist—in the literature review that provides a starting point for your project. This point should inform the choices you make in answering the questions below.
- If your topic seems to be difficult, you may want to start anew with a narrower focus.
- Create a research question or questions. Look back at narratives from previous weeks for guidance on this.
- Identify and explain your research constructs.
- Create 1 or more hypotheses.
- Fully operationalize each variable. Make certain that this step is as extensive as possible.
- Explain how and why your form of operationalization for each variable will help you avoid the threats to validity you learned about this week.
- What approach will you employ to study your topic—quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods analysis?
- Define the parameters for the population you will study as a whole, draw samples from, or combine methods for.
- How will you extend any findings from this population to a larger one?
- Fully defend the choices you are making.
- Explain what research instruments you plan to use for any and all phases of your research.
- Fully defend the choices you are making.
- Outline how you will proceed in conducting your study.
- What forms of data collections will you use, and why did you choose them?
- Explain the findings you expect to reveal.
- Consider and forecast the form your data output will be in.
- Estimate what process you will use to interpret and report your findings (you cannot do much more without conducting your research).
- Provide an outline for your entire research plan