Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements

Research Proposal

The Research Proposal assignment will be your final project. The purpose of this assignment is to provide you with an opportunity to understand the process of designing a research study.

Research Questions:

Is there a significant difference between males and females in terms of income magnitude and job satisfaction?

Does good relation have a significant effect on job satisfaction?

Paper format: Please follow the guidelines below when formatting your paper.

7-9 pages long (excluding references and cover page)

A separate title page including the title of the proposal, your name, and submission date

Include page numbers on each page

Use APA style formatting to write in-text citations and reference section

Use 1 inch margins

Double spaced

No extra space between paragraphs

The content of the research proposal should include the following three major sections:

Introduction: The introduction section should discuss the importance of the subject or research question you are going to answer. After discussing its importance, the next step is to conduct a literature review. (about 1 page long)

Review of the literature: This subsection of introduction should include a discussion of previous research findings related to your research questions. So you should focus on, what questions previous studies asked, how previous studies tried to answer these questions, what they found, and what are the deficiencies related to these studies (if there is any) and etc. (about 2.5 pages long)

Formulation of research question (or hypotheses): This subsection should include how your research will built on previous studies and in what way it will provide new insights. Also you should clearly write your hypotheses at the end of this section. (About 1 page long). See the examples below regarding how to write a hypothesis.

Hypothesis 1: The effect of salary on job satisfaction is higher for male employees than in female employees.

Hypothesis 2: The effect of salary on job satisfaction is lower for employees who are older than 50 than employees who are between 30-50 years of old.

Methods: In this section, you should provide a detailed description of the methods you will use in conducting your research. That means you should provide information about your subjects, your measurements, your research design, and the methods you will use to analyze your data. This section should include two major parts: data collection methods and data analyzing methods.

Data collection methods (about 1.5 pages long): This subsection should include information on the following:

Subjects: How many subject you will use? From where you will recruited these subjects (e.g., from universities, firms, and online networking sites).

Measures: What scales you will use to measure your variables (e.g., OCB questionnaire by Williams and Anderson, 1991). What are the reliability of these measures, and etc?

Data collection method. Are you going to use an experimental or a survey method? Are you going to use a longitudinal or cross-sectional design? And so on.

Data analyzing methods (about 1 page long): This section should include information on the following:

Descriptive statistics: What descriptive statistics you will include(e.g., means, moods, standard deviation, maximum, minimum)

Statistical analyses: Which statistical analyses are you going to use to test your hypotheses (e.g., correlations, regression, t-test, ANOVA)

Discussion: In your conclusion, address the “So What?” of this research. That is, why does what you are investigating matter as more than an academic exercise? Why should your audience want to read it? Why does answering your question matter? What are the possible practical implications of your research? (about 1 page long)