How to Write a Research Proposal 1. Research Question/Hypothesis: The first thing that you need to do is to articulate the subject of the paper in the form of a research question or hypothesis. 2. Cursory Review of Literature: Conduct a cursory review of the literature (2-3 articles, book, etc) to determine whether other scholars have examined your subject. You can use this literature to justify the need or to verify that there is a gap in the literature that you in tend to fill. You can also use this review to extend research that has been conducted because what is true today can change over time. 3. Data and Methods: Find the data that you need for the paper or determine or decide that you are going to collect it yourself via surveys, etc. Be specific as to the location of the data, ie websites, etc. Then, decide what sort of research design that you will use. For example, cross sectional, time series, or meta analysis. Last, what are you going to do with the data? That is, what sort of statistical analysis will you run on the data [univariate, bivariate (crosstabs), regression, etc.]
Note: All of this should be no more than one page.