apa research proposal example

apa research proposal example

The Importance of Conducting an APA Research Proposal

1. Introduction

In conducting research of any sort, it is necessary to have a clear goal in mind and a planned series of steps to find or determine a specific answer to a problem or question. Such planning is known as a research proposal.

Lowman (1993, pp. 114-115) contends that research methods are consistent with those of a logical detective. The investigator begins a study in an attempt to solve a specific problem that he has identified. The research project then consists of both data and information, to determine the best course of action and to answer specific questions. Finally, in most situations, the research ends with the resolution of the initial problem.

By conducting research, students and professionals contribute to an ever-growing reservoir of human knowledge, thereby adding a sense of excitement to their quest for answers to unanswered questions. Research also provides a solid foundation for program evaluation and policy analysis. A plan to evaluate a new community-based treatment program depends on first conducting an initial study to determine the feasibility of such an evaluation and the availability of reliable and valid measures of community health. A thorough understanding of certain disorders also requires comparison between the characteristics of the disorder under study and the characteristics of other disorders.

Conducting research is an essential skill for today’s students, academics, and professionals. The rapid growth of knowledge has created a division of labor where no single person can know everything. Thus, we all must depend on each other. Upcoming scientists learn about the findings of their predecessors through journal articles reporting experimental and observational studies. In learning about these findings, researchers make new discoveries.

2. Literature Review

The various types of leadership are discussed, but the focus of the paper will be on the collaborative leadership style, one that is similar to transformational leadership. Coleman (2011) believed that transformational leadership must be used to have effective and successful change at institutions of higher learning. This is due to the fact that the traditional top-down leader and follower management styles do not work in today’s higher education atmosphere. Collaboration relies on shared accountability and responsibility, which allows for all players to have a voice in decision-making processes; this is vital in order to have successful change efforts. This type of leadership is essential for data-driven decision-making processes when information is gathered and analyzed as a team in order to come to the best decision to move forward. Transformational leadership is based on the leader and followers raising one another to higher levels of motivation and morality. This form of leadership works well with teams and groups that are looking to work towards continuous improvement, a common goal for community college educators.

3. Methodology

Time is a complex process, but this can be applied to almost anything. With direct reference to artwork and literature, the reader/viewer has to decipher coded messages from the text/image being analyzed. Language is the most obvious target of interpretation, while the mention of imagery illustrates a more involved reading between the lines. Some attempts to analyze may be pretty straightforward and take information directly (cited) from the source at face value. Other attempts take a more in-depth approach to analysis, considering the circumstances of the author/artist at the time of creation and comparing the work being analyzed to others by the same individual. The latter is like trying to solve an equation with many unknown variables and can often lead to much discrepancy in interpretation.

Postmodern artwork and literature usually provides some confusing kind of imagery. This imagery can, in many instances, be considered a particular artist’s tool of the trade. Take, for example, a painting of a man eating a slice of pizza. A realist painter would paint the scene just as it is. The man eating the pizza would look natural, and perhaps the scene would look as if it were photographic. On the other hand, a postmodernist painter would use the image to try and communicate an idea. The man eating the pizza may be hunched over to illustrate a feeling of sadness, and the background may have some distorted features. In the man eating the pizza instance, one could say that the pizza itself is the image, while the man is the tool used to communicate the idea that the artist is trying to get across. Great poems such as “In Flanders Fields,” or novels such as “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” owe much of their success to an abundance of imagery. In both cases, the imagery used can be analyzed very deeply to reveal the true message that is being communicated by the author. Schugar and Dietrich in their article on Imagery claim that all imagery is a dual coding, of which one part is a sensual depictive representation and the other is what the image truly stands for. They also refer to imagery as a form of mental representation, which is very fitting vocabulary for a discussion of language and imagery in art and literature.

4. Expected Results

Students in this course have previously written research literature reviews. It is expected that much of the experience gained will be useful in the production of the literature review of the proposal. The research methods course is taken in various programs and at various stages of training during our second year. There are qualitative and quantitative researchers from each of the fields of psychology, education, and kinesiology. Although it is expected that the vast majority of the proposals will be written in APA format, given the diversity of programs and previous research courses, it is inevitable that there will be some differences in expectations about how a particular research proposal should be presented. In order to maximize the usefulness of the general research methods course to students in different programs, we have found it very helpful to provide and discuss examples of issues in the proposal which are common to research at different designs and in different content areas. We plan to do this using a mix of examples drawn from the past research of the instructors. All of these efforts to accommodate diversity of experience and interests will be considered in the grading of the written research proposal, so there should be a clear relationship between what is presented in lectures and discussions and what is written in the proposals.

5. Conclusion

Therefore, one could posit that APA is essential to consider as it greatly assists in the grading and overall outcome of what is expected from the writer. It provides the writer with a clear understanding of what is to be expected when undertaking research, making it more likely that the writer will obtain the results that are more precise and informative. Moreover, the importance of APA style writing is reflected in the quality of one’s writing. An individual who writes using APA style is typically assumed to be a more experienced and knowledgeable writer when compared to those who write using other styles of writing, i.e. a writer who is in favor of creative writing or poetics. These individuals who are writing not within their field of expertise or research would also benefit from writing using APA style, as using clear and precise writing will ensure that an outsider’s interpretation of the work will be what it was originally intended and not a theoretical understanding of what the writer had written.