As with the previous discussion forum, in the Discussion 3 first state the purpose of your study in one complete sentence. For example, “The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of…… (this thing)………on…… (that thing)…” That way, other students will be able to identify your cause-effect relationship of your study, and suggest appropriate statistical analyses for it.
The Sample and Sampling Method: Next (start with a new paragraph), identify the sample, the sampling frame (when applicable), and the sampling method that you plan to use in your proposed study. Justify your choices. If you propose to use secondary data (e.g., publicly available data that somebody else has collected, UCR data, GSS data, NCVS data, etc.), then specify the study population, the sample, and sampling method that originally was used to collect those data. Specify “who” collected those data (specify a location, a CJS agency, & CJS professionals who collected those publicly available data). If you plan to examine available records (e.g., court records, police records, or any other forms of unprocessed data), then specify how many cases you propose to analyze, and that’s your sample. You may also specify the study population, in addition to the sample, the sampling frame, and the sampling method. Finally, specify what is that you are proposing to compare – restate the units of analysis and the units of observations (see pdf in the reading material folder).
When you discuss the sample, sampling frame, and the sampling method in the Sample and Sampling Method section above, make sure to follow these rules:
The sample: it should contain a number (of subjects, cases, etc.)
The sampling frame: you need to explain how you plan to obtain the list of all subjects (or cases) that you plan to include in your sample.
The sampling method: you need to explain how you plan to select your sample (the number of subjects or cases) from that list of subjects or cases (i.e., from the sampling frame).
Data Analysis Plan: Last (start with a new paragraph), identify the data analysis plan. This is a very important section of the research proposal project. For this section, you need to outline how do you plan to analyze the data to answer your research question/or hypothesis in your study. In other words, describe how you plan to determine the relationship between the cause (the independent variables) and the effect (the dependent variable) in your study. Identify specific types of statistical techniques (e.g., hierarchical regression analysis, T-test, Discriminant Analysis, factorial analysis of variance, measures of central tendency, etc. google each to find out more) that you propose to use to empirically test the cause/effect relationship. Most importantly, explain how the selected statistical techniques will answer your research question or test your hypothesis. The data analysis plan relies heavily on the explanation that you give about the units of analysis in your study.
