Assignment #3

Assignment #3. First Complete Draft of your SRP
Due Feb. 13, 2007 (25% of course grade)

For this assignment we want a complete first draft of your SRP. The components of an SRP are spelled out below. Limit your thesis to a maximum of 25 pages (including the first page with the title, abstact and start of the introduction). Examples of completed SRPs are in your reader and on this web site at: click here

Components of the SRP

Cover Page (1 page)

The first page should include your SRP title, your name, university affiliation, abstract, four or five keywords, and the start of your introduction. Click here to see an example Please follow the formating shown on this example. Be sure to include four of five keywords at the base of your abstract.

Introduction (3 pages maximum)

Introduce the SRP topic and your question. Why is this an important or interesting issue? While the original research component of the paper may be quite narrow in scope (e.g., a case study of a particular program), the introduction should frame the case in a broader context. The introduction also should give the reader an overview of the organization of the paper. Many briefly mention their research strategy in the introduction, but this is not necessary. Subdivide your intro (and your whole thesis) into sections with meaning full subtitles (i.e., headers that serve as clear signposts telling the reader what to expect).

Use the introduction to explain to the reader what is it about poverty, community economic development, inequality, industrial ecology, regional planning, class conflict, racism, social movements, NGO networking, or whatever, that your SRP tries to understand or prove. What are we going to learn from you study? What kind of questions do you raise about your object of study (i.e., what really happened? how can we change this? why did it happen? what's going to happen next? how can we make people understand?). There is a balance to be struck between what you include in the intro and the lit reveiw. These sections should be mutually reinforcing without being redundant.

Make sure your introduction is an introduction to the SRP, not to the topic in general. Make sure you don't provide such a broad background to the topic that it takes pages to get to your argument (this explains our limit of 3 pages). You should give a thumbnail sketch of where you’re going to go before you delve too deeply into background. Sometimes students do not give this thumbnail sketch because they expect the abstract to be doing that. Don’t consider the abstract as part of the paper, but rather a separate summary. (This can create a sense of deja vu when you read an abstract and then read the opening paragraphs of an article, but that's ok.)

Literature Review (5 pages maximum)

Synthesizes existing answers to the same or similar questions. The literature review should not include every work under the sun that is related to your topic. The literature review is not the same as an annotated bibliography (an annotated bibliography simply lists a series of summaries of relevant books and articles). Your literature review should be integrated. It should be organized around some theme or argument. Think of the literature review as the place to orient your reader to the intellectual terrain of your topic (i.e., the fields of pertinent scholarly discourse on your subject matter). Drawing on the work of others, your literature review should make clear the assumptions, reasoning, and arguments that inform your study. In examining a specific setting or set of individuals, the writer should show how she is studying a case of a larger phenomenon. By linking the specific research questions to larger theoretical constructs or to national policy issues, the writer shows that the particulars of the study serve to illuminate larger issues and, therefore, are of significance. Here you show that you know the important work that has been done in the field and what is currently being undertaken. If you know of other people doing research which sounds very similar to your own, explain the crucial differences, and the additional advantages of being able to compare the findings of the studies.When making reference to literature, use Chicago Style parenthetical citations--for example: (Smith, 1985: 24), or "Smith (1985: 24) found that..." All referenced items must have a complete citation in the bibliography.

Research Strategy (3 pages maximum)

Here you explain your research design and your logic for choosing particular methods (why, for instance, did you choose to do interviews, content analysis, and/or archival research). Your research design is your "action plan for getting from here to there, where here may be defined as the initial set of questions to be answered, and there is some set of conclusions (answers) about these questions" (Yin 1994: 19). Describe your research strategy (methodology) so the reader understands what you did. Identify any shortcomings of your strategy. Define necessary terms. This is not the place to go on and on about the ordinary trials and tribulations of doing the research (i.e., how difficult it was getting a hold of a key informant, the fact that your topic was a moving target and changed over time). Here you have to convince the reader that your approach was rigorous and based in social science methods-be they qualitative or quantitative. The length of this section can vary depending on the kind of research you conducted. Someone doing an inductive
qualitative research project will have less to say about research design than someone doing quantitative hypothesis testing (the former will need more room to discuss their findings while the latter needs less).

Findings and Analysis (10 pages maximum)

Describe your research findings. The descriptive component should report what you found. Use diagrams, maps, graphs, tables, charts or other illustrations where appropriate. Depending on the size of your maps, tables, and/or illustrations you may want to include them in an appendix. Anything that takes up more than one-half a page should probably go in an appendix. Don't go overboard. If you do decide to include attachements, limit yourself to one or two pages. All small diagrams, or tables should be folded into the text. The analysis component should interpret your findings and consider the implications for the research question you addressed.

Conclusion (3 pages maximum)

The main task here is to reiterate the main points of your study, and to suggest why you think it matters. What are the implications of your research? What questions remain unanswered? Based on your findings, you may want to suggest an agenda for further study, or point to gaps in policy that need to be addressed.

Appendices (Optional, 2 pages maximum)

Appendices can include supporting documentation such as charts, diagrams, maps, etc., that don't easily fit into the body of the text. Tables and charts presenting the research findings should be placed in the text, not in an appendix.

Bibliography

Use the Chicago Style, click here for details. Be consistent and complete. Include all items cited in the text as well as other relevant books, articles and documents. Alphabetize all items in a single list.

Scholarly sources include journals, books, dissertations, and theses written by academics and/or professionals. Scholarly sources are also published in the form of policy reports or reviews by "think tanks," professional societies, and certain institutions (e.g., publications sponsored by the World Bank's Urban Management Program). There are many valuable sources of data which do not count as scholarly literature (e.g., newspaper articles, community newsletters, minutes to meetings, industry reports). Of course such sources can add great value to your study. The point here is that you must include scholarly sources. Other sources are OK too, as long as the bulk of your references are scholarly content (i.e., peer reviewed journal articles and books)..

Before you turn in your Draft, please have someone read it; and ask them to fill out this check list. Place your reader's name on the check list and turn it in with your draft. These are the kinds of questions we'll be raising as we grade your SRP

Did I successfully place my SRP in a conceptual framework?
Does my SRP spell out a clear research question, argument, or problem. Does it provide specifics/background/evidence on why it important. Do I clearly outline my specific objectives, including how my research provides insight into the general topic or problem.
Do I clealy spell out how my research is related to other previous and ongoing research. Did I tell you if anyone else is doing what I did. Does my literature review meet the criteria spelled out by Neuman (2000: 446):

Did I clearly explain what my data collection strategy and methodology?
Did the description of my research design and methods make sense, did it come across as an "action plan" in the way Yin uses that term: an "action plan for getting from here to there, where here may be defined as the initial set of questions to be answered, and there is some set of conclusions (answers) about these questions" (Yin 1994:19).

Do you get a clear picture of my findings? Do I convince you that they are significant?
How would you characterize the "deliverables" of my research (e.g., a causal explanation, a thick description, applied policy input, an evaluation, strategy suggestions)?

Write an outline of another students SRP. One way to do this is to write 1 or 2 paragraphs under three or four of the SRP body's main sections:

Introduction
Literature Review
Research Strategy
Findings and Analysis
Conclusion

Think of the outline as a kind of map. Read the thesis and try to capture what it is all about in outline form. The example noted below (taken from an SRP completed by a student in the class of 2000, click here) illustrates one way to do this.

The Art of Collaboration: Creating the County of San Diego's
Multiple Species Conservation Program

{sample annnotation} The main findings include ..here you would spell out what you learned from reading the thesis, e.g., about: .Creating an Innovative Legal-Institutional Framework
The Role of Consultants and other stakeholders, The Art of Collaboration and Consensus-building

Conclusion

Bibliography

Other points:

The overall thrust and organization of your SRP
Stay on target. Don't get sidetracked or simply describe the topic without relating the information to the argument at hand. The papers must have an argument---or rather, is an argument. Every section, every paragraph of the paper should be a step towards the conclusion. If a sentence or paragraph doesn’t add to the argument, it probably doesn’t belong in the paper.

Don't overuse of the first person. Base your argument on the evidence you've mobilized. This will be more convincing than mere statements of opinion. Instead of describing what you did, the paper should be a way for the reader to step into your shoes and recreate the logic you used to get to your conclusions. The conclusion and the research strategy sections are probably the only places you’d want to use “I”. Even there, limit it.

Avoid argumentative drift where the forward-motion of your thesis becomes difficult to follow, either because individual sections serve no clear purpose or because they do something that another section is supposed to do. The most frequent version of this is to begin the results section with another lit review.

Make sure your introduction is an introduction to the SRP, not to the topic in general. Make sure you don't provide such a broad background to the topic that it takes pages to get to your argument. You should give a thumbnail sketch of where you’re going to go before you delve too deeply into background. Sometimes students do not give this thumbnail sketch because they expect the abstract to be doing that. Don’t consider the abstract as part of the paper, but rather a separate summary. (This can create a sense of deja vu when you read an abstract and then read the opening paragraphs of an article, but that's ok.)

In your research strategy section, don't give a blow-by-blow description of the agonies of doing the research. This section is supposed to describe the logic of how you got from the research question to your answer. The research strategy should be an idealized recreation of that logic. Don’t distract the reader with dead-ends you went down. (There are times when you would want to discuss dead-ends, especially if the problem you’re tackling has baffled researchers for a long time.)

A completely different kind of problem is an uncritical approach to evidence---that is, evidence is taken at face value. You should always consider how data was gathered, whether there are different possible interpretations, what are its limitations, etc...

Some graphics that are central to the arguments are reserved for appendices when they should be in the body of the text. (By the way, academics call them appendices, not exhibits, as planners do.)

Style
Paragraphs should have a clear topic and should advance your argument. Many people have “trajectory paragraphs”---tracing the writer’s thoughts on a string of related subjects instead of making a point. Paragraphs should not be more than a page long. If a paragraph is more than two-thirds of a page, then it is probably two paragraphs. Every paragraph should have a sentence or two at the beginning or end that explicitly states the main point.

Transitions between paragraphs should also be strong. Sometimes, paragraphs are not connected and could essentially have their order shuffled without it being obvious. Remember, the paper is trying to lead towards a set of conclusions.

Watch for cliches, especially phrases like “today’s society”.

Keep the use of direct questions to a minimum. These tend to interrupt the flow of the text for the reader. Especially don’t have a list of them because after the first question it’s not clear to the reader why the question is being asked. Pages should be numbered, beginning on the first page of the text.