Tuesday, Jan. 16 - Prospectus design

I have a copy of a prospectus from my school. I snagged it because of the topic - rural policing. However, I'm now using it as a model for my prospectus. I went through it tonight and made an outline of what I need to cover in my prospectus. Here it is, with the number of pages in the model:

Prospectus

Introduction - about 2 pages
Summary statement of proposed research
Brief discussion of what research will hopefully accomplish
Study hypotheses

Literature review - about 30 pages
Discussion of what other researchers have found and theorized
This will be divided into sections - I will have to divide mine into sections based on
the information I find. For example, there will be sections on how journalists select what to cover, how they've covered crime generally, and how they've covered homicide in particular. I will also have some discussion of social typifications - stereotypes - since the theory I'm operating from says journalists use typifications to guide their story selection.

Research plan - about 5 pages
Research question - mine basically is, "Is there evidence that journalists select which homicides to cover based on which will reinforce racial and gender typifications in this society?"
Operational definitions - such as, what is a typification?
Statistical methods - what tests will I run on the data to find out the answers I'm looking for?
Data collection - what data will I use and how will I go about getting it?
Storing data and preserving anonymity - this won't be hard, I'm not using any personal identifying information about victims or offenders that hasn't already been published in a newspaper.
Appendices - any data collection instruments or other important materials will be added here.

And that's it! Next step - doing the readings for the lit review.