http://myfwc.com/media/649778/sandhill_monitoring_protocol.pdf

This proposal comes from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute and focuses on the conservation of birds in the Sandhill habitat of Florida.  It starts out with an introduction, then leads into the objectives, study population and methods, data management, schedule and deliverables, budget and payments, and then the references.  Most of these sections have sub sections that cover the 6 key steps of a research project (Ex: Study population and methods covers data collection site, and data collection method)

The Sandhill habitat of Florida, and 14 bird species that inhabit it,  are in need of conservation. This is due to invasive species, lack of prescribed fires, development, and converting the land to high density pine plantations. The purpose of this proposal is to collect data on the population of birds in the Sandhill habitat, which can help develop a survey protocol for multiple types of fauna,  and find which areas need management.

This study has already received funding, which allowed this proposal to have a budget on what would be spent. It also details the methods on how they will perform a survey on the birds, and also how they assess the quality of the Sandhill habitat. These methods include exact measurements (such as how far away they will be from a study point to observe) and which tools they will use.

I found a sample proposal from Florida International University. There is a note on this proposal sample that is based off of a funded proposal, but has little resemblance to the actual proposal. I thought this sample was useful to look at because I believe it is similar to the ones we will be submitting for our projects. This proposal is aimed at the emotional, behavioral, and academic adaptation of immigrant elementary, middle, and high school students in relation to their post-immigration stress and social support. The anticipated results of this study are that high levels of social stress and low levels of social support following migration are to be associated with poorer adaptation. Since the research is using school-aged children, they covered appropriate measures to ensure guardians are informed and consent of the research and the children’s identity is concealed. The research will use the Children’s Convoy Mapping Procedure to collect social support information, “a checklist of stressful life events adapted from Johnson” to collect general family info, scales developed by Gil and Vega (1996) to measure acculturative conflict, and perceived discrimination, Children’s Depression Inventory-Short Form (CDI-S) (Kovacs, 1985), and the Harter (1985) Self-Perception Profile to collect adjustment measures information, and grade reports and standardized achievement test scores to measure the children’s achievement. Once the data is collected the researcher will use a multiple regression analysis to try to prove their hypothesis, that higher levels of family stress and lower levels of social support will be associated with poorer adjustment.

This proposal was very interesting and could add much needed information about U.S. child immigrants and their achievements in schools. While this proposal is an example and extremely useful for us to look at, I do not believe this example proposal would be funded or accepted by the IRB since it is short and lacks some information. The proposal does not mention the specific site the research will be taken from. The proposal also mentions several ways of measuring data that is not described in the proposal. Overall this example proposal is extremely useful for reference when practicing writing research proposals but would also need more substance if it were to actually be funded or accepted by the IRB.

http://www2.fiu.edu/~levittmj/Sample%20Proposal.pdf

http://sites.duke.edu/urgws/proposal-examples/39-2/

This proposal is about changing policy effects on Moroccan Artisanal fishers and business. This proposal does a good job of laying out what the IRB restrictions will be and how they will follow IRB protocol in their interviewing methods.

The research question that the proposal gives is, “what are the effects of the declining fisheries and the recent policy focus in coastal fishing economies along the Moroccan coast on inshore artisanal fishers and businesses directly associated with fishing”? While this question is concise, it is missing the actual data type. For this question to be more accurate, it should mention something about the reports of fishermen, as the data type is Reports on Acts and Behaviors.

As previously stated, through in-depth interviews, the data type would be reports on Acts and Behaviors. The logical structure would be descriptive while the location site that is mentioned is the Moroccan Coast Line. How the data would actually be analyzed is missing, but would be easy to infer or add.

One main thing that is missing is a budget and materials. Other than that, I feel that this proposal is good and informative.

This study regarding the affects of computer games on adolescents was published in the Report for The Danish Media Council for Children and Young People by Simon Egenfelt-Nielsen and Jonas Heide Smith.  These researchers were an interesting combination- while both were PhD candidates, Egenfelt-Nielsen had an MS in Psychology, while Smith had a MA in Media Studies.

This study sought to prove the question that most other studies have attempted to answer before: do computer games affect adolescents negatively? It began plainly, stating two basic research questions: “what do people do to media?” And “what does media do to people?” To answer these questions, Egenfelt-Nielsen and Smith drew from the most prominent literature surrounding this issue to answer their own questions, such as Game Studies. Predictably, the study focuses on games structured around the First Person Shooter model, such as Grand Theft Auto or Mortal Kombat. Unlike other studies I have observed in the past, Egenfelt-Nielson and Smith realize that many studies and opinions are based on articles surrounding public debate rather than actual scientific studies. They even included a quote from a Danish newspaper in an article referring to marketing and children: “Contrary to what has preciously been believed, that children’s imaginations have been destroyed by video games… However, international research shows that they adopt a far more strategic way of thinking”. They also cited a 2000 study from the Danish Media Council saying that violent movies and TV were far more damaging to adolescents than “active media” (computer/video games). They also expounded several other theories surrounding active media, such as the general Social Learning theory, how children develop social skills, as well as the General Aggression Model, a theory stating that violent media creates violent behavior by “influencing the person’s internal state by cognitive, affective, and arousal variables” (Egenfelt-Nielsen, Smith, 2003). After analyzing several other studies, the study concluded  by saying that though much of the literature insists that violent media leads to violence within people, there is still too many other scholars fighting this claim to be completely conclusive, even regarding the claim that younger gamers are more susceptible to violent tendencies.

Source: resources.eun.org

Thompson, R., & Rowland, S. (2007). Research Project Proposal Do microplastic fragments present a hazard to marine life? [Scholarly project]. In Kimointernational.org. Retrieved April 3, 2016, from http://www.kimointernational.org/WebData/Files/Microplastics Project Proposal 2jm.pdf

http://www.kimointernational.org/WebData/Files/Microplastics%20Project%20Proposal%202jm.pdf

This research grant proposal is titled, “Do Microplastic Fragments Present a Hazard to Marine Life?”, this is also their research question.  The proposal is written by Richard Thompson and Steve Rowland both have relationships and ties with the University of Plymouth UK.  They would like a call for a project and funding partners in conjunction with KIMO International.  They provided a great background with information regarding the durability of plastics and how they end up in aquatic habitats.  One of their facts was that over 180 species are known to ingest the plastic from the ocean.  They believe that this toxic debris is going to infiltrate the food chain.  The type of data they collected in the past were observational data of acts, behaviors, and reports.  Besides the facts that plastics are in the animal systems, the plastics are also pollutants.  The researchers developed a program to address the issue of the size and pollutants of the plastics in the marine environments.  The results from the experiments will be analyzed in a risk assessment on the quantities and conditions that are portrayed on the marine populations.  They provided a map of the area studied, North East Atlantic water column, three different graphs and one picture of a micro plastic that was found in an animal.  They are searching for a postdoctoral researcher.  They will need them for three years to help with technical support of several analyses and invertebrate experiments.  This will all occur at the University of Plymouth since there are facilities to analyses all of the data they collect.  Funding was then described in detail, however it is in the British pound.  Lastly, they described how the greater public knows about their research because of how many times they have ben published in the common media such as the New York Times of Washington Post.  I thought that they wrote extremely well, but it was only two pages and we are required to have at least ten.  However, their use of graphs and past research was beneficial.  I need to break down the funding of my research grant proposal and add more background.

In the Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice Journal of October of 2005, J. Scott Allen Jr. and James O. Windell speak about their research through their article “An Application of Fear Appeal Messages to Enhance the Benefits of a Jail Encounter Program for Youthful Offenders”, regarding scared straight jail encounter programs effects on the delinquent youth. Allen and Windell recognize that jail encounter programs aimed at youth delinquents do not effect the recidivism rates, however they conducted psychological research which shows that the inmate-youth encounter programs incited more fear in the youth, which increases the chances of an attitude change in the youth. This research was done with one two-hour program in a county jail in a suburb of a large midwestern city. This program used fear, encouragement, and recommendations to try to help 16 and 17 year old delinquents who where court ordered to attend the program. After the 327 participants had finished the program they were given a self-report survey. This self-report survey was analyzed to find any correlation between attitude change and fear from the scared straight program. While the research didn’t look at recidivism or the youth’s attitudes on a later date, the research shows that the youth had a more negative view of jail due to the fear from the scared straight program. This is an interesting study since it is widely known among researchers that scared straight programs do not decrease recidivism.

In this article “Decrease in suicide rates after a change of policy reducing access to firearms in adolescents: A naturalistic epidemiological study”.By: Gad Lubin, Nomi Werbeloff, Demian Halperin, Mordechai Shmushkevitch, Mark Weiser. They talk about how Suicide is the third most common cause of death among children and young adolescents from the ages 10 to 24 years of age in the United states. They said the percentage of suicides caused by firearms in Europe was 38% while in the United States it’s a drastic jump from 60-70%. This article talks about how young men that have the availability to firearms are more likely to commit suicide and has been shown in the suicide rates. This study looked at the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), which is an army, based population that is mandatory for ages, 18-21 adolescents to enlist in. They found that 90% of the suicides in the IDF were committed by using of firearms, In 2003-2005 there were reported 28 suicides and 26.3 of them were with firearms. The suicides were usually when the soldiers when home on the weekends for leave and took their weapons. The IDF started to realize this and made a change in 2006 by making the soldiers leave their guns when they went on leave. Their results of this study were that by making a policy change in the guns that they were able to decrease the rate of suicide with the use of firearms by 40%. They did not find an increase in suicide by other means; they think that the use of firearms was an impulsive attempt whereas if they had to time to plan it out they wouldn’t do i.

After reading this article I think it was really cool and very interesting that they were able to look at this whole leaving the guns on base a way of stopping the suicide by a great amount. I sit and think about suicide and how people can be so selfish sometimes and like the saying is suicide is a permanent solution for a temporary problem. If you think about it the use of firearms is a rash and impulsive way of committing suicide and if there were no access to firearms there would be less deaths in the world as a whole. Suicide is a sad thing to think about and the fact that they came up with a tiny way to stop it and reduce the rates is a wonderful thing.

http://0-search.proquest.com.books.redlands.edu/sociology/docview/848856112/D7BF95840C954693PQ/21?accountid=14729

Ríos-jara, E., Galván-villa, C. M., Rodríguez-zaragoza, F. A., López-uriarte, E., & Muñoz-fernández, V. T. (2013). The tourism carrying capacity of underwater trails in isabel island national park, mexico. Environmental Management, 52(2), 335-47. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00267-013-0047-3

This journal article is titled, “The Tourism Carrying Capacity of Underwater Trails in Isabel Island National Park, Mexico,” and it was worked on by Eduardo Rı´os-Jara, Cristian Moise´s, Galva´n-Villa, Fabia´n Alejandro Rodrı´guez-Zaragoza, Ernesto Lo´pez-Uriarte, and Vicente Teo´filo Mun˜oz-Ferna´ndez.  The problem that they were dealing with was the rapid decline in biodiversity caused by human activities in the marine protected areas of Mexico.  Many SCUBA divers travel to Mexico every year to go see the underwater sights, but they can be harmful to the ecosystems if they are not careful.  Their research question was could ecotourism trails be created and a tourism carrying capacity be figured out in order to protect the biodiversity as well as still allow tourist to dive.  The data that they needed were acts, behaviors, and reports.  They needed to study multiple areas to figure out if an underwater trail could work.  The study area was Isabel Island in the mouth of the Gulf of California.  This location is known for its vast amounts of biodiversity.  They then had to map out underwater trails that would please the tourist, but would also not create a disturbance to the wildlife and habitats.  One of the ways they analyzed their data was by creating a large map.  The map laid out all of the possible diving sites, underwater trails, soft coral, stony coral, opisthobranches, echinoderms, and fishes. To figure out the carrying capacity of the water trails they used a wide variety of mathematical analysis to come up with a possible capacity that benefited the area the most.  They came up with six underwater trails that diving activities did not cause any damage.  This research project took a long time because of all the detail they had to get.  I thought this was interesting because they are working with ecotourism, which is something I would like to do in the future.  In my biodiversity class, we are creating a research proposal grant and we are dealing with ecotourism as well.  This research has showed me that through hard work, biodiversity can be saved and still enjoyed.

This study was done by Douglas A. Gentile, Paul J. Lynch, Jennifer Ruh Linder, and David A. Walsh and was published in the Journal of Adolescents. This study’s research topic was to document the patterns and video game habits of adolescents, as well as to draw a connection from violent exposure in games to violent tendencies in life, such as arguments with teachers and parents, playground fights, and performance in school. The study also chose to focus on the efficacy of mediation tactics derived from the video game habits. There were 607 8th and 9th grade students from four different schools interviewed for this process. The results of the data showed that students who were more interested in violent video games were also more often prone to violence and aggression in school, as well as lower educational performance. According to those who carried out the study, the results of the study supported the general aggression model.

This study was particularly interesting because it focused on the age group I am also interested in for my proposal. What I didn’t like about this study was that it linked the idea, that violent video games cause violence, to an already suspect age group. Though it’s true that these students may have been linked to violet video games, I think it is unfair to assume that already obstinate teenagers are made that way due to video games. 8th graders have been annoying and violent way before video games existed. All I think this study proved was that video games may be a symptom, but hardly the cause.