The research proposal that I looked at was under a completely different topic than the one I looking at for class.  This proposal titled “The Long Goodbye” discussed behavior displayed by patients who have dementia, Alzheimer’s and the services provided by caretakers. Even though it’s not related to my topic, the topic of an aging American population is interesting to me and it’s a relevant topic that needs to be discussed. I recently had cousin lose his father to dementia so reading this proposal I was able to understand a little bit as to what he and his family have gone through the last ten plus years and it really is terrible. This proposal is divided into five sections: Introduction, Objective, Method, Timeline, and Questions for Interview Subjects. All five of these have important information that clearly outlines the steps that will be taken to gather data for this research project.

This proposal is seven pages and the first two are the introduction. The introduction talks about aging US population and how it is only going to increase as time goes progresses and how “dementia illness are often the most feared and devastating disorders of later life” which can lead to problems for the care takers of these patients. While caretakers face many problems when helping a person with dementia, the most common and most prominent being physical aggressive behavior and verbal aggressive behaviors. The objective of this proposal is “to examine the occurrence of both physical and verbal acts of aggression towards care staff” and the settings of those who have dementia who need proper care. In the methods section, the author will identify aggressive patterns and how patients react to a caregiver by using “both direct observation and by caregiver/patient interviews” in at least three hospitals in the LA and Orange Counties. I also think they could also use an ethnography to witness first hand aggressive behavior displayed. However, it depends on how long the author will be at each hospital and he does not mention specifically how long he’ll be at each hospital. The timeline section is a very detailed layout of the author’s research and where he’ll be on what month and the deadlines he has set. Each month is very precise and detailed as to what will happen. The final sections are the questions in which the author will ask the people they are going to interact with during this research. This section is divided into three different sections: For Caregivers, Management, and Research Question for the author. They are all very detailed questions that ask for specific answers and quantitative data from hospital employees.

http://www.urop.uci.edu/SURP/sample_proposals/SURP%20Social%20Ecology%202.pdf