The article Intrinsic Honesty and the Prevalence of Rule Violations Across Societies written by Simon Gächter and Jonathan F. Schulz is about research on the human intrinsic honesty and if it is more prevalent or not where there are more or less rule violations. Their main goal was to be able to explain how the prevalence of rule violations in people’s societal environment, such as corruption, tax evasion, or political fraud, could compromise and individual’s intrinsic honesty. To do this, researchers conducted experiments across twenty-three countries. They created a “Prevalence of Rule Violations” index from corruption from 2003 and completed this on more than 2,000 people. They made sure to only conduct the experiment on younger people who had no ability to affect the PRV during their time. To measure intrinsic honesty, researchers conducted an anonymous “die-in-a-cup” experiment where participants sat in a cubicle and were asked to roll a six-sided die twice, but were told to only report the first roll. After the data was analyzed, results showed that institutions and cultural values influence the prevalence of rule violations, which impacts people’s intrinsic honesty and whether or not they follow the rules. Results also showed that many people are try and be honest/only become rule benders so as to maintain an “honest self image.” Overall, they found that lower prevalence of rule violations, and higher intrinsic honesty was more profound in western societies.

For this research, the topic was intrinsic honesty, and the research question was to ask if the prevalence of rule violations in people’s societal environment, such as corruption, tax evasion, or political fraud, could compromise and individual’s intrinsic honesty, and how. To answer this question, researchers needed reports of acts, behaviors, or events (die-in-a-cup) and ordinal data (to rank the different country levels of prevalence of rule violations). To collect this data, they completed tests/experiments, and public records. To analyze this data, they complete four different scatter plots to find any correlation between the two variables.

I though this research was well conducted, and an interesting one to learn about, although I think it would also be beneficial to learn if societal/household upbringings had any effect on their intrinsic honesty.

Gächter, Simon, and Jonathan F. Schulz. “Intrinsic honesty and the prevalence of rule violations across societies.” Nature 531.7595 (2016): 496-99. Web. 17 Mar. 2017.

sydney.edu.au/mekong/documents/current_projects/mli_partnerinit_nuolkkuexchange_proposal_jan06.pdf

This research proposal is called Enhancing community based forest resource management vital to local livelihoods in the Lower part of Mekong Basin and was conducted by Somsy Gnophanxay, Lamphoun Phanvongsa, and Dr. Buapun Promphakping.

These researchers planned to establish more efficient ways for professors in Laos and Thailand to conduct research and fieldwork with students to improve the Mekong Learning Initiative. They planned to do this to improve forest health in Laos and Thailand because forest degradation in both countries is a large concern.

The research proposal is set up in an odd way, the researchers didn’t have a question, but rather objectives and expected results. Although they called this a research proposal, and they went through with this plan, it’s not a traditional research proposal because it’s missing so many things. With the lack of their research question, they don’t have a specific type of data they set out to collect, and from there the entire project gets disorganized. The first thing the do in the proposal is define where the data collection site will be, Step 5 in the design to data analysis. After this they set up their structure for methods and implementation, which again is not as clear as it should be. The writers of this proposal spend a lot of time discussing the background of forest degradation in Thailand and Laos for how uncentered their project is. Reading the background made me think there was going to be a lot more focus on environmental issues rather than researching how people can better understand this through collaborative learning. Although it can be inferred from reading the entire proposal, the data type or collection method is not outlined in any clear way. This proposal clearly has a lot of room for improvement and hopefully this example of a not so thorough research proposal can help students to design much clearer versions of their own research in the future.

The article titled “School Shootings as Organizational Deviance” by Cybelle Fox and David Harding is found in the Sociology of Education journal. Fox and Harding argue that rampage school shootings in American public schools can be understood as instances of organizational deviance. Organizational deviance occurs when organizations do not conform to their goals and expectations, especially anti-bullying policy and awareness, which produces unanticipated and harmful outcomes. The topic of this research is the role of the school administration to recognize troubled and bullied teens to prevent future violence. The proposed research question is, “What role do teachers, administrators, and counselors play in intervention of troubled teenage boys, looking specifically at the schools of Heath and Westside?” “Does an inability to recognize the social and emotional problems of teenage boys by school staff increase the likelihood of future violent rampages?” Fox and Harding draw on qualitative case studies of two schools that experienced shootings to show the ways in which the organizational structure, environment, and culture of these schools led to a lack of recognition of socially and emotionally troubled teenage boys. The researchers aim to understand the causes of each shooting, suggest measures to prevent school shootings, and to understand how the communities were affected by these events. The type of data needed to answer this research question are acts/behaviors/events and reports of acts/behaviors/events. The data collection method involves fieldwork such as participant observation and interviews with the community members. Once the tape-recorded formal interviews were transcribed, in combination with notes from observations, the researchers analyze the data through thematic analysis. Coding is then utilized to sort out the discovered patterns to find underlying themes. This research successfully calls for a policy change to provide teachers with better training on the warning signs of students with social and emotional problems. It is an interesting fact that schools tend to center their focus on students with overt and disruptive behavioral and academic problems, rather than students suffering with social and emotional issues. The teachers must communicate their concerns with one another so that students with social and emotional problems can be identified and receive the guidance they need.

Fox, C., & Harding, D. J. (2005). School Shootings as Organizational Deviance. Sociology of       Education, 78(1), 69-97.

The proposal “Moving From Culture Shock to Cosmopolitanism: The Position of Students Immersed in Educational, Cross-Cultural Experiences“ created by Kristen Hunsberger, with the guidance of Professor Elizabeth Guthrie and Glen Levine, was a grant recipient for SURP. This proposal is a well structured interactive experiment. It bases its conclusion on reported behavior and emotions through surveys of a more specific sample group of students who go abroad. This sample is to be compared to the researchers own experiences and those of others in this project, then drawn to conclusion by such comparisons. The research purpose is in studying the experiences of students studying abroad, acquiring a cross-cultural experiences, and reporting on how they expand their educational experience on an academic and personal levels. The type of data are reports of behavior through a series of collected survey data. The surveys used categorical and ordinal to create data based off the pre researched theories. The administering surveys, questionnaires, and interviews are to be past out on stages of pre-departure, arrival, mid-stay, prereturn, and post-experience. This data will then chart the personal progress of the focus group in their unique relations pre researched stages. Specific factors such as the Pedersonian Stages, and the Schumann’s Factors, are the basis of the interview questions given to the focus group. These factors will be monitored in the research to follow student progress and enable results to show patterns throughout the time abroad. In addition to taking part in the surveys and questionnaires the focus group, Kristen Hunsberger will be maintaining a personal journal. The specific collection sample and site will be monitoring the progress of 10-20 students who are studying abroad in France, along with a personalized data collection of Kirsten herself. As her data analysis method she plans to “organize all data in comprehensive manner to show variance of experiences in relation to Pederson’s “Stages”, interview participants about experience and conduct comparison of initial expectations with actual outcome of time abroad”.

http://www.urop.uci.edu/SURP/sample_proposals/SURP%20Humanities%201.pdf

Rachel Lambrecht submitted a research proposal to the University of Redlands in 2014. I attained this proposal through on of my professors. Lambrecht’s research question focused around the benefits and costs of including or not including social-emotional learning in sex education classrooms as reported by experts.

Lambrecht argues that current sex education is not effective and must be reformed, focusing specifically on how children interpret the information they are given in school into practices in their own lives. Her proposal explains the necessity of youth learning not only about prevention of sex and safe sex practices, but to see sexuality in a positive light, in contrast to how sex is normally portrayed in schools. There is a culture of fear around sex education that posits safe sex as mutually exclusive to sex for pleasure. Body positive language is rarely included. Lambrecht wants to research how social emotional learning can be included using the opinion’s of experts.  As Lambrecht’s proposal uses expert knowledge in order to understand an aspect of sex education, our projects are quite similar. Although, my focus is specific to California’s new sex education standards as of 2016.

Lambrecht proposes to do snowball sampling, first reaching out to experts within her own network, and then learning of others from her interviews. Her interviews used open-ended questions and would be categorized as qualitative research. As she is interviewing, Lambrecht would need to attain the Institutional Review Boards Approval of the topic, however, the risks are minimal. Her research does not work with any vulnerable populations, and as she planned to only interview experts in their own field, there is very little chance even for job retaliation. This part of the research differs from my own, as although I am also interviewing experts, my research does have a slight risk of job retaliation, and so I must set up further precautions to protect my participants.

Lambrecht’s proposal is very similar to how I would imagine my own proposal, however, less complicated. Her project seems simpler and her question addressing a broader issue. My research question is very specific to California and I am looking for multiple data types. I am involved with vulnerable populations, although not interviewing them. Thus, my proposal would be different in many aspects.

The research proposal I chose is called Gender, Credit Constraints and Performance of SMEs in Cameroon by Tabi Atemnkeng Johannes, Makoudem Tene Marienne, NDAM Romanus Adze and Mrs. Tchouapi Meyet Rosy Pascale ( link to the proposal here). I chose this proposal because it is both throughout and related to the topic of research that I am interested in: micro-economics. The research proposal is broken down in to different sections with bolded headings. These sections include Abstract, Introduction, Problem Statement, Objectives of the Study, Gender Discrimination in Access to Business Credit Performance, Methodology, Nature of Data, Expected Outcomes and References.

The research they are proposing to do is about the role of small and medium businesses especially ones run by women, in economies. “In entrepreneurship and finance literature studies, it is suggested that raising capital is more difficult for women than men” Given this information the objectives of the study are to research female business owners and the credit market in Cameroon in order to find better ways to make women entrepreneurs successful in the future. In order to do this the proposal states that they must first recognize and identify gender discrimination in these fields, discover the ability of businesswomen to access credit markets and to identify the relationship between discrimination and performance.

The type of data and ways it will be collected:  the methodology is very important to making this research proposal as good as it is. The proposal states “differences in loan denial or approval rates and interest rates charged do not, in and of themselves, prove that discrimination exists.” So the researchers plan to use additional methods to data collection in order to find out what they are searching for. The proposal is very dense and suggests formulas for uncovering the data that they are looking for. They take many different variables into account when determining how to conduct their research. Much of the data they intend to collect is from secondary sources.

I am inspired by this extremely thorough and specific research proposal. I like how it is segmented into very clear sections with clear headings. I also like how the researchers cover a lot of ground in regards to possible variables that could effect the collection of their data. Finally I am inspired by how their topic connects to what I want to study and offers a new question to the field. I am now interested in how gender can effect the profitability of small and medium businesses in the economy.

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

For this research proposal, the study specifically revolves around Ecuador, as the country and many others located in Latin America were subject to social spending cuts. To help improve these cuts, the country went through a total economic reform. Every sector made improvements after the reform except for the educational system. However, due to the failure to improve the educational system, Ecuador as a country lost their ability to expand  economic growth and lost the ability to compete with other people for skilled jobs. This proposal wants to find the detriments of economic performance in Ecuador, along with looking at the importance of education for economic development. Along with this, the researchers hypothesize that Ecuador would need both access and quality in education in order to improve social well being and economic growth.

Before talking about the data, the study talks about some possible issues that could occur. The first problem that could occur is that there is bias due to limited variables. For example, this study did not take parental influence as a factor for the results. The other problems that were mentioned were bias due to inconsistent measurements, a lack of specification of the dependent variable, and the sample selection that could be used did not include children who have never been to school or those who repeat a grade. These issues could have a significant impact on the results due to the fact that the entire country of Ecuador is not equally represented.

There are two different types of data methods that could be used for this study. The first type of collection is through two different surveys. One survey would look at the living standards of those that go to school. They would get the questions though data from the ministry of education. The other survey looks at performance on standardized tests and tries to find out about education production. In terms of the other data collection method, the study would look at statistics about the unemployment rate to look for labor productivity. All of these method would help the researchers see if their hypothesis would be right.

https://www.iss.nl/fileadmin/ASSETS/iss/Student_profiles/PhD/PhD_foto_s_pdf_s/Education_Policies_in_Ecuador.pdf

Forecasting Climate Change Impacts on Conifer Forests of the Intermountain West

This research proposal was developed by David R. Bowling, Greg Maurer, James R. Ehleringer, and Thomas H. Painter through the Departments of Biology and Geography at the University of Utah. The proposal is focused on forests in alpine areas and investigates these areas in regards to the impacts of climate change on the availability of water. Spring melt is the annual event under investigation because it is the timing by which stored water in the form of snowpack melts and is no longer available. The proposal attributes two factors that lead to a shorter snow covered season, both being intensified by climate change. The first is rising mean temperatures leading to an increase in the proportion of precipitation in the form of rain instead of snow. The other is an increase in dust deposition on snow. Dust deposition on snow decreases the albedo, lowering the reflectivity,  of the snow thus accelerating the melt of the snow. The research question presented by the proposal is  “How will climate change influence conifer forest distributions and carbon cycling in the Intermountain West?” The proposed three-year study combines observational and manipulative field experiments to determine the “functioning, distribution, and carbon stocks of conifer forests in the region.” [1] Three forests were selected at different elevations experiencing differing levels of precipitation and ranges of temperature. The observational experiment will be conducted by temporarily installing devices that measure weather, soil moisture and temperature, and tree sap flow. Other devices will be temporarily placed to gauge the degree of carbon cycling occurring in each area. The experimental manipulations will simulate the presence of dust deposition on the snow surface by using a leaf blower and material sourced southern Utah. Dust will be added to the surface of the snow on a weekly recurrence interval. This will simulate future dust deposition on snow and will be used to determine the timing of an early spring melt due to dust deposition.

The proposal clearly discusses what is under investigation, the topic, the question being answered and has a detailed description of how data will be collected. A strength of the proposal was providing alternate sites for conducting the research that had similar attributes to the preferred sites. This enables flexibility for the research in the case a site becomes unavailable. Another strength was citing work done recently to the time of the proposal. This provides up to date information and data about the topic. One aspect of the proposal that could have been expanded upon was more explanation of the problem and why it is important to develop a greater understanding of the subject. The problem is the aspect which gives the proposal merit and thus should be elaborated.

The concepts discussed in this research pertain to my topic on avalanche risk in two ways. Primarily, both proposals are looking at attributing changes in observed patterns to climate change. Secondly, the presence and health of trees decrease the risk of avalanches because trees stabilize the snowpack, inhibiting slides. Declining health of alpine forests could be another trigger for why more fatalities from avalanches are occurring. This proposal also demonstrated how specific observational data can be created in the field by simulating an event, dust deposition in this case, and through the use of control sites conclusions can be made. This is imperative for my proposal because observing the impact of natural dust deposition on layers of snow that have been buried by new snow could be immensely difficult to get the timing right for observations. However, if dust is artificially introduced more variables can be controlled and more accurate results generated.

1. https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5068763.pdf

In this proposal by Jeffrey Arnett from the University of Maryland College Park, Arnett walks through his proposal for a new theory for what he calls emerging adulthood. He argues that there is a period between adolescence and young adulthood called emerging adulthood which happens during the years of 18-25. He begins his proposal by laying out theoretical background and providing evidence for his theory by showing how this period of life is different demographically, subjectively, and in terms of identity. He also gives reason for why emerging adulthood is different from adolescence and young adulthood in light of different life aspects such as romantic relationships, work, and worldviews. At the end of his proposal he explains in what kind of conditions emerging adulthood is most likely to exist and why.

The direction he seemed to be going in terms of structure was meta-analysis. He uses surveys, previous theories, research, and reports and with them all in collection he was able to come to a more general conclusions especially about American society where emerging adulthood is very prevalent. The type of data that would be gathered for his research would fall more under reports of acts, behaviors, or events because although he is drawing his own conclusions he is building evidence through previously made reports and tracking the changes as time goes on and as society changes. With his use of reports of acts, behavior, or events he will no doubt be collecting this data through the use of public records. His method of analysis would be thematic analysis because he is looking for themes in the collected data to show social trends.

After reading this proposal I feel like I have a better understanding of what I will need to write a proposal of my own. I thought Arnett was extremely convincing his proposal was very organized and as he went on it was easy to remember by the end what was read at the beginning because he kept all of his information linked together without any annoying repetition of information.

http://jeffreyarnett.com/ARNETT_Emerging_Adulthood_theory.pdf