The research topic of the article I chose, Test-Enhanced Learning in a Middle School Science Classroom: The Effects of Quiz Frequency and Placement, tests how effective quizzes are in learning, specifically with middle school students in a science class.
The article relayed the information gathered from an experimental study, which examined whether quizzing students fosters learning of course content. The researchers used 139 8th grade science students to conduct their experiment. In experiment one, the researchers used three quizzes on the courses content spread throughout the unit prior to the unit’s examination, this experiment resulted in the students receiving a 13%-25% gain in their examination performance. In experiment two, the researchers manipulated the placement of the quizzes. In this experiment the students were quizzed on content prior to the lecture and then again immediately after the lecture. It was found that experiment two resulted in the highest unit examination scores, the benefits of quizzing often continued throughout the students entire course.
The type of data needed for the researchers to properly answer their research question is acts, behavior, or events due to the fact that it is a first-order phenomena and the researchers are conducting the research themselves and observing it in person. The data-gathering method would then be ethnography due to the fact the researchers were in contact with the research subjects. The method of data analysis would fall under the category of quantitative data due to the fact that it is regarding numerical grades and scores in connection with the number of quizzes.
I found this type of research to be very interesting and helpful. The way the researchers conducted their research accompanied by the different methods they used to test how the quiz taking was affecting the examination results was flawless and led to great results, it was a successful experiment.

Agarwal, Pooja K., Huelser, Barbie J., McDaniel, Mark A., McDermott, Kathleen B. Roediger, Henry L. (2011, February). Test-Enhanced Learning in a Middle School Science Classroom: The Effects of Quiz Frequency and Placement. Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 103. No. 2, pp. 257-508.

The way humans behave is quite peculiar sometimes you end up working your dream job you’ve always wanted but on the other hand you might have another job that somehow managed to interest you far beyond your dream job. This is only possible because of the concept organizational attraction which is a tactic used by employers and organization to generate interest when it comes to finding new employees to hire. In the article Narrow personality traits and organizational attraction: Evidence for the complementary hypothesis written by Kausel, Edgar E. and Slaughter, Jerel E. the authors try and answer what kind of complementary and supplementary recruiting strategies attracting an employers most preferred candidate. The Kausel and Slaughter went about this was by asking 220 participants to join in their research study, the participants were all job seekers and all they had to do was report on how interested or interesting a group of job advertisements were to them sent via email. The process in which Kausel and Slaughter acquired the shallow opinions of the participants was through repeated uses of questionnaires. I believe the way Kausel and Slaughter analysed their findings was through researcher-centered analysis because they are looking for patterns such as what traits attract more suitable job candidates or what strategies are most effective at making an organization more attractive. Overall I found this to be a well done research study the researchers even started with a set of possible categories the participants could fall into but had room for changes if necessary. They data collection method was not just used on time each participant answered up to 3 questionnaires giving a broader sense of what the participants feel about the job advertisements. For my fellow classmates I think the focus on certain traits like trust, assertiveness, and so on are very interesting.

Link to article, http://0-search.proquest.com.books.redlands.edu/docview/755396882/6C8EB073521844EDPQ/1?accountid=14729

The research topic of the article I chose examined effectiveness of onsite sewage treatment systems. The question focused on what is the percentage of four types of onsite treatment systems (aerobic and septic systems both with and without filters) that allow effluent to surface rather than be treated. The study was done under the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency in 2009. A single certified soil scientist was used to ensure consistency and to verify results. The outcome was a 12.7 to 19.7 percent failure rate among the categories of systems, or about 1 in 8 systems failing overall; no significant distinction between types of systems and failure rates was seen. I suppose expert knowledge could be a data type, because they needed a specific expert in soil sciences to conduct the investigation. However, I am choosing public and private records because the scientist was reporting on the failure of the treatment systems. I believe public and private records was collection method because as the scientist collected data, a record was created. The results were listed as “yes and no” answers to whether the effluent surfaced or not, therefore it is non-numerical data. I am lead to believe it is researcher-centered analysis because the researcher compared whether or not which systems failed and if any failed more than the others. The research was effective in terms of the question, though with the few number of investigations of filtered systems and the small area surveyed I’m not sure we come to a general conclusion as to whether onsite systems are failing to this degree everywhere as opposed to only in Ohio. It was interesting to note that 75% of all onsite treatment systems installed were filter-less anaerobic systems, which also accounted for the highest percentage of failure among each type of system.

Tumeo, M. A., Newland, J. (2009, September). Survey of Home Sewage Disposal Systems in Northeast Ohio. Journal of Environmental Health, 72(2), 17-22.

The research proposal i found online was one on childhood obesity that an undergraduate student did from Cal Poly. She was proposing that she wanted to do a pilot project that involved children in a kindergarten class wanted to teach them about eating healthy and growing healthy foods. Her project was called kindergrow which was a project were she would have a garden of healthy foods and she was going to work with a kindergarten class by teaching them and helping them learn how to grow and make better choices in the foods that they were eating. there was not an actual timeline that she gave but her funding she got was 40$ which would help her start the garden in which is a primary key in her project. When she is going over her project she brings in the numbers of obese children in California and looks and the foods they are consuming and this is her main reason why she is doing this project is to promote and instill a better diet and eating habits in the children’s lives at a early age rather than later.

The research proposal,“The causes of drug addiction among street children in Dhaka city,” was prepared by Sazzad Karim, of the University of Dhaka. This is a rather short proposal of six pages, including the cover page, content page, and bibliography. The content page lists elven sections: Abstract, Introduction, Aims & Objectives, Literature review, Methodology, Analysis of data, Ethical consideration, Time frame, Limitations, Anticipated result, and Reference. However, each section is limited and brief in the information provided.

The purpose of this study, according to the proposal, is to “help us to know the present scenario of drug addiction among street children in Dhaka city and suggest the way to eliminate this dangerous situation.” The study intends to gather data from three randomly selected spots that have a “high concentration of street children” in Bangladesh. The proposal lists areas that are to be randomly selected and researched by three teams of five members each to interview samples of individuals.

For the proposal, one-hundred street children from each of the three spots selected is said to be ideal. This means that total sample for the study would be three-hundred, total. The research relies on a survey and respondent method from street children, using a snowball technique. A snowball technique would require referrals from individuals being survey, to find other street children that could be potential samples. As discussed in class, this type of method could be problematic. It is difficult to survey individuals with issues involving substance abuse because they can be unreliable.

Ultimately, this proposal could use some fine tuning to be more clear to the person reviewing. Because this proposal is intended to be read by an associate professor of the University of Dhaka, it could explain the flaws, as there is a conflict of interest.

REFERENCE:

Karim, Sazzad. “A Research Proposal on “The Causes of Drug Addiction among Street Children in Dhaka City” Submitted to Prepared by.” A Research Proposal on “The Causes of Drug Addiction among Street Children in Dhaka City” Submitted to Prepared by. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2016.

A Research Proposal: The Effects of Restaurant Environment on Consumer Behavior, is an example of a research proposal that I choose to study and critique. I choose this one specifically because it related a lot to the project proposal that I have created. Both have to do with restaurants, and have subjects that aren’t often discussed in the work place.

This article wanted to find out whether the environment of a restaurant, including paint, decor, and seating, had any effect on the consumers and their likability of the restaurants. They planned to help future managers and owners, by learning what is best for a restaurant and what will bring more people back. This proposal included: an abstract, statement of the problem, background, data types, methods of data collection, and some form of analysis. This proposal seemed to have all of the six steps needed in creating a research project, and could possibly go somewhere with their research and finding answers.

I really liked reading this article, because it gave me ideas on how I should make my own research proposal much better. I will definitely use these ideas on my own revision. Providing a statement of the problem and a background is something I thought I could really use in my own project. They stated why we should even ask their question and why it can be important. With providing the background we could see what they already knew about the topic, and what has been already researched.

Something that I would suggest in changing with this proposal is their questionnaire and location. The questionnaire provided a lot about the restaurants environment and the customers likability to come back, but I felt that they should have asked what the customers would have liked to see in the restaurant environment or what they would like to change about the environment. I also felt as though they could have had more of a control over the restaurants that they tested, while they tested a variety of restaurants, I thought that maybe they should have tested one specific type of restaurant such as a diner, and tested other diners with different environments.

Overall, this proposal gave me more ideas on how to improve mine, as well as being able to see what a real proposal looks like.

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.