1) Present the research problem you intend assess and provide some contextual information that helps demonstrate your understanding of the nature of the problem.
2) Clearly state your single SPECIFIC and academically-rigorous research question and your hypothesis. [Note – ONE academically rich research question].
3) Explain why this is important to investigate. What can we learn from this situation? How will the knowledge we gain through your research help our understanding of the topic?
4) Discuss your theoretical framework. Here you’ll summarize/synthesize some of the theories/models and concepts you’ll use to assess your research question. You will also need to clearly state your research hypothesis.
5) Discuss your case study research design. Your research design should discuss how you plan to carry out your analysis.
6) Preliminary Source List. – You will need to include a list of at least 8 preliminary sources, 6 of which must be from peer-reviewed journals. These should be listed using Chicago style formatting. As you might remember from INTL 500 there are two Chicago styles including the author-date style, and bibliography-notes style. Make sure you references are consistent throughout. APUS students have access to the official version of the 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style Online (CMOS). To access the full CMOS, use this link: Chicago Manual of Style Online. Go here for the Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide.
Format: Your proposal should include a title page, proposal body, reference page, and a preliminary source list (title, references page, and source list are not included within the page count). Your paper should have 1-inch borders on all four sides, use times new roman-12 point font, be double spaced, and not have an extra space in between paragraphs. (You may need to turn this off in MS word by going to paragraph and selecting “Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style). Since this is an INTL course you need to use the Turabian parenthetical citation style with a references page.
