Overview
In a thesis proposal, you define a research topic and describe how you will collect and analyze data to study that topic. What goes into a proposal will depend on your topic and whether you want to test an established model or develop a new one. Regardless, though, these questions should be addressed in any proposal:
- What topic do you want to study?
- What do scholars in Africana Studies already know about your topic? Do the scholars who have addressed your topic primarily come from a particular discipline, of from a mix of disciplines, and what are they?
- Why do we need to know more, and how would your research build on, modify, or correct errors in previous work on your topic? What role will an interdisciplinary approach play in advancing scholarship on your topic?
- What exactly would you do? (Conduct participant observations? Conduct in-depth personal interviews? Collect a survey? Analyze primary source material from archives? Analyze secondary sources? What approximate timetable would you use? For empirical research, who would be your subjects? How would you analyze and interpret your data?
- How would what you propose to do in #4 address the needs identified in #3?
Parts of a Proposal
1. An Introduction
This should set the topic you propose to study within a broader interdisciplinary (including literary, humanistic and social scientific) context in between half a page and one full page.
2. A Review of the Pertinent Scholarly Literature
In the literature review you should develop the rationale for why you focus on the topic you’ve selected. The review should summarize and briefly critique what social scientists already know about your topic. It should also indicate the major theoretical assumptions, concepts, and issues (both theoretical and empirical) that social scientists have been concerned with in studying your topic. Your task is to organize and analyze previous thinking and research, identifying major strengths and weaknesses as they pertain to your topic.
The scope of your literature review will vary based on your topic and the type of research you intend to conduct. If, for example, you are interested in the link between race and income, you will find an enormous literature on the determinants of income and social mobility. Instead of writing a book, review the work that addresses your specific topic. You don’t need to discuss the literature on, say, gender and income unless you draw important ideas for your own work from that literature.
If you select a topic on which little has been written, you might have to search further afield. You might be able to draw on ideas from research on related topics or from general theoretical perspectives. In this case, refer only to the sources you used directly in developing your research topic.
The biggest challenge in a literature review is how to organize it. Please do so topically, in terms of ideas, rather than by author-by-author. Think of your literature review in terms of a Venn Diagram of interrelated intellectual conversations to which you would like to contribute. Your own topic is at the intersection of, say, three “circles” you address in your literature review.
Your review should be four to seven pages long, depending on the amount of literature available on your topic and your topic’s complexity. This means your review must be concise. Sentences with long lists of citations are common in literature reviews, but such “citation banks” still need enough specificity to make sense. You will expand this literature review as part of the comps thesis.
3. Definition of the Research Problem
In this section, discuss the research questions you intend to explore. When developing your research question, it would be a good idea to review the Africana Studies Student Learning Objectives. Whatever you are proposing, you should define any ambiguous concepts. Remember to not only state but also discuss your research question, exploring how its various dimensions and facets fit together.
For help in understanding the differnce between a research topic and a research question, you may want to consult chapters 3 and 4 of Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams (2008) The Craft of Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Q180.55.M4 B66).
This section might be anywhere from two to five pages long. Its length will depend on how many hypotheses and/or questions you deal with and how directly they follow from the literature you’ve reviewed.
4. A Description of your Proposed Research Methods
Here you should identify the unit of analysis for your study, the population and sample on which you will focus, observation and measurement techniques, and (if appropriate) how you will analyze your data. If you are collecting original data, for example, you must indicate how you will collect it. If you are conducting archival research, how will you select your primary source material? What kind of field observations would you focus on? What topics will you cover in your interviews or questionnaires?
Most importantly, what are the strengths and limitations of the research methods you’ve outlined, especially with regard to your research problem? What is your rationale for choosing these methods?
This section usually requires three to five pages, although often less for a project based solely on participant observation.
The page guidelines given above are approximate. For most topics, we expect your proposal to be 10–12 pages long. As for the number of sources that make a reasonable literature review, there are no firm guidelines. While this number depends on the scope of the pertinent literature, less than 20 sources would not feel like thorough work for a comps project.
5. A Conclusion
Please remember to wrap up your proposal, reminding the reader of its key points and how your research problem addresses the interdisciplinary concerns of Africana Studies.
6. Consulting Faculty
List the faculty members who signed their agreement to advise your comps at Week 2. Next to each advisor’s name, list the dates you have consulted with them between Week 2 and turning in your proposal, and the main topic of each consultation (e.g., “refined the research question,” “discussed methods and IRB”).
Projects involving original research on human subjects (such as interviews, surveys, and participant observation) must be approved by the College’s Institutional Review Board. For more information and application guidelines, see the IRB’s website.
Additional Tips and Hints
Organizing a Literature Review
The library staff will have suggestions to simplify your journey through the many resources available in the library. Your life will be far more pleasant if you seek their help. The reference Librarian assigned to Africana Studies is Claudia Peterson.
Also, make as much use as possible of the abstracting sources. Reading abstracts and reviews first will save you the frustration of reading irrelevant or crummy articles and books. Recent articles in top journals will offer examples of a finished literature review and help you organize your own. Logical grouping of works along the dimensions of your research problem is key.
Evaluation of a Thesis Proposal
Several factors will figure into the program’s assessment of your proposal and its feasibility as a thesis topic. The intrinsic merit of proposed research is one of these factors. Is your proposed research adequately framed as an interdisciplinary Africana Studies inquiry?
We will also consider the conceptual and methodological soundness of your proposed research, the adequacy of the resources available for carrying out your proposed study, and your preparation for carrying out the proposed work.
Annotated Bibliography
Append an annotated bibliography of scholarly works that you’ve consulted and that you plan to consult for your comps. The bibliography should be formatted according to an acceptable citation style, and it should include two to four lines of annotation per item. Annotations should indicate what the article or book is about and its relevance to your project.