DBA Writing Workshop
June 11, 2016
Prospectus Draft Assignment Sheet

According to our DBA Handbook (a full copy can be found under the Helpful Resources tab on our Blackboard site) a prospectus is a “pre-proposal” written to show that your dissertation research topic is feasible. You will write two drafts of the prospectus during our workshop session, in preparation for the Prospectus Seminar this fall. The first draft is due at our next session, July 16, 2016, and the second draft is due at our final session, August 13th, along with the second draft of the accompanying literature review. With these drafts in hand, you should be well prepared for the Prospectus Seminar, when you finalize your prospectus.

Although we will have discussed and examined the sample prospectuses during our June 11th meeting, please take the time to read the Prospectus section carefully, in its entirety. I’ve included the section under the June 11 tab on Blackboard. Use the outline provided below when you write your first draft.

Again, the first draft is due July 16, 2016, at the time of our workshop. Please provide as complete a draft as possible, so that peer review is meaningful for you and for your colleagues. Also, in addition to uploading the draft to our Blackboard site, please bring two hardcopies to class. I request hardcopies because the prospectus warrants careful and thoughtful reviews from your peers, and research demonstrates that printed matter is better suited to comprehension and metacognitive processes that digitalized content (Tanner, 2014). You may print your copies on both sides of the paper.

Outline:

1) Background
One or more pages that identify the general topic for the research, why it is important, and why it is suitable for a research study. Enough of the relevant literature should be cited to establish credibility for the existence and importance of the topic.

2) Problem Statement
This should comprise one or two paragraphs that identify the problem – the bad thing that needs fixing – that the information provided by a research study could help address. This problem must be something that is of interest to leaders within the business community, and something that can be addressed by the provision of the information and insight that might be provided by a dissertation research project.

3) Purpose Statement
In this section, one or two paragraphs identify the specific purpose of the research study that would address the identified problem – what information it could provide, and how it would go about doing so (general research approach).

4) Research Questions/Hypotheses
a) Regardless of what type of method you propose (quantitative or qualitative), in this section you list all research questions to be addressed. Each question should be defined with a single sentence. Research questions are interrogatives (i.e., they end with question marks).

b) If you believe you will be conducting a study using quantitative methods, list your hypotheses (research, null, or both). Hypotheses are assertions, and should therefore be declarative sentences.

c) If you believe you will be conducting a study using quantitative methods, list each of your proposed variables.

d) If you believe you will be conducting a study using qualitative methods, briefly describe the types of information you will be seeking to gather.

5) Significance
In one or more paragraphs, describe the importance of this study to the business and academic community. Identify what leaders might be able to do to address the identified problem if they had the results of the proposed study.

6) Research Method
Identify and briefly describe the specific research design (e.g., case study, phenomenology, experiment, correlational study, etc.) proposed to address the research questions. Describe why you think this research method is the best fit for what you want to research.

7) Data Collection
Identify the population relevant to the study, the approach to be used in gathering a sample from this population, and the data collection method.

8) References
Provide a complete reference in accordance with APA style rules for each item cited in the text of the prospectus.

9) Appendices
If appropriate, include items that are needed to support the prospectus text (such as, for example, a draft of an interview protocol to supplement the discussion of method or data collection.)

Reference

Tanner, M. (2014). Digital vs. print: Reading comprehension and the future of the book. iSchool Student Research Journal, vol. 4 (2). Retrieved from: http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/slissrj/vol4/iss2/6