DESIGNING A RESEARCH PROJECT

Pick a research topic. Focus on something currently happening in the world. Think about current events, recent trends, and so on.
You will not be doing a literature review, but you must provide some background info about your topic. Sources for this background info should come from newspapers and magazine articles. You do not need to use academic sources, though if you’d like to use some, that’s fine.
Develop a research question. What about this topic do you want to study? Why is your question significant? In other words, why should people care about your project?
How do you plan on studying your topic? What research method do you plan on using? Keep in mind that the method you choose should make sense given your topic and research question.
How will you go about selecting cases? This will vary tremendously depending on the method you choose. For example, if you are doing interviews, how will you find people to interview? What will your sample look like? Or, if you are doing a survey, will you use existing survey data, or will you be creating and administering your own survey? If you are using existing survey data, talk about the sampling strategy used by those who administered the survey. If you plan on doing your own survey, what sampling strategy will you use? Of course, there are other methods to consider regardless of the method you choose, you should be thorough as you discuss the case selection process.
Discuss the tools you will use to collect your data.