Topic Proposal Summary – Communications

Research Question: Is gender an important defining factor in how people communicate with each other?

Independent Variable – Gender

Dependent Variable – Inter-Personal Communication

Utilize only approved communications journals for the proposal. A list of approved communications journals is attached

For this project, you will begin to create a pathway to original research on a communication topic of your choice. By the end of this course, you should be able to identify communication concepts and propose original research surrounding communication for both academic and proprietary purposes. This assignment has you begin your research journey by identifying a topic of interest, justifying examination of that topic, creating research questions and/or hypothesis to explore, and providing resources that can be used in your literature review assignment.

Purpose

The purpose of this assignment is to help you practice the following skills that are essential to your success:

           Create hypothesis/Research questions for Communication research.

           Identify the variables/concepts associated with Communication research.

Compose clear conceptual definitions to identify the variables that you will discuss in future papers.  

To do this, you will propose a topic of interest and begin researching that topic.

Step by Step Guide

• To complete this assignment, follow these steps:

Requirement #1: Cover Page

You need an APA (7th edition) cover page. See the resources at the end of this document for guidelines on APA.

• Requirement #2: Introduction
• The topic proposal is the first phase of your research project.  For the first part of this assignment, you will write a short introduction (1 page) on the topic/question of interest.  These pages should introduce your topic.  You will want to have an attention getter, justification statements, thesis and preview of your main points.  Your topic proposal must focus on communication behavior.  You need to make sure that there is some sort of message focused behavior being discussed.  If you are unclear as to what this means, please ask! You should be using what you learned in COM 207 when you develop this first paragraph. If you did not complete COM 207 with ASU, please look into these resources. 
• Requirement #3: Hypothesis and Conceptual definitions
• After providing your introduction, please provide the following:
• Preliminary research question or hypothesis. This may change as your paper develops, but please provide the RQ or H as you are currently thinking about the topic.

Conceptual definitions for all IV(s) and DV(s).

Please use third person (i.e., avoid “I”, “me”, “you”, etc.) to help get you comfortable with this type of writing.

Requirement #4: APA Reference page

After you have your topic defined, you need 6 peer-reviewed journals for your bibliography in APA format. Please use journals from the Communication discipline.  An easy way to find these journals is using COMABSTRACTS through the ASU library. This resource should be helpful: Library Guide,  See the list provided for approved communication articles. Approved Communication Journals List.doc

• Please keep these journals recent.  You should search for articles that:

Help describe the problem you are studying and why it is important

Define key variables or concepts

Provide a theoretical foundation for your argument

• Help establish the links in your argument/explain why you think something should happen

Describes previous research on the key variable, population, etc.

Address the same question you are interested in only in a different setting, population, etc.