This assignment is designed to help you focus and think creatively about possible research topics for your final research project proposal. Although this is a basic exercise, the more time you think about and develop these ideas the easier the final paper will eventually be to write. Your assignment should be typed, double-spaced, in 12-point font, and follow general APA formatting guidelines.
Create TWO separate. mutually exclusive research ideas that could be used for your final project. For each of these TWO research ideas, do the following:
List the research question. Use the client-oriented, practical evidence (COPE) question framework to guide your question development as well as the SAMPLE criteria for thinking about and developing good research questions (see lecture & discussion notes/slides from week 4).
Provide conceptual/nominal definitions for all the key concepts in your research question.
Provide an example of an operational definition (with proposed real-world measurement) for at least one of the key concepts in the research question.
Identify the key independent and dependent variables in each research question. If you are designing a non-causal question/study, please discuss why this is the most appropriate approach for your research questions.
To further hone in on your question use the research purpose categories (Exploratory, Descriiptive, Explanatory, and Evaluative) to characterize your research questions and provide a brief explanation for why you think it is that type of research question.
Here is an example of what a research idea might look like for this assignment:
1. List the research question.
Are brief alcohol interventions effective in reducing risky alcohol use among adolescents, relative to those who do not receive brief alcohol interventions?
2. Provide conceptual/nominal definitions for all the key concepts in your research question.
Brief alcohol interventions are defined as therapeutic contacts that last between 5-60 minutes, delivered by a therapist or other treatment provider using any therapeutic approach that is explicitly designed to reduce alcohol consumption or minimize the negative consequences associated with alcohol use.
Risky alcohol use is defined as alcohol consumption that exceeds normative experimental levels of alcohol consumption, and could be indicative of progression to an alcohol use disorder.
Adolescents are defined as youth between the ages of 12-18.
3. Provide an example of an operational definition (with proposed real-world measurement) for at least one of the key concepts in the research question.
Risky alcohol use could be operationally defined as drinking more than five drinks in a row in a single sitting, in the past week. On a self-report survey this question might look like:
In the past month, how many times have you consumed more than 5 alcoholic drinks (where drink = 8 oz of fluid) in a single sitting?
None
1 – 2
3 – 4
5 – 6
7 or more
4. Identify key independent and dependent variables in the research question.
Independent: brief alcohol interventions
Dependent: risky alcohol use
5. Is this research question Exploratory, Descriiptive, Explanatory, and Evaluative? Provide a brief explanation why you think it is in that research purpose category?
This could be either an explanatory or evaluative research question. This could be considered an evaluative question if I were already offering brief alcohol interventions in my setting and wanted to determine if these local programming efforts were having the desired or intended effects on risky alcohol consumption among youth. The emphasis here would be on the effectiveness of the program. Additionally, this might also be considered an explanatory research question if I were especially interested in examining whether brief alcohol interventions caused risky alcohol cessation. The emphasis here would be on eliminating spurious relationships and identifying if there actually is a causal connection between brief alcohol intervention completion and alcohol use.
Please choose the topics related to children or eduacaton