MA 4: Research Funding Proposal

In this assignment, you will create an imagined 4-5 page proposal for research funding from NC State’s Office of Undergraduate Research.

Sequence of Steps

 Step 1: Identify purpose/objectives (Purpose & Objectives section) and fill in the literature

After narrowing in on a few ideas, you can begin thinking about what research questions you’d like to address in this proposal: What gaps did you collectively find in the literature? You can start by drafting your purpose/objectives section, which will identify the particular problem or gap in the literature that your research aims to address as well as the research questions you want to try to answer through your proposed project. This section will establish the importance of the research and why it is needed.

Step 2: Draft a revised literature review (Background section) and determine your methods (Methods section)
From your research and discussions in Steps 1, you should start to develop an understanding of the literature on which your research idea is founded. Go ahead and draft a revised literature review, using the scholarly work from the last assignment and any additional research needed. Be sure that you’re connecting this literature directly to the proposed research: your reader should clearly be able to see why your literature review brings you to these particular research questions.

You can also start thinking about how you will answer these questions, i.e. your research design or methodology. Draw from the literature you’ve read, your own experiences in labs and talking with mentors. Be especially aware of how your methods match with your questions: it wouldn’t make sense to answer the question, “What are the biometrics involved in video gameplay?” with qualitative interviews or ethnographic data. Your methods should be able to give you the exact answers to the questions you ask. In this, they should account for both data collections (how you will gather information) and data analysis (how you will parse and understand information).

Step 3: Determine the nuts & bolts (Budget & Timeline section)
Once you have a  purpose, a set of research questions, a background from which to ask your questions, and a method by which you can answer those questions, you will need to draw up a budget and timeline for the research. To do this, you will need to think through everything that is needed to conduct research at NC State and do some exploratory research on how much those things cost/how much time is necessary to complete tasks. Utilize the resources here on campus that are available to you. OUR’s grants are up to $1000 and during the semester for which you apply, so you want a lot of money or time to conduct complex research. Feel free to use the OUR’s sample budget spreadsheet for your budget and the samples below for your timeline.

Step 4: Read, revise, and abstract
The final step is to read through your full draft, take in the comments you’ve received from your peer review, and revise accordingly. As you go through your full proposal one last time, draft an abstract that summarizes the project in 4-5 sentences. This will be easiest to do after you’ve written everything but as you’re going through your document and revising. You’ll be able to draw out one sentence to explain the objectives, one to explain the background research, one or two to list your research question, and one to list the significance of the project. Go back and forth between your abstract and your proposal to make sure that they are accurately representing one another.

AUDIENCE

Your audience is the Office of Undergraduate Research, meaning they are invested in undergraduate research but are also concerned with feasibility, finances, and the relative return on investment/impact your research will have. The OUR grant committee is also educated but not necessarily specialized in your area, so it will be important to clarify things that may not be common knowledge to an educated audience. In many ways, this proposal is an argumentative essay in which you identify a clear plan for research and show evidence for why it will be important and cost-effective.

EXAMPLES

Social Sciences & Humanities
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3

Physical & Biological Sciences
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3

RUBRIC OBJECTIVES

(adapted from OUR’s Grant Rubric)

Rhetorical Awareness – 30 pts.

  • Research questions are developed from a body of literature and are directly linked to the “gap” in the literature
  • Clearly articulates the significance of the proposed research
  • Methods are specific to the disciplinary field in which the project is situated
  • Project is appropriate for the timeline and budget given

Content – 25 pts.

  • Clearly states research questions of the proposed project
  • Synthesizes 10-12 primary source studies to ground the project in a body of literature
  • Methods are clear and offer a new way of examining the questions
  • Timeline and budget fit within the constraints of the OUR Grant
  • Includes an abstract that summarizes the trends you observed in the literature and the conclusion of your review

Organization & Structure – 25 pts.

  • Content is organized under five main headings: Purpose & Objectives, Background, Methods, Budget & Timeline, and References
  • Uses topic sentences and headings to transition seamlessly
  • Coherent and easy to follow

Formatting & Design – 10 pts.

  • Reviews 10-12 articles for the Background section
  • Follows citation-name the citation style used
  • Includes appropriate headings and subheadings
  • Budget and timeline are organized into a graph or spreadsheet that is easy to read

Mechanics & Conventions – 10 pts.

  • Follows the standards of style for your discourse community
  • Contains little to no spelling and grammatical errors and no patterns of error