Long-Term Relationship

investigate what those common factors exist across happy and long-term relationships. Such a study might have a research question like, “What are the common factors that exist in happy long-term relationships?” This would allow you to design a study where you interview various couples (be they happy or unhappy) and try to uncover what the common factors are that seem to be present in the happy and long-term bonds.

Research proposal project
Students will complete a research proposal designed to develop their skills in identifying issues and questions for research, reviewing and critiquing literature for evidence-based practice, exploring the implications of research findings, and designing research that addresses practice-based questions. You will NOT actually be carrying out these research projects. This is simply a proposal of a project you would do if given the opportunity. The proposal is divided into two written parts.

Part 1: Problem Statement and literature review- Due October 21st at 2 PM
This assignment has two sections, the problem statement and the literature review. The primary purpose of the problem statement is to acquaint readers with the issues you plan to address in your hypothetical research project. The primary purpose of the literature review is to inform your reader about existing research on the key variables and relationships in your conceptual framework. This section of your research proposal sets the stage for the methodology section (due later in the semester) and should briefly cover the following topics:

Identification of the problem or issue and why it is important (10 points)
-What is the main problem that you hope to address?
-Who is impacted by this problem? How widespread is it? Please cite existing data, not simply describe why you personally think it is a problem (though that is relevant too).
-Why is this study important? What gaps in our knowledge will it fill?

Relevance to social work (10 points)
-Explain how the findings of this study may be useful to social workers
-Explain how this research adheres to our professional values (link to one or more of our profession’s core values).

Conceptual framework (20 points)
-State what the research question is for your proposal
-State what the corresponding hypothesis is for this research question
-Identify both the dependent and independent variables for this study
-Operationally define the independent and dependent variables in this study
-Do not include specific methodological details, e.g., sampling approach, data collection methods, measurement issues; this information will be included in the second assignment.

Literature review (50 points)
-The goal of this portion of the assignment is to teach your reader about the main variables in your study. You must use existing scientific literature to teach the reader about the main variables in your study. You must use a minimum of five scientific journals in your literature review. Scientific studies are projects where there is a specific research question, data is collected, in results are presented. Books or popular websites that simply describe variables are not scientific studies. Scientific studies have specific research questions that they are trying to answer (ie “Does pet therapy reduce symptoms of PTSD among survivors of domestic abuse?”). Scientific journals are NOT articles that simply describe a variable. They are testing the variable in some way. Use the literature search strategies reviewed in class to identify publications relevant to this topic in the College database (sources from outside of this database are not acceptable unless you receive permission from the instructor)
-When summarizing articles, be sure to include details related to the research question itself, the hypothesis (if available), how data was collected, what the results of the study were, and any relevant limitations (either identified by the author(s) or by you).
-Do not summarize publications one by one, in serial fashion. Instead, organize your discussion around relevant concepts, themes, and variables using references from the literature to support your points. (A good way to think of a literature review is as the portion of a research proposal where you tell the reader what the scientific community already knows about your key variables and the relationships between them). Examples of how to organize this portion of your paper will be reviewed in class.