Scientific Research Proposal

Inquiry question: How is scientific research planned, based on a relevant hypothesis?

Students:

• conduct a detailed literature review to support the validity, significance and appropriateness of the scientific research question
• formulate a final scientific hypothesis based on the scientific research question
• develop the rationale and possible outcomes for the chosen scientific research
• develop a detailed plan to investigate the scientific hypothesis including:

– the overall strategy

– methodology

– data analysis

– representation and communication of the scientific research

– timelines

– benchmarks

• critically analyse the scientific research plan to refine and make appropriate amendments
• employ accepted referencing protocols, for example:

– APA

– Harvard

– MLA

Crafting your research question and hypothesis

For this section we will present our progress weekly to our peers and obtain feedback and suggestions for what the next step could be, and how the proposed methodology or data analysis could be improved.

Referencing protocols

There are online 'automatic' referencing tools which can produce references formatted in accord with particular protocols. The most efficient way to deal with references is however just to use reference management software that can do this automatically (e.g. Mendeley), you just need to choose the protocol that you want to use.