Topic and Research Question Instructions Prompt: During Week 2, choose an interdisciplinary research topic to study and fill out the Topic and Research Question Assignment Model. During Week 3, based on instructor feedback, edit your submission and resubmit for further feedback. Requirements: 1. You may not use first or second person. 2. Your grammar, spelling, and punctuation should be flawless. 3. Use the Research Question Assignment Model when you do either stage of this assignment. 4. Week 2: Make sure that you are referring to at least two unique areas of study and that at least one of them matches one of your personal areas of study. Additional Suggestions: 1. Avoid gun control, marijuana legalization, abortion, homosexual marriage, and other charged political or moral topics unless you have a unique/narrow way to study them that’s never been studied before (which will be difficult). 2. Remember, even though interdisciplinary research topics are often broader than the average research topic, you need to narrow a lot. A student who begins with the topic “the healthiest foods to eat” could narrow it down to “breakfast foods that lead to higher energy levels” to “whether eating eggs for breakfast increases daily energy levels for women over age 80.” When you think you’ve narrowed enough, narrow your topic more. 3. Using the reading from Nissani, measure your combination to determine whether it truly is interdisciplinary. 1 Student Name Professor Name INDS 400 12 February 2018 Topic and Research Question Topic: Put your topic here in under 20 words. Particularly when it comes to interdisciplinary studies, you want to choose a big picture topic that may need multiple perspectives to study it. Gregor Mendel’s study of bean characteristics comprised a revolutionary combination of biology and statistics—fields that had never been combined until he combined them. INDS students in the past have studied the criminalization of the African American narrative using film studies. They have also proposed research into American-Chinese relationships from a historical perspective, combining history and international relations. Make sure your topic in this section is just a topic, not an argument. Throughout this entire process, the only thing you are arguing for is that your topic should be studied, not that you are right about it. A good litmus test to make sure what you write here is a topic is to write it as a phrase, not a full sentence. Hypothesis: In under 50 words, make a prediction about the results of your proposed study; make sure you are not simply proposing research by reading what others have written. You have to propose original research using primary sources. Generally, your hypothesis should include a narrow independent variable (or observable intervention), a narrow dependent variable (or measurable response to the intervention), and a narrow sample (the people or sources of data you are studying). It might be something like this: “Middle-school boys, ages 12-14, who listen to classical, Baroque music for one hour a day in class will score higher on daily quizzes on class material than similar students who do not listen to music in class.” Notice how the independent 2 variable is an observable thing: one hour of music. The dependent variable is measurable: test scores. And the sample is narrowed so it does not encompass all people. Also, remember, you are not arguing for your hypothesis. You are stating it and then proposing in the research proposal assignment (Week 7) that it be tested. Remain unbiased and do not draw conclusions here. Just state the bare fact of what you expect to find as specifically and detailed. Research Question: Put your research question here in under 50 words. A research question is a rephrasing of the hypothesis and asks a specific question that can be clearly studied and answered. Like the hypothesis, it usually has an independent variable and a dependent variable. The question above may be rephrased as this: “Will middle-school boys, ages 12-14, who listen to classical, Baroque music for one hour a day in class score higher on daily quizzes on class material than similar students who do not listen to music in class?” Or a humanities student has asked this question before: “Did popular feminist ideologies in 1974 and 2017 respectively influence the film scores of the Wonder Woman movies released then?” In many ways, the research question is just a rephrasing of a hypothesis as a (usually) yes or no question as long as the hypothesis is detailed. There are times when a “how” or “what” question are appropriate such as “What do female medical school graduates attribute retention success to?” That usually leads into a more qualitative question rather than quantitative and is most appropriate when the hypothesis must be very broad because little research has been done on the topic, but these kinds of questions are rare. If you find yourself asking a question that starts with “What are ways that . . .” or “How can we improve . . .” stop! Questions that openly ask for ways to fix things are not research questions. It is better to pick one way to fix things and then create a hypothesis and research question that could test whether it works or not. 3 Disciplines Incorporated: List disciplines you plan to incorporate here without commenting on them—a simple, clear list will suffice. You need at least two and more than three will likely create too much of a research burden for you. Note that Liberty University’s listing of areas of study is not equivalent to a listing of disciplines. Some of the general areas of study are disciplines (aviation, education, government, etc.), but many of the sub-listed prefixes are as well (economics, journalism, English, mathematics, etc.), and some disciplines are not even listed (women’s studies, humanities, art history, military studies, gender studies, etc.). Behavioral sciences, health sciences, and social sciences are overarching categories, and you should be more specific if you want to use one of these. Keep in mind that statistics are often used with other disciplines (psychology, sociology, etc.) so combining something with statistics is not enough to make it interdisciplinary unless the combination is very unique. Justification: In 100-200 words, convince your instructor that each discipline you mention will provide a helpful perspective on the topic. Show how your topic is complicated enough that it requires multiple perspectives and that the perspectives you have chosen are the best fits for the issue.
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