Proposal Guidelines

Your proposal should be a thumbnail sketch of your purpose and procedures and should include the following in one single-spaced page uploaded on the submission form:

• General description of the project – briefly describe the research questions and overall goals of the proposed research.
• Significance of the study – provide a brief theoretical and/or empirical rationale supporting the importance of this project, including citations for relevant literature that you are building upon in your project.
• Subject population- Who are your subjects? How will you decide who to approach? Will you include any vulnerable populations? (Vulnerable populations include, but are not limited to, children, prisoners, undocumented immigrants, or developmentally disabled individuals.)
• Study procedures- Be sure to describe what data you plan to collect and how you will collect the data. Consider the following:
• What are you going to do? Interviews? Surveys? Observations? Participant observations? Experiments? Describe your procedures in as much detail as possible and why they are appropriate for your project.
• If your procedures involve in-person data collection from human participants, please include a COVID-19 research safety plan (see “COVID-19 Guidelines for Safe Research Practices)

Your proposal should also include your drafted Informed Consent form(s), your instruments of study (survey, interview questions, etc.), and/or debriefing forms (only if concealment or deception is used).