You are encouraged to identify a research problem that is related to your field placement and/or your areas of interest within social work, or just a problem that interests you. Stick to this outline. It will make the paper easier to write and more understandable for me to read.
For the research problem statement, consider and respond to the following questions. Use each question as a header for your paper.
1) What social problem will your research address?
a. Extent of the problem?
b. Who is directly (and indirectly) affected?
c. Are there additional reasons that we should concern ourselves with this problem?
2) What do we currently “understand” about the problem (e.g., from theory and/or research about related factors)?
3) For this section, you will identify five (5) research articles to read, review, and briefly describe that pertain to your research problem/area of interest. For each article answer the following:
a. What is the research topic, problem and/or research question addressed in the article?
b. What is the research design (e.g., exploratory, explanatory, or descriptive) and methodology (e.g., experimental, survey, single-subject, etc.)?
c. What are main variables or concepts of interest? How are these variables/concepts defined and measured?
d. What are the sampling procedures (e.g., probability, nonprobability, etc.)? What is the sampling frame and sample size?
e. What about human diversity issues (e.g., was the sampling plan fair and inclusive, was the sample representative of the population or did it lead to biases in the findings?). Were ethical issues (e.g., human subjects’ protections) adequately addressed?
f. What methods were used to collect the data?
g. What are the main findings of the research study?
h. What are the main strengths and limitations of the research study? Was the study rigorous in your opinion?
Discuss this body of research (thinking about all of the articles) in relation to your social problem.
a. How does this body of research contribute to what we currently understand about this social problem?
a. What is one gap in our current understanding and how is this gap preventing us from making progress on this social problem?
c. What kind of research study would you propose to conduct that would help to fill this gap in our understanding of this social problem?
d. What might be your (preliminary) research question or hypothesis?
These papers should be double-spaced, approximately 5-7 pages in length (not including
