Research Proposal

Your research proposal should be a maximum of 3 pages (double spaced). Use the
general headings in the game plan below. Make sure that you describe the question you
are testing in the clearest possible terms, how the experiment will be set up, including the
timeline, and how you intend to analyze the data. Point form descriptions and lists are
fine – this proposal doesn’t need to be a work of literary art, just a succinct description of
what you plan to do.

A general game plan:

1. Choose a TESTABLE hypothesis

a. There are many great ideas, but not all can be tested. Accept the constraints of
the lab (little budget, little space, little time), and work to find the best question
in this setting.
b. The "best question' here is the one which your whole group is interested in, and
which you can test. It is not necessarily a question which will get you into
Science or Nature. If you have those sorts of questions in mind, feel free to talk
to JC Cahill about doing a 499!
2. Design the experiment
a. Figure out how to isolate the variable of interest while keeping all other
potentially confounding effects constant across treatments.
b. Determine what your dependent variable(s) will be.
i. Will you be measuring something about the population (e.g. size
.structure), communities (relating biomass around species), something
about individual plants (e.g. biomass), or all 3?
ii. Will you measure these things only at the end of the study, or in the
middle as well?
c. A good experimental design would let you draw the figures that you will use in
your talk BEFORE you have even filled the first pot with soil. Although you
won't know the "answer" at the start, you should know what each axis will be,
and what the different possible answers would indicate about your
factor/process and competition.
i. If you are unable to do this before you have all the messy data, you
definitely won't be able to do it after you have the data.
3. Create a timeline for the experiment.
a. What needs to happen when?
b. Who is going to be responsible for each step of the study?
c. Where is the data going to be kept?
4. Implement the study.
a. Follow your timeline.
b. Take detailed notes of each step.
c. Take pictures of each step (digital camera is available).
5. Get ready for analysis and report
a. Do not wait until the end to start getting the analysis ready.
i. Set up a spreadsheet as soon as possible
b. Start working on the introduction and methods sections of the report BEFORE
the data comes in - Once the data is here, things will get real busy real fast.