Outline: Background (15 points)
Overview
The background describes
the key concepts and facts that the reader must know to fully understand
the rest of the proposal and judge the value of the proposed research.
The background should describe the:
- Conceptual and theoretical basis of your research
- Status of research in the field, including significant publications
- Preliminary results if available
- Remaining information gaps, including those that your research will address
- Key assumptions
- Methods that make your research possible if they are not widely known or well understood
You must cite published research to support your arguments and conclusions, acknowledge the people whose research influenced your ideas, and document the validity of the methods you will use. Furthermore, your review of the literature is important for demonstrating your command of the subject and quality of your research. A strong understanding of your field increases the likelihood that you will make significant scientific contributions.
Keep in mind that your completed background section must be relevant to your stated goals, objectives, hypotheses, and methods.
Procedure
For this assignment, you will write a sentence outline for your background section. You will later revise this outline based on feedback from one of the other students, and then use the revised outline as a guide for writing the background section of your introduction.As you develop the outline for your background section, you should include key citations (i.e., authors' last names and the date of publication) where appropriate. This outline (with citations) will help you identify where additional citations or pieces of information are needed to make your arguments more compelling, and will serve as a working draft that you will build upon as your proposal and ideas evolve. In fact, you may want to continue refining this outline throughout your tenure at OSU.
Review the assignment on outlines to make sure you understand how to produce a sentence outline before completing this assignment. Make sure that the subheadings that will appear in your background section are included and clearly identified in your outline. A common and effective approach is to draft a series of short declarative sentences that will become the main subheadings of the background section in your final proposal.
Submit 2 copies of your background outline on or before the due date. One copy will be distributed to another student to critique.
If you do not complete the assignment by the due date, a late penalty will be assigned using the penalties listed in the late assignment policy.