Assessment 2: Research Proposal Part 2
In Assessment 2 you will describe and justify your evaluation design, methods and analysis. Specific criteria for this assessment can be found in the Course Profile.
Components of your research design
When describing a research design/methodology consider the following:
- The characteristics of your evaluation site and/or the characteristics of the subjects you will study. For example, will you study a particular institution or program? Multiple institutions or programs? A particular group of individuals? What/who are these and where are they located?
- The evaluation design (e.g. experimental, secondary data analysis, pre-post-test, time series, field research study, etc.).
- Precisely, what you intend to do (e.g., if you intend to use an experimental or quasi experimental design, will there be an experimental group and a control group? How will you select these? Will you measure the outcome pre and post intervention? etc.)
- The steps of your study.
- Your population and sample. You should clearly identify whom, what or where you are sampling, how you are sampling and any anticipated problems with generalising from this sample to the larger population.
- Any variables you are going to measure, how these are conceptualised and how you are going to measure them. For example, what is the outcome or “dependent variable” in your study? What are the “independent variables” in your study? How will these be measured?
- How you propose to collect the data, how you will approach your participants, and the advantages and disadvantages of this design?
- How you intend to analyse the resultant data. Describe the following: how you will organise your data to prepare for analysis (e.g., transcription, data entry, coding, cleaning [correction/synthesis/editing]); how you will analyse your findings (e.g., will you use a particular data analysis program, or other methods, e.g., for qualitative analysis, e.g. will you use statistical procedures – what type of procedure will you use). See Maxfield and Babbie’s discussion of data interpretation, in addition to your own reading in the area.
- The appropriateness of your research design, methods and analysis to your research questions and to the chosen intervention.
- The limitations of your research design.
- Any ethical implications/project management implications that may arise. Thinking about these as you put together Assessment 2 will help you prepare for Assessment 3.
Consult the literature
To prepare your evaluation design, methods etc. please consult the course text, methods books, recommended readings, as well as the research designs presented in other evaluation studies—in particular, those evaluation studies that you have identified in the first assessment and that are relevant to the development of your own study design.
Assessment 3: Research Proposal Part 3
In this final piece of assessment you will consider all of the practicalities involved in running a research evaluation project. Specific criteria for this assessment can be found in the Course Profile.
Abstract
This abstract is a brief summary of your proposal (i.e. key points covered in Assessments 1, 2, and 3. It should be no more than 250 words.
Research plan, project organisation and budget
You will also provide an overview of how you propose to organise and manage the project. Consider the following:
- Who will make up the project team (i.e. will it involve multiple researchers, will they require training to carry out the work—interviewing for example—etc.), will there be a project manager, will you need to audit their work?
- The steps involved in collecting the data, for example if you use a qualitative interview method someone needs to: conduct the sampling procedure, arrange the interviews, conduct the interviews, transcribe the interviews, analyse the resultant data, and disseminate the findings – who will do these tasks?
- How the project will be timetabled – that is, present a timeline or schedule for each phase of the project (a Gaant chart is appropriate here)?
- How much the project will cost? Estimate the budget that would be required to carry out the work. See Higdon (2004) in the reading list.
- How your findings will be disseminated, consider disseminating the findings back to participants, to the academic community, to the government/community more broadly, consider how your findings may be of interest to public policy makers.
Together these three pieces of assessment comprise a research evaluation proposal, and will prepare you for the realities of research evaluation and policy analysis. We hope you enjoy the course.
Ethical considerations
Ethics are a very important consideration for research evaluation projects. Based on course readings as well as online resources from Griffith University https://www.griffith.edu.au/research/research-services/research-ethics-integrity/human/gurem you will briefly discuss the following:
- How will you obtain the consent of your participants?
- Are you providing any guarantees and assurances to your research participants?
- Might your research have a foreseeable positive or negative impact on those you study? What is the nature of that impact?
- What procedures will you have in place to ensure that your study will not bring about harm to those involved or related to the research?
- What procedures will you have in place to ensure that your research participants’ privacy, confidentiality, and anonymity (if applicable) are respected and protected?
Limitations
Limitations refer to the way in which your research proposal is limited in terms of addressing the research questions posed or contributing to the broader knowledge base. Examples of limitations include those concerning the validity and reliability of your data collection methods or research design and the inability to generalise your findings beyond the sample in question. Journal articles will usually discuss the limitations of their research – reviewing the limitations cited by authors in your literature review can help you learn about the limitations of particular research designs, and also to consider how research can be improved for future work (i.e. can your research address some of the issues that have been noted in the past?).
• Access various sources to research and select suitable tools for monitoring resource usage. • Choose two tools that are suitable for monitoring and measuring energy, water, waste and carbon footprint. Consider compliance requirements when making your selection. • Examples may include: ? life-cycle mapping tools ? carbon footprint calculators ? energy monitoring tools and calculators ? water usage monitoring tools and calculators ? waste audit procedures and tools ? external benchmarks ? sustainability frameworks such as CERES, The Natural Step or TBL. • Use the template provided to write a brief summary of the two tools you have selected, including: how it works, how it helps compliance, whether you would use it and why/why not. • Include details of the source. For example, provide the website name, address and date accessed.
select any Tourism or Hospitality marketspaces to find an organization or enterprise that is engaging in significantly by interactive marketing activities over the web, conduct an audit of the site. Students are required to present a report on their analysis.
This is an Individual Assignment. Students are to select any Tourism or Hospitality marketspaces to find an organization or enterprise that is engaging in significantly by interactive marketing activities over the web, conduct an audit of the site. Students are required to present a report on their analysis.
In this assignment you will use the IT project management knowledge area and the tools used in project
initiation and planning to prepare a project charter for the Case Study below. Make sure to analyse the
project management parameters and identify the actors relevant to the case study and mention the
project scope, constraints and assumptions.
For this assessment, you will prepare a project charter based on the business case given below. Your
report should be limited to approx. 1000 words. Use 1.5 spacing with a 12 point Times New Roman
font. You can use other sources to support your claims. Citation of sources is mandatory and must be
in the IEEE style.
The project charter must include:
• Project Title.
• Background (Why is the project is undertaken? Describe an opportunity or problem that the
project is to address.)
• Project Goal/s (Not more than 3)
• Project Scope (What will be the end result of the project?)
• Key Stakeholders
• Project Milestones (Identify/assume the significant project milestones)
• Constraints and Assumptions