Relate to a gendered phenomenon
Example: how does fitness environment affect the comfort level of male/female working out together? ?you can use this example for the topic.
Format: 1–2 pages, double-spaced
This assignment is geared towards getting you to imagine and design a research project. However, you will not actually be carrying out this project! One of the first things you do at the beginning of a formal, academic research project is you produce a research proposal. Generally speaking, a research proposal includes four central components:
1. Description of your topic
2. Literature review to give nuance to your topic and situate your topic in relation to existing research
3. Your methodology/theoretical framework/research design
4. The significance or potential contribution of your research, and its anticipated audience
For the first draft of your Research Topic, you are only focusing on component#1: Description of your topic. The second draft of your Research Topic will rework #1 and expand to include component #2. Your “Method Match” assignment will focus on component #3.Your topic should relate to a gendered phenomenon you have observed and find interesting, troubling, exciting, or some of each.
First, the description of your topic should start from a brief introduction to the gendered phenomenon you have observed. For ideas on the gendered phenomenon to research, look around you, at people on campus and on public transit; look at your own friends and family; look at local and world events on the news and in the newspaper; think about your own path and experiences.
Second, you should then provide a more specific statement of the phenomenon to be studied. This more specific statement will help you to avoid choosing a research topic that is too broad and unsearchable; make your statement more specific by including details of the context for the phenomenon when it comes to time and place, and/or by narrowing your research to a particular community.
Third, you need a research question about the specific gendered phenomenon that asks a why or how question to begin the process of explaining the phenomenon. Coming up with a research question will require you to brainstorm the concepts and issues surrounding the specific gendered phenomenon, and then choose as your research focus a cluster of concepts and issues relating to the phenomenon. In the assignment, only show the research question you arrive at, not the initial brainstorming. For more on this step, see the Laurier library video “Developing a research question” (library.wlu.ca/help/tutorials/developing research-question).