Next steps in the proposal process:
Preliminary proposals have been emailed to you with comments by two reviewers.
Revise and strengthen your preliminary proposal or write a new one. This is due Friday and is a major assignment.
Focus your research question. Generally, these questions have the form of how will changing such-and-such a variable may affect such-and-such a variable. The variables must be measurable and be clearly specified. A possible alternative is a project that requires development of an involved technique in order to provide evidence for a particular natural phenomenon.
Develop your method. The more specific you can be about the methods and equipment you’ll use and how you’ll employ them, the better.
Provide an item-by-item listing of the equipment and supplies that you’ll need. This, of course, may be revised later, but we need to start out with a good idea of what you’re going to need.
If you have special space or equipment needs, describe them. Tell what you've done to secure the space and equipment that you need.
What kind of data do you expect to get with your photos? Will you take measurements? If so, what specifically will you measure? What will you do with the measurements? If your project doesn’t entail taking measurements, what will you be looking for in your photos in order to know whether you’ve been successful in meeting your goal, that is, answer your research question?
Expand your bibliography. Find out what has been done before that will help you in your own research (both in your methods and in the phenomenon that you’re investigating). At this stage, your references need to be targeted to your research topic. Provide complete bibliographical listings. Write a summary of the information from the references that will be helpful to you. In the summary, reference particular items from the bibliography. (more about this later