Topic Proposal

Points: 30 Due: 9/29

The Assignment: Submit a typed proposal for the topic you will research for this course. Your proposal (about two pages) must have three elements:

• a description of your topic and focus
• a one-to-two paragraph keyword tree for the topic
• proof that enough research material exists to support a 15 page paper (just test the waters. Do preliminary searches bring up much?)

This proposal will be accepted (30 pts), accepted with stipulations (20 pts) or rejected (mandatory revision).

Advice for text: Describe both the topic and the focus you will pursue. Explain why you're interested. Be sure your topic is professional and narrow enough.

"Just curious" is an excellent reason for choosing a topic. This should be something that you want to learn more about, something that you would be naturally inclined to read about. You will work on this topic, and read upwards of 100+pages of text on this topic, so it is imperative you pick something you like.

In explaining your focus, take your topic and break off one piece of it. If your topic is animal rights, your focus can be animal rights and the testing of cosmetics on chimps. Use CQ Researcher for help.

Step One: Explore some topics that you are interested in.

• Look through the Topics list created by your classmates. Stop and examine the entries you find interesting. Note those you like the most.

Step 2: Develop a list of search terms and list them. You will do this by digging around. If your topic is

As the Library at St. Thomas Univ. says, “Knowing ahead of time what terms you will use in doing your searching will make your searching more effective and efficient” (http://www.stthomas.edu/libraries/research/tutorials)

• Developing a search strategy involves defining your topic as a sentence or question, identifying the major concepts or key words that make up your topic, and determining the relationship between the keywords and concepts.

• Most online catalogs and databases cannot understand complex sentences or questions, so you need a list of keywords that will bring up the texts you want. These keywords are usually the main concepts of your topic or thesis statement. Ie: Animal rights AND “chimps

o Think of additional terms and names: Ie: Steroids are also called Performance enhancing drugs, cheating, unfair advantage, or you can be more specific and look for EPO.
o Look for a variety of implications of this term, ie:
Steroids AND incentives to use them,
economic implications,
unfair advantage,
biology of,
medical concerns,
surveys, statistics.
Also, Baseball and increase in homeruns,
Cheating
Steroid era
Etc.
These words you will combine to get the results you want.
o Include plurals, synonyms (similar terms), variant spellings (for example, British vs. American spellings), and related terms; this can improve your results and pick up things you might otherwise miss.

Step 3: to prove that enough research exists to make this topic work, go to the library databases, such as Academic Search Premier or One File and start searching. Also, look for books. Specifically, look for an Opposing Viewpoints or Taking Sides. You can use your “Next Step” section as a beginning, but I want proof that there is enough information out there for you to start digging through. You should plan on providing bibliographic info. for at leat 5 articles, 3 books, and maybe a few others (as starting points—ie reliable websites, etc). If all you offer a Wikipedia and dot.coms you will be rejected.