Abortions Among Teen Rape-Related Pregnancy
You will compose and document your proposal in the style established by the Council of Science Editors or CSE. This style is used primarily by the natural scientists (biology, zoology, etc.) but for this proposal use the CITATION-SEQUENCE SYSTEM in which references are numbered in the order by which they appear.
Your proposal will be organized with a title page, an abstract, a main body, and a cited reference list. I expect you to include an abstract, (unlike APA the abstract simply precedes the introduction, it is not on a separate page) and list of references (CSE calls it Cited References).
You will begin your main body with an introduction that briefly introduces the problem, identifies the exigence behind it, lays out the purpose and significance of the study, and concludes with research questions and a hypothesis. The introduction will also provide any other background information that is relevant and a very brief literature review.
The next part of the proposal is a section which is variously called Statement of the Problem or Aim of the Study—in any event the purpose should be clear. You must outline why this research needs to be done. This involves more than just stating the purpose of the proposed experiment as mentioned in the Introduction. This section answers the question “Why do this research?”
Between these two sections – the Introduction and the Statement of the Problem, the reader should be able to come to a conclusion about the worth of the experiment.
The next major section is Methodology. Here is where you will explain the steps of the experiment and argue for its feasibility.
Since we are not really doing an experiment, and I am hardly qualified to judge in any case, you may be as creative as you like here—simply suggest something that might be reasonable. Some of the possible subheadings here are Research Design, Instrumentation, Data Collection Procedures, Protection of Human Rights (if you are using human subjects), and Budget. Feel free to make up budget figures – their accuracy is not the point of this assignment. In any event, these elements are important for the audience to judge the feasibility of the experiment. Can it be afforded? Do the tools exist, etc.? Don’t worry about the details here – simply demonstrate that you know what would go in these sections.
Finally you will have a Discussion section which is your last opportunity as the author to sell your experiment. You might consider it your last “sales pitch.”
