(Selecting a research topic)

This is the first step in your final research proposal. For this assignment, you should copy and paste the following questions in a new document and type your answers in the following order.

1- Explain your research problem here. Think about a problem that you are aware of in your field and you are interested to do a research about it. Please NOTE this is not the goal of your research, this is a problem that needs to be answered or a gap in the literature that needs to be filled. For example, you may think that parents of Latino students are not actively involved in their children’s school or in their homework. Another example: “the attrition rate in online education is much higher than regular education”

2- Write your general research question related to this research problem. For example,

Why is parental involvement low for Latino students?

Why is the attrition rate low in online education?

3- Think about a few search words related to your general topic to specify it. Example: (parental involvement= in the title AND Latino=in the abstract AND education= in the journal’s name). Please let me know how you searched your keywords and which tool did you use to do your search (google, ERIC,..etc.)

4- Use Google or Library data bases and the above keywords or some new keywords to find at least 10 studies. Read the abstracts of these 10 studies.

5- You should copy and paste the 10 abstracts here to prove you have found 10 related abstracts. If your abstracts are not related you may change your search words.

6- Choose one of the abstracts that you like more and find the full article for the abstract. Attach that article whaen you submit this assignment

7- Reagrding the full article and the 10 abstracts, make a VERY short list of what is already known (found) from earlier research and another list of things that we need to know or the things suggested in earlier studies to be done in the future. Use direct quotes as well as your own summary of what is known and what is unknown.

Known

A- My research shows that Latino parents are not really different (Direct quote from article is needed)

B- It is a cultural thing

C- Latino parents don’t have enough education to help their children

D- Children’s education is not their main priority

E- Parents are too busy to help (don’t have time)

Unknowns

A- What are the most effective ways to make them involve?

B- Is Tele-parenting or other technology based networks useful in this regard?

C- Which one is a more important factor (Parental income of Parental education)?

D- Which one is a more important factor (students who don’t let parents to get involve, school systems, or parent themselves)?

8- Redo your search this time searching for an answer to the unknown questions. Please let me know how you searched your keywords and which tool did you use to do your search (google, ERIC,..etc.)

9- Find at least 3 abstracts closely related to your new research question. While you are reading the abstracts, think about and one specific research question that has not been investigated before. Write your question here.

Make sure no one has researched this question before. If you find out this question has been researched before, you have to change or modify your research question.

Examples,

A-Are there any differences between parents’ and teachers’ opinions about parental involvement in students’ academics?

B- What type of online instruction (comparing 3 specific models) leads to higher attrition rate?

10- Go to this link and share your topic with the whole class.

11- Send your assignment to BeachBoard (DropBox).