Anth 398  Fall 2024

Template for thesis proposal  

Proposal length: 10-12 pp (double spaced, Times 12-point font or equivalent)

Create a document titled "working thesis proposal" in your personal OneDrive for Anth 398. 

 Your thesis proposal is a document that explains your topic, research questions, methodology, related literature, and the significance of your project.  It is supposed to be a persuasive document that convinces a committee of reviewers that (1) the project you propose is important and will make a contribution to existing knowledge within anthropology and more broadly; (2) the project is feasible (do-able in the time frame and within the constraints of your situation); and (3) that you are prepared and competent to do the research.

Include the following sections in your working document:

Introductory Section (about 2-3 pp)

The proposal should begin with an introductory section explaining what your project is about and introducing the research questions/hypotheses that you are working with. 

-You should take a few sentences to elaborate and explain each research question.

-This section should also give any necessary background (relevant facts, history, etc) that will be helpful for your reader to understand your project. 

-This section should also state briefly what the significance of your project is (for anthropology, for the institution/community you’re working with, etc.)

 

Methodology Section (about 3-4 pp)

Next should come your methodology section, describing exactly what you plan to do.  Here is where you address the what, when, where, and how questions.  For each method that you are proposing to use (eg, interviews with therapists, observation of activity on a public twitter account, participant-observation in a lab, measurements of mandible features, survey of student-athletes, interviews with archaeologists, etc), you must justify WHY you are planning to use that method and WHAT, in general terms, you hope to learn from it. 

 Eg. “From interviews with therapists I hope to be able to learn more about how they conceive of and categorize different kinds of anxiety.”

 You can’t know exactly what you will find out in advance, but you can describe generally the kind of information you are hoping to get.

 Your methodology section should also explain how you plan to analyze your data.  For most ethnographic projects, this is relatively less elaborated at the proposal stage. You can say that you will take notes on or record and transcribe interviews, and that you will then look for themes, patterns, or narratives that emerge over the corpus of interviews.  It may be that there are certain key words or concepts that you will be particularly interested in. You can mention those.  Eg. “gossip” or “anxiety” or “team spirit.”

 For projects in biological/archaeological anth, where the data has already been collected, the discussion of how you plan to analyze the data is usually more elaborated at the proposal stage.  You should describe the programs/statistical methods/etc that you plan to use to analyze the data, and include, in the appendices, any chart templates you are planning to use to organize the data. 

 Your methods section should also include a discussion of how you plan to recruit participants (interviewees, survey participants, etc) for your project, how you will obtain informed consent,  and what you plan to ask them. 

 Your methods section should also include a discussion of any ethical issues you expect to encounter and how you will handle them, and a discussion of how you will manage and protect your data. You need to show that you will be professional and respectful in your handling of the data and that you will keep all participants’ identity confidential. 

 

Literature Review (about 2 pp)

This section should be a narrative review of the scholarly literature that is pertinent to and informs your project.  The paragraphs in this section should be organized by theme/topic and the works that you are mentioning should be cited parenthetically (author last name date). 

 Eg.: “A number of works discuss the relationship between gossip and gender (xxxx 2020; yyyy 2016, zzzz 2017). 

Eg.: “The questions I explore here will contribute to existing research on the relationship between mandible form and variation in diet.  Works by aaaa (2020) and bbbb (2019) have explored ____, while cccc (2008) and dddd (2009) have focused on _____.”

 You do not need to summarize individual works in depth here; the purpose of this section is to tell your reviewers that you are informed of existing work and have thought about how your project will contribute to or build on that work to bring new insights.  You can also use this section to point out gaps in existing literature that your project will fill in.

 

Significance (1-2 pp)

You should wrap up your proposal with a more elaborated discussion of the significance of your research.  Think about the different audiences you hope to reach, both within anthropology and possibly in other fields as well.  Eg. if someone was not interested in the specifics of your project, what would they still get out of reading your thesis?  What will your thesis help us understand?

 Also think about whether there is applied/practical significance you can talk about.  Eg. helping to inform better care/treatments for mental health issues, or helping higher education institutions understand the stresses that student athletes face, or helping archaeologists understand the ways they can reach out to and work with indigenous communities.

 

Bibliography

This should include full bibliographic information for all books, articles, websites, etc that you have mentioned in your proposal.  As per our guidelines, you should have at least 10-12 sources that you can include.  You can, if you wish, also include a supplementary bibliography with other works that you’ve found, but not included in your proposal, if you feel they are pertinent.

 

Budget

Please prepare this in chart form.  List and describe each item briefly, and include the estimated cost.  Acceptable items to include in a budget are things like: equipment that will be necessary to do the project (including small things like notebooks, batteries, etc), transportation costs, small gifts (usually $10 or under) for participants as a thank-you for participating, any costs associated with getting access to data sets or specimens. Given our circumstances, your actual costs may be very small, or you may already have access to what you need through the College.  You can still include these items in your budget.

 

Appendix

Items to include:

- Any documentation of your efforts to set up the project. Eg. if you are doing research in a lab, include your email correspondence with the head of the lab asking for permission to do research there.  If you are planning to speak to or need the help of people in official positions (eg. coach, church pastor, moderator of an online forum, professional academic archaeologist, etc) you should include your correspondence with them. 

-Any interview guides, surveys, chart templates you will be using to organize your data, and other research instruments you will be using.

-Your recruitment script and informed consent script for projects that involve human subjects.  These are part of the information that you will provide to the IRB.

 

 

 

Last modified: Monday, October 28, 2024, 4:07 PM