Produce a dissertation proposal, outlining your intended topic and project plan. You should include the following key sections:

• Introduction: setting out the context of your topic

• Literature assessment: indicating the scope of the topic literature and source for key theoretical concepts for your proposed study and previous empirical work in the subject area

• Research questions: detailed parameters of your study, emerging from your assessment of the literature

• Proposed Method, including:

 Research strategy: stating your research rationale and how it derives from research questions and the subject/ research methods literature

 Research design: your overall approach to the work

 Access issues: Where will you conduct your research, how will access be obtained?

 Proposed work plan: detailed actions and timescales for the dissertation project

 Ethical issues: what issues impact on your work and how you propose to manage them

 Limitations: practical constraints

 Proposed data handling and analysis: indicating data collection, storage, encoding and interpretation; relating to the questions and research strategy

• On the title page, please ensure you include your name, student number, and programme of study. You should also include a 100-word abstract at the front of your work.

Assignment Two Guidance

1. Written presentation. Your work should take the form of a written paper of 3500 words (+/- 10%) Please include a word count. Papers outside the 10% allowance will not pass.

2. Citation. You should ground your proposal in the research methods and subject-based literature through reference to or direct quotations from appropriate sources. Do not simply regurgitate diagrams or extensive general information from the textbooks or articles, however. You should assume that we know the workings of any basic theoretical or analytical models you use and will allocate marks for the way you apply them to the question or to clearly support a line of argument that helps you to make your proposal. Where you use direct quotations, try to keep them short and ensure that they make a direct and clear contribution to your argument.

3. Graphics and presentation. Use headings, diagrams and brief tables, if appropriate, to illustrate points and to support your arguments. Ensure that these are relevant, based on your reading, and their contribution to your proposal is clear.

4. Style and content. Your work summarizes your dissertation plan and provides evidence that is relevant to its execution. You do not need to make a complete listing of all the analytical and interpretative processes you went through. You should expect, therefore, to carry out more analyses in the process of exploring the question than you will use in your final work.

5. Combine practical information and theory. We will give marks for a well supported argument and discussion of your proposed project that draws on evidence, applies the evidence intelligently and shows some insight in drawing conclusions. The aim of the assignment is to evaluate the issues embedded in your proposed topic, not to produce an unrealistic proposal that does not recognize established subject and research methods literature or the practical limitations which exist.

6. Sources of research information. You will find information from a variety of sources, including academic and trade journals, press reports and company- or industry-produced information. Remember to consider the validity of the information and the writer’s viewpoint in the sources that you use in your final text. You should minimize the general descriptive information you include. You should focus on analysis and interpretation of the significant issues you identify, rather than describing them in excessive detail. Remember to credit all sources of information that you use, in your text and in the bibliography.

7. Structure and development. Try to ensure that the structure of your work follows a clear pattern and that the themes develop in a way that is appropriate. Ensure that what you write makes a direct contribution to your project and try to avoid including general or irrelevant information in your answers. Please include appropriate headings, sub-headings and other ‘sign-posts’ so that we can see the direction of your thinking.