Proposal

Proposal Instructions

Word count target: 1650 words
Format: 12-Point Times New Roman; Name, Date, Course Name and Section, and Dr. Babson listed in the upper left-hand corner. References in APA.
Goal: To propose a research plan for responding to your research question.

Step 1: State your RQ and summarize your conceptual framework. This should include a snapshot of the gap in the academic literature, i.e. the “missing puzzle piece” your research question addresses, and a sentence or two about your personal rationale for posing the RQ. (4-6 sentences)

• This step can be largely taken from the RQ assignment

Step 2: Provide further detail on the gap or “puzzle piece” you described above by using your five sources to paint a picture of your understanding of the academic literature on the research problem. As with the RQ assignment, organize as follows 1) State the main finding(s) of the source; unlike the RQ assignment, do not write out the title and full names of the authors, just cite the sources in APA format, e.g., “Jones (2000) talks about …”, etc. Then, 2) describe in a few sentences how it helps you understand what your project can contribute to “the literature”, to the best of your knowledge—that phrase is very important, because you will only be reading a tiny bit of “the literature”. (25 sentences)

• This step can draw heavily from the Research Question assignment
Step 3:

*The Research Methods Instructions document provides you with the parameters for this step. You must consult it in order to complete this step.*

You will conduct interviews and observations and use the resulting data to address your research question. In this step, you are stating your research plan, or in other words, your interview and observation choices. For your interview choices, state the type of interview (formal or semi- formal), sampling approach for that (group or individual), and optionally, a detail or two you’d like to share about the sample. For your observational choices, state: direct or participant; and if direct, obtrusive or unobtrusive stance, and continuous monitoring or time/spot sampling. You should state a detail or two about the setting of your observations. Finally, provide your best guess at logistical details such as locations and times. Remember: it’s just a plan, and plans change. (8-10 sentences)

Step 4: If step 3 is the “what”, this step is the “why” and “how”. Briefly explain your choices above: tell me how you think your methods plan will address the research question. Think of it as a defense of your plan. Use your notes of my lectures and the Glesne and Seidman readings on observations and interviews for further guidance. (6-8 sentences)

Step 5: Provide a summary of your question and your plan, and your rationale for both. (3-5 sentences)

Step 6:

*This section does not count toward the word count target* In a section entitled “References”, list the five sources which you have cited here

in this assignment. Use APA format, and be as detail-oriented as you can possibly be. This step is very important and often a source of dropped points for many students.

Further guidelines:

For this assignment, you are committing to addressing a research question and demonstrating how you will do that. This proposal can, and should, change a bit over time. Committing now to a detailed plan will help you make progress. To repeat from above, what you actually do may not match this proposal, which is fine. Keep track of how what you actually do departs from the plan and include this information in your final paper.

Project Proposal: The social and professional success of members of the Doctor Who
fandom

Step 1:

With my research project, I hope to answer the question: What are the effects on the
offline social and professional success of members of the Doctor Who fandom? Some
sub-questions may include: Does this online community often lead to offline
relationships? If it does not, do strictly online relationships offer similar social and
professional benefits as offline? How does the bond of having a common and intense
interest in Doctor Who affect these relationships?

As a quasi-member of this fandom, I have a vested interest in this topic. In addition,
though the research on online communities is extensive, there is relatively little about
science fiction fandoms in particular and especially about the long-term effects of being a
member of these communities.

Step 2:

With technology becoming ever more present in our lives, how this technology is
affecting the way we interact with one another is a hugely important topic of study. The
research in online communities in general is fairly vast, but there are still gaps in this
research. These gaps call for case studies pertaining to the role of online communities in
people’s lives (Preece). My research project will provide a case study of the Doctor Who
fandom. Fandom, which often plays an important role in members’ lives and may even be
some members’ main social outlet, is a great way to not only explore how fandom affects
people’s lives, but also gain insight into the larger picture of sociability within and
resulting from online communities. The current research pertaining specifically to science
fiction fandoms provides a good basis for my project. This research has determined that a
psychological sense of community exists within science fictions fandoms and that this
sense of community is strengthened by a common interest (Obst). Research has also
found that, within the Doctor Who fandom, there is a sense of openness and acceptance
which may provide a more supportive community than members might find offline.
Members are also encouraged to create and to share their creations, which may help
shape skills that can be applied in academic or professional settings (Johnson). The
research, however, does not go in depth on how the sense of community, social

interactions, or strengthening of creative skills affects members in their lives outside of
fandom. This is where my research project will provide some insight.

Step 3:

Due to the nature of my research question, the majority of the research will need to be
conducted online. Since my aim is to determine the long-term social and professional
benefits of being a member of the Doctor Who fandom, my target participants will be
those who have been involved in fandom for a while and who are just recently entering
the professional environment. As such I will be focusing on members of the Doctor Who
fandom between the ages of 20 and 30. I will employ three methods of data collection:
online observation, survey, and interview. The first method I will employ is online
observation, by which I mean observing the posts on some of the sites typically used for
the fandom: Tumblr, LiveJournal, and the forums on two Doctor Who fansites. Secondly,
I will create a questionnaire, which will include both quantitative questions (such as age,
profession, length of fandom membership, and average time spent participating in
fandom activities) as well as more open-ended, qualitative questions (such as how he/she
participates (e.g. creatively, administratively, etc.), what skills he/she has gained, whether
he/she has ever met anyone from fandom in an offline capacity). This questionnaire will
ideally take participants 10 – 20 minutes to complete and I will distribute it through the
same sites used for my observation. As a third method, I will also aim to interview
between 3 and 5 fandom members, most likely through online means (either text or
video). These interviews will ask similar questions as the survey, but will hopefully get
more in depth and spontaneous answers to those questions.

Step 4:

As detailed in step 3, I will be using three forms of data collection: survey, interview, and
online observations. Through the survey, I hope to gain a general sense of how people’s
experiences within the Doctor Who fandom might answer my research question. This
method will also provide some demographics to ground and organize the qualitative
research, for example by allowing me to separate the answers to the qualitative questions
based on age, profession, gender, and amount of time spent participating in fandom. The
interviews will then step in to provide a few more in depth accounts of members’
experience in the Doctor Who fandom. Since these will be far more fluid than a
questionnaire, I will be able to press respondents for further explanation or clarification.
From this, I will have some examples of members’ personal understanding of how

fandom has affected their lives. Though both survey and interview will provide very
useful data, they are both from fans’ own perspectives and are therefore necessarily
biased to some degree. From online observations, I hope to explore the interaction and
participation within fandom in a less biased manner, allowing me to both confirm the
data from my other methods as well as to see where it may be skewed.

Step 5:

With my research project I hope to explore the effects of being involved in the Doctor
Who fandom on one’s offline social and professional success. This questions fills gaps in
the current research by connecting some of the research done within fandoms and online
communities with members’ experiences offline. My plan is to choose a sample from
members of the Doctor Who fandom who have recently entered the professional
atmosphere, namely those between 20 and 30 years old, and to gather data through a
questionnaire, interviews, and online observations. These research methods will provide
insight into members’ experiences within fandom and their resulting experiences in their
offline social and professional lives and will thus provide empirical evidence which will
work towards an answer to my research question.

References

Preece, J., & Maloney-Krichmar, D. (2003). Online Communities. In J. Jacko and A.
Sears, A. (Eds.) Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction (596-620). Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. Publishers

Obst, P., Zinkiewicz, L., Smith, S. G. (2001). Sense of community in science fiction

fandom, Part 1: Understanding sense of community in an international community
of interest. Journal of Community Psychology, 30, 87-103.

Johnson, L. (2012). Fan Self-Identity in the Docor Who Universe. Communication

Honors Theses. Paper 7. Trinity University, San Antonio, TX.