Research Proposal on Gender Comparisons in Sports Success

The goal of Assignment 3 is to allow you to familiarize yourself, in some depth, with relevant literature in order to generate a research question and an approach to researching an issue, area, or problem you have elected to focus on. Your Research Proposal (Assignment 4) should be designed to investigate one of the major topics presented in this course that is of particular interest to you. This assignment (Assignment 3) will provide the groundwork for Assignment 4.

Before you begin your work on Assignment 3, review the instructions for Assignment 4.

There are two related parts to Assignment 3. Part 1 asks you to clearly articulate a research question that you will use to inform your work in Assignment 4. Part 2 of this assignment asks you to develop summaries of four (4) research articles you have isolated and reviewed to inform your research question. These same research articles will also be used to inform your work in Assignment 4. Note that, in total, you will be asked to refer to at least eight (8) journal articles when you are working on Assignment 4; half will come from your work in this assignment and the remaining four will be added when you work on Assignment 4.

Part 1: Research Question

Derive your research question from your interests, your understanding of the course materials, and your preliminary review of relevant literature on the topic you will be investigating. Your research question should be one that clearly relates to a topic that is important in the study of the psychology of women. It should also be a question that could realistically and ethically be explored and answered through a research project.

Part 2: Article Summaries

For this part of the assignment, you will need to search for, review, and develop summaries of four (4) journal articles. Journal articles should be drawn from AUs online journal databases.

For each article you have selected, prepare a separate summary. Each summary should include the following information in this order:

1. Provide a full and correct reference, using APA style at the beginning of each summary.
2. Immediately following, in two or three sentences, identify the main thesis statement (i.e., the primary focus or main argument) of the article.
3. Once you have identified the main focus or argument of the paper, outline three or four major points made by the author(s) to support his/her/their thesis statement.
4. Summarize, in one or two sentences, the conclusions drawn by the author(s) of the article.
5. Finally, in one or two sentences, indicate the relevance of the article you have summarized to the topic and research question that you plan to explore more fully in Assignment 4.

In developing your summaries, do not use direct quotations. Your job is to summarize and synthesize the materials from each article. Each summaryincluding the full reference for the articleshould not exceed one word-processed page (i.e., approximately 250 words, double-spaced).