PP279/MacCoun

SURVEY PROPOSAL ASSIGNMENT

DUE DATES FOR THE PREPROPOSAL AND THE PROPOSAL ARE LISTED ON THE COURSE WEB PAGE.

The Preproposal

Please submit to the MacCoun Foundation a 1-page (1-3 paragraphs) preproposal--a letter of intent--concisely describing the central policy issue you are addressing, and the specific research questions you plan to answer. (You needn’t explain your methodology here.)  Please send it as an email (doesn't have to be an attachment; I'd actually prefer it as email text--unlike the full proposal). Such letters of intent are often requested by funding agencies as part of their RFP -- "request for proposals." You probably won’t hear a word from me unless there’s a problem--not unlike the deafening silence that usually greets preproposals in real life! (Providing your email addresses also increases the likelihood that you'll receive feedback.)

The Proposal

The proposal must be submitted as an email attachment (maccoun@berkeley.edu) in MS Word format. This will allow me to embed my comments directly in the file and send it back to all of you.

  1. EACH TEAM MEMBER'S EMAIL ADDRESS MUST BE ON THE CC: LINE OF THE EMAIL. 
  2. TO HELP ME TRACK THE FILES ON MY COMPUTER, PLEASE USE THE FOLLOWING FORMAT FOR NAMING THE FILE:  ‘279_F06_P1_NameNameName.DOC’ (where NameNameName lists your last names).
  3. Submit only a single file; if you have spreadsheets and appendices, merge them into a single Word file. 
  4. Make sure there are no team comments or revision marks left in the file.  I have repeatedly received files with students’ comments to each other plainly visible on my screen; needless to say, the contents of these comments have not cast the teams in the best possible light.

Your proposal should include the sections described below; very approximate space-and-a-half page guidelines appear in brackets. If you wrote the maximum number of pages for each section, your proposal would be roughly 30 pages plus bibliography (we’ll skip the vitae); at minimum, you’ll probably need at least 20 pages.  These pages are GUIDELINES; not strict rules.  Use your own judgment about what your topic requires.  When in doubt about anything, the fundamental deciding principle isn’t “what does Rob want” but rather “what would encourage a funder to decide it is worth risking a large sum of money on our organization?”

  1. Proposal abstract

[1 page]: Brief summary of issues, questions, and general strategy. You must engage the interests of the MacCoun Foundation here so they keep reading past the abstract--they are very busy and very picky!

  1. Policy context

[3-4 pages]: Explain the policy issues that motivate your proposal. Assume the reader is a non-expert who reads the NY Times and catches The News Hour with Jim Lehrer occasionally. End this section by briefly foreshadowing your research questions.

  1. Review of relevant existing research

[4-8 pages]: What do and don’t we know about your research questions? Show critical thinking in your evaluation of the existing literature; by drawing upon your vast and deep knowledge of survey methodology obtained in this course, tell the reader if and how existing studies are flawed or incomplete. (If they aren’t, why should we fund yours?) Assume that while your reader may not be an expert on the policy context, he or she (more likely, they--sometimes 10-15 different reviewers) knows enough about methodology that you don’t have to ‘start from scratch’ in explaining your critique.

  1. Precise statement of research questions and objectives

[1-2 pages]

  1. Sample design

[4-8 pages]: Discuss the following issues:

- Target population

- Survey modality (telephone, in-person interview, etc.)

- Survey population

- Sampling frame

- Sample design (SRS, stratified, etc.)

- describe any strata or clusters, if appropriate

- Estimated sample size

- Special sampling concerns

  1. Survey instrument

[4-8 pages]: Provide a copy of the actual set of questions you intend to ask, including instructions for the interviewee, guarantee of confidentiality, etc. There is nothing wrong with using or adapting some items from other surveys, but you must include a page of sources (e.g., "Item #2 from Costello, Elvis, Bacharach, and Burt (1988)") or you are plagiarizing.  And at least one of your latent constructs must be measured using original items. Although it is a lesser priority, I encourage you to try to use the kind of formatting used by survey professionals (e.g., check boxes, "precolumning," skip statements, etc.). If you plan multiple indicators of one or more latent constructs, provide a "circles and boxes" diagram to portray them graphically.

  1. Bibliography

[as many pages as you need; any standard style is fine]

  1. Budget

[0 pages]: You don’t need to include a budget, but do try to ponder what the survey might cost, and try to propose something that that you think might plausibly fall into the $100K-$500K range.  As a very rough rule of thumb, this means 100s or a few 1000 respondents, and not 10,000s of respondents.

  1. Survey team

Include a 1-page vita for each team member. This will help you get into the spirit of things--unlike journal reviewing, grant reviewers do pay careful attention to your vita--and will let me learn more about you.

It is fair game to email me questions about your proposal. But be warned: I may not answer certain questions if they involve problems I think you should work out for yourselves.

It is also fair game to discuss this proposal with other students. (Obviously, my hope is that you’ll at least discuss it with your teammates!) In addition, you can discuss it with members of other teams. But I encourage you to see how far you can get without consulting experts (e.g., professors, survey professionals) -- that is, experts other than your fellow students.