Developing a Qualitative Research Proposal Guidelines and Steps

What You Need to Know

In this week's assignment, you will develop a research topic appropriate for a qualitative research proposal that most closely aligns to your program based upon one of the general topics listed in the assignment instructions. You will use the same research topic for the final assignment as well.
What You Need to Know
A research topic, especially a doctoral research topic, must be ?rmly situated within the existent body of knowledge in a particular discipline, or it must contain interrelated knowledge from several disciplines. Therefore, the researcher must have a thorough grounding in the relevant literature.
Readings
Use your Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design text to read the following:
Review the acceptable topics of study and methodologies for your specific program in the following resources. You will be expected to adhere to these guidelines and standards in your dissertation work, so be sure to focus your work in the research courses on these topics and methods.
Acceptable Research Methods and Research Designs for PhD Dissertations in the Harold Abel School of Psychology
Qualitative Research Approaches in Psychology.
Writing a research question is one of the first steps in conducting qualitative research. Use the information provided here to develop your research question.
Because of how intimately a topic is tied to current literature in the field, some excellent places to look for potential topics are in recent dissertations (within the past five years) and recently published journal articles. Doctoral deliverables for doctoral research must have a section delineating suggestions for future research. In addition, many journal articles address the next logical steps for future researchers. If you are in need of a topic, these are two places to start looking.
Qualitative studies are guided by an open-ended research question. In some cases, a qualitative study may have more than one research question. An open-ended research question provides the initial framework that directs the qualitative study and maintains its focus on the topic under inquiry. The research question that leads the qualitative study must match the research methodological approach that will be used to conduct the qualitative investigation. When designing a qualitative study, the research question is formulated before selecting a methodological approach.
Once the researcher has selected a research topic, question, and methodological approach, the next step is to identify the need for the study supported by scholarly literature. These initial steps will assist the researcher in developing an appropriate research design.
Writing a Good Question for Qualitative Research
You should keep the following in mind while writing a good question for qualitative research:
The research question must be a question. Qualitative studies are guided by an open-ended question.
The question that leads the qualitative study must match the research methodological approach to be used to conduct the qualitative investigation.
The question should name the phenomena that you want to investigate.
The question should be written in such a way that it can be turned into a title using same or similar words, which makes it useful as keywords for someone else's search.