ARCH 1411 Urban Planning and Environment Project
Assessment Task 1: Research Proposal (30%)
Due Date: Sunday 3 April (23:59) via Canvas – Word Limit: 2000 words
Your research proposal will set out the research question, literature review, proposed methodology, and details of the data you will use and how you will collect them.
The assessment task requires you to start writing the first part of your final research project report. It is expected that you will review the feedback on this content, and further revise and develop it for inclusion in your final report.
Prescribed Structure
TITLE PAGE
- Student Name and S-number
- Assessment Task Number
- Project Title
INTRODUCTION (Suggested word length: 600 words)
- Introduction and background to the topic.
- Problem Statement/Project Rationale.
- Research Question(s)/Aims and Objectives
LITERATURE REVIEW (Suggested word length: 1,000 words)
- Overview of the literature (minimum 10 peer-reviewed sources)
- Significant themes/key writers and texts for your topic
- Summary.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY (Suggested word length: 400 words)
- Briefly introduce your research design
- Methodology: describe the methodology/ies best suited to answering your research question (reference methodological texts) and discuss why.
- Data sources: what sources of primary data will you be using? How will you obtain and analyse the data?
REFERENCE LIST (Not included in word count)
- Harvard style
See next page for detailed instructions.
ARCH1411/1405 Assessment task 1 further instructions and guidance
Generally
– Make sure you read and understand the marking rubric for this assessment task.
– There is some flexibility in the word lengths between the sections: you decide.
Introduction and Background
– Discuss the policy/planning/environmental, economic or other significant contexts of your research.
– Think about your audience: is there a specialist terminology you need to explain?
– Key concepts/terms should always be defined on first use.
– Why is your topic significant? What is problematic about it, and for whom is it a problem? Is it an industry or governmental concern, or a wider social problem?
– How does your research address the problem?
Research Question
– Not all research reports are guided by a specific question(s). A set of aims and objectives can be developed to underpin the inquiry. This structure includes elements of the research design (eg. identifying the objectives you will fulfil to achieve the research aim).
– Make sure the question cannot be answered with a yes/no response. (For example: Have planning controls introduced to limit building in bushfire prone areas resulted in less development applications?)
Literature Review
– The purpose of the literature review is to enable you to identify existing knowledge that you can build in your research. The aim is to situate your topic within the field of scholarly publications, and in some cases also in the context of policy, industry or ‘grey’ literature.
– Your literature review should:
- Provide background information you (and the reader) need to understand and frame your research topic.
- Demonstrate familiarity with the important research done in your area.
- Identify how your research contributes to the existing body of knowledge (you may be addressing a research gap, or contributing new case study or analytical perspective, or providing further support for (or arguments against) a theme in the literature)
- Critically evaluate independently sourced peer-reviewed articles and construct a coherent argument supporting your research topic.
– It is very important that you do not simply list and describe peer-reviewed sources relevant to your topic. Instead, you should analyse these sources by critically evaluating them in the context of your research topic.
– Good literature reviews bring sources together to support an underpinning narrative that justifies the research you are conducting.
Research Methodology
– Discuss your overall research methodology that you plan to adopt (this may vary in the final report as you search for data and your thinking evolves).
– For each methodology chosen, define it (referencing the methodological literature), discuss why it is suitable to answer your research question, and identify the data/information sources you plan to use.
Referencing
– You must use Harvard-style in-text citations and include a complete reference list.
– All sources must be referenced appropriately, particularly where quotations, paraphrases or ideas have been found in/taken from sources.
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