January 21st, 2020 
This is a topic proposal. Instructions listed below. I will be attaching an EXAMPLE of what the proposal topic paper SHOULD look like. DO NOT USE ANYTHING that is on the EXAMPLE PAPER!!!! It’s meant as a simple reference ONLY!
The purpose of this assignment is for you to propose a topic of interest and begin researching it. For the first part of this assignment, you will write a short introduction (1-2 pages) of the topic/question of interest. These pages should introduce your topic. You will want to have an attention getter, justification statements, thesis and preview of your main points. Your topic proposal must focus on communication behavior. You need to make sure that there is some sort of message focused behavior being discussed. If you are unclear as to what this means, please ask!
After providing this overview, please provide the following:
Preliminary research question or hypothesis. This may change as your paper develops, but please provide the preliminary research question or hypothesis as you are currently thinking about the topic.
Conceptual definitions for all independent variables and dependent variables.
Please use third person (i.e., avoid I, me, you, etc.) to help get you comfortable with this type of writing.
After you have your topic defined, you need 10 peer reviewed journals for your bibliography in APA format. Please use journals from the Communication discipline. An easy way to find these journals is using COMABSTRACTS through the ASU library. See the list provided for approved communication articles. Please keep these journals recent. Aim for articles published within the last 5 years. You should search for articles that:
Help describe the problem you are studying and why it is important
Define key variables or concepts
Provide a theoretical foundation for your argument
Help establish the links in your argument/explain why you think something should happen
Describes previous research on the key variable, population, etc.
Address the same question you are interested in only in a different setting, population, etc.
You will be graded on:
1. Do you have a topic proposal?
2. Do you have 10 journals?
3. Are they in APA format?
4. Do your conceptual definitions make sense and clearly define the phenomenon you are interested in?
5. Is your topic communication based?
The basic requirements for the assignment must be met or it will be impossible to get a grade better than a C (1-3 are the basic requirements). You will NOT get a grade higher than a C if you do not have enough journals or a question. You will be marked off for each APA error. This is an easy assignment to do well on but it will be graded very strictly.
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