Design a proposal to test one of these three theories: 1) Agnew’s General Strain Theory, 2) Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control theory, 3) Walters’ Criminal Thinking Theory
The research proposal will give you the opportunity to display your mastery of course materials. This proposal will account for 20 percent of your course grade. You will design a proposal to test one of these three theories:
1) Agnew’s General Strain Theory.
2) Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control theory.
3) Walters’ Criminal Thinking Theory.

Below is the first major publication for each theory.
General Strain Theory:
Agnew, Robert. 1992. “Foundation for a General Strain Theory of Crime and
Delinquency.” Criminology 30:47-87.
Self-Control Theory:
Hirschi, Travis and Gottfredson, Michael. 1987. “Causes of White-Collar Crime.”
Criminology 25:949-974.
Criminal Thinking Theory:
Walters, Glenn D. and T.W. White. 1989. “The Thinking Criminal: A Cognitive Model
of Lifestyle Criminality.” Criminal Justice Research Bulletin 4:1-10.

To evaluate the theory you have chosen, you will be given a survey questionnaire that contains measures of both theories, as well as a full range of demographic, family, and criminal justice variables. The questionnaire can be downloaded from the Blackboard page.(I attached the survey) The survey was distributed to resident of The Lovelady Center, which is a faith- based transitional center for women in Birmingham, Alabama. You will examine the questionnaire and select the variables that would be appropriate for testing the theory. You should identify appropriate dependent variables, variables that measure the theory you have chosen, control variables, and anything else that would be important to include in an analysis.

This handout contains the guidelines for the project. These guidelines should be followed extremely closely. Failure to follow them will result in a significant deduction of points. The guidelines are divided into three sections. The first section includes the outline. The second section includes guidelines for the format and visual presentation. The third section includes substantive suggestions for formulating and writing the paper.

A list of at least eight research articles to be used in the proposal is due. This list must be in the Deviant Behavior formatting style (Attached).

Outline:
The research proposal is organized as follows:

I. Title page – Include a title page with the title of your proposal, your name, course name, instructor’s name, and date. The title page will be the first page, but should not be numbered.

II. Abstract – A short abstract (150-200 words) of the proposal should appear on the second page and be labeled as page 1. An abstract is a summary that provides an overview of the proposal. The abstract is very important because it provides a first impression of the entire paper. You can take a look at an issue of most any criminology or criminal justice research journal for examples.

III. Introduction – Here you will provide a statement of the issue and theory that you are addressing. In this section, you will provide readers with the “setup” or “hook” for the proposal. Explain what you will study and why anyone might want to read it. The introduction will begin the third page of the proposal and will be labeled as page 2. This is the beginning of the “text” or “body” of the paper. This section should be 1-2 pages. (Note: Be sure that the hook is consistent with the survey questionnaire.)

IV. Literature Review – Provide a review of at least 8 research articles on the theory you have chosen. Books and book chapters can be used, but they do not count towards the requirement of 8 articles. You will want to select articles that 1) provide information about the key propositions of the theory and 2) review previous tests of the theory. Try to avoid putting the 8 studies in chronological order and providing simple summaries of each one. A good literature review should tie previous studies together in some logical fashion and should lead readers to anticipate something important to be gained from your study. This section should be 3-5 pages.

V. Data and Methods – You will use a survey questionnaire (see link in BB) to create this section. Your main task is to identify dependent and independent variables that will be used to test the theory. Identify the variables that you want to use in your analysis by their question numbers and then explain how they are measured and why they will be useful. You should have about 2-4 dependent variables 30-50 independent variables. This section should be 3-5 pages.

VI. Discussion – This section will provide a summary of the previous sections. You will want to review the main topic of the proposal and reiterate why your study is important. Then review the data and methods section and speculate on what you think you might find if you did the analysis. If you actually conducted this study, how would it be useful? Finally, discuss the policy implications of your study. If your state senator asked you to design a crime control bill based on findings from your study, explain what it might include. This section should be 2-3 pages.

VII. References – Follow the format found on the example page from Deviant Behavior in BlackBoard.(attached) This section should be 1-2 pages