Directions: Choose a topic dealing with some aspect of regulation or regulatory policy. Formulate a research question about the topic around which you can create a research design. Your research design should contain the following components:

--Introduction: this section lays out the topic, introduces the research question, briefly explains why answering the question is important and presents a roadmap for the rest of the research design.

--Literature Review: this section treats previous research that has examined research questions that are at all similar to yours. The purpose of a literature review is to understand previous research so that your own design can build upon it and strengthen your contribution to the literature. The review does not necessarily need to discuss every piece of work ever done on the topic, but needs to be targeted towards your research question.

--Theory/Hypotheses: this section lays out the basic theory and argument of your research design. The section presents the core hypotheses that you wish to test and these are based on the literature review, but also on your own contribution to the literature through your theory and argument. If you believe that the literature does not provide a sufficient guide to generate testable hypotheses, you need not present them. Also, if you are proposing an ethnographic/grounded theory method/similar approach, you can argue that you cannot generate testable hypotheses.

--Data/Variables/Methods: this section indicates which variables you need to conduct your analysis. Here, you specify what your dependent variable is, what your primary independent variables of interest are, what your control variables are and finally, from where you plan to collect your data. You should also indicate what sort of research method you plan to use here. You do not need to be overly specific (e.g. the type of quant method), but if you can give an idea of whether it is a comparative case study, a large-N statistical study etc., that is useful for the reader.

--Conclusion: this section is a reiteration of your topic, research question and the importance of the question to the area of study.

For this paper, you will not actually collect and/or analyze data, but you will proceed with writing the research design, AS IF you were going to collect and analyze data. In other words, you will develop all the steps of a research design, without actually doing the data analysis.