Now look over the grades the evaluators back in Spring 2000 gave Proposal
1. Whether you agree or disagree with the grades they assigned, note
the particular commenting styles of each of the evaluators. Which is
clearest and most effective--and why? Which seem unduly biased toward the
commentor's own idiosyncratic preferences? Which comments (and commenting
styles) are unhelpful--and why?
Now do the same for Proposal 2:
Proposal Evaluation criteria
Remember: The following are informal criteria, strictly for your own
guidance.
I. Organization and overall clarity of proposal:
Do you get a sense of the body of research in the field and how the project fits in?
Does the author include an adequate number of citations--sufficient to convince you he/she did his/her homework and covered enough turf?
Does the author refer to a sufficient number of previous studies or prior research?
Does the writer make a good case for the study's overall relevance?
Does the writer make a good case for the proposal redressings gaps in
the research record or flaws in the methods/design of prior experiments
or studies?
Is the project clearly and comprehensibly described?
Do the methods fit the study?
Do you have an adequate grasp of how the writer will proceed on data collection and what he/she will do with the data to analyze it?
Does the writer account for controls or variables?
How well do the individual sections refer to each other?
How well organized do the individual aspects of the proposal seem? What about the whole thing?
Would you fund this research?
II. Clarity and coherence
Do you find the proposal unclear, even allowing for your (potential) lack of familiarity with the discipline or its vocabulary?
Do you need to reread more than a few of the sentences, either because
the sentence structure is jumbled, or because you aren't quite sure what
the writer means?
Are you distracted by spelling, grammatical, or punctuation errors--enough to divert your attention from the proposal itself?
Is the proposal not well suited to its audience, in terms of its focus,
language, and introduction to research in the field, terms, and methods
(either a foundation board or a faculty committee
for thesis proposals)?
Does it fail to make clear any unfamiliar terms or methods?
Does the writer fail to describe any phase of the proposed study clearly and in sufficient detail?
Could the sentences be revised so that they read more clearly--or, even,
more gracefully?
If you answered "Yes" to all questions in Part I and only "Yes" to a single question in Part II, the paper is in the A range.
If you answered "No" to only one question in Part I, or "Yes"
to only one question in Part II, the paper is in the A/A- range.
If you answered "Yes" to all questions in Part I, but "Yes" to two
questions in Part II, the paper is probably in the B+ range
If you answered "No" to more than two or three of the questions in Part
I, the paper is probably in the B/B- range.
If you answered "No" to only one question in Part I but "Yes" to more
than two in Part II, the paper is also in the B/B- range.
If you answered "No" to four questions in Part I, the paper is
most likely in the C+ range.
If you answered "No to two questions in Part I and "Yes" to two or
three questions in Part II, the paper is in the C+/C range
If you answered "Yes" to four questions in Part II, your paper
is in the C- range.
If you answered "No" to more than five questions in Part I, or "Yes"
to more than five questions in Part II, the proposal probably falls into
the
D range.