研究计划

托马斯·亨利·赫胥黎说：科学充其量只是常识：观察严密，对逻辑谬误毫不留情。

论文计划书是你的问题定义阶段的高潮（culmination）。

在论文计划书框定了我们的研究问题后，它还要总结你未来的研究中计划要完成的内容。它扼要地说明：您的困惑（puzzle）、您可能提供的理论解释、将检验的假设（hypotheses）或推测（suppositions）、采用的方法（methodology）以及预期的结论。它确保您有一个小心而合理设计的（carefully and appropriately designed）研究项目。

这个计划书能够让你获得写作的最初始的想法。它是你和自己的一个合同，提醒你要完成什么工作，也帮助你规划你的研究优先级。它有5个作用：1）帮助你澄清自己真正感兴趣的是什么；2）迫使你清楚地思考要做什么研究、做多少研究，来回答你自己的问题；3）帮助你决定哪些材料和你的项目相关；4）帮助你预见任何逻辑或后勤的（logistical）难题。否则，你可能会忽视这些难题；5）基于它，我们就可以具体地和导师、学长讨论，寻求意见。否则靠你口头说，导师一般只会点头。

一旦你细化（refine）了你的研究问题到了这样的一个程度：你知道了你想写什么，你或许也知道了研究它的最佳的、可行的（best feasible）方法，你就以论文计划书的形式写下这些想法。顾名思义，招股说明书应该是前瞻性的 —— 即“前瞻性（prospective）”。它和商业上的招股说明书有相似的地方：都是要说服读者你有一个计划，做一个长期的项目，而且能够成功地完成它。成功意味着新的知识（论文计划书）或利润（招股说明书）。

所以，就像招股说明书会描述你建立和发展一个生意（business）的计划，您的论文计划书也必须提出一个“研究设计（research design）”—— 那些特定的工具，您将用来获取证据、并对这些证据，基于您的理论和推导出的假设对其进行检验。

论文计划书的写作比你的研究的其它阶段在概念上都难。一般来说，首先给出你的研究问题的精确描述，介绍它和我们研究领域的相关性。这里有一些不确定性是可以的，因为导师可以基于它，给你推荐相关材料。然后，解释你的研究设计：你将如何收集和分析证据；如何定义自变量和因变量、规范论证和积极论证（normative and positive）、因果推理和反事实推理（causal inference, and counterfactual reasoning）。您将如何以及从何处收集信息，或者您将使用什么特定的数据集？你的研究设计一定要可行，并且能够提高足够的证据，来回答你的问题。否则，就要改变研究设计，或者换一个新的问题。写得尽可能细致，这样导师的指导就也会细致。

下面是 Miles Osgood 老师关于招股说明书的原文：

在写一篇论文之前，写一个“招股说明书（Prospectus）”是有意义的。招股说明书是为一所学校、一家企业、一本即将出版的书籍等，做广告的、描述性的印刷文件，以吸引或告知潜在的客户、会员、买家或投资者。写一份招股说明书，让我们清晰地定义我们将干什么，并且一开始就考虑它对读者或者世界的意义，因为我们要证明它的重要。

我们下面就来看看毕业于哈佛、现在在斯坦福大学“结构性通识教育”课程组任教的 Miles Osgood 老师关于“招股说明书”的详细指南。

招股说明书是您要进行的研究项目的计划的说明。它不仅包括您论文主题的陈述（您计划调查研究（investigate）的内容），而且还包括您的研究策略（您计划如何调查）的陈述。

对于文学研究课题来说，它应该提出文学、批判和理论（literary, critical, and theoretical）问题，解释你希望如何回答这些问题，并提出一个可能的研究结果 —— 当然，它现在也许还不是一个确定的论点，只是一个预感（hunch）：在你做了一些研究之后，你可能最终会提出的论点的预感。

一份好的招股说明书将雄心勃勃，但范围也很狭窄：您希望追求一个在您的空间和时间上都可控的项目，同时证明该项目重要。

你最后完成的论文可能和你在招股说明书中想象的完全不同，这完全没问题。招股说明书重要的是给你动力和方向：你应该对你提出的问题感到兴奋（excited），你应该知道你的下一步是做什么。因此，招股说明书不必结构完美，也不必完全有先见之明，只要确保它包含以下组件即可。

在开始写作您的招股说明书之前，请回答下面的问题。即使其中某些部分在您的最终书面招股说明书中比其他组件受到更多关注，当您开始研究时，能够参考所有这些部分也是一件好事。

在此作业中，如果需要，欢迎您超过页数限制（但简洁、全面、两页的招股说明书也很棒！）。招股说明书的绝对重要的组成部分标有星号 (*)。

A. 招股说明书的要素——长度：2 页：

一、* 主题（Topic）

你要写作什么主题？关于一件著作？一位作家？课程中提到的一个主题（Theme）？一个文学理论的领域？一次批判性的辩论？一个主题通常来自几个不同术语（term）的交集，例如：“Der Blinde Junge”和残疾理论；格特鲁德·斯坦和巴黎艺术收藏家的历史；关于T.S.艾略特在奈特伍德身后的角色的批判性争论。弄清楚你的一些术语（term）是什么。

课堂讨论笔记：

个人规划：

二、* 关键问题或难题（Driving questions or problems）

您希望您的论点（argument）回答的关键问题可能具有理论维度，但它们应该从根本上植根于您将分析的文本带来的、特定的、一组文学批评上的关切（concern）：你的论点（argument）希望解释文本的哪些方面或难题？重要的是，你提出的问题应该有不止一个合理的答案：你设计的任何答案都应该是有争议的，这样你就必须努力工作，来向读者证明你的观点。

三、* 主要证据（Primary evidence）

既然您已经选定了您将要研究的文本，请指出将影响（figure into）您的分析的关键方面和/或时刻（moments）。你将基于什么样的证据材料开展研究？文本的哪些部分对您的阅读至关重要（pivotal）？哪些是特别成问题的（problematic）或令人费解的（puzzling），因此需要进行理解和解释（interpretation）？

如果你正在写一篇比较式的论文，你应该考虑你是否打算将你对两个文本的分析交织在一起，或者一个一个文本地按顺序来，例如，也许你阅读完一个文本后，对你探索你提出的问题能够到达的深度还有限，这时你需要第二个文本以扩展或使您的阅读复杂化）。

一旦你综述（survey）调查了你的所有证据，你越多地确定你的研究策略越好，以便设置好，让它们更好地为你的分析服务。除了课程文本之外，您还想使用其他类型的主要证据吗？

四、* 次要证据（Secondary evidence）。

您现在还不需要明确您将使用哪些辅助资源，因为您会在创建注释书目（Annotated Bibliography）时弄清楚这一点，但您应该开始考虑如何搜索它们了。当您想了解批评家、理论家、历史学家或其他学者对您的主题的看法时，您会寻找什么？你能把你的主题的各个方面分成不同的研究类别吗？

五、批判性和方法论的方法（Critical and methodological approach）

我们在批判性阅读中看到了回答重大问题和问题的不同策略，有时会排除其他可能的策略。你将如何专注于你的研究？既然您已经想象过要寻找什么样的资源，那么是什么让这些资源成为您项目的最佳选择？哪些方法可能会分散你的注意力，或无关紧要（为什么）？你认为谁是你的重要盟友或对手是？你的论点（argument）将基于仔细阅读（close reading）、结构性阅读（structural reading）、比较、历史还是其他维度？

六、* 临时性的论点（Provisional thesis）

尝试以肯定的语气，尽可能清晰和简洁地写（articulate）出你的论点主题句（thesis），讨论上述关键问题或难题（Driving questions or problems）。您可以将其视为一种“假想” —— 随着进一步的研究，可能会发生变化。如果你能用一句话写出来，就太好了；通常，对于 Junior Essay 这样的长论文，它的“论点陈述（thesis statement）”需要几句话来阐述（elaborate），这也很好。如果论文将是比较性的论文，请确保您的论点陈述句（thesis）涉及两个文本，或者至少阐明（clarify）您如何看待它们之间的关系，以进行论证。

七、潜在的反驳（Potential counter-argument(s)）

大多数优秀的论文都会想办法包含有意义的反驳论点。这些可能来自你阅读的文本，或其他评论家阅读后的评论。考虑对正文的可能的反对意见是很好的，但你也应该考虑一个聪明的读者会用什么来反驳你的主要论点。您可能还没有发现这一点，但值得把它放在心上。

八、* 利害关系（Stakes）

除了帮助我们理解你考虑的具体文本，你的论点对我们来说还有什么“利害关系”？它们是文学历史的（literary-historical）、理论的，等等？你想要让人们感受（sense）到你的工作的重要性和更大的影响（implications）—— 为什么它很重要 —— 当然也需要过分夸大其词（overreaching into grandiose claims）。

通常，一篇较长论文的结论这一节会引入一个最后的转折（turn），这个转折在逻辑上是顺应前面的内容而出现的，但也开辟了一个新的视野（horizon），即：尝试回答本文最初想研究的一组问题，引出了新的问题；这并不意味着你应该用一堆问号来结束论文 —— 事实上，你可能不应该怎么做！—— 但山顶的景色不可避免地与山脚的景色不同。

您可以在整篇论文、主题句和其他地方，想办法指出这些利害关系（stake），但您也可以在开头和结尾处直接引入（enage）它们。

小结

招股说明书，很像开题报告，又很像项目申请书。确实在做一个研究工作前，应该用它作为一个阶段性成果。主题、关键问题、主要证据（数据）、关键方法、可能的发现、利害关系，这些都是一个好的选题，需要具备的。特别是最后关于利害关系的介绍，指出文章的意义，在历史上的地位、理论意义、带来新的视角、问题，这些都可以表明论点的意义。很有参考价值。感谢！

参考文献

Miles Osgood, Prospectus Guidelines and Worksheet，adapted from a handout by Matthew Ocheltree，Word 文档链接
Department of Government, Harvard University, A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in Government, 2014, PDF 链接
Department of History, Harvard University, A Handbook for Senior Thesis Writers in History, 2010， PDF 链接
哈佛写作中心，学位论文写作指南，网页链接

Index

附录 1：政府系项目提案指南

Framing the Question: Writing the Prospectus

Science is simply common sense at its best; that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic. - Thomas Henry Huxley

The prospectus marks the culmination of your question refinement phase. It summarizes what you plan to accomplish through further research. The prospectus will outline your puzzle, the theoretical explanation you offer, hypotheses or suppositions you will test, your methodology, and expected conclusions. The prospectus attempts to ensure that you have a carefully and appropriately designed research project. As much as you can, get your ideas down on paper early. This will force you to be more precise and will let you take advantage of comments your adviser may offer.

Once you have refined your research question to the point that you know what you want to write about and perhaps the best feasible method for investigating it, you need to put these ideas down in the form of a thesis prospectus. As the word suggests, the prospectus should be forward-looking—that is, “prospective.”

In writing the thesis prospectus, it might be helpful to consider another forward looking document, with which you may already be familiar—the business prospectus. When an entrepreneur or company is looking for new investors, they will often send around a document that outlines the plan for what the company wants to achieve and how it will go about achieving that goal. This business plan/prospectus allows the investor to decide whether the business is likely to be profitable and whether the potential profits are worth the risks; it also allows the investor to ask questions (and even make suggestions for revision) of the entrepreneurial strategy

Of course, since academic research and starting a business are not the same, there are also important differences between a business plan and a thesis prospectus. You need not sell your thesis (except in the persuasive sense). But the similarities are more than skin deep, primarily because both documents seek to do the same thing: persuade an audience that you have a plan to conduct a long-range project and to complete it successfully, whether success means profit or new knowledge.

More specifically, in the same fashion as a company would present a plan for setting up and growing a business, your prospectus must present a “research design”—the particular tools that you will use to obtain evidence and test it against your theory and derived hypotheses. In addition, just as a business plan provides the basis for investors to ask questions about the enterprise, your prospectus will provide your adviser the opportunity to raise questions about your research design. Finally, just as business plans are short, your prospectus should be also: 1,000 words more or less (about 4 pages, in 11- or 12-point type, with 1-inch margins and double spacing).

Take the prospectus seriously! This is not a task to be gotten out of the way so that you can go onto your thesis’ “real work.” The prospectus is your plan for what you will do over the next six months and how you will do it. Often, the prospectus phase proves harder (conceptually) than many of the other phases of your research.

What should you include in the prospectus? Though your adviser may ask you to include other aspects, follow these guidelines:

Begin with a precise and concise presentation of the research question and its relevance to the study of politics. This will not be a comprehensive literature review, but should allow your adviser to see at least a first approximation of how your thesis will connect to scholarship that has come before you. It’s okay at this stage if you’re not 100 percent sure how to frame your research question. Indeed, the point of writing a prospectus is to allow your adviser to recommend new ways of framing your inquiry. An adviser is likely to read your prospectus and reply with comments such as, “I think you should read…” or “Scholars X and Y would be really interested in your question, why don’t you look at their work.”
Once the research question is presented, the bulk of the prospectus should be devoted to explaining your proposed research design. An important focus of Gov 99, the “research design” is the combination of specific methods that you will use to collect and analyze evidence. In your workshops, you will discuss basic social science terminology that can be helpful in specifying your research design, e.g., independent and dependent variables, normative and positive arguments, causal inference, and counterfactual reasoning. Be specific! Do not simply say that you will do “case studies” or statistical analysis: how and from where will you gather the information for your case study, or what particular data set will you use?
The importance of thinking ahead about your research design cannot be overstated. If your research design cannot provide sufficient evidence to answer your question, then you need to either change your research design or ask a new question. The prospectus, by allowing your adviser to examine your research design, serves as an early warning system for poorly matched questions and methods.
A rule to follow as you write your prospectus is to be as detailed and specific as possible. The more detailed your prospectus, the more detailed your adviser’s comments will be. For instance, if you write only vaguely in your prospectus that, “I will collect information about both of these arguments,” your adviser won’t be able to offer much in the way of constructive feedback. But suppose you write, “To test this hypothesis, I am going to gather data from eight different countries.” Seeing this, your adviser might recognize that eight countries are too many (e.g., you won’t have enough time, so let’s figure out how to focus only on four), or too few (e.g., there’s actually a dataset you can use that will allow you to look at 80 countries easily).
Here are some suggestions to help you make the prospectus as specific as possible:

§ Are you going to conduct case studies? If so, how many? By what criteria are you going to choose your cases? Does your case selection allow you to answer your question? (Also, please note, a “case study” is a specific technique of qualitative methodology and not a generic term for any narrative.)

§ Will you conduct interviews, and if so, whom will you interview? Will you examine primary documents, and if so, which ones? How difficult will it be to gain access to the people, places, or things you want to examine? When will you go to collect this data?

§ Are you conducting statistical analysis? If so, what level of statistical knowledge do you have? What type of data are you going to use, and how are you going to obtain it? How will the data you obtain, and the analysis you conduct, allow you to answer the question you’ve stated?

§ Are you making normative claims (how the world “should” work)? If so, on what theories are you building your argument? What counter-arguments must you consider?

§ Is what you’re proposing feasible? Can you collect this evidence, then analyze and write it up, in the six month window? If not, how might you narrow your proposed research scope?

Granted, you have but about 1,000 words in which to do this, so you may not get to describe each of the points above in as lengthy a fashion as you might like. That’s actually quite a good state to be in—it will force you to write sparingly and concentrate on what most matters to your project.

附录 2：历史系项目提案指南

Writing a Prospectus

The prospectus is one of the most important stages in the thesis project. Though no one expects your finished thesis to look anything like your prospectus—your project will almost certainly evolve as you research and write—it is nevertheless important to get your initial ideas down in writing. A well-written prospectus, though it may eventually become obsolete, is like a contract between you and your advisor, and can help you start to plot your research priorities. It is also a contract with yourself, and can serve you as a helpful reminder (especially as deadlines loom) of exactly what you did—and didn’t—promise yourself you would achieve.

The prospectus is an integral part of the thesis project, and not something that one should throw together the night before the deadline. You might wonder why you should bother putting any effort into the prospectus when you know so little, frankly, about what the finished product will be. It is certainly true that very few theses ever end up looking exactly like the prospectus would have suggested. You will invariably find new and unexpected sources that lead you down slightly different paths than you foresaw in September, and as you write, you will become aware of new arguments implicit in your work that you hadn’t really imagined possible. Yet none of this cancels out the vital role of the prospectus.

If you’ve never had to define or articulate your thesis project before, you will find very quickly how helpful it is to get your ideas down on paper:

It helps you clarify for yourself what really interests you about your topic.
It forces you to think through exactly what kind, and how much, research you will have to do to answer your own questions.
It helps you decide which historiography is, and is not, relevant to your project.
It helps you to foresee any logical or logistical problems you might have overlooked when you initially settled on your topic. Is it really possible to do this topic with the sources available to you? Can you really answer all these questions in about 90 pages?
Last, but not least, it gives you something concrete to talk over with your thesis adviser and/or other mentor(s). It can be very difficult for even the most seasoned adviser to give you solid feedback on your project when you haven’t committed to anything yet. Everything sounds good when it’s just castles in the air! Having your adviser nod his/her head while you describe what you’d like to do is not the same as stepping up and giving him/her something in writing. No one can help you edit something that’s never been written.

If you applied for summer research funding, you may in fact already have written something very similar to a prospectus for your grant proposal. You’re ahead of the game, but that doesn’t mean that this exercise isn’t still important. Though you already have something on paper, it is important to use this opportunity to gather your thoughts about the fruits of your summer research. Has your project already begun to change on the basis of things that you found, or didn’t find, in your summer reading? Are you still asking the same questions and using the same methodology?

The Parts of a Prospectus

So what goes into a thesis prospectus? The exact presentation may vary according to the nature of your project, but we encourage you to organize your prospectus into the following seven sections:

Research topic. What is your thesis about? Cuban-Americans during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Biographers of Charlemagne? The history of foreign language teaching at Harvard? It’s important to be as specific as possible here (for example, to specify “Cuban Americans during the Cuban Missile Crisis” rather than just “The Cuban Missile Crisis”). At the same time, it’s not expected that you have any sort of argument or thesis statement whatsoever at this early stage. Just knowing what you are, and are not, going to research is enough. The argument will come later, once you’re writing.
Major questions. Brainstorm at least five analytical or interpretive questions you would like to ask. You probably still have some basic factual questions at this point—what happened in 1847?—but it’s important to try to push beyond those and formulate some higher-level questions that will guide your research—why did that happen in 1847? How does it relate to what happened 10 years before? Remember, too, that not all interesting questions can be answered in a historical study, and that many questions are of a scope not answerable within the format of a senior thesis.
Preliminary bibliography. Offer a preliminary annotated bibliography of at least five scholarly works on the topic, to show that you have a sense of where to begin your research and where your project fits into a larger historiographical context. After each reference, summarize in a sentence or two why you think that this work deserves your attention.
Sources. Identify any archival or primary source materials that you plan to examine. You need not be exhaustive, but describe the most significant texts or repositories in one or two sentences each, explaining what is there and why it interests you.
Relevant coursework. List at least two history courses (not History 97) taken in preparation for the project, and explain in one or two sentences how you think they are relevant to your plan of research.
Consultants/advisers. If you have an adviser, name him/her. In addition, or in lieu of an adviser, also name any faculty and/or graduate students with whom you have consulted, and indicate whether they might be potential advisers or mentors
Research plan. Outline a plan for completing your research in the fall semester. This may be as brief or as long as necessary to fully explain how you intend to complete enough research to make a presentation at the Senior Thesis Conference in November and to produce at least one chapter by early December. If applicable and appropriate, review the research you have already done and how it has shaped your agenda for the fall.

To be approved, a thesis proposal ordinarily must be at least five pages long.