What Should a Thesis Proposal Contain?
An honors thesis proposal is a document written by a student in consultation with his/her honors thesis advisor. It identifies the problem or question that the student will address in the thesis and explains how the student will go about investigating it. The proposal is a blue print that guides the thesis project. It often constitutes a rough version of the first chapter of the thesis itself. Most proposals contain the following parts. • Statement of the problem: This section identifies the specific problem or question that the student will investigate and briefly explains why it is of sociological interest. This section often includes a preliminary review of the sociological literature that explains why the student’s research problem or question is important and how it relates to other sociological work that has been done. • Hypothesis: The proposal should identify one or more specific hypotheses that the student will test empirically. The hypothesis is often derived from literature
