The goals of this course are learning to:
1. Collect and analyze relevant scientific literature regarding an social scientific research question;
2. Detect gaps in the literature;
3. Formulate a good research question;
4. Write a short theoretical/empirical background regarding this research question;
5. Write a good research proposal;
6. Gain insight in ethical issues surrounding the proposed research project and data collection:
7. Write a research proposal to be evaluated by an ethical committee
8. Use provided feedback to improve one's work
9. Provide feedback to peers on their written work

In order to achieve these goals, students will write a research proposal which consists of an introducation and method section. Students can ask questions during small-group sessions and will receive feedback from their supervisor as well as their peers on their written assignments.

In the course academic writing (block 2), students will write a research proposal that fits within an existing (or to be developed) line of research. If possible, students will be able to select a topic of interest from an available list of topics. In other cases, the supervisor will determine the topic. Students will conduct a literature search in order to formulate a relevant social scientific research question. The research proposal is an individual product, and can be seen as the introduction and method section of a scientific article. During this course, students will work together in small groups on a joint project, on which they will report individually.

The reserach proposal--when satisfactory-- can be used as a starting point for the datacollection report and research report that will be written during the course premaster thesis (block 4).