Developing a Research Proposal Fire and emergency services organizations are in desperate need of scholarly research to expand the body of knowledge that exists in the field. For decades, firefighters and allied professions have relied on subjective opinions derived from magazine articles written by “experts” in the field. However, who is to say that what are being written are truly industry best practices? In this assignment, you will be tasked with creating a mini-research proposal that could be used as a springboard for conducting actual scholarly research in the future. Listed below are several topics that can be used for this assignment, but you are free to select your own as long as your topic can be justified as important to fire and emergency services as a whole. This assignment, however, is not about whether or not volunteer firefighters are better than career firefighters or whether smooth bore nozzles are better than combination nozzles. Choose a topic with a broader perspective. Optional Topics Change and fire and emergency services organizational culture Diversity in fire and emergency services Leadership in fire and emergency services Recruitment, retention, and incentives for volunteers In 1,400–1,750 words, develop a quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods research design that includes the following sections: Introduction Brief statement of the problem including: Existing literature about the problem Deficiencies in the literature Relevance of the study Purpose of the study Research questions (and/or hypotheses) Procedures Data collection procedures Data analysis procedures Validating the findings Ethical concerns and how they will be addressed Conclusion