More information
PRE comes in both a teaching version intended for use in undergraduate and graduate research methods courses and a professional version that links to the other programs in the Methodologist's Toolchest.
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Peer Review Emulator
Peer Review Emulator (PRE) is an expert system to help prepare research proposals for peer review. In PRE, you begin with an overview of the major components of a research proposal. As each topic is selected, you see successively more detailed screens with the subcomponents of each section. You answer questions about your research and provide brief text summaries of each section on these forms. As you work, the program displays an up-to-date summary of which components you have completed and which remain to be done.
Critiquing Work
PRE uses the information you provide to critique your work, pointing out areas where you don't yet meet common research standards. Unlike methods texts that separate major steps in the research process into separate chapters with little or no connection among them, PRE reminds you of links between components of the research proposal. When decisions in the design or sampling plan influence measurement strategies, the program points those out. This helps avoid inconsistencies among sections.
Creating proposals
PRE combines your answers with your text input to generate a draft of the proposal in its current form. The draft is saved in a text file that you can edit with a word processor to produce a final proposal.