If you’d like examples to better understand what’s expected for your research proposal, I encourage you to check out these resources.

APA Style Example

The APA Style website has two separate example papers.  You can check an annotated student paper or a plain student paper to better understand APA Style.

Proposal Example

Additionally, I used to teach Communication Research Methods at Appalachian State. I’m attaching one of those graded proposals.
Hank Tucker and Aki Regan were kind enough to let me shine a light on the good, the bad,  and the ugly in their paper. The attached pdf is a copy of their paper and includes the comments I added when grading. If you scroll down to the 24th page, you’ll see their final score in that class, a 98/100, and information on the various notations throughout the document. While it is not being used for this class, this feedback rubric was similar to how their paper was judged and many of the items in the rubric can be used as a checklist for your paper.
If you have any questions about the paper, I’m happy to discuss any questions via email (gmloggins@fhsu.edu), in real-time, or on the blog.
Student Proposal

Page Length:

No, there is no required length for the proposal. However, I would say that Hank and Aki’s eight pages of basic paper content (see pp. 3-11 of the pdf) is a good guideline. If you write a paper that’s only five pages, you’ve probably missed important details that should have been included. If your paper from title page to references runs 15 pages, you’re probably repeating information or stating the obvious way too often.