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Some guides on writing a research proposal

Before you start writing your research proposal, you will need to consider all the other steps in the research cycle.

Once you have written your proposal and it has been accepted, then you will go back to the beginning of the research cycle, starting with your topic, going on to the literature review, etc..

From  http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~gboychuk/psci491/proposal.html

GUIDE TO WRITING A RESEARCH PROPOSAL

"It's too hard!"  Ballplayer to Coach in A League of Their Own.
"It's supposed to be hard...otherwise everyone would be doing it." Coach (played by Tom Hanks).

As senior students in the social sciences, you have begun to develop specialized research skills.  This assignment is intended to allow you to help hone these skills further; however, this requires effort -- it's supposed to be hard.  A key element of the assignment is the research proposal.  Writing a good proposal for a research paper should, if done properly, be the most difficult part of the whole project.  If you get the proposal right, all you have to do after that is execute the research program and determine whether the findings confirm or reject the hypothesis spelled out in the proposal.  That is, the most important thinking needs to be done at the proposal stage.  The greatest returns to investment of your time is likely to be at the proposal stage.

CHOOSING A TOPIC:  Independent research (where you choose the topic) is more challenging than being assigned a given topic; however, it should also be more rewarding.  Choosing a topic that is interesting to you but also of more general interest as well as "do-able" is a key part of the overall assignment.  As noted, the latitude for choice is wide so long as the question involves health care, has relevance to the Canadian context, and takes a political science approach.  (If uncertain as to whether a topic meets these criteria, students should discuss the topic with the instructor.)  Suggested topics are cross-national comparisons of health care, public opinion and health care issues, federalism and health care, gender issues and health care, the impact of international agreements such as NAFTA on the provision of health care, health care and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  Probably the best sources for a topic if you haven't yet thought of one are the two reports (Romanow and Kirby) which are the focus of readings for the course.  Browse the assigned course readings (you have to look at them sometime anyway!) and look for an issue that captures your interest.  If you are having difficulty choosing a topic, please come and see me; however, be prepared for my first question which will be whether you have looked at the course readings to find one!

THE RESEARCH PROPOSAL -- WHAT IS IT?

A research proposal is a statement that is intended to convince your professor, thesis supervisor, granting agency, etc. that you have an interesting and significant question to research and that there is some reasonable guarantee that you will be able to complete the research required to answer the question.  (For example, imagine the reaction if you contracted with a government department to do research and came back later and said, "Gee...I was sure that the data required to answer my question would be available but it's not.  Sorry."  You would be very lucky to get paid and you could be sure that you wouldn't be working for them again!)

A research proposal is not simply a statement of interest in a specific topic area.  It should indicate that you have identified the important questions in that topic area, thought about the answers one might expect to find to those questions, considered how to go about answering those questions, and have done some preliminary work in determining whether the information needed to answer the questions is actually available.  This is virtually impossible to do without doing some background reading and initial research.  For this assignment, the most valuable background sources are likely to be the Kirby and Romanow commission reports as well as the 40 research papers commissioned for the Romanow commission.  (All of this material is available on-line and should be the starting point to look for material on any given question related to health care in Canada.  Another easy place to check is the rest of the course material.  If you do not find material on your topic, let me know.)

Elements of a Research Proposal

A research proposal should have five components.  Each component is key in convincing the intended audience that your question is important, that you have a plan for how you are going to answer it, and that the project is "do-able."

1. The Question.  What is the question that you intend to answer.  The question needs to be framed such that is sufficiently narrow that you can come up with a hypothesis (a suspected answer) and a research strategy but also sufficiently broad that you can convince others that it is a question that is significant.

2. The Hypothesis.  What do you expect that the answer will be?  Remember, it is crucial in the social sciences that your hypothesis is testable and falsifiable.  That is, it must be possible to imagine that the empirical evidence could potentially demonstrate the hypothesis to be wrong.  (Otherwise your argument is tautological -- self-evidently true.)  Remember, it is better have a "brittle" hypothesis (one that is carefully specified in detail so that there is the possibility that it may empirically turn out to be wrong) and be proven wrong than to have a tautological hypothesis (that can't be proven wrong) and have the evidence confirm your argument.  In a tautological argument, the evidence always supports the hypothesis.

3. The Statement of Significance.  The most infuriating but most common question researchers face is "So what?"  You demonstrate something and then someone comes along and asks why they should care!  It is important that you think in advance about the significance of the question you are asking.  What are the implications if you are right?  What if you are wrong?  Will anyone else care and why should they?

4. The Research Strategy.  The research proposal needs to outline how you intend to answer the question and test your hypothesis.  That is, when you are doing "research," what is it that you will be doing?  Analysing online health expenditure data from the Canadian Institute of Health Information?  Looking up public opinion polls online to examine what Canadians think about two-tier health care?  Combing through an online newspaper database to see how the provincial premiers reacted the the release of the Romanow commission?  Looking for books on the historical development of the health care system in Canada or in some other country?  A common mistake in research proposals is to carefully frame the question and then simply say, "I'll answer this question by doing research."  The skeptical reader will be looking closely to see if you know how you are going to answer the question so that they can judge whether it seems likely that you will be able to answer the question.

It is crucial to clearly specify the boundaries of  your research including geographical focus (which country, countries or provinces are you looking at) as well as the time period -- is your research focusing on a single point in time or a period of time.  For both questions, you need to provide a justification for the geographical focus and chosen time period -- why do they make sense given your specific question and hypothesis.  Many questions require taking a comparative approach -- determining why something happened in one case and not another.  Comparisons can be across geographical units but also across time.

5. Data/Literature Survey and Bibliography.  The purpose of the data/literature survey and bibliography is to convince the reader that that proposal has not simply been written off the top of your head.  That is, the proposal should demonstrate that your assessment of the significance of the question and your ability to complete the research required to answer the question is based on an initial (but serious!) examination of preliminary sources.  (In our case, I would count the following as critical: the Romanow commission report and commissioned papers, the Kirby committee report, and the Report of the National Forum on Health.)

Once you have outlined how you will answer the question, the proposal should convince the audience that you have determined in advance that the research project can actually be completed.  The danger at this stage is that you've outlined the question, thought about how to test the hypothesis, but then find out that the data you need do not exist or are not available.  The research proposal stage requires that you have at least thought about where you will get the data and made some initial efforts to determine if it is likely to be there.  (Of course, this is more crucial to certain types of research projects than others.)

The bibliography is to show the reader the materials that you've looked at to that point and the materials that you will look at in the future.  (This distinction should be clear to the reader!)  It is intended to convince the reader that you've done enough basic background research to be certain that this is a question of significance.  (The easiest way to assert that a question is of significance is to identify an authoritative source as saying that it is an important question or drawing that inference from something they have said.  For example, the Kirby report outlines how important it is to look at health care in other countries and one could cite this in making a case for why it is important to compare the health care system of Canada with that of, say, Lichtenstein.)

Drafting the Research Proposal

Concision is key!  If you cannot clearly spell out your question, hypothesis and statement of significance each in a couple of sentences, the skeptical reader will suspect that you are not clear on what they are.  A general perception is that the more you think about something, the lengthier and verbose your writing should be. More often, the opposite is the case.  If you have thought carefully about each of these elements, you should be able to spell them out in very few words -- clearly, simply and straightforwardly.  Most proposals at the professional level (even for very large contracts and grants) are limited to a few pages at most.  Why?  Grantees, contractors, and thesis supervisors recognize that clearly thinking the project through should allow the proposal writer to strip away all of the extraneous material and outline the key elements of the project concisely.  (Of course, the bibliography might take up quite a bit of space -- but it doesn't count!)  You should be able to do a strong proposal for a project the length of this assignment in one page (single-spaced) and certainly not more than two pages.

EXAMPLE PROPOSAL

MS-Word Format
HTML

HOW TO START...

Answer each of the following questions in 25 words or less:

1. The Question.  What is the question that you intend to answer?

2. The Hypothesis.  What do you expect that the answer will be?

3. The Statement of Significance.  Why should anyone care?

4. The Research Strategy.

• What evidence will be required to answer the question (including geographic focus and time period)?  
• What will the evidence look like if your hypothesis is right?  
• What will the evidence look like if your hypothesis is wrong?

5. Data/Literature Survey and Bibliography.

• Where will you get your evidence and is it actually available?
• Have other people written on this question and, if so, what have they said?

From  http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Courses/P096/WritingResearchProposal.html

Structure of a research proposal

1. Abstract - Between 50 and 150 word summary of the proposal. Best written after finishing the other sections. It should briefly but clearly state the problem, the context of the problem, the significance of the problem, the broad methods to be used, the form of the results, and where these results might lead in future.

2. Summary of Research - About 250-400 words that flesh out the abstract in more detail. Probably most important section.

3. Background - About 300-500 (but can be a bit longer in special cases) words on the main related findings by others, with a review of the major related literature. How the problem came to have significance. Other areas in the discipline the problem links to. Why it hasn't been addressed by others. Why you are suited to do the research. I tend to put this section last now, but it can come at the beginning if you want.

4. Aims and Objectives
Aims - What you want to find out - e.g. why you are actually doing the research.
Objectives - Specific things you will actually achieve which take you some way towards the aim. The relationship between the objective and aim if necessary.
Example:
Aim. To understand better how people manage local economic resources.
Objective. I will record information on sources and use of income, access and use of credit and the ways these are used.

5. The Research Question(s) - In the light of the Aims and Objectives, what specific research questions are you asking. These are the bridge between Aims and Objectives and the Methods and Materials you plan to use. E.g.

How do social factors influence economic management?
How does conservation impact local economic activities?
What is the impact of external governmental and private bodies on local economic organisation?

6. Methods and Materials - Specify how will you specifically carry out the research. What specific methods will you use (standard ethnographic methods will not cut it!). E.g. interviews, structured or semi-structured. Participant observation and a specification of what this means in this research, e.g. just hanging out or active role in specific activities.

Specify what kinds of things you will need in the way of equipment, special props, access to people, arrangements to gain cooperation (are you going to pay, gifts, your good looks etc.). What will the community require in exchange for participation, if anything.

Specify how you will analyze the material once collected, e.g. interpretive, statistics, qualitative methods, community consensus analysis etc. Be specific.

The idea of this section is to be brief but specific about what and how you are going to carry out the research. Typically 250-500 words long, sometimes adding appendices.

7. Deliverables - A list of what will be available to other researchers and possibly public bodies. E.g. what research materials will yoy make available to others. This can simply be a dissertation or a paper or book, or include dissemination of forms of the field data.

8 Significance - What is the significance of the research? How does it connect to other research. What new research does it make possible. Does i have policy implications. Can it be applied to other disciplines.

9 Bibliography - No more than one page of major references relating to the research. Not all need be cited in the proposal, but this is good form.

From  http://www.users.drew.edu/~sjamieso/research_proposal.html

Writing Research Proposals

The Role of the Research Proposal in a Research Project

The research proposal can serve many useful functions.  The most important is that it helps you to think out the research project you are about to undertake and predict any difficulties that might arise.  For those who aren't quite sure what their focus will be, the research proposal can be a space to explore options -- perhaps with one proposal for each potential topic (which can then be more easily compared and evaluated than when they are still just ideas in one's head).  Research proposals can be effective starting places to discuss projects with your professors, too.  A professor who is initially skeptical about a project may be able to imagine it more easily after reading a well written research proposal (this doesn't mean he or she will approve the topic, especially if there are significant potential difficulties that you haven't considered).

Uses of Research Proposals Once the Research has Begun

Once you have begun your research project, a research proposal can help you to remain on track -- and can also remind you why you started this project in the first place!  Researchers very often begin to lose heart about two thirds of the way into a project when their research hits a snag or when they are having problems developing a thesis, organizing the ideas, or actually starting to write.  Rereading the initial research proposal, especially "Significance" can reenergize the project or help the researcher to refocus in an effective manner.  [See drafting and revising the research paper for more on this aspect of the project.]

NOTE:  Each discipline and granting agency has its own guidelines for writing research proposals, so if you have been assigned to write one for a class other than a composition class, please consult your professor.

  Sample organization of a non-discipline-specific research proposal

  C. Sandra Jamieson, Drew Univeristy, Feb. 1999.

From  http://www2.hawaii.edu/~matt/proposal.html

Guidelines on writing a research proposal

by Matthew McGranaghan

This is a work in progress, intended to organize my thoughts on the process of formulating a proposal. If you have any thoughts on the content, or even the notion of making this available to students, please share them with me.

Introduction

This is a guide to writing M.A. research proposals. The same principles apply to dissertation proposals and to proposals to most funding agencies. It includes a model outline, but advisor, committee and funding agency expectations vary and your proposal will be a variation on this basic theme. Use these guidelines as a point of departure for discussions with your advisor. They may serve as a straw-man against which to build your understanding of both your project and of proposal writing.

Proposal Writing

Proposal writing is important to your pursuit of a graduate degree. The proposal is, in effect, an intellectual scholastic (not legal) contract between you and your committee. It specifies what you will do, how you will do it, and how you will interpret the results. In specifying what will be done it also gives criteria for determining whether it is done. In approving the proposal, your committee gives their best judgment that the approach to the research is reasonable and likely to yield the anticipated results. They are implicitly agreeing that they will accept the result as adequate for the purpose of granting a degree. (Of course you will have to write the thesis in acceptable form, and you probably will discover things in the course of your research that were not anticipated but which should be addressed in your thesis, but the minimum core intellectual contribution of your thesis will be set by the proposal.) Both parties benefit from an agreed upon plan.

The objective in writing a proposal is to describe what you will do, why it should be done, how you will do it and what you expect will result. Being clear about these things from the beginning will help you complete your thesis in a timely fashion. A vague, weak or fuzzy proposal can lead to a long, painful, and often unsuccessful thesis writing exercise. A clean, well thought-out, proposal forms the backbone for the thesis itself. The structures are identical and through the miracle of word-processing, your proposal will probably become your thesis.

A good thesis proposal hinges on a good idea. Once you have a good idea, you can draft the proposal in an evening. Getting a good idea hinges on familiarity with the topic. This assumes a longer preparatory period of reading, observation, discussion, and incubation. Read everything that you can in your area of interest. Figure out what are the important and missing parts of our understanding. Figure out how to build/discover those pieces. Live and breath the topic. Talk about it with anyone who is interested. Then just write the important parts as the proposal. Filling in the things that we do not know and that will help us know more: that is what research is all about.

Proposals help you estimate the size of a project. Don't make the project too big. The MA program statement says that a thesis is equivalent to a published paper in scope. That means about 60 double spaced pages with figures, tables and bibliography. Your proposal will be shorter, perhaps five pages and certainly no more than fifteen pages. (For perspective, the NSF limits the length of proposal narratives to 15 pages, even when the request might be for multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is the merit of the proposal which counts, not the weight.) Shoot for five pithy pages that indicate to a relatively well-informed audience that you know the topic and how its logic hangs together, rather than fifteen or twenty pages that indicate that you have read a lot of things but not yet boiled it down to a set of prioritized linked questions.

Different Theses, Similar Proposals

This guide includes an outline that looks like a "fill-in the blanks guide" and, while in the abstract all proposals are similar, each proposal will have its own particular variation on the basic theme. Each research project is different and a needs a specifically tailored proposal to bring it into focus. Different advisors and advisory committees have different expectations and you should find out what these are as early as possible; ask your advisor for advice on this. Further, different types of thesis require slightly different proposals. What style of work is published in your sub-discipline?

Characterizing theses is difficult. Some thesis are "straight science". Some are essentially opinion pieces. Some are policy oriented. In the end, they may well all be interpretations of observations, and differentiated by the rules that constrain the interpretation. (Different advisors will have different preferences about the rules, the meta-discourse, in which we all work.)

In the abstract all proposals are very similar. They need to show a reasonably informed reader why a particular topic is important to address and how you will do it. To that end, a proposal needs to show how your work fits into what is already known about the topic and what new contribution your work will make. Specify the question that your research will answer, establish why it is a significant question, show how you are going to answer the question, and indicate what you expect we will learn. The proposal should situate the work in the literature, it should show why this is an (if not the most) important question to answer in the field, and convince your committee (the skeptical readers that they are) that your approach will in fact result in an answer to the question.

Theses which address research questions that can be answered by making plan-able observations (and hypothesis testing) are preferred and perhaps the easiest to write. Because they address well-bounded topics, they can be very tight, but they do require more planning on the front end. Theses which are largely based on synthesis of observations, rumination, speculation, and opinion formation are harder to write, and usually not as convincing, often because they address questions which are not well-bounded and essentially unanswerable. (The old saw about research in the social sciences is: "some do and some don't". Try to to avoid such insight-less findings.) One problem with this type of project is that it is often impossible to tell when you are "done". Another problem is that the nature of argument for a position rather than the reasoned rejection of alternatives to it encourages shepherding a favored notion rather than converging more directly toward a truth. (A good proposal is a boon here, too.)

Literature review-based theses involve collection of information from the literature, distillation of it, and coming up with new insight on an issue. One problem with this type of research is that you might find the perfect succinct answer to your question on the night before (or after) you turn in the final draft --- in someone else's work. This certainly can knock the wind out of your sails. (But note that even a straight-ahead science thesis can have the problem of late in the game discovering that the work you have done or are doing has already been done, this is where familiarity with the relevant literature by both yourself and your committee members is important.)

A Couple of Models for Proposals

A Two Page (Preliminary Proposal) Model

Here is a model for a very brief (maybe five paragraph) proposal that you might use to interest faculty in sitting on your committee. People who are not yet hooked may especially appreciate its brevity.

In the first paragraph, the first sentence identifies the general topic area. The second sentence gives the research question, and the third sentence establishes its significance.

The next couple of paragraphs gives the larger historical perspective on the topic. Essentially list the major schools of thought on the topic and very briefly review the literature in the area with its major findings. Who has written on the topic and what have they found? Allocate about a sentence per important person or finding. Include any preliminary findings you have, and indicate what open questions are left. Restate your question in this context, showing how it fits into this larger picture.

The next paragraph describes your methodology. It tells how will you approach the question, what you will need to do it.

The final paragraph outlines your expected results, how you will interpret them, and how they will fit into the our larger understanding i.e., 'the literature'.

The (Longer) Standard Model

The two outlines below are intended to show both what are the standard parts of a proposal and of a science paper. Notice that the only real difference is that you change "expected results" to "results" in the paper, and usually leave the budget out, of the paper.

A Basic Proposal Outline:

Introduction
  Topic area 
  Research question 
  Significance to knowledge
Literature review
  Previous research
   others & yours 
  Interlocking findings and Unanswered questions
  Your preliminary work on the topic
  The remaining questions and inter-locking logic
  Reprise of your research question(s) in this context
Methodology
  Approach 
  Data needs
  Analytic techniques
  Plan for interpreting results
Expected results
Budget
Bibliography (or References) 

The Basic Thesis Outline

Introduction
  Topic area 
  Research question  (finding?)
  Significance to knowledge
Literature review
  Previous research
   others & yours 
  Interlocking findings and Unanswered questions
  Your preliminary work on the topic
  The remaining questions and inter-locking logic
  Reprise of your research question(s) in this context
Methodology
  Approach 
  Data needs
  Analytic techniques
  Plan for interpreting results
Results
Discussion and Conclusions
Bibliography 

Another outline (maybe from Gary Fuller?).

Introduction
  Topic area 
  Research Question and its significance to knowledge
Literature review
  Previous research
  Your preliminary work on the topic
  The remaining questions and their inter-locking logic
  Reprise of your resulting question in this context
Methodology
  Approach to answering the question
  Data needs
  Analytic techniques
  Plan for interpreting results
Budget
Expected results
Bibliography / References 

Each of these outlines is very similar. You get the idea of what the proposal does for you and organizing your thoughts and approach. The section below goes into slightly more (boring) detail on what each of the points in the outline is and does.

The Sections of the Proposal

The Introduction

Topic Area

A good title will clue the reader into the topic but it can not tell the whole story. follow the title with a short The introduction provides a brief overview that tells a fairly well informed but perhaps non-specialist reader what the proposal is about. It might be as short as a single page, but it should be very clearly written, and it should let one assess whether the research is relevant to their own. With luck it will hook the reader's interest.

What is your proposal about? Briefly describe the general topic and quickly come to the question that your research will address. Show why this is important to answer.

Question

Once the topic is established, come right to the point. What are you going to do? What specific issue or question will your work address? What will we learn from your work?

Significance

Why is this work important? What are the implications of doing it? How does it link to other knowledge? How does it stand to inform policy making? This should show how this project is significant to our body of knowledge. Why is it important to our understanding of the world? It should establish why I would want to read on. It should also tell me why I would want to fund the project.

Literature Review

State of our knowledge

The purpose of the literature review is to situate your research in the context of what is already known about a topic. It need not be exhaustive, it needs to show how your work will benefit the whole. It should provide the theoretical basis for your work, show what has been done in the area by others, and set the stage for your work.

In a literature review you should give the reader enough ties to the literature that they feel confident that you have found, read, and assimilated the literature in the field. It should probably move from the more general to the more focused studies, but need not be exhaustive, only relevant.

Outstanding questions

This is where you present the holes in the knowledge that need to be plugged and by so doing, situate your work. It is the place where you establish that your work will fit in and be significant to the discipline. This can be made easier if there is literature that comes out and says "Hey, this is a topic that needs to be treated! What is the answer to this question?" and you will sometimes see this type of piece in the literature. Perhaps there is a reason to read old AAG presidential addresses.

Research Questions in Detail

Your work to date

Tell what you have done so far. It might report preliminary studies that you have conducted to establish the feasibility of your research. It should give a sense that you are in a position to add to the body of knowledge.

Methodology

Overview of approach

This section should make clear to the reader the way that you intend to approach the research question and the techniques and logic that you will use to address it.

Data Collection

This might include the field site description, a description of the instruments you will use, and particularly the data that you anticipate collecting. You may need to comment on site and resource accessibility in the time frame and budget that you have available, to demonstrate feasibility, but the emphasis in this section should be to fully describe specifically what data you will be using in your study. Part of the purpose of doing this is to detect flaws in the plan before they become problems in the research.

Data Analysis

This should explain in some detail how you will manipulate the data that you assembled to get at the information that you will use to answer your question. It will include the statistical or other techniques and the tools that you will use in processing the data. It probably should also include an indication of the range of outcomes that you could reasonably expect from your observations.

Interpretation

In this section you should indicate how the anticipated outcomes will be interpreted to answer the research question. It is extremely beneficial to anticipate the range of outcomes from your analysis, and for each know what it will mean in terms of the answer to your question.

Expected Results

This section should give a good indication of what you expect to get out of the research. It should join the data analysis and possible outcomes to the theory and questions that you have raised. It will be a good place to summarize the significance of the work.

It is often useful from the very beginning of formulating your work to write one page for this section to focus your reasoning as you build the rest of the proposal.

Bibliography

This is the list of the relevant works. Some advisors like exhaustive lists. I think that the Graduate Division specifies that you call it "Bibliography". Others like to see only the literature which you actually site. Most fall in between: there is no reason to site irrelevant literature but it may be useful to keep track of it even if only to say that it was examined and found to be irrelevant.

Use a standard format. Order the references alphabetically, and use "flag" paragraphs as per the University's Guidelines.

Tips and Tricks

Read. Read everything you can find in your area of interest. Read. Read. Read. Take notes, and talk to your advisor about the topic. If your advisor won't talk to you, find another one or rely on 'the net' for intellectual interaction. Email has the advantage of forcing you to get your thoughts into written words that can be refined, edited and improved. It also gets time stamped records of when you submitted what to your advisor and how long it took to get a response.

Write about the topic a lot, and don't be afraid to tear up (delete) passages that just don't work. Often you can re-think and re-type faster than than you can edit your way out of a hopeless mess. The advantage is in the re-thinking.

Very early on, generate the research question, critical observation, interpretations of the possible outcomes, and the expected results. These are the core of the project and will help focus your reading and thinking. Modify them as needed as your understanding increases.

Use some systematic way of recording notes and bibliographic information from the very beginning. The classic approach is a deck of index cards. You can sort, regroup, layout spatial arrangements and work on the beach. Possibly a slight improvement is to use a word-processor file that contains bibliographic reference information and notes, quotes etc. that you take from the source. This can be sorted, searched, diced and sliced in your familiar word-processor. You may even print the index cards from the word-processor if you like the ability to physically re-arrange things.

Even better for some, is to use specialized bibliographic database software. Papyrus, EndNote, and other packages are available for PCs and MacIntoshs. The bib-refer and bibTex software on UNIX computers are also very handy and have the advantage of working with plain ASCII text files (no need to worry about getting at your information when the wordprocessor is several generations along). All of these tools link to various word-processors to make constructing and formating your final bibliography easier, but you won't do that many times anyway. If they help you organize your notes and thinking, that is the benefit.

Another pointer is to keep in mind from the outset that this project is neither the last nor the greatest thing you will do in your life. It is just one step along the way. Get it done and get on with the next one. The length to shoot for is "equivalent to a published paper", Forty pages of double spaced text, plus figures tables, table of contents, references, etc. is probably all you need. In practice, most theses try to do too much and become too long. Cover your topic, but don't confuse it with too many loosely relevant side lines.

This is not complete and needs a little rearranging.

The balance between Introduction and Literature Review needs to be thought out. The reader will want to be able to figure out whether to read the proposal. The literature review should be sufficiently inclusive that the reader can tell where the bounds of knowledge lie. It should also show what has been done and what seem to be accepted approaches in the field and the kinds of results that are being gotten.

The balance may change between the proposal and the thesis. It is common, although not really desirable, for theses to make reference to every slightly related piece of work that can be found. This is not necessary. Refer to the work that actually is linked to your study, don't go too far afield (unless your committee is adamant that you do ;-).

Useful References

Recent National Science Foundations Guidelines for Research Proposals

Strunk and White The Elements of Style

Turabian A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses and Dissertations

Chamberlain "Multiple Working Hypotheses"

Platt "Strong Inference"

Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren How to Read a Book

From  http://www.warnborough.edu/Resources/proposal.htm

WRITING A RESEARCH PROPOSAL

The information below relates specifically to Warnborough University research proposal requirements. It is intended as a guide only. Research proposal requirements at other institutions may differ.

What is a Research Proposal?

A research proposal is a short document (1 to 2 pages) that identifies and outlines the main components of your research. They are:

1. The purpose of your research
2. The intended audience
3. Your role
4. An opening statement or hypothesis
5. Brief description of intended methodology, data, materials
6. Expected outcomes (if any)

The Purpose of Your Research

There are many reasons for doing a research-based programme. Research is, after all, finding out something you don't know. One could write a thesis to review and explain collated factual data. One could also conduct analytical research to study a particular subject in depth. One could discuss, debate and/or argue a certain topic, or come out with a new hypothesis/theory. One the other hand, one could also try persuading others to believe in what s/he is proposing.

You will often find conflicting ideas, biases, and other influences whilst conducting your research. You may even discover things in the course of your research that are contradictory to your personal thoughts, ethics and ideals. These could hinder your research, give rise to doubts, or cause a lack of interest in the work. Quality research demands objectivity, caution in assertion, solid backing from sources/experimental results, and clear rational thinking. You should be prepared for contingencies, to challenge widely-accepted norms/rules in your quest to seek further knowledge.

Your Audience

You will need to identify the audience for your work. Obviously, if you are doing a scientifically-inclined study into the effects of Neon atoms under intense heat, say, your target audience will not likely be Shakespearean thespians. However, your research may also traverse several fields (eg. child psychology research might be of interest not just to psychologists, but also to teachers, doctors and parents). Your target audience determines what style of writing you may use, and/or what theories and experiments to apply.

Your target audience should easily identify with what you are trying to do (whether they agree with it or not). Your research should try and persuade your readers to stand with you on your findings. It should contain adequate information without being unnecessary or boring. The purpose of research is not to rehash information that is easily available but to come up with something new or worthwhile for your audience to think about.

Your Role

Following on from above, the research is (hopefully) your own. You have to display your knowledge and points of view to be taken seriously. First and foremost, you must be extremely familiar with what you are setting out to do (hence the research proposal). When you quote sources and references, use the information to propel your points of view rather than those of the sources.

Opening Statement, Argument or Hypothesis

This is the "Big Bang" - the one that begins it all. Similar to debates, you can use one sentence, statement or question as a jump-off point to a complete body of research. This opener, though, should not be too broad. For example, "Drinking Too Much Coffee is Bad For Health" is too generalised. What is covered in the term 'health'? What is considered 'bad'? Is this from a social, psychological or medical point of view? Does this statement apply to all types of coffee (including decaffeinated coffee)?

Methodology, Materials and Data

This section should outline how you plan to go about doing your research. For example, to find out how many people prefer jogging to walking, would you ask people on the street directly, hand out questionnaires, appeal for volunteers over the Internet, or make up your own figures? (The last option is definitely not recommended!). If you are trying to find out how fast beans germinate under UV light (if at all), how would you go about doing it? What about controlled experiments/samples?

Expected Outcomes

Sometimes, your opener may be a new hypothesis that you are trying to prove. Perhaps you could be working towards a certain expected outcome that you intend to prove. If your research is of this nature, you might wish to include this in your proposal.

So, Why Bother?

Well, a research proposal basically lays out your ideas and intentions in a clear, concise manner. It also acts as a guide throughout your research, and helps keep you on course. Of course, a good research proposal helps in allocating the most appropriate mentor for you.

Is It Set In Stone?

Heavens, no! The idea behind research is exploration, and delving into the unknown. If it is set in stone, we might as well not bother with research. Your proposal does not even have to be perfect. What we look for is your ability to lay out your ideas step-by-step, with clear intentions and objectives. Sometimes, these may be a bit fuzzy but that is why you have a mentor - to help you bash out ideas and whip and pull the proposal, and ultimately, your research work, into shape. It may sound violent, but it is actually a lot of fun.

If you have any questions regarding how to write a research proposal, feel free to e-mail us. We can also put you in touch with potential mentors.

GOOD LUCK!

Adapted excerpt from "So, You Want A PhD?" by J. NG © 1997-9.

From  http://www.learnerassociates.net/dissthes/

Introduction

From  www.i-m-c.org

Preparing a Research Proposal

All Associates will be aware that the project is intended to be action orientated. We are therefore looking not for a conventional piece of academic research, but for a piece of rigorous study that either embodies action or leads to action, to improve the way things are. Associates should therefore be selecting topics which have relevance to their jobs or their organizations, can be accomplished within 21 months, and have a sufficiently tight focus to enable a meaningful project to be completed.

In choosing a topic, or in refining their topics, Associates will need to bear in mind the constraints within which they will be working. Guidance on selecting topics is given not only in the notes of guidance for completing the application form but also in the book entitled The Management of a Student Research Project by Howard and Sharp. This book forms part of the courseware material supplied to all Associates. Below is a summary of some of the key points that need to be borne in mind when selecting a topic.

The proposed title of your thesis should reflect the general nature and content of the topic. It should be as short as possible. Some examples of typical titles are:

• "An examination of total quality management practices by senior executives"
• "Training for change - the impact of organizational change in the XYZ organization"
• "Improving efficiency and performance in marketing organizations"

You will be better able to determine a title if you have thought carefully about the topic. In selecting a topic, ask yourself these questions:

1. What is the main thrust of my job - now and in the coming future?
2. What aspects of my job and experience require substantial further development?
3. What problems, issues, dilemmas need to be sorted out?
4. What are my main personal interests in the job area - now and very much for the future?
5. What positive developments might I derive from sustained project work - for me, my job, my career, my organization?
6. What burning issues, desires, opportunities are around?

Discuss these with a colleague, your boss, or whoever you feel might be able to help you reflect on the questions, then come up with a suitable project topic. The topic must be of direct relevance to you and your job/organization, must be capable of being studied and investigated with the necessary rigour for an IMC programme and must lead to actionable recommendations and conclusions. Remember, it is an action learning research programme combining relevance and rigour - it is not a purely academic programme, nor is it simply a problem-solving exercise.

State the sources of information upon which you will draw in your work and to give evidence of the kinds of research techniques you will use. These can be best thought of as a "plan of work". Your statement in this section should contain:

The aim of the thesis

In a few lines, a description of what you hope to achieve from the project. An example might be:

To determine the factors influencing effective management in the ABC company and to use this in designing and implementing relevant quality management approaches.

Method or approach

A statement of how you intend meeting the aim. This will contain a brief description of the steps or stages that will be involved and the methods/techniques you will use or intend to use in your investigation. What literature sources might you use? Will you be interviewing people, at what level, why? What about questionnaires, observation, company documents, minutes of meetings, corporate records, specific tests? Not all of these will be used in any one thesis, of course.

Indicative references

A short list of some key references to, for example, journals, articles books, reports, your previous work, other people's work, etc. to indicate the nature of the field in which you will be working. We are not looking for a comprehensive bibliography - usually a handful of references will suffice.

Give an indication of the proposed (or likely) content of your thesis. A typical thesis structure (but by no means every structure) would contain the following:

• Introduction
  Containing the background to the thesis, the challenge to be addressed, the aim to be achieved, etc.

   

• Review of the field
  Review of appropriate literature and other sources of general information that might have something important and useful to say about your problem/topic area, a summary of what will come out of this and the implications for your project.

   

• Method
  A statement of the issues explored and the methods/techniques used in exploring them.

   

• Main findings
  What came out of the project/investigation. This may be placed within several chapters, each with a heading that reflects the content.

   

• Conclusion and recommendations
  What action is proposed and/or has been taken, and how, by whom, by when.

   

• Evaluative discussion
  Of learning outcomes from the project, further work needed, what you might have done differently, personal development plans for the coming years.

   

• Bibliography
  A listing of the full references to sources of literature used.

   

• Appendices
  Detailed information that is relevant to the thesis but not essential to your arguments or would "clog up" the text and make for difficult reading.

Please note - we are not asking you to write your thesis/dissertation! We require only headings, sub-headings and brief details of the proposed content. This may, and probably will change as you work through the programme. A statement now, however, will act as a route map and help you marshal your thoughts and information. Further advice, guidance and information on methods and on content will be given on the Start-Up Workshop. NB - Your final thesis proposal is completed six months after the programme has commenced.

And finally - please make sure you have gained the support of your organization and are able to meet the fees payable.

These Notes of Guidance were provided by Dr Roger Bennett.

From  http://www.nrf.ac.za/yenza/research/proposal.htm

From  http://www.ssrc.org/programs/idrf/Application_Instructions.page

Proposals should include the following information:

• An explicit statement of the major hypotheses you will test or questions you will ask.
• Relevance of the research to disciplinary concerns and other fields.
• An explicit description and justification of your research methods.
• Preliminary research already completed or plans for research prior to going to your research site(s).
• Proposed location(s) for research and explanation of why your project requires the stated field research.
• A research schedule, justifying how much time you propose to spend in the field and at each field site.
• A two-page bibliography in addition to the ten-page proposal, listing sources most important to the topic.

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