Definition
The
goal of a research proposal is to present and justify the need to study a
research problem and to present the practical ways in which the proposed study
should be conducted. The design elements and procedures for conducting the
research are governed by standards within the predominant discipline in which
the problem resides, so guidelines for research proposals are more exacting and
less formal than a general project proposal. Research proposals contain
extensive literature reviews. They must provide persuasive evidence that a need
exists for the proposed study. In addition to providing a rationale, a proposal
describes detailed methodology for conducting the research consistent with
requirements of the professional or academic field and a statement on
anticipated outcomes and/or benefits derived from the study's completion.
Krathwohl,
David R. How to Prepare a Dissertation Proposal: Suggestions for Students in
Education and the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse
University Press, 2005.
How
to Approach Writing a Research Proposal
Your
professor may assign the task of writing a research proposal for the following
reasons:
- Develop your skills in thinking
about and designing a comprehensive research study;
- Learn how to conduct a
comprehensive review of the literature to ensure a research problem has
not already been answered [or you may determine the problem has been
answered ineffectively] and, in so doing, become better at locating
scholarship related to your topic;
- Improve your general research
and writing skills;
- Practice identifying the
logical steps that must be taken to accomplish one's research goals;
- Critically review, examine, and
consider the use of different methods for gathering and analyzing data
related to the research problem; and,
- Nurture a sense of
inquisitiveness within yourself and to help see yourself as an active
participant in the process of doing scholarly research.
A
proposal should contain all the key elements involved in designing a completed
research study, with sufficient information that allows readers to assess the
validity and usefulness of your proposed study. The only elements missing from
a research proposal are the findings of the study and your analysis of those
results. Finally, an effective proposal is judged on the quality of your
writing and, therefore, it is important that your writing is coherent, clear,
and compelling.
Regardless
of the research problem you are investigating and the methodology you choose,
all research proposals must address the following questions:
- What do you plan to accomplish? Be clear and succinct in defining the research problem
and what it is you are proposing to research.
- Why do you want to do it? In addition to detailing your research design, you also
must conduct a thorough review of the literature and provide convincing
evidence that it is a topic worthy of study. Be sure to answer the
"So What?" question.
- How are you going to do it? Be sure that what you propose is doable. If you're
having trouble formulating a research problem to propose investigating, go here.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Failure to be concise; being "all over the
map" without a clear sense of purpose.
- Failure to cite landmark works in your literature
review.
- Failure to delimit the contextual boundaries of your
research [e.g., time, place, people, etc.].
- Failure to develop a coherent and persuasive argument
for the proposed research.
- Failure to stay focused on the research problem; going
off on unrelated tangents.
- Sloppy or imprecise writing, or poor grammar.
- Too much detail on minor issues, but not enough detail
on major issues.
Procter,
Margaret. The Academic Proposal. The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre.
University of Toronto; Sanford, Keith. Information for Students: Writing a Research
Proposal. Baylor University; Wong, Paul T.
P. How to Write a Research Proposal. International Network on Personal Meaning. Trinity Western
University; Writing Academic Proposals: Conferences,
Articles, and Books. The Writing Lab and The OWL.
Purdue University; Writing a Research Proposal. University Library. University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign.
Structure
and Writing Style
Beginning the Proposal Process
As
with writing a regular academic paper, research proposals are generally
organized the same way throughout most social science disciplines. Proposals
vary between ten and twenty-five pages in length. However, before you begin,
read the assignment carefully and, if anything seems unclear, ask your
professor whether there are any specific requirements for organizing and
writing the proposal.
A
good place to begin is to ask yourself a series of questions:
- What do I want to study?
- Why is the topic important?
- How is it significant within
the subject areas covered in my class?
- What problems will it help
solve?
- How does it build upon [and
hopefully go beyond] research already conducted on the topic?
- What exactly should I plan to
do, and can I get it done in the time available?
In
general, a compelling research proposal should document your knowledge of the
topic and demonstrate your enthusiasm for conducting the study. Approach it
with the intention of leaving your readers feeling like--"Wow, that's an
exciting idea and I can’t wait to see how it turns out!"
In
general your proposal should include the following sections:
I. Introduction
In
the real world of higher education, a research proposal is most often written
by scholars seeking grant funding for a research project or it's the first step
in getting approval to write a doctoral dissertation. Even if this is just a
course assignment, treat your introduction as the initial pitch of an idea or a
thorough examination of the significance of a research problem. After reading
the introduction, your readers should not only have an understanding of what
you want to do, but they should also be able to gain a sense of your passion
for the topic and be excited about the study's possible outcomes. Note that
most proposals do not include an abstract [summary] before the introduction.
Think
about your introduction as a narrative written in one to three paragraphs that
succinctly answers the following four questions:
- What is the central research
problem?
- What is the topic of study
related to that problem?
- What methods should be used to
analyze the research problem?
- Why is this important research,
what is its significance, and why should someone reading the proposal care
about the outcomes of the proposed study?
II. Background and Significance
This
section can be melded into your introduction or you can create a separate
section to help with the organization and narrative flow of your proposal. This
is where you explain the context of your proposal and describe in detail why
it's important. Approach writing this section with the thought that you can’t
assume your readers will know as much about the research problem as you do.
Note that this section is not an essay going over everything you have learned
about the topic; instead, you must choose what is relevant to help explain the
goals for your study.
To
that end, while there are no hard and fast rules, you should attempt to address
some or all of the following key points:
- State the research problem and
give a more detailed explanation about the purpose of the study than what
you stated in the introduction. This is particularly important if the
problem is complex or multifaceted.
- Present the rationale of your
proposed study and clearly indicate why it is worth doing. Answer the
"So What? question [i.e., why should anyone care].
- Describe the major issues or
problems to be addressed by your research. Be sure to note how your
proposed study builds on previous assumptions about the research problem.
- Explain how you plan to go
about conducting your research. Clearly identify the key sources you
intend to use and explain how they will contribute to your analysis of the
topic.
- Set the boundaries of your
proposed research in order to provide a clear focus. Where appropriate,
state not only what you will study, but what is excluded from the study.
- If necessary, provide
definitions of key concepts or terms.
III. Literature Review
Connected to the background and significance of your study is a
section of your proposal devoted to a more deliberate review and synthesis of
prior studies related to the research problem under investigation. The purpose here is to place your project
within the larger whole of what is currently being explored, while
demonstrating to your readers that your work is original and innovative. Think
about what questions other researchers have asked, what methods they have used,
and what is your understanding of their findings and, where stated, their
recommendations. Do not be afraid to challenge the conclusions of prior
research. Assess what you believe is missing and state how previous research
has failed to adequately examine the issue that your study addresses. For more
information on writing literature reviews,
GO HERE.
GO HERE.
Since a literature review is information dense, it is crucial that
this section is intelligently structured to enable a reader to grasp the key
arguments underpinning your study in relation to that of other researchers. A
good strategy is to break the literature into "conceptual categories"
[themes] rather than systematically describing groups of materials one at a
time. Note that conceptual categories generally reveal themselves after you
have read most of the pertinent literature on your topic so adding new
categories is an on-going process of discovery as you read more studies. How do
you know you've covered the key conceptual categories underlying the research
literature? Generally, you can have confidence that all of the significant
conceptual categories have been identified if you start to see repetition in
the conclusions or recommendations that are being made.
To help frame your proposal's literature review, here are the
"five C’s" of writing a literature review:
- Cite, so as to keep the primary focus on the
literature pertinent to your research problem.
- Compare the various arguments, theories,
methodologies, and findings expressed in the literature: what do the
authors agree on? Who applies similar approaches to analyzing the research
problem?
- Contrast the various arguments, themes,
methodologies, approaches, and controversies expressed in the literature:
what are the major areas of disagreement, controversy, or debate?
- Critique the literature: Which arguments are more
persuasive, and why? Which approaches, findings, methodologies seem most
reliable, valid, or appropriate, and why? Pay attention to the verbs you
use to describe what an author says/does [e.g., asserts, demonstrates,
argues, etc.].
- Connect the literature to your own area of research and investigation: how does your own work draw upon, depart from, synthesize, or add a new perspective to what has been said in the literature?
IV. Research Design and Methods
This
section must be well-written and logically organized because you are not
actually doing the research, yet, your reader has to have confidence that it is
worth pursuing. The reader will never have a study
outcome from which to evaluate whether your methodological choices were the
correct ones. Thus, the objective here is to convince the reader that your
overall research design and methods of analysis will correctly address the
problem and that the methods will provide the means to effectively interpret
the potential results. Your design and methods should be unmistakably tied to
the specific aims of your study.
Describe
the overall research design by building upon and drawing examples from your
review of the literature. Consider not only methods that other researchers have
used but methods of data gathering that have not been used but perhaps could
be. Be specific about the methodological approaches you plan to undertake to
obtain information, the techniques you would use to analyze the data, and the
tests of external validity to which you commit yourself [i.e., the
trustworthiness by which you can generalize from your study to other people,
places, events, and/or periods of time].
When
describing the methods you will use, be sure to cover the following:
- Specify the research operations
you will undertake and the way you will interpret the results of these
operations in relation to the research problem. Don't just describe what
you intend to achieve from applying the methods you choose, but state how
you will spend your time while applying these methods [e.g., coding text
from interviews to find statements about the need to change school
curriculum; running a regression to determine if there is a relationship
between campaign advertising on social media sites and election outcomes
in Europe].
- Keep in mind that a methodology
is not just a list of tasks; it is an argument as to why these tasks add
up to the best way to investigate the research problem. This is an
important point because the mere listing of tasks to be performed does not
demonstrate that, collectively, they effectively address the research
problem. Be sure you explain this.
- Anticipate and acknowledge any potential barriers and pitfalls in carrying out your research design and explain how you plan to address them. No method is perfect so you need to describe where you believe challenges may exist in obtaining data or accessing information. It's always better to acknowledge this than to have it brought up by your reader.
V. Preliminary Suppositions and Implications
Just
because you don't have to actually conduct the study and analyze the results,
it doesn't mean you can skip talking about the analytical process and potential
implications. The purpose of this section is to
argue how and in what ways you believe your research will refine, revise, or
extend existing knowledge in the subject area under investigation. Depending on
the aims and objectives of your study, describe how the anticipated results
will impact future scholarly research, theory, practice, forms of
interventions, or policymaking. Note that such discussions may have either
substantive [a potential new policy], theoretical [a potential new
understanding], or methodological [a potential new way of analyzing]
significance.
When thinking about the potential implications of your study, ask the following questions:
When thinking about the potential implications of your study, ask the following questions:
- What might the results mean in
regards to the theoretical framework that underpins the study?
- What suggestions for subsequent
research could arise from the potential outcomes of the study?
- What will the results mean to
practitioners in the natural settings of their workplace?
- Will the results influence
programs, methods, and/or forms of intervention?
- How might the results
contribute to the solution of social, economic, or other types of
problems?
- Will the results influence
policy decisions?
- In what way do individuals or
groups benefit should your study be pursued?
- What will be improved or
changed as a result of the proposed research?
- How will the results of the
study be implemented, and what innovations will come about?
NOTE: This section should not
delve into idle speculation, opinion, or be formulated on the basis of unclear
evidence. The purpose is to reflect upon gaps or understudied areas of the
current literature and describe how your proposed research contributes to a new
understanding of the research problem should the study be implemented as
designed.
VI. Conclusion
The
conclusion reiterates the importance or significance of your proposal and
provides a brief summary of the entire study.
This section should be only one or two paragraphs long, emphasizing why the
research problem is worth investigating, why your research study is unique, and
how it should advance existing knowledge.
Someone
reading this section should come away with an understanding of:
- Why the study should be done,
- The specific purpose of the
study and the research questions it attempts to answer,
- The decision to why the
research design and methods used where chosen over other options,
- The potential implications
emerging from your proposed study of the research problem, and
- A sense of how your study fits within the broader scholarship about the research problem.
VII. Citations
As
with any scholarly research paper, you must cite the sources you used in
composing your proposal. In a standard research proposal, this section can take
two forms, so consult with your professor about which one is preferred.
- References -- lists only the literature that you actually used or
cited in your proposal.
- Bibliography -- lists everything you used or cited in your proposal,
with additional citations to any key sources relevant to understanding the
research problem.
In
either case, this section should testify to the fact that you did enough
preparatory work to make sure the project will complement and not duplicate the
efforts of other researchers. Start a new page and use the heading
"References" or "Bibliography" centered at the top of the
page. Cited works should always use a standard format that follows the writing style
advised by the discipline of your course [i.e., education=APA; history=Chicago,
etc] or that is preferred by your professor. This section normally does not
count towards the total page length of your research proposal.
Source: http://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/researchproposal
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