Few if any Masters students will leave their studies without having to write a research proposal for their research or minor thesis.
To write an excellent research proposal, it's best to start by thinking about the role of the proposal. The document is intended to persuade the reader that your research is worthwhile doing. In working life, this may translate into persuading a funding body or your boss to support your work. In life at university, it might mean the difference between receiving a high distinction or a credit or a grant or scholarship.
A good research proposal will have some or all of the following elements:
- A persuasive piece of writing which leaves the reader in no doubt as to the intent of and need for your research (Key sections: The significance of the problem and The literature review)
- A demonstration that the research proposed is do-able. While it would be impractical to solve world water shortages, you might be able to research a technology which will enable the saving of water under particular conditions in a particular location. (Key sections: The methodology and The problem or sub problems)
- Critical exploration of the current and key literature surrounding your topic. Critical is the most important word here. Simply providing accounts of what so-and-so said or found will not convince the reader of the need for research or the approach you are deciding to take. You must say why a finding or study was useful and examine its weaknesses, limitations and how it will be of use to your writing. (Key section: The literature review)
Finally, 'all roads must lead to your research'. This means that a research proposal must at its core, convince the reader of the need for your research.
Writing the Research Proposal is a useful read. Although written for students of Engineering Research Practice and Engineering Research Methods, it has some handy links and approaches for all research writing. A word of caution: check with your course coordinator about the headings they would like you to use. The approach suggested in this particular online resource has been taken from Leedy and Ormond (2005).
Best of luck with writing your persuasive and winning proposal.
Liz Horrocks, Andrea Duff and Helen Johnston
2 comments:
Science and innovation usually move quite slowly and by small incremental increases in knowledge. All projects need to be doable and boring as it might seem, research needs to be undertaken in ‘bite-size’ pieces. Research needs to address a gap in knowledge. The question being asked is developed by studying the existing literature and establishing that the gap exists. A good proposal starts by arguing how the proposed research will complement and extend the existing field of knowledge.
Once the question is clarified the next step is to describe how the proposed research will address the question. The methods that will be used in the research need to be outlined clearly and must include appropriate controls and details of how the research will be evaluated. If you need to use statistics, I strongly recommend that you have a conversation with a statistician before you start.
Background – disposable tools - tools that can help you to envisage your project:
Start with a mind map so you can visualize the context of your proposed work
Sketch some pictures or construct some simple diagrams as a sort of ‘time & motion’ of doing the research
Draw some Diagrams and Tables with imaginary data to see how your results might look when you’ve finished
Judy
Virtually engage with your end-product end-reader.
Writing a research proposal is one of the initial tasks that students undertake when they making their first steps in pursuing their carriers as researchers.
The paper they have to write can be a research proposal for Minor thesis, Muster thesis, or PhD. If you are not a student, but working in an area of research, you still need to write proposals and applications for internal university funds or external ones such as ARC linkage or ARC discovery.
Depending on how good your work is results wether your proposal is successful or not. As we grow as researches our ability and experience in writing good proposals is growing along with us. Believe me, not only students are having difficulties in writing a good research proposal.We academics are having them too.
There is no THE ONE standalone recipe of how to write a good proposal. Each academic does its own way (of course with the published guidance from books, external web pages and university guides), but we all aim to “sell” our research ideas in a best possible way by writing a successful paper in a form of a research proposal or a grant application.
When I start my paper I always follow MY principle – Start from the end. What do I mean by this? I have already discussed this in my earlier published blog article (http://scientistswrite.blogspot.com/)and would like to explore this more.
It is difficult to say exactly what your research outcome would be if you are in an early stage of writing proposal. Although there is always some level of uncertainty to deal with it is very important to raise questions at a very beginning of your writing:
(1) What will be my end-product?Here I ask myself what I would like to see in my paper, what would be an outcome of my proposed research, if it applicable to a “real” situation and if it is a beneficial for the community.
(2) Who will be my end-user? Here I virtually engage myself with the reader (for students it would be a supervisor or lecturer, for academics it would be a grant application assessor).
Also it is important to understand what format is required I examine the end-user’s environment. It could be university programs where students doing their research or institutions from where research grants are coming from.
I believe without those two major points described above it will be difficult to produce a winning research proposal.
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