WRITING RESEARCH PROPOSAL (USC Libraries)
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 this research 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; 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 results 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 succient 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 traditional research
paper, research proposals are generally organized the same way
throughout most social science disciplines. Proposals vary between ten
and twenty 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 the end, your research proposal
should document your knowledge of the topic and highlight 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.
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
sense your passion for the topic and be excited about the study's
possible outcomes.
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, and why should someone reading the proposal care about the outcomes from the 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 flow of your proposal. This is where you explain the
context of your study proposal and outline 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
research problem; 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 deal with some or all of the following:
- State the research problem and give a more detailed explaination 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.
- 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.
- If necessary, provide definitions of key concepts or terms.
III. Literature Review
Connected
to the background and significance of your study is 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. Assess what you
believe is still missing, and state how previous research has failed to
examine the issue that your study addresses.
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.
To help frame your proposal's literature review, here are the "five C’s" of writing a literature review:
- Cite: 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, etc.].
- Connect the literature to your own area of research and investigation: how does your own work draw upon, depart from, or synthesize 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.
As a consequence, the reader will never have a study outcome from which
to evaluate whether your methodological choices were the correct ones.
The objective here is to convince the reader that your overall research
design and methods of analysis will correctly address the research
problem. 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.
Be specific about the methodological approaches you plan to undertake to
gather information, about the techniques you would use to analyze it,
and about 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, or times].
When describing the methods you will use, be sure to cover these issues:
- Specify the research operations you will undertake and the way you will interpret the results of these operations in relation to your 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 changes to school curriculum].
- 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 they add up to the best feasible approach.
- Be sure to anticipate and acknowledge any potential barriers and pitfalls in carrying out your research design and explain how you plan to address them.
V. Preliminary Suppositions and Implications
Just because you don't have to
actually conduct the study and analyze the results, this doesn't mean
that 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 of your study will impact future scholarly research, theory,
practice, forms of interventions, or policy. 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?
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 advances knowledge.
Someone reading this section should come away with an understanding of:
- Why the study was done,
- The specific purpose of the study and the research questions it attempted to answer,
- The research design and methods used,
- 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]. This section normally does not count towards the total length of
your proposal.
Develop a Research Proposal: Writing the Proposal. Office of Library Information Services. Baltimore County Public Schools; Heath, M. Teresa Pereira and Caroline Tynan. “Crafting a Research Proposal.” The Marketing Review 10 (Summer 2010): 147-168; Jones, Mark. “Writing a Research Proposal.” In MasterClass in Geography Education: Transforming Teaching and Learning. Graham Butt, editor. (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), pp. 113-127; 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; Procter, Margaret. The Academic Proposal.
The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of
Toronto; Punch, Keith and Wayne McGowan. "Developing and Writing a
Research Proposal." In From Postgraduate to Social Scientist: A Guide to Key Skills. Nigel Gilbert, ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006), 59-81; 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.
