Developing a Research Proposal: Key Considerations for Master's Degree Students

Module Learning Outcomes Assessed:

1.Critically evaluate the key ethical, political, legal and social issues that need to be considered when carrying out research.

2.Demonstrate a critical understanding of the main philosophical and theoretical approaches to research methods.

3.Construct appropriate research questions or hypotheses.

4.Critically review literature appropriate to their discipline.

5.Critically appraise the main approaches to research design, sampling and analysis appropriate to their discipline.

1.You are expected to use the Coventry University Harvard Referencing Style. For support and advice on this students can contact Centre for Academic Writing (CAW).

2.Please notify your registry course support team and module leader for disability support.

3.Any student requiring an extension or deferral should follow the university process as outlined here.

4.The University cannot take responsibility for any coursework lost or corrupted on disks, laptops or personal computer. Students should therefore regularly back-up any work and are advised to save it on the University system.

5.If there are technical or performance issues that prevent students submitting coursework through the online coursework submission system on the day of a coursework deadline, an appropriate extension to the coursework submission deadline will be agreed. This extension will normally be 24 hours or the next working day if the deadline falls on a Friday or over the weekend period. This will be communicated via your Module Leader.

6.You are encouraged to check the originality of your work by using the draft Turnitin links on your Moodle Web.

7.Collusion between students (where sections of your work are similar to the work submitted by other students in this or previous module cohorts) is taken extremely seriously and will be reported to the academic conduct panel. This applies to both courseworks and exam answers.

8.A marked difference between your writing style, knowledge and skill level demonstrated in class discussion, any test conditions and that demonstrated in a coursework assignment may result in you having to undertake a Viva Voce in order to prove the coursework assignment is entirely your own work.

9.If you make use of the services of a proof reader in your work you must keep your original version and make it available as a demonstration of your written efforts.

10.You must not submit work for assessment that you have already submitted (partially or in full), either for your current course or for another qualification of this university, unless this is specifically provided for in your assignment brief or specific course or module information. Where earlier work by you is citable, ie. it has already been published/submitted, you must reference it clearly. Identical pieces of work submitted concurrently will also be considered to be self-plagiarism.

What is the title for your research?

Why are you undertaking the research?

What will be the gain in knowledge?

In your research proposal, have you provided evidence that you have thought about the area you wish to investigate?

As mentioned above, the title and topic area should be relevant to your

Master’s degree programme; moreover, it is important that your topic is something that interests you, since you will have to concentrate on it for many weeks. You must choose a subject on which you can easily acquire primary or secondary information (documents, interviews, questionnaires, data) and for which there is a body of related academic literature to investigate and synthesise when identifying research questions.

What theoretical and practical issues will you examine?

Based on the above, which are your research questions? Be as clear about these as possible.

You should discuss major authors, key debates in the literature and relevant frameworks. List the reading you have already done and identify the research questions within your chosen topic as best you can. Also, consider how you will decide between different perspectives or bridge the gap between them.

How are you going to address the research questions?

How are you going to acquire and analyse the identified data?

• Are the methods suited to the data?
• Is the approach realistic and achievable?
• Are you comfortable using this research approach?
• What are the limitations of the methodology you use?
• What sources of bias could occur?
• What are the ethical dimensions you need to consider?

What is your hypothesis or research question?

How will this guide the research? State your Objectives.

How will you adjust following any changes in the hypothesis or research question?

Have you thought in depth about the key research question you will address?

It is likely that you will choose a current, real business problem as the focus of your Individual Project. This may be undertaken using an internal or external perspective, with or without access to a company, group of companies or industry.

It is important that you have gone further than just picking a generic topic area to be researched, and that you have decided which aspect of the topic you might investigate in detail. It is important to try to make this process as specific as possible. Narrow questions are easier to investigate successfully; a broad topic may evoke so many conflicting issues that giving an adequate amount of attention to all of them in the time available might be impossible. However, please note that too narrow a topic may mean that the individual project will lack empirical breadth or analytical depth.