Critically Appraising a Project Proposal: A Guide

Aim and objectives

To critically appraise a project proposal

·To develop a better understanding of what makes a good proposal so that when you write yours, it is good.

·To develop your search strategy and referencing skills,

·To learn more about a topic of your choice.

Task

From the selection on BlackBoard choose a project proposal that you are interested in. Provide a critical reflection of the work. This will require you to consider the following, though this is not exclusive:

·Is it clear why the work is important?

·Is the literature used to set the scene appropriate?

·To answer this, you will need to carry out your own literature search on the topic and review the literature yourself to determine whether they have given an accurate and complete background to their project. Is the literature the most relevant and is it sufficiently up-to-date. Are the citations correctly formatted and complete? How might you have done it differently. Justify any statements you make.

·Does the introduction introduce the context of the project, starting broadly, making it clear why it is important then homing in on the specific area of research? Does it flow well into the aim, so that it is obvious, from the introduction, why the research needs to be done

·Is there a clear overall aim so you have a broad overview of what they are trying to achieve? Are there either specific objectives or research questions that assure you that the work will be carried out? Are these achievable within the scope of the project? Are they specific?

·Is the method/plan written so that you or someone with the necessary skills could carry out the work instead of them if necessary? Have they included unnecessary detail that you could have known, with a bit of common sense and that aren’t critical for you to know if you were going to complete the experiment? The method can be in bullet points as that can make it clearer to follow.

·Is the budget well laid out and sensible? – estimates are allowed

·Is the time plan well laid out, professional looking and sensible?

·Is the reference list consistent in its formatting and complete?

·Overall: is the writing style clear to understand? Did you have to read it more than once to work out what they were trying to say, because sentence and paragraph structure were clumsy? Does the writing flow? Is it concise or are there words or phrases that are longwinded or repetitive?

To support your answer, provide your search strategy – by that I mean, what databases did you use? What key words and phrases? How did you use Boolean logic (AND, OR, NOT,””, (), * ) to combine, limit and extend these? Did you put limits on your work? Justify these. What was the output that suggested to you that this was a good strategy?

I’m looking for a well-written, well-constructed piece of work that shows full understanding of the requirements and is able to critique the work. The most marks will be weighted towards the critique of the introduction and the use of the literature. The next most important part is the critique of the aims, objectives and methods. I would expect you to draw on the literature for the topic, but also on that relating to project proposal writing. Do not spend too long  critiquing the budget, Gantt chart, risk analysis etc. but do mention them.

Note

Students of Ecological Consultancy will write a Project Inception Report. This is slightly different, but you will be given clear guidance for what is expected. The principles of writing and the literature are the same for the PIR and a standard PP.