Guide to Writing a Research Proposal for a Dissertation

Summary of the research topic

Your supervisor will ask you to produce a proposal  so that you and s/he can agree a feasible plan for implementing your dissertation. The proposal should be approximately long (not counting abstract, references and bibliography). The proposal should have the following sections and sub-sections:

Summary of the research topic describing the major issue(s), your proposed methodology and possible findings and justification for the study.

List of all major parts and divisions (including the abstract, even though it precedes the table of contents).

What the research project is to achieve?

What is the underlying rationale and aim of your research? What in your experience prompted it? Why are you doing it?

What is the study trying to achieve (i.e. is your purpose to explore, describe, understand, explain, predict, change, or something else)?

• Research question (or propositions or hypotheses)

What is your research question(s)? or proposition(s)?

2 Critical Literature Review

This will be indicative. You will need to identify the key landmark studies in your topic area and will describe how these relate to the issues you intend to look at in your research. You are not expected to have thoroughly read and absorbed all the books and papers you discuss but you will obviously need to know what the papers are about. You will need to provide a preliminary, critical evaluation or assessment of why they are likely to be relevant to your topic.

From the literature identify working concepts/models and theoretical frameworks that you will use to guide your research - What is the role of theory in relation to your research? In what ways are you using the theories of others? Are you testing theories or building them?

3. Methodology and methods Outline how you plan to go about doing your research.

• Research Design

Justify the methodological and philosophical approach you intend to employ. What implications does your approach have for your research design and methods?

• Research Context

What is the context of your proposed research? Key features, characteristics! Why is it a suitable context? Who will be studied? How many? How will they be selected (i.e. sampling)?

• Procedure (i.e. what happened from the participants’ perspective, ethical considerations) Consider ethics and access to your study sample. Try to anticipate any problem you might have in implementing your method.
• Methods for data collection

Describe (and justify) the methods and techniques you plan to use to collect your data. -What sort of data will you collect?

How will you collect this data? Why is this method suitable for your question?

• Methods for data analysis

Describe (and justify) the methods and techniques you plan to use to analyse collected data. - What type of data analysis will you use

4. Discussion

• Significance of proposed research (Research Contribution)
• Research limitation

A necessarily preliminary statement of what you may find or demonstrate by having undertaken the research. Why it will be important and what the practical or theoretical implications might be.

What are the envisaged limitations to your research?

Provisional work schedule

A timetable for completing the research indicating the tasks necessary to complete each segment. Don’t forget to include slippage time.

Via research methods classes and your dissertation supervisor.

Research proposal-Grade (0%)-formative feedback: The assessment of your research proposal is Formative feedback and there is no grade (the received grade is just for your feedback and will not be calculated for the final grade).

Research Project-D1-Grade (100%)-Formative and Summative Feedback: The summative feedback and final grade (100%) will be on the final research project, D1. You should have 6 meetings with your supervisor

Presentation Style of Research Proposal

Emphasis should be made by printing relevant text in italics and underlining should be avoided in preference to bolding.

First paragraphs (after a heading) should be flush to the margin with subsequent paragraphs first-line indented five spaces.

Dates should be written as: 29 May 2001; a decade may be written as: 1990s; pairs of dates may be hyphenated as: 1980-1990.

Single quotation marks should be used when quoting an author; double quotation marks should be used in other circumstances