Crafting an Effective Research Proposal Report

RESEARCH PROPOSAL REPORT

This coursework centres around you choosing a suitable research area relevant to your programme (with the agreement of your tutor) and identify relevant aims and objectives for the research area and produce a literature or technical review for that area. In addition, consideration should be given in relation to relevant research approaches / techniques for the research area you have identified.

This section should contain the:

·Title of the proposed area for research

·Abstract (circa 200-250 words)  

·Aims and objectives

·Justification as to why the area is being chosen and its relevance/importance

·Any potential ethical considerations

This part of the research proposal report should contain a critical investigation of the appropriate literature that covers your research area which should include academic and non-academic sources as appropriate. The importance of the literature/technical review is that it:

·Provides academic underpinning for your work

·Defines key terms and concepts  

·Identifies what previous work has been undertaken in the area

·Provides basis for identifying and clarifying research questions

·Constructs an argument that draws upon your own ideas and various sources to support those ideas.

The literature/technical review will provide you with the context in which to plan, implement and present your own work. Your research proposal is very unlikely to be completely new. You need to find out what has already been done and said and then fit your proposed work into this overall collection of work. The literature/technical review will help you define your research questions, as well as key themes and issues to be investigated as part of your research proposal.

At the end of the report a full list of references should be provided which are in the correct UWS Harvard format for referencing (see lecture handouts).

Depending on the type of project this can cover areas such as:

·Proposed research methodology giving reasons for choice and use of relevant references to justify your choice. It could also include details of any organisations and stakeholders that might be engaged with as part of the research proposal.

·If the project is more of a development project then this section might include a discussion of the approach that is being adopted in relation to design and areas such as user requirements. Some consideration should also be made in relation to the evaluation and selection of appropriate platforms/approaches on which to develop the proposed prototype and what development/simulation approach might be adopted.

Throughout the report you must justify the points that you make, rather than making unsubstantiated generalised statements. Your report layout and structure must be of as high standard with a cover page, table of contents, appropriate headings and subheadings, page numbers, appropriately labelled figures and tables, a full list of references (in UWS Harvard referencing style) and any appendices.

As a rough guide, the report should be at least 3000-3500 words in length (excluding references section) and you can go over the word limit if you wish. Please remember the number of words produced is not directly proportional to the number of marks gained.

When choosing a research topic you need to consider a variety of factors such as:

•The extent to which the topic is relevant to your programme  

•The extent to which the topic attracts your interest

•The availability of materials and equipment

•If anything is happening in that topic area

•The access you have to organisations and people from whom you would need to gather data

•The techniques and skills you will have to master

•The extent to which the topic might be of interest to others

•Your understanding of the concepts and theoretical approaches available to support such work

•Any ethical considerations that might make the topic inappropriate