Writing your research proposal
Writing the ‘what’ of your proposed research
The purpose of this part of your research proposal is to generally describe what your research is about.
The what of your research establishes how your research is situated within your discipline or field. It provides fundamental information, such as:
- the context for the research, which can be:
- the key ideas, theories and concepts,
- the major issues and debates,
- the key players and seminal texts or key artists, and
- the questions that have been asked around this topic.
- your research questions, problems or hypotheses
- the scope of the proposed research (i.e. what you will and what you won’t do)
The what of your research proposal may also include:
- the aims and/or objectives of your research
- an introduction to the theoretical framework within which your research sits
- a statement of the problem grounded in the context or theoretical framework and a resulting argument for your research to be conducted
- definitions if needed
Writing the ‘why’ of your proposed research
A key requirement of your research proposal is to justify that your research is worth doing. Your review panel will be looking for a succinct and convincing argument about what sets your proposed research apart from others, and why not doing this research leaves an important problem unaddressed.
Ways of justifying your research include showing that your project will make a significant and substantial contribution in terms of:
- how it fits within an existing body of scholarship/literature/practice
- how it builds on and adds to this body of knowledge
- what the value of your research is and for whom (e.g. a particular community, industry, etc.)
Critical engagement with the literature is crucial in order to justify your research. You must demonstrate that you understand:
- the main concepts and themes, underlying principles, and established theories related to your research
- areas of controversy and contention
- the key scholars and seminal research related to your topic
Writing the ‘how’ of your proposed research
This part of your research proposal involves describing how you plan to find answers to your research questions or resolve the research problems. In other words, it entails describing the design of your research.
A challenge in this section is providing the right amount of information—not too little or too much. You need enough detail to convince the review panel that the research is feasible and to justify your research design components.
Reflection
Which of these questions will you need to answer in your research design (i.e. the ‘how’ section of your research proposal)?
- What is your chosen research design and rationale?
- What theories, concepts or models inform your research design?
- What are the step-by-step methods or process used?
- What constitutes your creative practice?
- How will you engage with your creative practice (e.g. reflection, testing, theorising)?
- What type of data will be collected?
- What are your sources of data?
- Where and how will the data be collected?
- How will the data be analysed?
- What are the strengths and limitations of your methodology?
- What resources are required (equipment, other)?
- How reliable and valid are your methods?
- What ethical issues relate to your research methods, and how will you address these?
Sentence frames commonly used to discuss study design
- The theory that will guide this study is …
- This methodology appears to be the most appropriate in order to achieve the objectives of the research.
- In this research, I will relate the objects or artefacts to …
- My research involves creative and practice-based enquiry, which …
- This practice-led research draws upon …
- Experiments will be conducted using …
- Data collection will take place in …
- Data will be obtained by …
- Data will be analysed by …
- The analysis will involve …
- Various methods have been used to …
- The rationale for this chosen study design is …
- The study will apply previously developed techniques for …
