Postgraduate Research
Guidance for writing a research proposal
A research proposal should set out:
- the question(s) that you intend to ask;
- how you intend to go about answering them;
- how to tell whether an adequate answer has been found; and
- the steps you intend to take along the way to the answer.
Your proposal should also mention the principal literatures you will be
drawing on. Sources should be mentioned and potential difficulties with
obtaining them assessed. The method(s) used should be explained in reasonable
detail. A list of chapters with brief outlines of expected content and a
timetable for the completion of chapters should be included.
It is particularly important that you go beyond the identification of a
research topic and specify one or more concrete research questions. Over the
course of the first year of your PhD, you may find that your research question
evolves, as does your research design. The question(s) and theoretical
approaches you specify in your proposal are not intended to not bind you; rather
they are designed to help you think through your PhD project. Likewise it may be
that the methods you identify in your proposal need to be supplemented or
revised when you undertake your substantive research. Nevertheless, it is
important at this point that you think through in some detail a methodological
strategy for answering the research question(s) you have specified.
There are research traditions in which an important centre of attention is
reflective questioning of your own research methods and critical appraisal of
standards of judgement. Research seldom in practice produces closed answers to
questions, and some would say that is should not aim to do so. It is not
difficult to accommodate these views within a research plan that focuses on a
question, method, epistemology approach.
Last modified on 28 February 2012