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Sample proforma for Research and Development

in this video I'm going to walk you through our tried and tested research proposal template I'll also share with you two actual research proposals one at a master's level and one at a PhD level so that you can see what these things look like in practice this will get you geared up and ready to go whether you're writing a research proposal for a dissertation thesis or any other sort of research project so let's get into it hey Derek here from grad coach if it's your first time here the great coach channel is where we cover all things research related so that you can approach your research with confidence and competence this particular video is based on an extract from our popular online course research proposal boot camp if you're new to research or to formal academic research and you're busy working on a research proposal you'll definitely want to check out that course to say thanks for watching this video we've included a special coupon a special offer for you and you can access that using the link in the description below this video as I mentioned in this video we're going to be looking at two sample research proposals well actual research proposals but we're using them as examples in this video as well as our tried and tested research proposal template you can access all of those from the great coach website and we will include a link to that again below this video in terms of structure first we're going to look at the proposal template itself and walk through the Section so that you have an idea of what needs to go into your research proposal and then we'll have a look at the two sample proposals where you'll see how these things all come to life in an actual proposal so let's get into it alright so yeah we have our sample proposal template and it's worth mentioning right up front that every University and every degree program is different and they'll have slightly different requirements in terms of what they expect from a proposal some universities will expect a really detailed in-depth really practical or practicality focused proposal whereas others will just want a a rough idea of what's expected in this template we basically follow a standardized structure which is the most common one so just keep that in mind is that every University will differ in terms of the expectations and if your institution has provided you with the template certainly that supersedes what we're going to discuss here nevertheless you should get a lot of value from this discussion regardless because they are very generic components that go into most research proposals the variation is really in terms of structure in other words what goes where and in terms of depth and other always how much detail they want from each section generally speaking universities are looking for four core components in a research proposal these are one the introduction to the literature review three the methodology or research methodology and for a section discussing the practicalities of the research so in other words things like project plans and timelines and budgets and so forth again as I say universities can differ in terms of what they require here but these are four common sections that come up so we'll look at each of these in a bit more detail so first up we've got the introduction section and generally the introduction section what you'll start with is a discussion of the background and the context so the background in context is really where you lay a foundation for your reader to understand where your study is coming from so yeah you'll want to lay out things like any specific terminology any jargon and any concepts that a reader needs to understand in order to really get what you your study is about remember when you're writing a research proposal and even generally when you're writing your dissertation or thesis you're writing for the intelligent Layman so someone who's not an expert in your field and so you need to explain Concepts before jumping into them and really getting into a deep dive so that is what the background and context section is about from there you'll usually move on to a discussion of the research problem or the problem statement and this is where you really talk about what problem your research is going to solve what whole are you going to fall that's currently not being filled and so I'm not going to go into detail here we do have a a comprehensive blog post on the grad coach blog that explains what their problem is about or what the problem statement is about the research problem is about how to structure those things so we'll include a link to that below but what's important is that you outline your problem statement from there we'll usually move on to the research rationale and the research rationale is really about justifying why it's important to solve this problem that you just laid out so you've laid out a problem previously you've laid out your research problem and the research rationale is saying okay if I solve this problem who will it benefit and how will it benefit them and so this is where you want to clearly explain what value your research is going to create and that might be for practitioners it might be for the research field itself but regardless whoever's going to benefit from this and whoever is going to derive value from this problem being solved this needs to be explained yeah so this is about justifying why your research is important why it's valuable from there you will usually move on to a discussion of your research aims and this might be research aims research objectives and research questions if all of this terminology seems a bit foreign to you then be sure to check out the blog post that we've got on the great coach blog that unpacks all of this but essentially what you're doing now is you've laid a bit of a an argument down you said okay there's a research problem in terms of x y z and solving that research problem would create a lot of value but in having that discussion you've probably spoken more broadly about a broad area where there's a problem where there's a lack of knowledge and of course your study isn't going to be able to go particularly broad you're going to have to focus and narrow down into one area and so the research aims and the research questions section is where you're going to say okay we've laid the land in terms of what the problems are but this is where the my study this is where this research this particular piece of proposed research is going to focus so this is really about getting a clear Focus now it's worth saying that this section the research aims section might be placed in a different location and that location is typically towards the end of the literature review which we'll discuss next and so it's important to just be aware that it might not go right up front it might actually be a result of the literature review and so we'll get to that in a little bit but that's just something worth noting beyond that still within the introduction section we've got a little section here called other and that's just to acknowledge that you may have depending on your University there may have some other things that they want you to discuss yes so just keep that in mind that what we've outlined here is a generic approach your University might require some other bits and pieces so moving on from there we get to the second section of a typical research proposal and that is the literature review sometimes the dreaded literature review so again a caveatia is that the the level of depth and the the expectations around this section will vary from University to University so be aware of that if there's if there's any indication of what word counts they're looking for pay attention to that because some universities some programs will require a really extensive literature review that you could almost transplant into your final dissertation thesis and some will just require a fairly basic overview literature review where they just they just need to assess that okay cool you've done some reading and you have an understanding of the research area at grad coach we tend to break the literature review down into three sections which you'll see the theoretical framework the Empirical research and the research Gap the theoretical framework is really your foundation of theory that's where you're going to outline the core sort of theoretical base on which you're building your your research the Empirical research is research that is evidence-based so that's where you're talking about what studies have found in relation to your specific research questions in the past and then those two sections together sort of give rise to the research Gap and what I mean by that is that your literature review is not just a whole bunch of he said she said and kind of just reciting and regurgitating what's already been done what it should be is a narrative that weaves everything together to present okay this is where the Gap exists this is where there's a hole in the research and of course from that Gap there's the opportunity for you to go and build your research that's where your justification comes in so I won't go into more detail about this we do have information on the blog and as I say we already got in depth in the online course but this is an important concept to understand is that your research proposal needs to build up to something and the that that something is the research Gap and of course it builds up to the research Gap and says okay this is where the Gap exists and then your research aims and your research objectives and your research questions then fit tightly into that so yes the Gap and yes when my research is going to go in and fill that Gap right from there we move on to the methodology section the methodology section is really where we get into the details we get into the how you know so far you've spoken about what your research is going to try to achieve but your methodology is where you really get into the how how you're going to achieve those things that you want to achieve how you're going to achieve your research aims so the research methodology chapter is relatively brief in a research proposal but again this is something that you want to pay very careful attention to to any specific specs or briefs that your university has provided because some will want a lot of detail some will want less detail generally speaking there are three retrievable areas that the reviewers are really interested in and those are data collections sampling and data analysis so those are the three key areas there are many other aspects to research methodology and I'm not going to go into detail about those yeah we've got plenty plenty information on the grad coach blog again I'll include some links below but what you want to make sure you're covering here is these three things and the reason these things are important because it's really talking about what data you're going to collect who you're going to collect it from and how you're going to analyze that data and so that's what these three sections are about from a data collection perspective this is where you'll talk about whether you're going to use things like surveys or interviews or focus groups and how you're going to do those things again you want to show the Practical side of things here you want to show the reviewers that you've really thought through how you're going to do your research sampling is about who or where you're going to get this data from the the way that you sample or the the sampling strategy that you choose or have a massive of impact on how your research turns out and so you have to give a lot of thought to that and if you're not too sure about sampling we've got a great blog post and a video about that on the great coach blog and then data analysis how will you analyze all this data that you have collected so if you're going the qualitative route which methods will you use are you going to use in thematic analysis so you're going to use discourse analysis which methods are you going to use and if you're going the Quant root you know what sort of statistical analyzes are you going to put your data through so those are really important things to consider and things to outline here what's really important with the methodology section is that for each of these decisions each of these choices that you're going to outline here one you need to discuss the watch in other words you need to State what you're actually going to be doing I'm going to be using this data analysis method I'm going to be collecting data from these people I'm going to use the sampling strategy but just as importantly you need to discuss the why AI in other words you need to justify why you have decided to choose each of these choices that you've made and that's really important because this demonstrates that you know what you're talking about in terms of the design of your research in terms of the theory that underpins good research in terms of making sure that your results will be valid and be reliable and so forth so I won't get into the detail of all of that yeah again we've got loads of content on the blog but what's important to remember in the methodology section is that you discuss the what what you're going to do and equally important that you discuss the why in other words why have you chosen these things and that's something that students often slip up on and it really costs them marks so remember both the White and the why so then moving on to the final section of the proposal is what we call the practicalities section and this the need for this section will vary quite a bit depending on what program you're applying for and what the nature of the proposal is whether you know if this is an application just to get into a degree program or if this is a proposal for an actual dissertation and so there will be a varying degree of Need for detail from University to University some won't have any need at all but many times they do require this information and if they do require it you really need to do it well and so it's something that we've included in this proposal template so what I mean by practicalities is yeah you want to basically show what's your plan of action for the entire research project be that a dissertation or thesis or whatever it may be so this is about project planning this is about risk management this is about budgeting and timelines and so forth so again the expectations will vary quite a bit from for from institution to institution but the things you'll generally want to outline here are your sort of project plan what are all the steps that are going to be involved in your process so everything from the initial reading of literature through to interacting with your supervisor all those sort of step-by-step components you want to outline what all the things that you're going to do what are the timelines associated with that and how does that all fit into a master plan and a master timeline that's acceptable to your University so you want to show that okay if you've got three months to do this dissertation or six months or however long it is this is what you know each week is going to look like there and a great tool in this respect is a Gantt chart we have a Gantt chart available within research proposal bootcamp the online course that I mentioned but you can also have a look online there are a few different options but again chart is a great way to visualize your project plan not only to your reviewer but also to yourself and it's quite a nice way to ensure that every week you kind of tick things off the list and see your progress visually another important component if relevant to your research is of course the budget and this is particularly important if this research proposal is for funding for example if you are requesting funding for a project they're going to have a lot of interest in what your budget looks like and so in the budget you want to get down to detail you want to talk about all the things that might come up in terms of costs it might be travel costs there might be equipment costs laboratory costs whatever the case may be you want to put all of that into your budget and show that you have done your homework and that you've actually got a a realistic view of what things are going to cost and what it's going to be what's going to be required to actually make it this project happen then lastly we've got a little section here called other considerations and these things might not necessarily go into this section but they're just a bucket list of items that some universities might require so some universities might require that you have a provisional research title they might require discussion around anticipated outcomes so what you expect to find in your research they might have a requirement for a dissemination strategy in other words how will you disseminate your findings to the research Community they might need an executive summary or an abstract and they might also want a personal statement so this isn't an exhaustive list per se but it is a list of of bits and pieces that you might want to consider including in your proposal and certainly if your University specifically requires it then definitely do include all right so from there it's really about wrapping things up with your references and appendices and so your reference list naturally will come at the end of your document and that will be followed by any appendices now keep in mind that this might not be allowed in certain situations you might not be allowed to have an appendix and in certain situations it might be expected that you have an appendix it might be expected that your project plan and your grandchild rod goes into the appendix so keep that in mind is that the structural requirements will vary from University to University with regards to the reference list itself you definitely want to make sure that when you are using whatever specific referencing format your institution requires so Harvard MLA APA you want to make sure that you know exactly what they require and that you're using that and two you want to definitely be using a reference management software in other words don't try to handle your references and citations manually you don't try to be tapping them in in word you need to use a reference manager two three options that we typically recommend are mendeley and zotero we have video tutorials for both of those on the great coach blog so we'll include the links to those but whatever the case may be you don't have to use those specific ones perhaps your institution actually dictates what you should use whatever the case may be make sure that you use a system because you cannot rely on handwritten references they're just bound to design on to be errors is bound to be issues so that's something to be aware of okay so now that we've had a look at the research proposal template let's look at two actual sample proposals well these are real proposals but we're just using them as samples in this video so we're going to look at two or sample proposals one being a master's level one being a PhD level proposal and we're gonna see how all of this plays out so of course these proposals don't follow the proposal template 100 in fact they they actually are intentionally we've chosen them because they're a little bit different but nonetheless you'll be able to see what a proposal looks like and how this all comes together in terms of what we've just discussed so first up we've got this proposal which speaks about the role of or potential role of social media to improve agility in certain types of Supply chains and this proposal is quite a lengthy detailed one so this is a master's level proposal but it is quite detailed relative to what might typically be expected and so I wanted to include it as a sample of a research proposals that you can see how these things vary a little bit so first up is the executive summary which it's in itself is not particularly common in a research proposal but given the length of this proposal it makes sense so in this proposal you go and see you're in this executive summary you can see that it kicks off with a brief statement of the problem some background information lists out the research questions quick word about the theoretical framework and the methodology so as I say research proposals don't usually have an executive summary but that was useful to include so you can see how things vary so then on to the introduction which which now follows a similar format to what we spoke about in The Proposal template so you can see it kicks off with a background of the study provides a bit of contextual information and then speaks about the research problem so laying out the problem with the current state of research and that would obviously then lay a foundation for what this proposal is going to propose in terms of the study that the student's going to do research questions up next quite a few research questions this is perhaps a bit more than what would usually be included in a research proposal but again useful to see followed by research objectives so if you've read any of our blog posts you'll remember that the research questions are the core questions that you're trying to answer and the research objectives is sort of how you're going to go about answering those questions and achieving the broader research aims then from there the proposal moves into the literature review given that this is quite a hearty proposal the literature review is quite detailed includes some figures include tables a bit later if I recall correctly yeah so here's a table over here and then also speaks about the theoretical framework so you can see how this ties into the proposal template that we presented just a moment ago and then the discussion moves into the significance and importance of the study as well as the justification so this is about so this is talking about why is this important why is this a valuable thing to research and so that is something that we originally spoke about in The Proposal template under the label of rationale and justification and so you can see how things can be ordered a little bit differently depending on what the University's requirements are or sometimes just in terms of what narrative makes most sense and and that's completely fine but nevertheless there is a need within a research proposal to clearly articulate what the importance of all of this is remember the core function of a research proposal is to convince that reader convinced that reviewer and marker or whatever is going to be approving this thing that this is important that this is worth doing you know research requires investment whether that's investment in terms of time or money or resources it's still an investment and so you've got to make it clear why this is worth doing why this is important and so that's very nicely outlined there then we move on to the research methodology so again following the same sort of core structure as in the research proposal template introduction literature review methodology this kicks off with a discussion of the research paradigms which were not included or that section was not included within the proposal template that we spoke about but it is something that's quite common within the social sciences and so that's something that might be required so then from there it moves on to talking about the target population and the sampling strategy sampling method sample size then data collection what data is going to be collected how is it going to be collected data analysis what's going to be done with that data once it's collected quality control how to make sure that the data that is collected and analyzed is actually suitable and so you can see that this gets into quite a lot of practical detail and this is great this is what you want within a research proposal especially around the methodology section what are the fine details that you're going to implement within your methodology we then wrap up with the ethical considerations and the limitations of the study ethical considerations often come into play almost always come into play when we're dealing with human subjects or perhaps animal subjects participants and this is something that you really want to pay attention to before you start writing up your research proposal and arguably even before you decide on a research topic you want to have a clear understanding of what are the ethical requirements from your University because those will restrict to what you can enconto and they will in many cases create complexity in terms of how you can handle things and so you want to really understand what the requirements are what the expectations are because those aren't negotiable you're not going to be able to no matter how brilliant your research project is your proposed project is if it's against the ethical requirements of the University you're wasting your time writing this proposal so pay attention to those components then the study or the proposal wraps up with a reference list you can see that this is a a well-formatted reference list and then moves on to the appendices so one thing you might notice is missing from this discussion or missing from this proposal is the practicalities component so the fourth part of the research proposal template that we spoke about and as I said this is something this is a demonstration of how much variance you can see from University to University here you've got a really detailed research proposal really in-depth lengthy research proposal but no discussion about the practicalities and that would just be a result of what the university is not too interested in those components at this point in time so just a a great way to see the variation between different proposals and different universities next up we've got this research proposal this is a PhD level proposal and it's looking at the effect of different types of spaces so blue green and urban spaces on stress levels in adults and it kicks off with the research problem so you'll notice here there isn't a introduction section per se although This research problem discussion is covering a lot of the same ground as what we discussed in the introduction section of the proposal template so laying out the problem of course all research starts with a problem you need a problem to solve otherwise there's no reason for you to do it and so this proposal kicks off by speaking about the research problem then it moves into the literature review you can see again something that's worth highlighting is that even though the previous proposal was a master's level proposal and this one is a PhD level proposal this one's actually a bit more concise this one's a a lot tighter than the other proposal that we looked at and so that's just something to be aware of that there's a lot of variation here and don't just assume that well if you're just doing a master's level proposal that you don't need a whole lot of detail or vice versa if you're doing a PhD proposal that you need a huge amount of details so anyhow back to this we now kick off with the literature review and this is providing some introductory discussion and then we get into the justification aims and objectives so again yeah we can see there's a slightly different structure at play in The Proposal template we spoke about the justification the research aims the research objectives coming in within the introduction section whereas yeah it's coming in in the literature review section so that's completely fine it's completely acceptable it sometimes makes a lot more sense to build up a bit of a a an argument within the literature review and then present okay these are aims and objectives based on what we see in the literature review so note that there are different ways to approach this and your University might specifically require that you only discuss these things later so yeah we speak about the research objectives this is all highlighted over here and then into the theoretical Paradigm where various theories and theoretical foundations are laid down moving on on to the methodology the research question is presented again in The Proposal template that we looked at that research question was presented right up in the introduction where is he has presented in the methodology or towards the end of the literature review all completely fine it just depends on what the Norms are regardless you're still seeing the research question the research aims the justification or these key ingredients you're still seeing them come up in the proposal it's just a matter of where they get placed so the methodology kicks off with the discussion about the design the sampling then onto measurement instruments which is a matter of data collection based on what we spoke about earlier in the template and then the data collection procedures themselves what will be done how all the stuff be be collected data analysis different types of Assessments that will be used and then again ethical considerations so what this proposal has in common with the previous proposal is of course the discussion of ethics and that's because both of them were assessing what's happening with people and would involve people in the data collection process and so discussion of Ethics is really important especially when it's psychological research then this proposal wraps up with the reference list if I'm not mistaken there's no appendices to this one yep there's nothing on this and so again what we see here is no real discussion about the practicalities regarding project plans and timelines and budgets and that's okay if that's not expected which obviously wasn't expected for these proposals because both of these proposals were accepted by the university then that's okay but it's just something to be aware of that there may be an expectation in that regard so as you can see in these two sample research proposals the exact same tape that your proposal will take will vary from University to University and so it's really important to pay a lot of attention to any briefing documents that your University provides you with what you also want to do if at all possible is to try and get your hands on some previous research proposals from your specific research program or degree program this will really give you a very very clear idea of what the Norms are within your University and more specifically within your research program so there you have it a comprehensive research proposal template as well as two research proposal samples that you can use to get a care idea of what exactly a good research proposal looks like in practice as I mentioned if you are new to research University crafting your research proposal you'll definitely want to check out our short course research proposal bootcamp which gives you everything you need to get started on your research proposal alternatively if you are looking for Hands-On support be sure to check out our private coaching service where we work with you one-on-one to hold your hand through each step of the research Journey if you're interested in that you can learn more and book a free consultation over at gradcoach.com so until next time good luck foreign [Music]