To write a successful research proposal, choose an interesting and relevant topic, clearly explain why it’s worth studying, and how you plan to approach it. The proposal should include a concise and eye-catching title, a short abstract, an introduction with a hypothesis, a literature review, a detailed methodology, and a conclusion that ties everything together. The proposal should be persuasive enough to justify funding.
The first step in writing a research proposal is to develop the topic to be researched. You should think of a topic that interests you, a topic that could further your understanding of a particular topic. Usually, the purpose of a research proposal is to ultimately receive research funding. Therefore, you need to make sure that your proposal is persuasive enough to justify such funding.
When writing a research proposal, you should be able to clearly answer why you are undertaking the project, why it is worth studying, and how you intend to do the project. Someone reviewing the proposal should clearly be able to provide answers to these questions. That’s why it’s important to write clearly, impactfully, and convince the reader that you have a solid understanding of the subject.
The topic title should be concise. It should also be eye-catching and arouse interest in the proposition. The title of the research proposal is written on the first page, called the title page, in the upper left corner. Also on the title page are the author’s name and the university they are affiliated with, which is centered in the center of the page.
The title page is followed by a short and clear abstract, no more than a paragraph long, which summarizes the main ideas of the research proposal. It usually spans about 120 words. The introduction of the proposal follows the abstract. It provides background on the research topic, demonstrates unexplored areas of the particular topic, ensures exploration of the proposed topic, and most importantly, contains the hypothesis.
The hypothesis suggests a correlation between two variables, and is the main aspect of the research proposal that you are trying to prove or disprove through experiment. In the introduction, following the hypothesis, describe why you are studying the particular topic, how you intend to approach it, and reiterate the need to study the topic.
Following the introduction, there should be a comprehensive literature review. The purpose of the literature review is to give credence to those who have already studied the subject and laid the groundwork for your work. The aim is also to expose what is already known on the subject, and expose the areas that could benefit from further study.
Subsequently, the research proposal contains the methodology by which the research will be conducted. The methodology section needs to be so detailed that another researcher would be able to emulate the experiment. It must specify the means of obtaining the qualitative or quantitative data that will be used in the research, what tools will be used, who will be the participants, where the research will take place and for how long.
Hence, a research proposal should briefly state how it will gather results from the methodology and how this step would help to prove or disprove the hypothesis. Finally, it contains a conclusion that summarizes the experiment and ties the hypothesis to the research methodology and results.
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