Writing a Research Proposal

 The Research Proposal (This page is taken from the longer page Research Writing)

You must describe:

• what you plan to do,
• why you want to do it,
• how you will do it,
• what you will do it with.

You must show your advisor you are capable of doing the project.

1. Background

When you write the background to a research proposal, your should survey the research which has been done before in your proposed area of research. You should also answer the question of why further research is needed.

2. Description

You must describe what you plan to do. If you are going to do a survey, explain what you will survey. If you are going to do an experiment you must explain how you will analyze your results.

3. Procedure

Procedure is sometimes called method and is sometimes included in the description section mentioned above. Often this section contains information about how you will collect material, what sources you will use such as, books, journals, government documents and the like.

4. Significance

• What is the importance of your research question?
• Why is it worth answering?
• What are the advantages of answering it?
• In order to show clearly how significant your research is, use the opinions of other researchers to support what you say.

5. Problems

All research involves problem solving. Be sure to cleary show any special problems you may meet in your research and explain how you will solve the problems or at least work around them.

6. Requirements

If your research involves something special such as travel to a different place or foreign country to gather materials, include a summary of what you plan to do in this section. If there are no special requirements, this section may be omitted.

7. Works Cited

You must document any sources you have used in your proposal. The list of works cited also shows that you have done enough preliminary reading and that you seem to be heading in the right direction. Purdue University has a good page explaining the basics of the MLA style which is recommended by Tokoha.

 References: Memering, Dean. The Prentice Hall Guide to Research Writing. 2nd Ed.Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989.