What is a Research Proposal?

A proposal is a request for support for sponsored research, instruction, or extension projects.
Good proposals quickly and easily answer the following questions:

 What do you want to do, and how do you plan to do it?

 How much will it cost, and how much time will it take?
 How does the proposed project relate to the sponsor's interests?
 What difference will the project make to: your university, your students, your discipline,
the state, the nation, or any other concerned parties?
 What has already been done in the area of your project? Why should you, rather than
someone else, do this project?
 How will the results be evaluated?

Certain questions will be emphasized over others depending on the nature of the proposed
project and the agency to which you are submitting the proposal. Most agencies provide detailed
instructions or guidelines concerning the preparation of proposals (and, in some cases, forms on
which proposals are to be typed).
Primary Components of a Research Proposal

Proposals for sponsored activities generally follow a similar format; variations depend upon
whether the proposer is seeking support for a research grant, a training grant, or a conference or
curriculum development project. The following outline covers the primary components of a
research proposal. Your proposal will be a variation on this basic theme.

1. Title Page: Most sponsoring agencies specify the format for the title page, and some
provide special forms to summarize basic administrative and fiscal data for the project.
Titles are brief but comprehensive enough to indicate the nature of the proposed work.
2. Abstract: The funder may use the abstract to make preliminary decisions about the
proposal. Therefore, an effective summary states the problem addressed by the
applicant, identifies the solution, and specifies the objectives and methods of the project.
This summary should also outline funding requirements and describe the applicant’s
ability.
3. Table of Contents: Brief proposals with few sections usually do not need a table of
contents. Long and detailed proposals may require, in addition to a table of contents, a
list of illustrations (or figures) and a list of tables. If all of these sections are included, they
should follow the order mentioned, and each should be numbered with lower-case
Roman numerals. The table of contents lists all major parts and divisions, including the
abstract.
4. Introduction (including Statement of Problem, Purpose of Research, and Significance of
Research): The introduction of a proposal begins with a capsule statement and then
proceeds to introduce the subject to a stranger. It should give enough background to
enable an informed lay person to place your particular research problem in a context of
common knowledge and should show how its solution will advance the field or be
important for some other work. The statement describes the significance of the
problem(s), referring to appropriate studies or statistics.
5. Background (including Literature Survey): Be sure to (1) make clear what the research
problem is and exactly what has been accomplished; (2) to give evidence of your own
competence in the field; and (3) to show why the previous work needs to be continued.
The literature review should be selective and critical. Discussions of work done by others
should lead the reader to a clear idea of how you will build upon past research and also
how your work differs from theirs.
6. Description of Proposed Research (including Method or Approach): The
comprehensive explanation of the proposed research is addressed to other specialists in
 your field. This section is the heart of the proposal and is the primary concern of the
technical reviewers. Remember as you lay out the research design to:

 Be realistic about what can be accomplished.

 Be explicit about any assumptions or hypotheses the research method rests upon.
 Be clear about the focus of the research.
 Be as detailed as possible about the schedule of the proposed work.
 Be specific about the means of evaluating the data or the conclusions.
 Be certain that the connection between the research objectives and the research
method is evident.
 Spell out preliminary work developing an analytical method or laying groundwork
as Phase 1.

At the end of this phase you will be able to report that you have accomplished something
and are ready to undertake Phase 2.

1. Description of Relevant Institutional Resources: Generally this section details the

resources available to the proposed project and, if possible, shows why the sponsor
should select this University and this investigator for this particular research. Some
relevant points may be:

 the institution's demonstrated skill in the related research area

 its abundance of experts in related areas that may indirectly benefit the project
 its supportive services that will directly benefit the project
 and the institution's unique or unusual research facilities or resources available to
the project

1. List of References: The style of the bibliographical item itself depends on the
disciplinary field. The main consideration is consistency; whatever style is chosen should
be followed carefully throughout the proposal.

1. Personnel: This section usually consists of two parts: (1) an explanation of the proposed
personnel arrangements and (2) the biographical data sheets for each of the main
contributors to the project. The explanation should specify how many persons at what
percentage of time and in what academic categories will be participating in the project. If
the program is complex and involves people from other departments or colleges, make
clear the organization of the staff and the lines of responsibility. Any student participation,
paid or unpaid, should be mentioned, and the nature of the proposed contribution
detailed. If any persons must be hired for the project, say so, and explain why, unless the
need for persons not already available within the University is self-evident.

1. Budget: Sponsors customarily specify how budgets should be presented and what costs
are allowable. The budget lays out the costs to be met by the funding source, including
personnel, non-personnel, administrative, and overhead expenses. The budget also
specifies items paid for by other funding sources. Includes explanations for requested
expenses.

14.3 Components of a Research Proposal

Krathwohl (2005) suggests and describes a variety of components
to include in a research proposal. The following sections –
Introductions, Background and significance, Literature Review;
Research design and methods, Preliminary suppositions and
implications; and Conclusion present these components in a
suggested template for you to follow in the preparation of your
research proposal.

Introduction

The introduction sets the tone for what follows in your research
proposal – treat it as the initial pitch of your idea. After reading the
introduction your reader should:

 understand what it is you want to do;

 have a sense of your passion for the topic; and
 be excited about the study’s possible outcomes.

As you begin writing your research proposal, it is helpful to think of

the introduction as a narrative of what it is you want to do, written
in one to three paragraphs. Within those one to three paragraphs,
it is important to briefly answer the following questions:

1. What is the central research problem?

2. How is the topic of your research proposal related to the
problem?
3. What methods will you utilize to analyze the research
problem?
4. Why is it important to undertake this research? What is the
significance of your proposed research? Why are the
outcomes of your proposed research important? Whom are
they important?

Note: You may be asked by your instructor to include an abstract

with your research proposal. In such cases, an abstract should
provide an overview of what it is you plan to study, your main
research question, a brief explanation of your methods to answer
the research question, and your expected findings. All of this
information must be carefully crafted in 150 to 250 words. A word
of advice is to save the writing of your abstract until the very end
of your research proposal preparation. If you are asked to provide
an abstract, you should include 5 to 7 key words that are of most
relevance to your study. List these in order of relevance.

Background and significance

The purpose of this section is to explain the context of your

proposal and to describe, in detail, why it is important to
undertake this research. Assume that the person or people who
will read your research proposal know nothing or very little about
the research problem. While you do not need to include all
knowledge you have learned about your topic in this section, it is
important to ensure that you include the most relevant material
that will help to explain the goals of your research.

While there are no hard and fast rules, you should attempt to
address some or all of the following key points:

1. State the research problem and provide a more thorough

explanation about the purpose of the study than what you
stated in the introduction.
2. Present the rationale for the proposed research study. Clearly
indicate why this research is worth doing. Answer the “so
what?” question.
3. Describe the major issues or problems to be addressed by
your research. Do not forget to explain how and in what ways
your proposed research builds upon previous related
research.
4. Explain how you plan to go about conducting your research.
5. Clearly identify the key or most relevant sources of research
you intend to use and explain how they will contribute to
your analysis of the topic.
6. Set the boundaries of your proposed research, in order to
provide a clear focus. Where appropriate, state not only what
you will study, but what will be excluded from your study.
7. Provide clear definitions of key concepts and terms. Since
key concepts and terms often have numerous definitions,
make sure you state which definition you will be utilizing in
your research.

Tip: Conceptual categories generally reveal themselves only after

one has read most of the pertinent literature on the topic at hand.
It is not uncommon to find that one is continually adding new
themes or revising themes already discovered

Literature review

This key component of the research proposal is the most time-

consuming aspect in the preparation of your research proposal. As
described in Chapter 5, the literature review provides the
background to your study and demonstrates the significance of
the proposed research. Specifically, it is a review and synthesis of
prior research that is related to the problem you are setting forth
to investigate. Essentially, your goal in the literature review is to
place your research study within the larger whole of what has
been studied in the past, while demonstrating to your reader that
your work is original, innovative, and adds to the larger whole.

As the literature review is information dense, it is essential that this

section be intelligently structured to enable your reader to grasp
the key arguments underpinning your study. However, this can be
easier to state and harder to do, simply due to the fact there is
usually a plethora of related research to sift through.
Consequently, a good strategy for writing the literature review is
to break the literature into conceptual
categories or themes, rather than attempting to describe various
groups of literature you reviewed. Chapter 5 describes a variety of
methods to help you organize the themes.

Here are some suggestions on how to approach the writing of

your literature review:

1. Think about what questions other researchers have asked,

what methods they used, what they found, and what they
recommended based upon their findings.
2. Do not be afraid to challenge previous related research
findings and/or conclusions.
3. Assess what you believe to be missing from previous
research and explain how your research fills in this gap
and/or extends previous research.

It is important to note that a significant challenge related to

undertaking a literature review is knowing when to stop. As such,
it is important to know when you have uncovered the key
conceptual categories underlying your research topic. Generally,
when you start to see repetition in the conclusions or
recommendations, you can have confidence that you have
covered all of the significant conceptual categories in your
literature review. However, it is also important to acknowledge
that researchers often find themselves returning to the literature
as they collect and analyze their data. For example, an unexpected
finding may develop as you collect and/or analyze the data; in this
case, it is important to take the time to step back and review the
literature again, to ensure that no other researchers have found a
similar finding. This may include looking to research outside your
field.

This situation occurred with one of this textbook’s authors’

research related to community resilience. During the interviews,
the researchers heard many participants discuss individual
resilience factors and how they believed these individual factors
helped make the community more resilient, overall. Sheppard and
Williams (2016) had not discovered these individual factors in their
original literature review on community and environmental
resilience. However, when they returned to the literature to search
for individual resilience factors, they discovered a small body of
literature in the child and youth psychology field. Consequently,
Sheppard and Williams had to go back and add a new section to
their literature review on individual resilience factors. Interestingly,
their research appeared to be the first research to link individual
resilience factors with community resilience factors.

Research design and methods

The objective of this section of the research proposal is to convince

the reader that your overall research design and methods of
analysis will enable you to solve the research problem you have
identified and also enable you to accurately and effectively
interpret the results of your research. Consequently, it is critical
that the research design and methods section is well-written,
clear, and logically organized. This demonstrates to your reader
that you know what you are going to do and how you are going to
do it. Overall, you want to leave your reader feeling confident that
you have what it takes to get this research study completed in a
timely fashion.
Essentially, this section of the research proposal should be clearly
tied to the specific objectives of your study; however, it is also
important to draw upon and include examples from the literature
review that relate to your design and intended methods. In other
words, you must clearly demonstrate how your study utilizes and
builds upon past studies, as it relates to the research design and
intended methods. For example, what methods have been used
by other researchers in similar studies?

While it is important to consider the methods that other

researchers have employed, it is equally, if not more, important to
consider what methods have not been but could be employed.
Remember, the methods section is not simply a list of tasks to be
undertaken. It is also an argument as to why and how the tasks
you have outlined will help you investigate the research problem
and answer your research question(s).
Tips for writing the research design and methods section:

Specify the methodological approaches you intend to employ to

obtain information and the techniques you will use to analyze the
data.

Specify the research operations you will undertake and the way
you will interpret the results of those operations in relation to the
research problem.

Go beyond stating what you hope to achieve through the

methods you have chosen. State how you will actually implement
the methods (i.e., coding interview text, running regression
analysis, etc.).

Anticipate and acknowledge any potential barriers you may

encounter when undertaking your research, and describe how
you will address these barriers.

Explain where you believe you will find challenges related to data
collection, including access to participants and information.

Preliminary suppositions and implications

The purpose of this section is to argue how you anticipate that

your research will refine, revise, or extend existing knowledge in
the area of your study. Depending upon the aims and objectives of
your study, you should also discuss how your anticipated findings
may impact future research. For example, is it possible that your
research may lead to a new policy, theoretical understanding, or
method for analyzing data? How might your study influence
future studies? What might your study mean for future
practitioners working in the field? Who or what might benefit
from your study? How might your study contribute to social,
economic or environmental issues? While it is important to think
about and discuss possibilities such as these, it is equally
important to be realistic in stating your anticipated findings. In
other words, you do not want to delve into idle speculation.
Rather, the purpose here is to reflect upon gaps in the current
body of literature and to describe how you anticipate your
research will begin to fill in some or all of those gaps.

Conclusion

The conclusion reiterates the importance and significance of your

research proposal, and provides a brief summary of the entire
proposed study. Essentially, this section should only be one or two
paragraphs in length. Here is a potential outline for your
conclusion:

Discuss why the study should be done. Specifically discuss how

you expect your study will advance existing knowledge and how
your study is unique.

Explain the specific purpose of the study and the research

questions that the study will answer.

Explain why the research design and methods chosen for this
study are appropriate, and why other designs and methods were
not chosen.

State the potential implications you expect to emerge from your

proposed study,

Provide a sense of how your study fits within the broader

scholarship currently in existence, related to the research problem.

Citations and references

As with any scholarly research paper, you must cite the sources
you used in composing your research proposal. In a research
proposal, this can take two forms: a reference list or a bibliography.
A reference list lists the literature you referenced in the body of
your research proposal. All references in the reference list must
appear in the body of the research proposal. Remember, it is not
acceptable to say “as cited in …” As a researcher you must always
go to the original source and check it for yourself. Many errors are
made in referencing, even by top researchers, and so it is
important not to perpetuate an error made by someone else.
While this can be time consuming, it is the proper way to
undertake a literature review.

In contrast, a bibliography, is a list of everything you used or cited

in your research proposal, with additional citations to any key
sources relevant to understanding the research problem. In other
words, sources cited in your bibliography may not necessarily
appear in the body of your research proposal. Make sure you
check with your instructor to see which of the two you are
expected to produce.

Overall, your list of citations should be a testament to the fact that

you have done a sufficient level of preliminary research to ensure
that your project will complement, but not duplicate, previous
research efforts. For social sciences, the reference list or
bibliography should be prepared in American Psychological
Association (APA) referencing format. Usually, the reference list (or
bibliography) is not included in the word count of the research
proposal. Again, make sure you check with your instructor to
confirm.