Your thesis proposal provides an overview of your proposed plan of work, including the general scope of your project, your basic research questions, research methodology, and the overall significance of your study. In short, your proposal explains what you want to study, how you will study this topic, why this topic needs to be studied.
Purpose:
Thesis proposals are designed to:
Justify and plan (or contract for) a research project.
ƒ Show how your project contributes to existing research.
ƒ Demonstrate to your advisor and committee that you understand how to conduct discipline- specific research within an acceptable time-frame.
Proposals generally include at least some form of the following sections:
z Title,
z Abstract,
z Introduction/Background,
z Problem Statement,
z Purpose/Aims/Rationale,
z Review of Literature, Methodology,
z Significance/Implications,
z Overview of Chapters,
z Plan of Work,
z Bibliography.
Sometimes these sections may be combined— the problem statement, aims, and review of literature are all part of the introduction. The most common elements are the introduction/problem statement, review of literature, and methodology
Title
A good title should:
ƒ Orient your readers to the topic you will research.
ƒ Indicate the type of study you will conduct.
The abstract should:
Abstract
ƒ Provide a brief (100-350 word) overview of the proposal that gives a reader a basic understanding of your proposal and encourages her or him to read more.
ƒ Summarize Introduction, Statement of the Problem, Background of the Study, Research
Questions or Hypotheses, and Methods and Procedures.
ƒ (In some cases, the abstract may need to be very brief—no more than 50 words—in which case, it will be more descriptive than complete.)
The introduction helps put your project in conversation with other projects on similar topics. Generally, the introduction provides necessary background information to your study and provides readers with some sense of your overall research interest.
A good introduction should:
ƒ Establish the general territory (real world or research) in which the research is placed.
ƒ Describe the broad foundations of your study, including some references to existing literature and/or empirically observable situations. In other words, the introduction needs to provide sufficient background for readers to understand where your study is coming from.
ƒ Indicate the general scope of your project, but do not go into so much detail that later sections
(purpose/literature review) become irrelevant.
ƒ Provide an overview of the sections that will appear in your proposal (optional). Engage the readers.
This section may be incorporated in your introduction or your purpose section, or it may stand independently (it depends on the field). Some proposals start with the statement of the problem, rather than a more general introduction. Regardless of placement, at some point you need to clearly identify the problem or knowledge gap that your project is responding to. This section should:
ƒ Answer the question: “What is the gap that needs to be filled?” and/or “What is the problem that needs to be solved?”
ƒ State the problem clearly early in a paragraph.
ƒ Limit the variables you address in stating your problem or question.
Most proposals include a clear statement of the research objectives, including a description of the questions the research seeks to answer or the hypotheses the research advances. This may be included as part of the introduction, or it may be a separate section. Spend significant time brainstorming before and while you draft this section. Once you begin your dissertation research,
you may find that your aims change in emphasis or in number. What is essential for you at this point, though, is to specify for your readers—and for yourself—the precise focus of your research and to identify key concepts you will be studying.
A clear statement of purpose will:
ƒ Explain the goals and research objectives of the study (what do you hope to find?).
ƒ Show the original contributions of your study by explaining how your research questions or approach are different from previous research (what will you add to the field of knowledge?).
ƒ Provide a more detailed account of the points summarized in the introduction.
ƒ Include a rationale for the study (why should we study this?).
ƒ Be clear about what your study will not address (this is especially important if you are applying for competitive funding; narrowly focused studies are more likely to win funding).
In addition, this section may:
ƒ Describe the research questions and/or hypotheses of the study.
ƒ Include a subsection defining important terms, especially if they will be new to some readers or if you will use them in an unfamiliar way.
ƒ State limitations of the research.
ƒ Provide a rationale for the particular subjects of the study.
Review of Literature
The literature review is a critical look at the existing research that is significant to the work that you are carrying out. Obviously, at this point you are not likely to have read everything related to your research questions, but you should still be able to identify the key texts with which you will be in conversation as you write your dissertation. Literature reviews often include both the theoretical approaches to your topic and research (empirical or analytical) on your topic.
Writing the literature review allows you to understand:
ƒ How other scholars have written about your topic (in addition to what they have written).
ƒ The range of theories scholars use to analyze their primary materials or data
ƒ How other scholars connect their specific research topics to larger issues, questions, or practices within the field.
ƒ The best methodologies and research techniques for your particular topic.
The literature review has four major functions or rhetorical goals that you should keep in mind as you write:
ƒ It situates the current study within a wider disciplinary conversation.
ƒ It illustrates the uniqueness, importance of and need for your particular project by explaining how your research questions and approach are different from those of other scholars.
ƒ It justifies methodological choices.
ƒ It demonstrates your familiarity with the topic and appropriate approaches to studying it.
Effective literature reviews should:
ƒ Flesh out the Introduction’s brief description of the background of your study.
ƒ Critically assess important research trends or areas of interest relevant to your study.
ƒ Identify potential gaps in knowledge.
ƒ Establish a need for current and/or future research projects.
Key Point: You are entering a scholarly conversation already in progress. The literature review shows that you’ve been listening in and that you have something valuable to say. After assessing the literature in your field, you should be able to answer the following questions:
ƒ Why should we study (further) this research topic/problem?
ƒ What contributions will my study make to the existing literature?
Methodology
This section is essential to most good research proposals. How you study a problem is often as important as the results you collect. This section includes a description of the general means through which the goals of the study will be achieved: methods, materials, procedures, tasks, etc.
An effective methodology section should:
ƒ Introduce the overall methodological approach for each problem or question. Is your study qualitative or quantitative? Are you going to take a special approach, such as action research, or use case studies?
ƒ Indicate how the approach fits the overall research design. Your methods should have a clear connection with your research questions and/or hypotheses. In other words, make sure that your methods will actually answer your questions
ƒ Describe the specific methods of data collection you are going to use—e.g. surveys, interviews, questionnaires, observation, archival or traditional library research.
ƒ Explain how you intend to analyze and interpret your results. Will you use statistical analysis?
Will you use specific theoretical perspectives to help you analyze a text or explain observed
behaviors?
ƒ If necessary, provide background and rationale for methodologies that are unfamiliar for your readers. (Typically, the social sciences and humanities require more explanation/rationale of methods than the hard sciences).
o If applicable, you may also need to provide a rationale for subject selection (particularly if you have not already provided one). For instance, if you propose to conduct interviews and use questionnaires, how do you intend to select the sample population? If you are analyzing literary texts, which texts have you chosen, and why?
ƒ Address potential limitations. Are there any practical limitations that could affect your data collection? How will you attempt to control for potential confounding variables and errors?
Significance/ Implications
Some proposals require a separate section stating the significance of the study. A clear statement of significance may:
ƒ Discuss the methodological, substantive, and/or theoretical contribution you anticipate making to existing knowledge in your (sub)field.
ƒ Plainly state the practical and/or theoretical importance of the problem and/or objectives of your study, given current knowledge and practices.
ƒ Explain the usefulness or benefits of the study, if possible (and especially for funding agencies), to both the outside world and the research community.
Overview of Chapters
Some
proposals also include a brief description of relevant chapters.
Bibliographic References and Appendices
Your proposal should include a working bibliography of key texts that inform your study and methodology. You will want to include all sources cited in your proposal, and you may also want to include references that will be cited in the dissertation itself.
Source
The slide is an excerpt from www.psu.edu/dept/cew/WritingProposals.doc
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