Writing an Academic Research Proposal

Professor AHMED MOHAMED ABUNOWARA

What is a research proposal?

A research proposal is a written document specifying what a researcher intends to study (a
research problem), its significance and the proposed procedures for solving the problem. It
has the content and organization of your research (research plan).

In general, the proposal you are writing will introduce what the research proposes to do
and/or prove. It will also give an in-depth account of the methods and theories that will be
used to support the objectives within the project, including a review of relevant literature.
Note that the proposals are written in the future tense showing what you will do and
obviously do not include results and conclusions.

The structure of a research proposal

There are certain elements that any research proposal requires and these should be presented
in the following order:

Title or Cover Page

Identifying or giving a title to your research is an important part of the research proposal. It
should be brief and descriptive (In 25 words or less) and tell what you intend to research and
how you intend to do it. However, the choice is up to you, as long as your title is relevant to
the research question or aim. The student researcher, the institution, and department should
be in the cover page.

Table of Contents
List the sections of the Research Proposal and the corresponding page numbers.

Introduction
Your introduction should provide the background or the skeleton of your study. Here you are
establishing your basic framework for research. Begin with a general context, narrowing to
specific focus of the study (What is the problem?). Including:

- Why your research is important

- What is already known about the topic
- The gap or what is not yet known about the topic

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 - Why it is important learn the new information that your research will add
- The specific aim that your research addresses.

Literature Review
The background section is a significant part of your proposal and therefore should be an
extensive review of the literature related to your topic. Therefore

- You should be able to discuss what the existing literature is about and highlight any
gaps, issues or contentions that arise.
- Demonstrate to your readers that you have read enough to show that you are aware of
who the most significant writers or researchers are in your area of research
- Specify which issues or concepts you will concentrate on in your review (this may
well change as you read more widely and deeply).
- Show that you can exercise critical judgment in selecting which issues to focus on and
which to ignore
- You also need to be able to show where your research fits within this literature and
enter into discussions on issues that relate to your research question.
- The point of this background section is to demonstrate to the reader your
understanding and knowledge of the research area. Thus, you may write some
sections showing some of the important concepts and ideas.
- By reviewing the current literature on your topic, you can narrow down your focus
and establish a hypothesis that has not yet been substantively addressed.
- This review will also bring you up to date on the current state of study in the topic
area and help you establish the theoretical orientation you are planning to take

Statement of the Problem

In this section, describe the research problem that you intend to answer or investigate i.e. why
does this research need to be done?

Aims and Objectives

In this section,

- You should expand on the title of your research project to articulate the aims or
hypotheses of your research (Depending on the nature of your study).
- State unambiguously and concisely the aims and key research questions that need to
be tested (make sure that you relate the aims to the research questions which follow
on from this). This will indicate whether you will be doing quantitative or qualitative
research, and the instruments of research (survey, interview, questionnaire, etc.) to be
used.
- It normally begins with the statement, "The purpose/aim of this academic research
study is…"

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Limitations
This section indicate any limitations which you cannot do in your research or any factor that
beyond the scope of your research. Note that this section is not necessary for a proposal. It
has to be there in the final thesis/study.

Significance
This section discusses why your research is significant. Relate the intended or expected
outcomes of your research to the original aims expressed in the proposal so that the
significance of the study and the contribution to knowledge is apparent.

The significance of the study answers the questions:

- Why is your study important?

- To whom is it important?
- What benefit(s) will occur if your study is done?

Methodology and Method

Research methodology simply refers to the practical method to be used in investigating the
research question. More specifically, tells your readers how you plan to tackle your research
problem. You may use more than one methodology to inform your method of research.

The Method section is very important because it

In this section of the proposal you will need to

- justify the use of the particular research methods that you are choosing to use.
- give a brief overview of why you have chosen to use this methodology and how your
research question fits within this methodological framework.
- if you are using more than one methodology, demonstrate why you have chosen to
use another methodology and how it is relevant to the aims and objectives of your
research.
- refer to the type of research you will do (experimental, correlational, or descriptive)
- cover how to select your subjects/participants.
- discuss the number of participants to be involved in your research, how to find or
approach them, and how they will be used in your study (procedures).
- specify how to collect data from them ( instrument(s)) e.g. interviews, questionnaires,
tests, etc. depending on the overall research aims and objectives.
- Data analysis methods can be grouped according to whether the research is qualitative
or quantitative.
- describe how to analyze you data (statistical analysis procedures), but not the results.

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References
In this section

- List all the resources (the books, journals, articles, or other documents) cited in your
proposal using a referencing format appropriate to your faculty, guidelines, or
discipline of your reference material (typically in either APA or MLA format).
- Do not list resources that are not.
- All the sources that you have used for your proposal must be generally arranged in
alphabetical order.

Detailed outline
Writing is an entire process that needs to be organized so you can easily present the things
that you would like to discuss. Therefore, create a detailed outline of the study that you would
like to accomplish. Show the title, sections and subsections of each chapter. With this, you
can specifically know the steps that you need to follow throughout the writing process.

Generally, your proposal or plan is about how you will systematically design a study to
ensure valid and reliable results that address the research aims and objectives. You must
provide justification for the need to conduct the study. What is the gap that the study will fill,
and what is its contribution to the existing body of knowledge? The originality and
importance of the research must be clearly described.

Professor AHMED MOHAMED ABUNOWARA

2023