Writing A Research Proposal: Basic Steps of Writing

A research proposal

Writing a good research proposal has been considered as one of the most difficult things during academic life. As it requires a lot of time to collect all of the literatures that are needed, proposing the idea based on the originality as well as novelty is not as easy as it is thought. Thus, how are we going to do it?

In term of structure and content, a research proposal is composed of summary, study background, objectives, literature review, and methods. In brief, most of people would have agreed that a research proposal is only about methodologies and methods. Another understanding may have argued that a research proposal is an idea that is to describe three important features, and they are:

What will you investigate? Why it is important? and How will you prove that it is important?

However, there are two feature of interests that must be included in a good research proposal. As it is argued by the Guidance from the University of Southern California, "The goal of a research proposal is twofold: (1) to present and justify the need to study a research problem, and (2) to present the practical ways in which the proposed study should be conducted". This only implies to Methodologies and Methods.

Organising the Writing

A research proposal is sheets of papers that are written for expressing the idea of research. Orderly, the proposal is composed of:

• Title
• Summary
• Introduction
• Study background
• Problem statement/ research question
• Study objectives
• Research urgency
• Academic target output plan
• Literature Review
• Building Arguments
• Research Roadmap
• Research Methodologies
• Materials/ Subjects
• Methods
• Fishbone diagrams
• Budget Allocation and Scheduling
• Budged
• Schedule
• References

From these outline, some students may have started they proposal by finding a suitable title first. Apparently, formulating a title is an incorrect step during the stage of preparing a proposal. As it is previously explained, a good proposal is to demonstrate the importance of a research, and the practical way to show why it is important. Then, a research proposal begins from writing Methodologies/ Methods and ends in the Title (as the following flowchart).

Flowchart of writing a research proposal

Now, by following this flowchart, it is obvious that Methodologies and Methods are the core of a research proposal. So, what is a methodology? and what is its difference with methods? do they share similarity?