Ultimate Guide to Write Research Proposal In 2024

Before beginning any research, the primary task is to write a research proposal. You may need to submit your research proposal when applying for PhD, grants, fellowships, policy briefs, or research projects. However, a research proposal is not required for writing a research paper.

The research proposal should outline your interest in the topic, incorporating various components such as the research title, introduction, conceptual understanding, literature review, research gap, research objectives, hypothesis, benefits of the study, and bibliography.

In this article, you will learn how you can successfully write your research proposal step by step. As the research proposal contains various sections, it might be time-consuming if not done right. This article also contains the best content format that you can use while writing the proposal.

The very first thing while applying for any research is to provide or submit a research proposal. The research proposal provides an idea of your understanding, capabilities, and how successfully you will carry out your research.

In short, the research proposal provides an overall idea of how the research will be carried out, the time it will take, the methodology that you will follow, what you aim to achieve, and how it will contribute to the existing knowledge.

How to Write a Research Proposal

Your research proposal should provide an in-depth knowledge of past studies related to your topic, the gaps in that topic, the scope of the topic, methodologies you will follow, and data that you will collect to achieve the objectives that you have formed. Before you start writing any research proposal, you will have to do an extensive literature review that gives an idea of existing knowledge.

The existing knowledge can be found in research papers, books published, web articles, etc.

Definition of Research Proposal-

Outlines a plan for conducting academic or scientific research, including the research question, methodology, and intended outcomes.

Structure of Research Proposal

In the structure of the research proposal, various contents should be present. Starting with the research title and ending with a bibliography or references. Let us have a look at these contents that should be in your research proposal-

1. Research Title

The research title or topic is the first and most important element in any research proposal. The research title gives an overall idea of what your study is going to be based on. The research topic/title should be unique and should not have been carried on earlier.

The research title is the general outline of where the researcher will focus his overall research project. While reading any research title, it should give and clear idea to the reader of what the title focuses on and what is the aim of the study in a single sentence. You should write your research title in a way that is narrowed down to focus on a specific subject, aim, goal, etc.

For example, your research title could be “Social inclusion of transgender individuals through social dialogue and community philanthropy, with reference to offering and accepting employment opportunities in Europe” 

2. Conceptual Understanding

The second part of your research proposal should have a conceptual understanding in which you mention the theoretical study of your topic. Conceptual understanding may also consist of the frameworks, concepts, and ideas on the chosen topic. You may also show how two or more variables of the study are connected using various figures, diagrams, pictures, etc.

In this section of conceptual understanding, whatever concepts are used in the research proposal have to be described, narrated, and explained with the intention to report their relevance to your proposal. Moreover, the key elements of the conceptual understanding have to be addressed in the research proposal and the working definitions of every concept must be included in the research proposal.

In short, you mention what you understand regarding the topic, and what previously used methodologies you are going to use.

3. Literature Review

The literature review is about the research that has been carried out earlier in the form of research papers, books, etc. By reviewing the literature, you will gain knowledge of previously carried out research and what their findings were. This will strengthen your research proposal and will also improve the quality.

The literature review will mention all the journal articles, papers, and books that you have gone through related to your research topic with your thoughts and understanding. The review section should contain a minimum of 8 to 10 literature reviews.

While reading the literature review, you may also come across various methodologies that were used in earlier research papers and also could be used in this research that you are going to carry out.

Your literature review should be in a proper citation format. I would advise you to write a literature review in APA (American Psychological Association) or MLA (Modern Language Association) citation format. The example for APA and MLA citation is given below-

APA – Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. DOI or URL 

MLA – Author’s Last Name, First Name. “Title of Article.” Title of Periodical, volume number, issue number, Publication Year, pages.

4. Research Gap

Research basically refers to the contribution to the existing knowledge. With this intention, an assessment of the existing level of knowledge is essential. Traditionally literature review is a reliable method for assessing existing level of knowledge to the extent of phenomena under investigation.

Now, keeping in mind the future requirements and the trends of the economy in the world, visionary knowledge building is felt necessary. Now the gap between future knowledge and the level of existing knowledge is identified as the research gap.

The gap identified so far is expected to be supported by the literature review, and also the literature referred to identified. This research gap must be recently investigated. The future of the research requirement is a major concern while identifying the research gap. This process could be referred to the valid sources of policy briefs and research article articles published by eminent research scholars.

The identified research gaps should be converted into research statements, and these research statements must then be transformed into research objectives.

The quality of the research objectives depends on its ability to face a scientific inquiry. A detailed discussion of this aspect is provided in a further section of this article.

5. Research Objectives

Research objectives are the specific statements that the researcher uses to split the entire research aim of investigation into measurable and attainable goals. The research objectives are statements explaining the intention of the research and are highly related to the research gap identified in the initial stage of the research investigation.

In the entire research work, objectives are considered to be the most important aspect as the direction of the entire research work is defined by considering the research objectives. Even the methodology of scientific investigation is also decided based on the research objectives.

Specifically speaking, for the doctoral research work, there should be a minimum of three research objectives and a maximum to be five research objectives.

Out of these research objectives, one objective should contribute to the suggestions of the research, and at least one research objective should highlight the theoretical background required for the research investigation. The remaining three objectives should be in line with the research gap, hypothesis, and any theoretical considerations.

6. Methodology

In the research pertaining to the social sciences, empirical research methods are highly appreciated. Mostly, the research on management discipline is opinion-based. Hence, it primarily considers Likert Scale thus an analytical aspect of Likert Scale is to be considered while finalizing statistical tools and their limitations.

Apart from this, research methodology is the collection of various methods, approaches, and tools to assert the scientific way of problem-solving. In the section on research methodology, researchers’  research should specifically address elements of research, namely sources of data, tools for data collection, sampling frame, sample design, and the specific methods used for data collection.

Software packages used for data analysis, tools utilized for data analysis, statistical techniques applied while inferential, statistical analysis, and justification for all these tools and techniques used while investigation. Some research proposals also include a discussion on the scope and limitations of the study under the research methodology. Also, some researches cover the limitations and further (future) scope of the research.

Speaking specifically in social sciences research and discussion of the research methodology should be attended in a separate chapter. While in the research pertaining to finance and economy research methodology would become a section in the chapter of introduction.

In the current trends of social sciences, researchers can be depicted, for instance, in the field of management studies, where a structured pilot-tested questionnaire is used for data collection. Researchers highly prefer the simple random sampling technique. T-tests and Chi-Square tests using SPSS are the latest trends in analysis. For the purpose of modelling the research variables, structural equation, models based on reflective constructs and using covalence and regression based structural equation modelling is highly preferred for this purpose. Currently, majority of the researchers are using SPSS Amos and PLS 4.

In social sciences, the level of significance would be 5%, and the conclusions of the statistical results are to be interpreted with logical reasoning by utilizing the deductive reasoning method along with the relative realism of research ontology.

All these details have to be considered at the earliest stage while preparing a research proposal; unless and until all these details are frozen, the research proposal will not be worth being accepted by the university authorities.

7. Hypothesis

There are many definitions given for the hypothesis, though, in this article, we preferred one definition of the hypothesis that is applicable to the social sciences. The practical aspect of the hypothesis is defined as the guess about the population parameters. With this definition, there are two elements that are necessary while defining the hypothesis for your research proposal.

The first is an estimate of population parameters and an estimate of sample observations supported by the assumption of the relationship between sample and population. In this way, the hypothesis is derived as the probable solution for the research problem under investigation by estimating the size of population parameters. This aspect can be easily understood by referring to one simple example, in the study of estimating the annual income of citizens, the hypothesis could be the average annual income of a particular geographical area, and the estimate is derived from the study of selected representative sample citizens from that particular geographical area.

If you are writing a Ph.D. proposal, then it must contain at least three hypotheses at the opposite. If it is a structural equation model, then the hypothesis should guess the relationship between all the constructs included in the proposed structural equation model.

8. Benefits of the Study

The benefits of the study depend on the title and objective of the research proposal. Still, as a thumb rule, research should benefit the industry, government, or respondent of the research.

9. Bibliography

There is a slight difference between the bibliography and the references. The material that is referred to and cited is given specifically to the particular research page into quoted text is called a reference. Still, the material that is used to announce the understanding of the researcher but not referred anywhere but has an impact on the entire research is called the bibliography.

In the proposal researcher should concisely mention what is to be in the references and what is to be included in the bibliography.

Conclusion

Before submitting your research proposal, please make sure it is in a valid format. Most of the research proposals use Times New Roman as their font and a font size of 12. One of the biggest mistake that I have seen is – people not using proper text alignment.

A research proposal that you may draft may have certain recommendations that you may add.  I would highly advise you to seek help from your fellow researchers that you may know. In this way, they will provide you with an idea of how valid your research is and also get a few recommendations.

If you want to download a sample of the research proposal, you can click on the download button below.

If you have any other questions related to the research proposal or writing, you may comment down below, and I willwill be able to help you out.