Sunday, August 26, 2012

The Sections of the Proposal


The Introduction

Topic Area

A good title will clue the reader into the topic but it can not tell the whole story. Follow the title with a strong introduction. The introduction provides a brief overview that tells a fairly well informed (but perhaps non-specialist) reader what the proposal is about. It might be as short as a single page, but it should be very clearly written, and it should let one assess whether the research is relevant to their own. With luck it will hook the reader's interest.

A Basic Proposal Outline:


Introduction
  Topic area 
  Research question 
  Significance to knowledge

Proposal Sample


Most students and beginning researchers do not fully understand what a research proposal means, nor do they understand its importance. To put it bluntly, one's research is only as a good as one's proposal. An ill-conceived proposal dooms the project even if it somehow gets through the Thesis Supervisory Committee.