PROPOSAL WRITING

TUTORIALS

Rev. Sister Henrietta Fawole

 To dos for research proposal – Chapter 1
• Start by discussing with your project supervisor – research (project)
topic
• Have a working research title and question
• Doa scoping search (preliminary search) using Google scholar,
Pubmed, Cochrane Library etc on your topic
• It
makes sense that you find out what others (researchers) have done
in your subject area (around your topic) before you commence your
research
• Thispreliminary literature review will help you to
establish what is known and unknown about your topic.

• A scoping literature review might form part of your

introduction section.

• Thisactivity also helps you to be conversant with your

project topic
• Todo this preliminary scoping search – use keywords from your
topic to identify relevant and recent articles (papers)

• The purpose of this preliminary review is to provide a background

to and often a rationale for the need for your project topic (further
research)

• Break your topic down using either PICO or PEO as appropriate and
this will also help you later in formulating your research questions.
 Research Question and the literature
review
• Toorder commence any research work – you have to
develop a research question (RQ)

• The RQ provides structure for the whole literature review

• Defining your RQ is a crucial step that points the way to

your research project investigation
• A good RQ will help you to keep focused.

• RQwill guide your literature search – leads to

identification of relevant articles

• The
RQ will inform what data you need to gather, how
and from, where, and finally how to analyse the data.
 Standard features of a research question
• It
must be clear, that is, it must be clear to you and your supervisor
what you are asking
• It
must be doable, that means feasible, have resources to conduct
the project, the idea is not too big or vague in scope, and it is
doable in the time you have for this project
• It should connect with established theory and research
• It
should have the potential to make a contribution to knowledge
(how will it impact society, participants, students, policy etc….)
• Once you have a draft RQ, redo your
preliminary searching
• Find out what the literature is saying
• If
your RQ is too vague, it will not lead
into coherent body of literature.
• Review the RQ again
 Steps to achieving a workable RQ
1. Formulate your draft RQ
2. Search for information using key words
3. Skim, scan, read, reflect and search some more,
defining key concepts
4. Obtain articles and read some more
5. Reassess your question
6. Formulate the final RQ
LET’S PRACTICE WITH A PROJECT TITLE

FORMULATE RQ
DO A PRELIMINARY SEARCH