Creating your ProposalComponents of the Proposal Document

• Brief project overview (objectives)

• Background information - sufficient for anyone to understand your proposal

• Scope of the project - what are its boundaries?

• Project details, methods and methodology• Resources needed to complete the work - sample

bibliography

Title

Creating your ProposalSuccessful proposals do the following:

Inform the reader of the subject your proposed project deals with

Propose a question that your research will eventually attempt to answer

Review the literature currently available which concerns the subject

Discuss the research methods and methodology to be used

Creating your Proposal

Primary and secondary research methods

Primary sources are are contemporary accounts of an event, written by someone who experienced or witnessed

the event in question.

Secondary source materials interpret and draw conclusions about the events reported in primary sources.

Creating your Proposal

Research methodology? What’s that then?

Academic research is traditionally based on scientific methods - data that can be converted into numbers, graphs,

charts etc.

This is known as “Quantitative Research”

This assumes that all variables can be identified and relationships measured

Creating your Proposal

Research methodology? What’s that then?

Qualitative researchers are interested in understanding the meaning people have constructed, that is, how people make sense of their world and the experiences they have in the

world. (Merriam, 2009, p. 13)

This assumes that variables are complex, interwoven, and difficult to measure

Creating your ProposalWhat methodology to use...

!Quantitative, or qualitative, or a mixture of both?

!What do you think your methods will enable you to discover?

!What might they prevent you from discovering?

!What kinds of research methods would be best suited to the kind of

research you are undertaking and the research questions you are pursuing?

!What sort of problems do you envisage in setting up these methods?

!What will you need to do to ensure they gather useful data?