DEVELOPING RESEARCH PROPOSALS

1. DEVELOPING RESEARCH PROPOSALS

2. Purpose of research proposals

3. Why do I need a research proposal? • To convince others of the value of your research • To demonstrate competency • To assist you - as a planning tool

4. When should the proposal be written?

5. When should the proposal be written? • Start thinking now • A substantial amount of work has to be done before a proposal can be written • Seek advice on your draft from me, and peers

6. Titles • This can come later • Descriptive and informative • Avoid bland titles! • Bland: Library Needs Analysis • Better: Effects of Household Income on Use and Perceptions of Library Services

7. Core components of research proposals Make sure that these are meaningful, not mechanistic

8. Core elements • An indication of why the problem is important • A description of the research question • A review of relevant literature • A description of the proposed methodology

9. Or in plain English... • What do you want to do? • Why do you want to do it? • Why is it important? • Who has done similar work? • How are you going to do it? • How long will it take?

10. Additional components of research proposals

11. Depending on the research... • A description of how the research findings will be disseminated • Reliability and validity • Ethical statement • Possible problems

12. Ethics in Research • CONSENT • HARM • DECEPTION • PRIVACY

13. Consent • Informed consent • Subjects must know potential risks, benefits, conditions of participation, and ability to withdraw without penalty • If consent is not informed, it can be as bad as (or worse than) not getting consent at all • Two types • Direct or Substitute (3rd party) • If the person has a legal guardian, need substitute • When in doubt, ask for permission • Consent should always be obtained in writing

14. Harm • Subjects must be protected from harm, or at the least fully informed about the potential costs and benefits resulting from the harm • Research that is physically or psychologically dangerous is generally considered unethical • Care needs to be taken with subjects who are, or consider themselves to be, relatively powerless • Children, elderly, w/ disabilities

15. Privacy • Sensitivity of topic &/or data • Can responses/results affect the subject’s life if known by others • How public/private is the setting? • Public display of the data • Personally identifiable information should be removed or changed

16. Deception • Often tied to the informed part of consent • Omission: withhold information • Commission: provide false information • i.e., lying • Establishing false intimacy: subject feels a high degree of comfort because he/she does not know is “on the record” • Using accomplices: someone helping the researcher that the subject doesn’t know is helping

17. Do not fabricate, falsify or plagiarize!

18. Success and failure indicators for proposals

19. Success indicators • Clearly defined research question • Appropriate literature provides a background to the problem • Use of other sources to identify/support the problem • Objectives clearly specified

20. Success indicators Conceptual framework and theoretical assumptions clearly stated Appropriate design and methodology Promotes further research Preliminary data/pilot study Necessary resources available

21. Failure indicators • Too long • Poor structure, language use • Inappropriate use of technical terms • Research too ambitious • No literature review • No integration of theory in literature review • Literature review copied • No theoretical foundation

22. Failure indicators (cont.) • Weak research design • Methods not clear • Methods inappropriate • No references or bibliography • Plagiarized work

23. Core components We will do this in week 13

24. Describing the research question

25. First find a research question! • Researchers get their questions from many different places... • Observation of the world • Concern with theory • Previous research • Practical concerns • Personal interest

26. Choosing a research question • A broad research area is not a research question • Formulate a number of possible questions, and weigh up the pros and cons • The proposal must reflect that the issues have been thought through

27. Criteria for choosing include... • Access to information • Access to resources • Theoretical background • Value of research • Researcher’s skills • Is question big/small enough • Overall probability of successful completion • Interest to researcher

28. Setting the limits: definitions • Provide explicit definitions for key concepts • Terms don’t always have single meanings understood in the same way by all • Don’t under- or overestimate your readers • Don’t provide mechanistic dictionary definitions of all terms

29. Sample definitions • “A dependent variable is a variable that is influenced by another variable.” - weak • The term “social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting” (SEAAR) has been used to describe a variety of practices relating to corporate social responsibility. For purposes of this study, the term will be used to refer specifically to the formal set of procedures outlined in AccountAbility 1000, while “social audit” will be used to describe the broader set of practices.- better

30. Setting the limits: boundaries • Specify the limits of the research in a way which makes in clear what is and is not to be studied, through, for example, • definitions • time span • geographical boundaries • other limits as appropriate to the field of study

31. Literature review

32. What purpose does the literature review serve? • Provides a conceptual framework for the research • Provides an integrated overview of the field of study • Helps establish a need for the research • May help clarify the research problem • Helps to demonstrate researcher’s familiarity with the area under consideration (theory and / or methods)

33. Skills involved in producing a literature review • Surveying a comprehensive range of existing material and sources in the general areas of your study • Selecting those that will be most relevant and significant for your particular project • Understanding and analyzing the central findings and arguments • Synthesizing the findings and integrating them into the research proposal • A good literature review generally contains an argument

34. How to write a literature review • Indicate the ways in which the authors you are reviewing will be relevant to your research (information, theory, methodology) • Demonstrate that you understand the similarities and differences between these works and paradigms (Where do they stand in relation to each other? Where does your research stand in relation to them?) • If the study is cross-disciplinary or comparative you need to describe how the different areas of research can be drawn together in a meaningful way

35. Questions to help you in compiling a literature review • What are the broad bodies of literature that have relevance for your research topic (local and international)? • What theoretical model/s relate to your research topic? • What theories, methods & results have previous researchers in your field produced? What is the history of your area of study? (cont.)

36. Questions to help you in compiling a literature review (cont.) • What are the most recent findings in your area of study? • What gaps or contradictions exist among these findings? • What new research questions do these findings suggest? • What structure suits my literature review best? • What should I leave out?

37. Draw a literature map

40. The literature review is not • A bibliography • A series of descriptions of pieces of previous research with no apparent connection to each other or your project

41. Significance of the research

42. The research must be of value, e.g. • Practical value in solving problems • Value to policy development • Contribution to theory • Contribution to body of knowledge within discipline

43. Methodology

44. What does the methodology section do? What should it contain? • The methodology section shows the reader how you are going to set about looking for answers to the research question (including materials and methods to be used) • enough detail to demonstrate that you are competent and the project is feasible • The proposed methods must be appropriate to the type of research

45. What does the methodology section do? What should it contain? • The instrument • Provide a copy of the questionnaire/ interview protocols in the appendices • The types of data you are going to collect • Quantitative data • Will be tabulated/ graphed etc.. • Qualitative data • Narrative, descriptive • Reliability and validity of instrument

46. Methodology section: “traditional” empirical social research • Hypothesis • Research design • Sampling • Measurement instruments • Data collection procedures • Data analysis

47. Methodology section: “qualitative” research • Research design • Research site • Participants • Researcher as the instruments • “bracket oneself, refrain from…..” • Data collection procedures • Data analysis

48. Sample evaluation criteria

49. Sample evaluation criteria Problem Identification: • Is the problem/line of inquiry clearly identified? • Has appropriate literature been examined in order to provide a background to the problem? • Have other relevant sources been used to identify the problem? • Are the aims and/or objectives of the inquiry clearly specified?

50. Sample evaluation criteria (cont.) Approach: • To what extent are the conceptual framework and theoretical assumptions clearly stated? • Are the research design, methods of data collection and analysis appropriate to the aims of the research?