Assignment:
Your research proposal should be structured using the following template:
Research Proposal Template:
1. Title:
You will need to write a statement which reflects the content of the proposal. (You can choose a company, social phenomenon, CRM to research as you like), topic should be interesting.
2. Research Questions:
Relate to course content: your topic must relate to your degree course. Research is about questions - you need to present 2 closely related questions that help you investigate an academic problem worthy of research.
3. Literature Review (aim for around 1000 words):
Good research questions evolve as you read. Many scholars will have published studies in areas related to your chosen topic area. As you read and review the literature on your topic, think about where your proposed research study will fit into the research literature.
Can you add something new to what has been done already?
1. E.g. you may have critically reviewed a particular area of literature relating to your chosen topic and discovered that something (e.g. a relationship, effect or cause) is unclear or not very well understood.
2. You may find contradictory results in different studies.
3. There may be a lot of research in one industry or country - but not in others.
4. Maybe you want to test a theory in a new context?
What will your proposed research study do to help the world understand more about your topic?
Ensure you make it as clear as possible to the reader how your reading (your review of literature) helped you design your research questions. During seminars your tutor may ask you how you arrived at your research questions - your analysis of the literature should provide reasons for wanting to ask a research question.
The literature review should help you decide what you want to research, and why. Ensure you:
1. Provide a literature review that is relevant to your research idea
2. Identify the main theoretical concepts (in your chosen topic area)
3. Cover a range of academic sources (including recently published studies)
4. Use the review to present an argument for your own research
4. Methodology / Methods / Sample (aim for around 600 words):
You will need to include three sections in this part of the proposal:
4.1. Methodology
4.2. Research methods
4.3. Sampling strategy
4.1 Methodology:
• Your methodology should outline your overall approach and the philosophical stance you will adopt (i.e. positivist or interpretivist?) and say why you have taken this approach.
• Provide an overall introduction to the type of research you propose. Read about the differences between intrepretvist and positivist approaches to research, and comment on whether you feel your proposed research is more intrepretvist or positivist. Is your research more inductive or deductive?
4.2 Research methods:
• How do you propose to do your research, and why? You should describe the method(s) by which you are going to gather the data, and any potential problems (e.g. reliability?) with your selected method(s).
• Use research methods texts and explain why you are going to use the method(s) in relation to your research questions.
• Your research proposal will need to propose primary data collection.
4.3 Sampling strategy:
• You then need to outline the sampling strategy. You will need to consider questions such as: who you are going to research, how have they been chosen (e.g. probability / non-probability) and how many people and/or organisations do you intend to research? • The answers to these questions need to be justified (i.e. explain why).
• You need to be realistic: it is unlikely that you could obtain data from a Premier League Football Club, or the Chief Executive of a major multinational company.
5. Ethical issues
• It is important that you demonstrate an understanding of the ethical issues facing researchers - as a minimum you should indicate that you have read (you will need to reference) at least one ethical code of conduct. You should also cover issues of confidentially and anonymity.
6. Referencing
You need to fully reference throughout the work; both in-text and bibliographic references need to be in the Harvard APA style (5th or 6th Edition). Work lacking academic sources will be penalised (see the University grade criteria). This could mean (in extreme cases) that poor referencing results in a fail. If in doubt, ask your seminar tutor for further clarification on referencing.