Prepare a Research Proposal based on a business issue.
Approaching the Assignment:
1. Identify the key terms and requirements for a Research Proposal
2. Use the Marking Criteria to understand the expectations of the reader.
3. Create an outline of your assignment.
4. Use your Research and Referencing to support and justify all your points
5. Use Evidence to support your proposed research design and methodology
Assignment use the Harvard Referencing Style.
Suggested Structure - Research Proposal
1. Research Proposal Title - Reflect as accurately as possible the content of your chosen topic.
2. Abstract - This is a brief statement of what you are intending to research.. This needs to describe the proposal content.
3. Introduction
• Relevance of the Proposed Research to Business Research
• Place the proposed study in context
• Justification of the chosen topic
• Value of this research
4. Research Questions and Research Objectives
• The research questions can be one overall question or a number questions that the research process will address.
• Research objectives
• Both research questions and research objectives must relate to the literature review
5. Literature Review
• Clear and precise knowledge that relate to the research topic.
• Explain how your proposal relates to the academic debate which has been identified as part of the literature review.
• Demonstrate a link between previous work and current work that has been done in your field of research interest.
• Highlight in your literature review where your research question(s)/objectives came from.
6. Method
Relates to your research questions and research objectives and shows how you will achieve them.
Your method consists of two parts:
(1) Research design - relates to the research opinion (philosophies, approaches, strategies, choices, time horizon). You are expected to make strong justifications in support of your chosen research design.
(2) Data collection - relates to the last phase of the research onion (techniques and procedures). Identify how specifically the data will be collected (i.e. questionnaire, focus group, etc...). You are expected to provide the advantages and disadvantages of the various data collection methods and select the most appropriate data collection method(s).
7. References
8. Appendix