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Below you will find a research proposal template you can use to write your own PhD proposal, along
with examples of specific sections. How to Write a PhD Research Proposal The typical research
proposal structure consists of: Title, Abstract, Background and Rationale, Research Aims and
Objectives, Research Design and Methodology, Timetable, and a Bibliography. Purpose: To include
any extra materials or information. It must be emphasized that these tasks are in no way independent
of each other. The purpose of this section is to argue how and in what ways you believe your
research will refine, revise, or extend existing knowledge in the subject area under investigation. A
thorough review of the literature pertinent to the research problem. The subsequent sections will
delve into the proposed methodology, including the training of machine learning models on diverse
network data and the evaluation of their performance. Don’t be afraid to reach out for comments
and suggestions. The Bottom Line Whether your research is academic (PhD or master’s graduate
student) or professional (competing for government or private funding), how you organize your
research proposal sections is one of the first things evaluators will notice. With empirical research,
it’s important to describe in detail how you plan to collect your data: Will you use surveys. Once I
got the completed paper, my last doubts were gone. It is also an argument as to why and how the
tasks you have outlined will help you investigate the research problem and answer your research
question(s). Normally, the proposal hearing precedes the designation of a Dissertation Reading
Committee, and faculty on either committee may differ (except for the primary dissertation advisor).
This includes the literature that will be explored in-depth, principles or theorems that will be
formulated and proven, experiments that will be conducted, sub-systems that will be built, systems
integrations that will be performed, and tests that will be accomplished. A traditional PhD, a Doctor
of Philosophy, usually studied full-time, prepares candidates for a career in Higher Education. The
purpose is to reflect upon gaps or understudied areas of the current literature and describe how your
proposed research contributes to a new understanding of the research problem should the study be
implemented as designed. Apply for postgraduate study New hdr curriculum, find a supervisor.
Resources Dive into our extensive resources on the topic that interests you. Upload Read for free
FAQ and support Language (EN) Sign in Skip carousel Carousel Previous Carousel Next What is
Scribd. Why would this matter to anyone other than you, or anyone who is outside of your specific
institution i.e. your school, your care home. An adequate grasp of the existing literature and know
how your research will contribute to it 3. There is no requirement that a program advisor serve,
although very often they do. However, it should also fulfill criteria in three main areas:
Researchability Feasibility and specificity Relevance and originality Cite this Scribbr article If you
want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article”
button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator. George, T. (2023, July 18).
How to Write a Dissertation or Thesis Proposal. Scribbr. Retrieved February 15, 2024, from Is this
article helpful. Ultimately, your proposal should persuade your supervisor or committee that your
proposed project is worth pursuing. It is probable that your question will change through the course
of your study. Gap Identified: While the paper provides a comprehensive analysis of existing
privacy mechanisms, it lacks discussion on the impact of these mechanisms on blockchain network
performance and resource requirements. IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, 7(2), 210-225.
Survey and Work Paper: Survey Paper: A survey paper focusing on the advancements in
recommendation systems, specifically in the domain of personalized music recommendations, has
been submitted to a prestigious conference. It's like a masterclass to be explored at your own pace.
Compare the various arguments, theories, methodologies, and findings expressed in the literature:
what do the authors agree on.
The dataset will be split into training and validation sets for model training and evaluation,
respectively. It serves as a decisive factor that can capture the attention of the reader and convey the
essence of the research. You may also access and check free of charge full text electronic versions of
Canadian theses and dissertations which were printed right from the start of 1998 to August 31,
2002. Note: The aim or purpose of a research proposal should be results-oriented as opposed to
process-oriented. With the advent of deep learning techniques and the availability of large-scale
annotated datasets, the field has experienced a renaissance, achieving remarkable progress in tasks
such as machine translation, sentiment analysis, and question-answering systems.” In both cases, the
introduction provides historical context and introduces keywords and concepts relevant to the
research topic. Make the reader’s job as easy as possible by clearly stating what the proposed
research will investigate, what the contribution is and why the study is worthwhile. Example:
Problem Statement The main objective of this work is to design novel and efficient algorithms for a
visually guided wheeled autonomous Robot that can explore an unknown or partially known 3D
environment, construct navigation maps, identify objects of interest and plan paths. Algorithm
Implementation: Several existing recommendation algorithms have been implemented as a baseline
for comparison. Citations to dissertations can be found from 1861 to the current, and abstracts are
incorporated from 1980 to the current. You may choose to interview people and transcribe what they
say are their motivations, feelings and experiences about a particular sugary snack choice. Committee
members could require an earlier deadline (e.g., four weeks before the hearing). It is a standard means
of assessing your potential as a doctoral researcher. Be sure to include: A succinct introduction to
your topic and problem statement A brief literature review situating your topic within existing
research A basic outline of the research methods you think will best answer your research question
The perceived implications for future research A reference list in the citation style of your choice The
length of your proposal varies quite a bit depending on your discipline and type of work you’re
conducting. For example, let’s imagine you are asking a group of people about their sugary snack
preferences. Smith and Prakash’s formula reduced mechanical failures by 25%. Cross-Validation: To
ensure the robustness of the models, k-fold cross-validation will be performed, where the dataset will
be divided into k subsets and the models will be trained and evaluated k times using different train-
test splits. Applications should include a covering letter, a 1 - 2 page explanation of what the
applicant hopes to contribute to the project, a CV, and the names of three academic referees. A
research proposal will be used to: Confirm whether you understand the topic and can communicate
complex ideas. You get this by formulating clear research questions 4. Move from a broad field of
interest to a specific niche: Russian literature 19th century Russian literature The novels of Tolstoy
and Dostoevsky Social media Mental health effects of social media Influence of social media on
young adults suffering from anxiety The only proofreading tool specialized in correcting academic
writing The academic proofreading tool has been trained on 1000s of academic texts and by native
English editors. It explains the background of the work, focusing briefly on the major issues of its
knowledge domain and clarifying why these issues are worthy of attention. As a general guideline,
try to keep your Title between 50 and 150 characters so that it can be easily remembered. Usually no
more than 2000 words, but check the requirements of your degree, and your supervisor or research
coordinator. Literature review This key component of the research proposal is the most time-
consuming aspect in the preparation of your research proposal. In addition to the above, you may
want to include data tables, surveys, questionnaires, data collection procedures, clinical protocols,
and informed consent documents. It can be quantitative (focused on numbers), qualitative (focused
on words and meanings), or a combination of both. What you should do: Consult with your
academic institution, PhD advisor, and laboratory colleagues. While it is important to consider the
methods that other researchers have employed, it is equally, if not more, important to consider what
methods have not been but could be employed. Research objectives divide the problem statements in
to set of sub-problems. Each sub-problem forms a separate research objective. On the other hand, few
institutions used ICT infrastructures for human resource managementinternal and external
communication purpose etc.
Surveyed Papers: Paper Title: “Privacy-Preserving Transaction Mechanisms in Blockchain: A
Comparative Study” Authors: Smith, J.; Johnson, A.; Brown, L. Publication: Journal of Blockchain
Research, 2019Summary: This paper compares various privacy-preserving transaction mechanisms in
blockchain, including ring signatures, zero-knowledge proofs, and confidential transactions. In other
words, you do not want to delve into idle speculation. Generally, you can have confidence that all of
the significant conceptual categories have been identified if you start to see repetition in the
conclusions or recommendations that are being made. If you knew everything when you were
writing up your proposal there wouldn’t be any point doing the PhD at all. How do you know you've
covered the key conceptual categories underlying the research literature. If the researcher has already
got some preliminary results then he should provide them in a simplified manner that helps support
the rest of the proposal. Preliminary suppositions and implications The purpose of this section is to
argue how you anticipate that your research will refine, revise, or extend existing knowledge in the
area of your study. However, before you begin, read the assignment carefully and, if anything seems
unclear, ask your professor whether there are any specific requirements for organizing and writing
the proposal. This signed form should be submitted to the Doctoral Programs Officer. Infrastructure
and Software Requirements: The necessary infrastructure and software tools for the recommendation
system have been identified and set up. Krathwohl, David R. How to Prepare a Dissertation
Proposal: Suggestions for Students in Education and the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Critique
the literature: Which arguments are more persuasive, and why. Remember, it's more impressive to do
a fantastic job of exploring a narrower topic than a decent job of exploring a wider one. Digital Sales
Sell your publications commission-free as single issues or ongoing subscriptions. Note: The aim or
purpose of a research proposal should be results-oriented as opposed to process-oriented. In other
words, sources cited in your bibliography may not necessarily appear in the body of your research
proposal. Follow this guide and you’ll be on a PhD programme in no time at all. This has had a
significant impact on how information is handled and maintained in academic settings. Download
Word template Download Google Docs template Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text
Be assured that you'll submit flawless writing. Our purpose is to help you draft a research proposal.
This review should provide proof that the relevant literature in the field has been thoroughly
researched. You can download our templates in the format of your choice below. Table of contents
What should your proposal contain, dissertation question examples, what should your proposal look
like, dissertation prospectus examples, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about
proposals. Within those one to three paragraphs, it is important to briefly answer the following
questions: What is the central research problem. The proposal hearing seeks to review the quality and
feasibility of the proposal. Whereas “Application of NN in Solving Pathological Issues in
Pomegranate Plant” Here NN (Neural Network) is not known to many, which may lead to ambiguity.
Now how to fit the critical points from the entire proposal— why the research will be carried out,
what the objectives are, how these will be addressed with different methodologies and what are the
expected outcomes—into a paragraph of just 200-300 words. Demonstrate you have a strong
understanding of the key topics, significant studies and notable researchers in your area of research
and how these have contributed to the current landscape. Correct my document today Like most
academic texts, a dissertation proposal begins with an introduction. By employing a supervised
learning approach and utilizing standard machine learning models, this research aims to develop an
accurate sentiment analysis algorithm for text classification.
Teams Enable groups of users to work together to streamline your digital publishing. Social Posts
Create on-brand social posts and Articles in minutes. Feature Extraction: Text features will be
extracted using techniques such as bag-of-words or word embeddings to represent the input text data
numerically. For Later 100% 100% found this document useful, Mark this document as useful 0%
0% found this document not useful, Mark this document as not useful Embed Share Print Download
now Jump to Page You are on page 1 of 69 Search inside document. We will discuss methodology in
more detail in section three. For example, what methods have been used by other researchers in
similar studies. Be careful though. Don’t expect them to come up with topics or questions for you.
Minor issues, even if valid, can be mentioned but they should not dominate the overall narrative.
Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005; Procter, Margaret. Introduction In the real world of
higher education, a research proposal is most often written by scholars seeking grant funding for a
research project or it's the first step in getting approval to write a doctoral dissertation. Cover what
materials and equipment you will use, what theoretical frameworks will you draw on, and how will
you collect data. Research proposals that are written by graduate students or academic researchers
typically follow a similar format consisting of headings and sections that explain the purpose of the
research, specify the scope and scale of the study, and argue for its importance in contributing to the
scientific literature. Your research proposal is used to confirm you understand the topic, and that the
university has the expertise to support your study. Remember that your goal in a dissertation
proposal is to convince the reader that your research is valuable and feasible: Does social media harm
mental health. University Library. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For more details, you
can refer to my previous blog on writing references. This is a great example of profound research
work. With empirical research, it’s important to describe in detail how you plan to collect your data:
Will you use surveys. At this point, it is more helpful to think of your methods in terms of the kinds
of data you aim to generate. Join over 100,000 email subscribers to receive weekly summary of
opportunities. It can be melded into your introduction or you can create a separate section to help
with the organization and narrative flow of your proposal. This is the most logical structure and will
be the order your proposed supervisor will expect. While of course it won’t include the results
section, discussion section, or conclusion, it serves as a “mini” version or roadmap for what you
eventually seek to write. It also outlines your research in terms of your aims, methods and proposed
timetable. Infrastructure and Software Requirements: The necessary infrastructure and software tools
for the recommendation system have been identified and set up. Purpose: To explain briefly, in a few
words, what the research will be about. Title: Enhancing Network Security through Machine
Learning-Based Intrusion Detection Systems Introduction: The introduction of this research proposal
provides an overview of the project, focusing on the background, major issues within the knowledge
domain of network security, and the significance of addressing these issues. A wonderful guide. I
must say not only well written but very well thought out and very efficient. Great. I’m glad you
think so. Preliminary results have been obtained to assess their performance on the collected data. On
the other hand, few institutions used ICT infrastructures for human resource managementinternal
and external communication purpose etc.
How might your study contribute to social, economic or environmental issues. After reading the
introduction, your readers should not only have an understanding of what you want to do, but they
should also be able to gain a sense of your passion for the topic and to be excited about the study's
possible outcomes. Thanks for sharing. Makes navigating through the proposal lot easier Great.
Chances are, you won’t have conducted a complete literature review, so the emphasis here should be
on the more important and well-known research in your field. It’s important to note that the specific
structure and naming of sections may vary depending on the institution, field of study, and specific
guidelines provided by the research program or department. Note: A good summary should
emphasize the problems the applicant intends to solve, identify the solution to the problems, and
specify the objectives and design? ?of? ?the? ?research. With the advent of deep learning techniques
and the availability of large-scale annotated datasets, the field has experienced a renaissance,
achieving remarkable progress in tasks such as machine translation, sentiment analysis, and question-
answering systems.” In both cases, the introduction provides historical context and introduces
keywords and concepts relevant to the research topic. Now how to fit the critical points from the
entire proposal— why the research will be carried out, what the objectives are, how these will be
addressed with different methodologies and what are the expected outcomes—into a paragraph of
just 200-300 words. This could either be to research participants or to your field as a whole on the
outcome of your findings (i.e. if you’re researching a particularly controversial area). Depending on
the aims and objectives of your study, describe how the anticipated results will impact future
scholarly research, theory, practice, forms of interventions, or policy making. Once you have a
question that you are comfortable with, the rest of your proposal is devoted to explaining, exploring
and elaborating your research question. You need also to show that you have given some thought as
to why your research ideas are worth researching. Similarly, unless your research is specifically
focusing on particular individuals, you don’t need to list exactly who you will interview. Section
Four: Justification for Proposed Research (1,000 words in length) In this section, you should discuss
why you feel your research topic and proposed study is important. Proposed methodology Provide
an overview of the methodology and techniques you will use to conduct your research. Again, make
sure you check with your instructor to confirm. You'll also define the population that you're
intending to examine. While this can be time consuming, it is the proper way to undertake a
literature review. Dissertation research often involves both, but the content of your methodology
section will vary according to how important each approach is to your dissertation. Ethical Approval:
If required by your institution, mention whether you have obtained or plan to seek ethical approval
from the relevant research ethics committee or institutional review board. On a scale where 1 is
dislike and 5 is like Dislike 1 unhappy-very Like 5 happy-very Thank you for rating the page Want to
create or adapt books like this. A PhD or master's degree by research can take two to four years of
full-time study to complete. One tip before submitting or even writing your research proposal is to
search for the best journal to publish your research in and follow the guidelines in the Guide for
Authors section, as well as read as many articles from that journal as possible to gain an
understanding of the appropriate style and formatting. Try to dive straight into your chosen topic:
What’s at stake in your research. Cite these reasons to demonstrate how your research will benefit
and contribute to the current body of knowledge. GIFs Highlight your latest work via email or social
media with custom GIFs. The University of Pretoria has an established reputation for academic
excellence, particularly in relation to its major research activities. Note that some departments require
a defense component, where you present your prospectus to your committee orally. As part of South
Africa’s contribution to the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan, the University of
Pretoria has made funds available for two doctoral scholarships for students coming from
Commonwealth Countries (excluding South African students). When describing the methods you
will use, be sure to cover the following: Specify the research process you will undertake and the way
you will interpret the results obtained in relation to the research problem.
They are like the compass you use to find your way through a complicated terrain towards a specific
destination. Your abstract should summarise your question, why it’s important to your field and how
you intend to answer it; in other words, explain your research context. While it is important to
consider the methods that other researchers have employed, it is equally, if not more, important to
consider what methods have not been but could be employed. When you need to justify your choice
of a particular research method or tool, for example, you can cite a text describing the advantages
and appropriate usage of that method. In a standard research proposal, this section can take two
forms, so consult with your professor about which one is preferred. For keeping track of the survey
papers one can use Zotero which I personally use. If they haven’t stated a word count limit, you
should contact the potential supervisor to clarify whether there are any requirements. Consistency is
the main consideration; whichever style is chosen should be followed carefully throughout the entire
paper. Knowing how to explain research methodology for reproducibility is important to explaining
your methodology to dissertation or thesis advisors and committees. Further exploration of privacy-
enhancing techniques within the context of legal frameworks is needed. Writing your proposal and
preparing for your interview The final article looks at writing your research proposal - from the
introduction through to citations and referencing - as well as preparing for your interview. Proposed
mode of research Describe your proposed mode of research. Preliminary Work: Data Gathering:
Extensive data collection has been carried out to gather the required information regarding user
preferences, item attributes, and historical interactions. It will include a title, research aims and
research question(s), all of which allows your reader to understand immediately what the research is
about and what it is intended to accomplish. This situation occurred with one of this textbook’s
authors’ research related to community resilience. How do you know you've covered the key
conceptual categories underlying the research literature. In either case, this section should testify to
the fact that you did enough preparatory work to ensure the project will complement and not just
duplicate the efforts of other researchers. Articles Get discovered by sharing your best content as
bite-sized articles. It is essential to follow the referencing guidelines provided by your academic
institution or the specific style guide recommended in your field of study, such as APA, MLA, IEEE,
or ACM. Have a language expert improve your writing Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes,
automatically generate references for free. This is critical. In many workplace settings, the research
proposal is a formal document intended to argue for why a study should be funded. Research
proposal examples To get a better idea of how your PhD proposal may look, some universities have
provided examples of research proposals for specific subjects: The Open University - Social Policy
and Criminology University of Sheffield - Sociological Studies University of Sussex University of
York - Politics Find out more Explore PhD studentships. Your plan to answer that question, including
any methodologies, frameworks, and resources required to adequately find the answer. Background
and significance The purpose of this section is to explain the context of your proposal and to
describe, in detail, why it is important to undertake this research. Demonstrate you have a strong
understanding of the key topics, significant studies and notable researchers in your area of research
and how these have contributed to the current landscape. Who applies similar approaches to
analyzing the research problem. Once I got the completed paper, my last doubts were gone. Share to
Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest. This requires some skill in writing economically and
you may find it easier to complete your introduction after you have written a draft of the full
proposal. The Pan-African Center has absolutely no connection to any of the recruiters publishing
here, and does not take responsibility for the accuracy and authenticity of their announcements.