Sultan Qaboos University
The Language Centre
Professional Development & Research Unit
Writing a Research
Proposal: A few
Guiding Questions
Prepared by:
Faisal Said Al-Maamari, PhD
© Language Centre Research Committee 2013
Last updated on 15 September 2013
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What is a Research Proposal?
Based on Punch (1998, p. 268), a research proposal comprises answers to
three basic questions:
• What is the purpose of this research? What are we trying to find out?
• How will the proposed research answer these questions?
• Why is this research worth doing? Or, what will we learn, and why is it
worth knowing?
Punch, K. (1998). Introduction to social research: Quantitative and qualitative approaches.
London, UK, Sage.
At the Language Centre, SQU, we do not stipulate a specified length for a
research proposal in terms of page numbers. We do however recommend that
research proposals include as much of the detail suggested below as possible in
order to enable readers to form a comprehensive picture of what the proposed
research intends to do. One guiding measure is to double space your proposal
and have the following face font and size specifications (Times New Roman, 14pt
for Title, and 12pt for other parts).
What General Questions can guide the writing process?
These guiding questions are not exhaustive, but they aim to present a basic
description of the contents expected per section in a research proposal.
Sections
General Guiding Questions
Title
What is the title of your proposed study? Is it concise and
simple? Is it clear and straightforward?
Abstract
What is the research problem you are trying to investigate?
Why is the study important to do? What are the aims of the
research? What is the context of the proposed study? Who
are your participants? How many? What methods of
collecting data are you planning to use? How are you going
to analyze the data?
Literature review
What is the literature guiding your proposed study? What
empirical studies are you using to review the general area of
your interest? How is your proposed study different from and
similar to existing theory? Are you doing the study to test or
to generate theory?
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Research
goals/objectives
What do you aim to achieve from conducting the study? How
are the aims going to inform theory, policy and/or practice?
How will theory, policy and/or practice benefit from this
research?
Research
questions
What are your general/specific research question(s)? How
are they aligned to the research goals/objectives above?
How are they going to address the problem(s) you set to
explore at the outset?
Data collection
What is your overall research approach (qualitative,
quantitative or mixed), and why? What is the context? Who
are the participants? How is sampling done, and why? What
kind of data (interview, observational and/or documentary)
will best address your research question(s), and why? What
kind of instruments will help you address the RQs, and why?
How can the research gathering instruments be sequenced
to maximize answering the RQs? What is your procedural
plan/design for carrying out data collection (who, when, how,
where, why)?
Data analysis
What approach are you going to use to analyse the gathered
data (qualitative, quantitative or mixed), and why? What kind
of techniques will help you do so, and why? What means are
you going to use to carry out the analysis (manual, electronic
or both), and why? How are you going to make sure that your
analysis is valid, credible and dependable?
Ethical issues
What is your chosen setting (the context of the research),
and why? How are you going to negotiate access to the
setting? How are you going to negotiate access to
participants? How are you going to convince participants to
partake in your research study? What means are you going
to use to record data? What issues arise in terms of storing
the gathered data and honouring participants’ anonymity? To
what extent can this protection of anonymity be guaranteed?
How long do you intend to keep the data for, and with what
secure means?
References
What is the list of works that you have relied on to present
your proposal? What referencing system are you going to
use to list the references?