Executive PhD
Research Proposal Guidelines
Format
Maximum 4000 words in text.
Content
The research proposal should address the following points in a systematic way:
1.
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3.
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8.
Your name and title of your research proposal.
Short introduction and statement of the problem you want to investigate.
Main research questions and sub-questions.
Why is the research question an interesting problem to address? What is the main theoretical
contribution of your research?
Short literature review: What have others written about this research question? What theory or
theories inform your research questions? How will your research add to the existing body of
knowledge?
Research plan: What are your key theoretical constructs? What methods will you use to answer
your research questions? What is the dependent variable, if any? What are the explanatory
variables? What kind of data do you need to answer your research questions? Be specific and
indicate whether you have access to the data; if not indicate how you are going to get access to
the data or collect the data.
Analysis plan: How are you going to analyse the data? What type of activities and/or analysis
are you going to do and in which order? It may helpful to produce a list of tables and figures (in
an appendix to the proposal) that you would be planning to use in your text later (only the list,
NOT the tables).
What are the practical or policy implications of your research?
In addition to submitting your proposal you need to answer the questions below: the questions are
meant to provide a summary of your proposal. Each question has a maximum word length and you
should specify the word count for your answers. The answers to the questions do not count to the
maximum of 4000 words of your main proposal.
Remember: this is a proposal, NOT your final PhD thesis. Nothing is written in stone and you can
change everything after discussing, more thinking or more reading. The assessment committee wants to
get an idea of your current stage of thinking about your research project.
YOUR NAME:
1. What is the main research question for your research work? (Maximum 40 words)
Answer question 1 - Number of words:
Answer 1:
2. What are the main sub-questions for the research question? (Maximum 80 words)
Answer question 2 - Number of words:
Answer 2:
3. What are the main constructs and/or variables in your research? (Maximum 40 words)
Answer question 3 - Number of words:
Answer 3:
4. What kind of data will you need and how you are going to access the data or to collect them?
If you plan to use more than one type of data, answer the question for each type of data.
(Maximum 400 words)
Answer question 4 - Number of words:
Answer 4:
5. Provide a description of the steps in your research and your thesis. Number the steps and be
as specific as possible (i.e.: ‘collecting data’ is too vague; you have to specify what data and
how they will be collected). (Maximum 400 words)
Answer question 5 - Number of words:
Answer 5: