How to write a research proposal - 3 common errors to avoid!
Where do research proposals go wrong? What glaring errors do people applying for a masters or doctorate make every single day? They make all kinds of howlers – some obvious, others, not so obvious. But they all have one thing in common – they are going to ruin your chances of a successful application!
Keep reading because I’m going to tell you about these three key mistakes that other students have made, so you can avoid them:
The title is too broad
Lack of clarity around the sample
A half assed project timeline
The title is too broad
I have read so many proposals where the title is incredibly broad.
Men’s experiences of domestic abuse.
A critical consideration of incarceration as a means of preventing offending.
Female serial killers in the media.
Whilst these are great places to start developing a proposal, they sure as hell shouldn’t be the titles that end up on any research proposal. If they do, the person reading it will do a massive eye roll. We’ve seen this stuff before, show us something new please!
Be more specific.
These questions will help: Who? Where? Why?
For example, in relation to the title, Men’s experiences of domestic abuse:
Who? - Which men? Who are they being abused by? A family member? An intimate partner?
Where? - Where are these men located? Are you focusing upon a specific country, a specific region, a specific city? Don’t limit your ‘Where?’ to geography either, Think about where these men are located in the social structure as well by thinking about social divisions. Are you focusing on a particular social class, an ethnic group, men with a particular disability, men within a specific age group?
Why? - Why do you think it is important to look at the experiences of this group? Do you think something needs to be done in terms of law, policy or practice? Has there been a particular case that’s drawn your attention to this issue?
These questions will help you begin to narrow your focus so you can arrive at a title or question that’s realistic and achievable. In the example, you might end up with a title like, “Experiences of domestic abuse among men aged 18-25 with learning disabilities in the UK: To what extent do support services recognise and meet needs?”. See - that’s better, this is considerably more focused and will have any reviewer sitting up and saying, “Oooh! How interesting!”.
Now, you might be thinking, “Mmm, I don’t want to get too specific, I want to be guided by my supervisors, they’re the experts”. No. No. No. No. No. No. When you are applying to do graduate research, we expect you to know your stuff. You should be familiar with the field, you should be well versed in the literature. We don’t want woolly, fluffy, maybe-this, maybe-that type research proposals. We want decisive, confident students who are going to be self-starters who know what they want to do, specifically. Your supervisors are there to supervise you, not to parent you, so make your own decisions and be confident in them.
Lack of clarity around the sample
Another big red flag for me is when a student is vague about their sample. It’s all a bit mysterious. They’ve not been specific about who is included in the sample – and who isn’t - or how big or small the sample is and how they’re going to recruit them.
Don’t leave the reader wondering. Get clear, get focused.
You need to get specific about WHO or WHAT you will be researching with.
I say ‘what’ because some people won’t be researching with people, they’ll be using documents, historical records, artefacts, that kind of thing, but the principle still applies.
If it’s a who – which group of people are you going to research with? Specifically? For example, if you’re a criminologist, you might want to do some research with people who have served prison sentences. That’s quite a large population, so you will need more detail. Who, exactly are you targeting within this group? People released in the last year? The last 5 years? People who were serving sentences for what kind of crimes? People aged between 18 and 24 when they were sentenced. People who live in London? People who have been supported by a particular charity? Men? Women?
Rather than stating you’re proposing to research with people recently released from prison, you might write that you’re going to research with women who had been serving a sentence of less than 12 months for a property offence, who live in the West Midlands region and who have been released since January 2022. Specifics all the way please! Explain WHY this particular group. What’s special about them? How will targeting this particular group help you answer your research question?
You also need to nail down the numbers. How many people are you aiming to include in your sample? You might not want to come down on an actual number - like 175 - but you might want to say 150-200 people. Or 20-25 people. How many people will you need to reach out to in order to end up with a sample of that size? Will you need to make contact with 100 people to ensure that you get a sample of 50?
What the number is doesn’t really matter as long as it’s appropriate for the kind of study you want to do and as long as you explain that. It may be that you are aiming for a sample of three people. But you’re doing in-depth, multi-stage, life history interviews with them, which you’re analysing using interpretive phenomeonological analysis because you really want to get to the nitty gritty meanings and understand these people’s experiences. That’s fine. Just ensure you’ve been transparent about your ontology, which is probably idealist, and your epistemology, which is probably interpretivist. If the words ontology and epistemology give you the ick, you should check out this blogpost, in which I explain exactly what those terms mean.
The last thing I’m going to say on this one - ensure that you are clear about how you are planning to get your sample, whether that’s recruiting people or gaining access to documents and the like. ACCESS is a huge issue and it’s one of the main things we use to assess how realistic your research ideas are and how likely you are to complete the project you’re proposing to do. If you don’t make a convincing argument that you can access who or what you need to, we’re not going to be confident you’ll complete. Because no access = no data = no project.
What issues are there in accessing your participants? For example, if you wanted to do research with young people who participate in local sports clubs, how are you going to access them? What processes will you need to go through? Do you need to have some form of vetting or approval to be able to research with children? Have you got that? If not, how and when are you going to get it? Will you need to identify gatekeepers? People who work with young people for example? Have you already approached them? Are you thinking about using Facebook groups or TikTok? What are some of the issues with this?
Please don’t just assume that your supervisors are just going to sort out your access for you. I have read so many research proposals that have said, “With Dr Yardley’s kind assistance, I will access survivors of stalking and domestic abuse”. Erm, no you won’t! This is your project, you need to stand on your own two feet and access participants on your own. You may find that your supervisors are able to assist you with access and if that is the case, great, but this is normally something that happens in addition to your own efforts, not as a replacement for them. Do not assume that your supervisors are just going to pull participants out of their hat for you. That’s cheeky, that’s entitled and that’s lazy. Do it yourself.
Half-assed project timeline
I see many, many research proposals that include a section called “Timeline” or “Research Plan” and underneath it, a really basic table or poorly screenshotted chart. Usually, when I see that terribly oriented and wonky table, there are a few rows that go something like this. Months 1-6. Literature Review. Months 7-12, methodology and ethical approval. Months 13-18, data collection etc. You catch my drift.
I know how this happens. I really do. By the time you’ve written about everything else in your research proposal, you’ve kind of run out of steam, you’re bored of it. You just want to submit the darned thing. So, you spend not very much time at all on that final section – the timeline.
But doing a really thorough, detailed timeline is crucial in convincing the person reading the proposal that you mean business. It’s going to communicate your understanding of the realities of the research process – namely that the research process isn’t always a linear one, phases often overlap, and the project timeline is not simply just going to track the chapters of the written-up dissertation.
Do a good job on the timeline, think about it. Walk through the stages of the research in your mind. Maybe talk to other grad students about their successful research projects, the step by step process, the kind of things that cropped up for them that they hadn’t anticipated, how long particular things took. It’s not difficult, it doesn’t need to take you loads and loads of time – just give it the attention it deserves.
Free timeline planner with example!
To help you out with that, I actually have an Excel spreadsheet template that you can use to map out the stages of your research project, which you can download by clicking here.
I hope you’ve found this blogpost helpful in avoiding some of the common, easy to correct errors that I often see in research proposals! If you would like more tips like this, subscribe to my email list by clicking below!
I also have a PDF self-study guide to walk you through your research proposal, one step at a time. Check it out below!
