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How to write a research proposal-I
When you are writing a RP, keep in mind that it will enter a competition, being read in line with quite a few other RPs. You have to come up with a document that has an impact upon the reader: write clearly and well structured so that your message gets across easily. Basically, your RP has to answer three big questions: what research project will you undertake, why is important to know that thing and how will you proceed to make that research.
In order to draw the researcher's attention upon your paper, write an introduction with impact, and that leads to the formulation of your hypothesis. The research hypothesis has to be specific, concise (one phrase) and to lead to the advancement of the knowledge in the field in some way. Writing the hypothesis in a concise manner and, first, coming up with a good hypothesis is a difficult mission. This is actually the core of your application: you're going to a university to do this very piece of research. Compared to this, the rest of the application is background scenery. Take your time to think of it. When you have an idea, be careful at the formulation. A well-written hypothesis is something of an essay's thesis: it provides a statement that can be tested (argues ahead one of the possible answers to a problem), it is an idea, a concept, and not a mere fact, and is summed up in one phrase. In some cases, you will have no idea what the possible answer to a problem worth being researched is, but you will be able to think of a way to solve that problem, and find out the answer in the meantime. It's ok in this case, to formulate a research question, rather than a hypothesis. Let those cases be rare, in any way.
Another piece of advice when writing your hypothesis, regarding the trendy research fields: chances are great that they're trendy because somebody has already made that exciting discovery, or wrote that splendid paper that awoke everybody's interest in the first place. If you're in one of these fields, try to get a fresh point of view upon the subject; make new connections, don't be 100% mainstream. This will make the project even more stimulating for the reader. Imagine that you are writing about the trendiest subject, with absolutely no change in the point of view, and you are given the chance to make the research. Trends come and go, fast; what are the chances that, in four years' time, when your research is done and you are ready to publish your results, one of those well-known professors who dispose of huge research grants has already said whatever you had to say?
Remember how, in a structured essay, right after the thesis you would present the organisation of your essay, by enumerating the main arguments you were going to present? Same thing should happen in a RP. After stating your thesis, you should give a short account of your answers to those three questions mention earlier. State, in a few phrases, what will be learned from your research, that your project will make a difference, and why is that important to be known. You will have to elaborate on both of these later in the paper.
The next step in writing your proposal is to prove that that particular piece of research has not been done yet. This section is usually called Literature Review. Inside it, you have to enumerate and critically analyze an impressive list of boring bibliography. The conclusion you should - objectively! - reach is that your idea of research has not been undertaken yet. Even more, you use this opportunity to prove solid theoretical knowledge in the field, and build the theoretical bases of your project. One tip: don't review all the articles and books in the fields even if you mention them in the bibliography list; pay attention in your analysis to those you will build on. Another one: avoid jargon when writing your RP. The chances are great that the person(s) who will read your and another 1000 research proposals are not specialists in that very field - niche you are examining. If you are applying for a grant with or foundation or something similar, it might happen that those reading your paper are not even professors, but recruiters, donors, etc. And even if they actually are professors, one of the reasons busy people like them agree to undertake a huge, and sometimes voluntary, work, is the desire to meet some diversity, some change from their work - so maybe they'll read applications for another specialisation. The capacity to get your message across in clear, easy-to-grasp concepts and phrases is one of the winning papers' most important advantages.
So far, you have proven you have a research idea, that you are familiar with the field, and that your idea is new. Now, why should your project be worth researching? Because it advances knowledge, ok. But is this knowledge that anybody will need? Maybe nobody knows for sure how the shoelaces were being tied in the XIXth century, but who cares, beyond two lace-tying specialists? Find arguments to convince the reader that s/he should give you money for that research: practical use, accelerating the development of knowledge in your or other fields, opening new research possibilities, a better understanding of facts that will allow a more appropriate course of action are possible reasons. Be clear and specific. Don't promise to save the world, it might be too much to start with. Even James Bond succeeds that only towards the end of the movie.
We approach now one of the most difficult parts of writing a research proposal: the methodology. In short, what actions are you going to take in order to answer the question? When will you know whether the hypothesis has been proven wrong, or has survived enough tests to be considered, for now, valid? Those tests and the way you are supposed to handle them to give rigor to your research is what is understood under methods. Methods divide in qualitative (interviews, questionnaires) and quantitative (statistics, stuff that deals intensively with numbers). For some projects qualitative methods are more appropriate, for some quantitative, while for most a mixture of the two is adequate. You should pick your methods and justify your choice. Research methodology, however, is too a complicated thing to be explained here. And this is why it's so tough: not much attention is given to teaching it in Eastern Europe. Try, before writing your RP, to read a bit more about methodology - on the Internet you will find for sure some articles - and decide which methods suit your project best. Don't forget: reading theoretical pieces of your work and providing a critical analysis of those is also a kind of research. It's fine to provide a rough schedule of your research; some grant programs will also require a detailed budget, even though for scholarships this is unlikely.
Conclusions: After working your way through the difficult methodological part, you only have to write your conclusions. Shortly recap why your hypothesis is new, why it advances knowledge, why is it worth researching and how, from a practical point of view, are you going to do that. Overall, the capacity of your project to answer the research question should come out crystal clear from the body of the paper, and especially from the conclusions. If this happens, it means you have a well-written RP, and you have just increased you chances for having a successful application.
One last word: how big should your RP be? In most cases, this is specified in the application form. If it is not, we suggest that you keep it at about 1500 words (that's 3 pages, single-spaced, with 12 size Times New Roman). In fewer words it can be really tough to write a good RP. With more you might bore your readers. Which we hope will not happen.
Good luck!
You are to write a research proposal of about 2000 words, maximum 8 type-written pages (including figures and tables), double-spaced. Fonts should be set at 12-point.
Objectives
The idea behind this research proposal is I would like to see whether you are able to identify outstanding issues that more research could help to clarify. Writing the proposal will then help you achieve four important objectives:
(1) to expand your knowledge of cognitive neuroscience by focusing on two areas that are of particular interest to you,
(2) to further develop your skills as a critical reader of psychological research, and
(3) to develop your scientific writing skills.
General Requirements
In this research proposal, you are asked to demonstrate your ability to integrate information
across topics covered in the course. In the proposal, you should critically review two areas of
cognitive neuroscience and then propose an experiment that would help to address an integrative question or issue.
Choose any two sections from the course outline, such as Attention and Memory, and discuss
how they are (or might be) related. For example, you might want to discuss the role of attention in memory. Alternatively, you might wish to discuss some general principles of cortical organization, such as modularity and central processing, and how they apply to two different areas you have studied. I guess you will find that there are a great number of potential topics you could pick. The best way would be to take something that interests you. You should then try to define what you picked narrowly. You need not deal with the entire topic area (e.g., all of language, all of perception), but choose smaller, more manageable topic (e.g., perception of living things and spatial attention; the function of the hippocampus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex). If you define your topic too generally there will simply be too much relevant research, making it very difficult to decide which the most relevant papers are.
Required sections of the proposal
The proposal must contain the following sections:
Title page – Abstract – Introduction – Methods– Predicted Results – References.
• Title page
• Abstract: One (1) paragraph that briefly describes the area of interest and the research
question that will be addressed in the proposal. Put the abstract on a separate page, immediately
following the title page.
• Introduction: This section should describe the research area and findings from previous
studies. Write in a goal-directed manner. By this I mean you will eventually be proposing some
experiment in your proposal. Therefore, the literature review should be designed so that it
discusses an issue or question that needs to be addressed in that area and provides a rationale
for your proposed study. Moreover, you should structure your Introduction so that the motivation for your proposal becomes clear. To achieve that you should begin with a relatively big issue and then focus down to the specific issue you are interested in, highlighting the aspects of previous research (e.g. some methodological flaw in previous approaches) that your proposal is meant to address. By the end of the Introduction the reader should have a very good idea of what the central issue of your proposal will be. Your Introduction should reference at least three research articles (see the section about references). (Maximum length of the Introduction: 3 double-spaced pages).
• Method: Now you are actually talking about what you are proposing. Again, be sure that this
follows naturally from the introduction in which you should have set up and highlighted some
critical issue that needs to be resolved. What you should do now is to tell the reader how you
would resolve this issue. The Method section should describe the proposed method for the
experiment, including who the participants will be (ages and where they will be recruited from),
what equipment will be used, and the procedure that will be followed. You should specify the
variables (independent and dependent) that will be used in the experiment. You do not have to
format this section with separate subject, apparatus and procedure sections, but having that in
mind can help to guide your thinking and writing. A clearly structured Method section is very
important. (Maximum length of the Method section: 2 double-spaced pages).
• Predicted Results: This section should describe the results you expect from your proposed
experiment. (Maximum length: 1 double-spaced page). Please note: You should use the future
tense. Do not create fake data and write the paper in past tense as if the experiment has already
been conducted. Also, you may want to think about alternatives. That is, sometimes it is
interesting to think about What if the results would turn out differently? Would there be any
alternative interpretations?
• References: You must have at least 3 primary sources (journal articles from the same list of
journals as for reaction papers, that is: Brain, Cerebral Cortex, Current Biology, Experimental
Brain Research, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of
Neurophysiology, Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Neurology, Neuropsychologia, Neuron,
Psychological Science, Science, Vision Research). The references should be from the last two
years. You must format your references using the guidelines developed by the American
Psychological Association’s Publication Manual (5th edition).
Use APA Format
You should use the guidelines for scientific writing that have been developed by the American
Psychological Association (APA). There you will find more details about what I was talking about
in the previous paragraphs. The 5th edition of the APA Publication Manual is available at the
UTSC Bookstore and at the Bladen Library: CALL NUMBER: BF 76.7 .P83 2001 SCAR --
BOOK – ShortTermLoan.
Evaluation of Research Proposals
This form is what will be used to both grade your proposal, and give you feedback about your
proposal. One of these forms will be stapled to each proposal after it is marked and, when we
return the proposal to you, you can use this sheet to see what things you may want to work on
with respect to other written work you do.
For each of the following, you will be given a 1-10 score, where 1 is very poor, and 10 is very well
(perfect really). There are ten different issues outlined below. Thus, your final mark on the
proposal (out of 100) will be calculated as you total score on these questions.
Writing
• How well did the author lay out the argument in the opening section of the paper? And,
how obvious was it where the author was going with their argument as you read it. That
is, was the information presented in a very scattered manner with no apparent direction,
or was the argument (and the relevance of the sections of the paper to it) obvious
throughout?
• How clearly did the author structure the Method section?
• How well did the paper conform to the APA writing standard?
Research
• How appropriate was the chosen research papers with respect to the argument the
author was suggesting?
• How well did the author explain the relevant aspects of previous research? Did you
understand the research, and what point it makes with respect to the author's argument?
Proposed Experiment
• How well do you think the experiment, as proposed, would deal with the argument the
author suggested in the introduction?
• How well did the author use the introduction to motivate reasonable predictions about the
potential outcome(s) of the proposed experiment?
• Was the experiment well designed? Did you see any obvious design flaws?
• How clever was the suggested experiment? That is, did the author simply suggest
looking at some existing issue as a function of some other variable with no apparent
motivation, or did the experiment represent a real attempt to either confirm or deny some
theory, or discriminate between existing views or theories? Let’s say, there is a lot of
research on how quickly we respond to circular spots popping up on a computer screen.
Then an experiment would be less clever if it just looked at how quick we are when the
spots are square-shaped.
• How realistic is the predicted outcome of the experiments? Does the author mention any
alternatives?

