PhD Research Proposals Guide

Writing a clear outline proposal for your PhD research will help us to understand your project and will also help us in making a decision on your application. The structure of a research proposal can vary but the following offers a useful guide and we suggest you use this when developing your proposal to accompany your application.

Title

This must clearly set out the nature of your project – it will probably be closely linked to your research question and methodology.

Background

Give some details of any literature you are aware of/or have reviewed that is related to your research topic. Why is your chosen topic important, and what will studying this subject achieve?

Aim of the study

This section should set out, briefly, what the aim/s and/or research questions of the study are. You can use bullet points for this section.

If you have not developed clear research questions – provide a short statement on the focus of the research

Methodology

This section should discuss what research approach you are taking and why. It needs to link to the nature of the research question/aim and justify the methodology. In this section discuss why qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods are to be used. If a certain type of methodology is to be employed – ie grounded theory etc – discuss the reason for it here.

Participants and sample

Who will take part and how will you recruit them. How will you arrive at your sample? How will you `gain access´ to these participants.

The intervention and research design

If the study is intending to be experimental: Give a brief description of this here.
How has the intervention been developed or validated?

Are any scales or questionnaires to be used – if so, how have they been;

• Designed?
• Piloted?
• Validated?

Data collection

What data will be collected and how?

Data analysis

How will the data be analysed and findings presented? What type of statistical tests will be undertaken and why? How will qualitative data be analysed?