Instructions For Preparing Your Ph.D. Research Proposal. One of the first steps in
embarking on a Ph.D. is to identify clearly the topic you wish to study and the.
Department of Geography, King’s College London Instructions for Preparing Your Ph.D. Research Proposal One of the first steps in embarking on a Ph.D. is to identify clearly the topic you wish to study and then to articulate some more focused and specific questions about that that topic to investigate and the methods and data that you will need to do so. While there are different ways to compose a research proposal, all proposals must answer the following basic questions: i. ii.
i.
ii.
What’s it all about? What exactly are you going to do? What specific objective or research questions do you plan to address? Why do you want to do this? Why are these specific questions/ objectives important and for whom? What is the rationale for doing what you are proposing to do? How does your project fit into and advance the literature (and which literatures)? What contributions will it make? Improved empirical understanding of a particular domain, issue, process or activity, with your project providing new facts or a novel interpretation of the issues in question? Some theoretical or conceptual contribution from the proposed investigation? A methodological contribution by developing new techniques, resources or practical guidelines for use in other research? Some practical contributions to policy or practice? Some combination of those? How are you going to do it? What data or other material will you need to achieve your research objectives? How you will acquire or collect them? What methods will you use and why? What, if any, training might you need to do to enable you to use those methods? How will you analyse and other process, interpret, and write up your results? What steps will be involved in completing your research project? In what order will you do them and how long will it take? Are there other practical or ethical concerns (ie securing visas, ensuring your own safety and that of anyone you are doing research on or with) that need to be discussed? How will you disseminate your results and to whom? What wider outcomes and impacts on might result from your project? What needs to be done to ensure that the beneficiaries you identify will learn about and thus benefit from what you do?
In addition to those generic questions, it would be helpful your proposal could also address: iii.
How does your project build upon, extend or otherwise contribute to research within the department and/or the wider college? Who might you be interested in working with and why?
There is no magic formula for writing your research proposal to answer those questions. Practice varies, and the proposals we receive vary in length from 2-3 pages to 10 pages or more. On the one hand, providing lots of detail about what you would like to research, why and how, is one important way to demonstrate the quality of your ideas and the seriousness of your commitment to advancing them. On the other hand, however, some funding applications 1 cap the length of research proposals, and longer is not necessarily better. 1
If you are thinking of making an application for studentship funding from one of our doctoral training centres, you will almost certainly need to get some support from a prospective supervisor in crafting your proposal to meet the specific guidelines of that funder, which vary from one scheme to another.
As a general rule, we would expect to see a proposal of at least 1000-1500 words, excluding references, but if you require longer, then by all means use as much space as you need to spell out your project. To give you a guide for how to structuring your Phd research proposal, you might consider the following template: Title: this should succinctly capture the main ideas of your project Introduction: A brief introduction which provides an overview of the broad aim of your project and the more specific topic or problem(s) it is addressing. Background and Rationale for Research: Specify the reasons for undertaking the project. Typically this will involve a focused and constructively critical review of the academic literature(s) relevant to your project. This serves to demonstrate your familiarity with the range of contemporary research bearing upon your project. But a well-constructed review can also help you to establish the need for your project in particular by showing that previous research has demonstrated the importance of the issues at hand but somehow failed to address them properly. Research Objectives/Questions: Whether you formulate them as questions (i.e. 1. how do…? 2. why …?) or as objectives (ie 1. describe how… 2. Explain why….), you need to specify what in particular your project is hoping to do so as to achieve the overall aim spelled out in your introduction. Sometimes they can be listed at the end of an introduction (i.e. “ … and to achieve that overall aim, this project will answer the following more specific research questions….”). Alternatively, it is also common to see research objectives/question presented as their own section sandwiched between a background/rationale section and a methodology section. Either way your questions need to be both specific and achievable. They serve as the linchpin connecting your background and rationale section to your methodology discussion. Thus in formulating your objectives/questions you want to make sure that they speak back to whatever research needs or problems you highlighted in your background & rationale section as the reason for doing your project. At the same time, you also want to make sure that you have formulated objectives/questions in such a way that it will be clear from your methodology how it is that you will be able to achieve/answer them. Methodology and research design: this section needs to describe and justify not just the data and analytical methods your project will use but also the underlying philosophical standpoint—or methodology- that your research design implies, whether this is empirical hypothesis testing, laboratory experimentation, mathematical modelling, cultural and creative work, interpretative social science, or abstract theorizing. If you are planning on using case studies you should spell out the rationale for their selection and the basis for (and limitations of) generalizing upon them. You need to provide as much specific detail as you can, at this stage, about the proposed methods of data collection, including such issues as sample frame and the number, location, and type of measurements, observations, or survey/interviews to be collected. Does your data collection strategy need to consider any logistical, access or ethical issues? You also need to say something about how you will analyse any materials you collect. Are there data processing and computational requirements that need considering? Sometimes it can be useful to provide a timetable for your research. Outcomes, contributions, and fit: A final closing section might address questions (iv) and (v) above. what academic or end user audiences might your research speak to and how (ie by publishing in this journal or going to that conference) might you considering disseminating your findings to them? You could also David Demeritt 22 May 2014
