| What are you trying to achieve Through your research proposal? | 1- Transferring funds from someone’s pocket into yours.
2- Transferring your idea to someone’s mind. |
| What is a research proposal? | A research proposal is a concise and coherent summary of your proposed research |
| What are the general rules of a research proposal? | •Read the instructions CAREFULLY, FOLLOW THEM
•Successful proposals must ‘be a joy to read’
•Make display pleasant and attractive
-Observe the words limit
-Avoid mistakes
-Avoid abbreviations, acronyms&jargon -spell check proof read! -must go through internal peer review |
| What are The components of a Research Proposal? | -Title
-Layman summary
-Abstract
-Background/introduction
-Rationale
-Hypothesis
-Objectives
-Experimental design/Methods -Expected outcome and Implications -references |
| Why choosing an appropriate title is important? And how it should be? | The title of your proposal is important as it sets the first impression.
It should be descriptive, specific and appropriate, and should reflect the importance of the proposal |
| who does the layman summary Target? | Targeted at a non-specialist audience.
Written for public not for researchers.
Avoid complex or meaningless terms and phrases |
| What does the layman summary include? | 'why the research is being suggested, what researchers aim to achieve, and how this may impact on the rest of the research community or public'. |
| Why is the abstract important? | The abstract should serve as a succinct and accurate description of the proposal.
Tell why the proposal is unique, important, significant, and worth supporting. |
| What are the contents of the abstract? | The contents: to include hypotheses, objectives, approaches, research plan, and significance. |
| Why’s the background/introduction important? | Summarize current understanding and background information about the topic
Discuss fairly all sides of a controversy, disagreement, and/or
discrepancy in published results.
Identify specifically the gaps and contradictions that you will clarify. |
| What are the 3 questions answered in the intro? | This should answer 3 questions; what is known, what is not known, and why is it essential to find out. |
| How do you present the sources and citations in the intro? | Use a plethora of sources especially primary sources such as journal articles.
Make sure to cite appropriately in the text
Citations tend to be (author, year). If you refer to the author in the sentence, immediately follow the name with (year)- Above examples |
| What is the rationale? | Rationale provides a logical foundation for your Hypothesis |
| What is the hypothesis? | A research hypothesis is a specific, clear, and testable proposition or predictive statement about the possible outcome of a scientific research study. |
| How should the objectives be? | Objectives should be SMART
—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timebound. |
| What is included in the Experimental design/ Methods? | To describe how you propose to fulfill the objectives.
Put the Objectives in a logical and sequential order.
There should be corresponding Research methods addressing each research objective.
Then outline the design and methods to accomplish each Specific objective, and explain why the proposed approach was chosen.
Discuss relevant control experiments
Explain the processes for data collection, analysis and interpretation. |
| What’s included in the outcomes section? | -List expected outcomes of your research and implications
-And potential difficulties. |
| In what style the references should be? | Vancouver style:
Example;
Bogaisky M, Leipzig RM. Vitamin D3, calcium, or both did not prevent secondary fractures in elderly people. ACP J Club [online]. 2005;143:74. |
