Keith F Punch - Developing Effective Research Proposals

3rd Edition

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Keith F Punch 2016

Chapter 3 Alis Oancea 2016

First edn 2000; second edn 2006

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ISBN 978-1-4739-1637-1

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The research proposal is a central feature of the research world. Typically, the presentation and approval of a formal proposal is required before a piece of research can proceed.

This applies to the graduate student in a university, for whom the research dissertation (or thesis) lies ahead, and for whom the approval of a research proposal is required in order to proceed with the dissertation. It applies also to the application for funds to support research, where the proposal is the vehicle by which the proposed research is assessed, and decisions are made about its funding.

This book is mainly written for the graduate student in the university, but I hope it will also be useful for other situations where proposals are required. Its central purpose is to help students develop research proposals, assuming that the research involved is empirical research in some area of social science. The idea of empirical research is discussed in .

To achieve its purpose, the book is organized around three central themes:

• What is a research proposal, who reads proposals and why ()?
• How can we go about developing a proposal? What general guidelines and strategies are there to help students, while recognising at the same time that the wide variety of social science research implies that we should not try to be too prescriptive or restrictive about this? This theme is subdivided into a general framework for developing proposals ().
• What might a finished proposal look like ()?

By way of introduction, I suggest a four Ps view of the proposal phase, process, product, plan:

• The research proposal is a phase of the overall research process the phase which launches the project, and therefore a very important first phase.
• Developing a research proposal is a process of planning, designing and setting up the research, including placing it in context and connecting it to relevant literature.
• The finished proposal is a product, where the proposal is formally presented as a document.
• That document contains the proposed plan for the execution of the research.

This description of the proposal suggests different ways you might read and use this book, choosing the chapters according to your interests and needs. For example, . If you want an overview of all of this, you might read the chapters in the order presented.

gives more detail about the chapter plan for the book. The remainder of this chapter now gives some background to it.