FREE How to Develop a Research Proposal [ Steps, How to Formulate, Elements, Guidelines ]

A research proposal is the very first thing you do when pitching your research project. You should always pitch your research ideas first before starting your research. This will allow the instructors to suggest outline and ideas for your research study. They can also suggest you Proposal Letter Examples that will allow you to formally begin your research study.

A research proposal is the very first thing you do when pitching your research project. You should always pitch your research ideas first before starting your research. This will allow the instructors to suggest outline and ideas for your research study. They can also suggest you Proposal Letter Examples that will allow you to formally begin your research study.

The very definition of a proposal is literally to pitch your ideas. By following the outline your teacher provided you with, making your project proposal can be quite simple. You can always use the available Sample Proposal Letters on this site as a means of reference.

Steps in Developing a Research Proposal

When making a research proposal, you should do an in-depth or descriptive study in research. This needs to be done so as to avoid being unprepared for the reader’s response. Research proposals behave similarly to business proposals in which the goal would be to entice the reader into investing some time and effort into the proposal.

• Title – It’s the main page of your proposal.
• Abstract or Abridgment – Basically a short introduction to your research proposal.
• Objectives of the research – Is the statement of the problem portion of your research proposal.
• Background 
• Methodology – This portion handles how you will conduct your research, what means you will use to answer or reach your objective.
• Schedule or timetable – This is the timetable portion of the proposals in which you will list down how long it will take to make the proposal.
• Approval letter – An unsigned but ready to be signed document, which will be signed by the reader when they approve of the proposal.
• Bibliography – This portion of the proposal indicates where you gathered your information—via Web, books, journals, or even articles.

 

If you don’t want to go through the hassle of creating your own research proposal outline, then you could always use one of our Sample Research Proposal.

How to Formulate a Research Question

Well, when formulating a research question for your Research Paper Proposal, please keep in mind to make sure that there are no other individuals submitting that same topic so as to be allowed for a grant application. Now, to more easily understand how to formulate a research plan, let’s make one as a sample of a research question.

There is an ever growing problem in a school; the problem is the integrity of the school library. The research question will be how to create a more stable library. When making a research question, identify all the facts and select the most relevant ones, when you select your question, try to identify ways to improve the situation.

However, you could always just check out our 40+ Proposal Letters in PDF format if you ever need to write proposal letters.

Basic Elements of Research Proposal

Now, the basic methodology of a research proposal is quite simple. You will need to have a quantitative approach to gathering data or information to have access to as much information as possible so as to come to a certain conclusion, or you could go with the qualitative approach in which the method of gathering information is not to gather as much data as possible; however, it is to gather exact and relevant data only. This type of approach is usually done when there is a small area of respondents available. For further understandings on research proposals, feel free to check out our Project Proposal Examples.

Guidelines for Developing Research Proposal

When developing a research paper, there are different approaches to it. As stated above about the quantitative and qualitative approach, these research designs are effective in terms of creating a research Project Proposal that is informative or enlightening to the reader.