If you are already been tasked with writing a dissertation proposal. You may be among those students who don’t have any idea about a dissertation proposal. What is a dissertation proposal? What should I include? How should it be presented? These are all the common questions that most of the students ask over and over again.
To have a complete understanding of how to write a dissertation proposal. This guide will walk you through the steps you can take up to compose a dissertation proposal for the best results.
What is a dissertation proposal?
In simple words, generally, a dissertation proposal describes the research you want to do, what is the purpose of the research. How you’ll conduct it and why it’s worth it. As an undergraduate or postgraduate student, before starting your dissertation, you’ll probably have to write a proposal.
A dissertation proposal should cover the research question you are going to analyse and how you are planning to conduct your primary and secondary research. Usually, a dissertation proposal comprises the following sections:
- Introduction to your dissertation topic
- Aims and objectives of your dissertation
- Literature review of the current research
- Methodology
- Implications of research
- Limitations of research
- Bibliography of relevant sources
- Mini conclusion
What should you include in a dissertation proposal?
Regardless of the structure, your dissertation proposal should include various key aspects. The introduction, methodology, aims and objectives, literature review, and the limitations of your research. These are all the several aspects that need to be included to ensure that you provide your supervisor with a compelling proposal.
Introduction
Your central research question will be stated in the introduction and it also provides background on the subject’ As well as relates it contextually to any broader issues surrounding it. The introduction of your dissertation should outline what you intend to investigate in your final research project.
In your introduction, you have to make sure to outline the structure of the dissertation proposal. For example, part one covers methodology.part two covers literature review. Part three covers the limitations of your research, and so on.
Dissertation Methodology
A dissertation methodology provides a breakdown of what sources you aim to use and what sort of data you will be collecting from it. whether it is qualitative or quantitative. It will also be included that how you will analyse the data you gather and what will be your chosen methods.
In your dissertation methodology, you can also explain the reason why your chosen approaches to gathering data are more appropriate to your research as compared to others. It depends on the level of detail your course requires.
You have to consider and explain how you will conduct empirical research. I.e. will you use interviews? Lab experiments? Surveys?
You must outline the variables that you will measure in your research and how you will select your data or participant sample to ensure valid outcomes in your dissertation methodology.
In the methodology section of your dissertation proposal. Make sure to provide information about any specific tools that you will use for your methodology.
It’s been a complex yet tiring journey for those students who are going to their dissertation methodology on their own. To make this hectic trip less stressful, students often order or outsource their dissertation writing services from competent experts.
Aims and Objectives
A dissertation proposal should also include the aims and objectives of your research. Make sure to state what your research hopes to achieve. As well as the outcomes you are going to predict. Also, you need to clarify what your main research objectives are. In other words, how you plan to obtain those achievements and outcomes.
Your aim should not be too specific and should not be equally too broad.
An example of a dissertation aim could be: ‘To investigate the key content characteristics and social contexts that influence viral marketing content distribution on Twitter.’
In comparison, the example of a dissertation aim that is too broad will be, “To investigate how things go viral on Twitter”.
In your dissertation proposal, the aim should directly relate to your research question.
Literature Review
In the literature review, the books and materials that are used in your research will be listed. This is where you list those materials that gave you more background on your topic, or contain research that has been carried out previously that you have referred to in your studies.
The literature review is the best place to demonstrate how your research connects to previous studies and how your methods are going to differ from or build upon those used by other researchers. It is important to provide enough information about the materials to show that you have read and understood. Also don’t forget to include your analysis of their value to your work.
If there are shortfalls in other pieces of academic work, identify these and address how you will overcome these shortfalls in your academic work.
Limitations of Your Research
In the end, you will also need to include the limitations of your research. Many topics will have broad links to numerous and more complex issues, so by clearly stating the constraints. You can display your acknowledgment and understanding of these larger issues. and the role that will be played by them by focusing your research on just one section or part of the subject.
In limitations of your research. It is important to include examples of possible limitations, for example, participant dropout, issues with sample size, and time constraints. Lack of existing research on the topic, and many other factors that may affect your study.
Ethical Considerations
Ethical concerns and confidentiality are important parts of any research.
As your dissertation will need to undergo ethical approval if you are working with participants, ethics is the key. That simply means that it’s important to allow for and explain ethical considerations in your dissertation proposal.
Keep your participants informed and keep confidentiality in mind so that they are aware of how the provided data is being used and are assured that all the personal information is confidential.
Consider how involved your patients will be in your research; this will help you decide what ethical concerns to include in your dissertation proposal and how to fully discuss them. Methods requiring face-to-face participant interviews, for example, may necessitate more ethical and confidentiality considerations than methods requiring no participants. Such as corpus data analysis (the analysis of a collection of existing written texts).
Although all of this information must be included in your dissertation proposal, it is not fixed and can be changed later if necessary. Depending on your research topic, university, or degree. Consider your dissertation proposal to be more of a guide for writing your dissertation than a strict rule to follow – this will be discussed further below.
Why is a dissertation proposal important?
A dissertation proposal is important because it contributes to the development of the dissertation. which is arguably the most important piece of writing a postgraduate student will complete. If you have a well-structured dissertation proposal. you will have a solid foundation for your dissertation as well as a good template to follow. Because it determines your overall grade, the dissertation is critical to postgraduate success.
Writing your dissertation will also help you develop research and communication skills. both of which will help you succeed in your current and future jobs. You will be in a great position to write an excellent dissertation if you keep up to date on current research on your chosen dissertation topic. and keep the details of your bibliography up to date.
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