fleming yachts 58

Fleming 58/60

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After extensive research and input from existing Fleming owners, we identified the need for a boat to bridge the gap between the Fleming 55 and the 65. While retaining the Fleming classic lines, the 58 is an entirely new boat designed from the keel up. The naval architects selected to assist the in-house Fleming design team were Norman Wright and Sons in Brisbane, Australia who, with their special expertise in hull design and tank testing, have been designing semi-displacement passagemakers for more than 100 years.

The latest 3D modeling and CAD software were employed during the design process and a 1/12 scale model was built and tank tested at the Australian Maritime College in Tasmania. Several load conditions were simulated at varying speeds to determine resistance, trim and other performance parameters.

The Fleming 58 is also available as a Fleming 60, which extends the transom aft allowing for some molded seating with a crew cabin under.

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• LOA 62' 9 (19.1m)
• LOA (w/swim and anchor platforms) 65' 9 (19.9 m)
• LWL 56' 8 (17.3m)
• Beam 17' 6 (5.33m)
• Draft 5' (1.52m)
• Air Draft (to top of arch) 17' (5.18m)
• Displacement 88,000 lbs. (39,916 kg)
• Fuel 1,450 US gal (5,488 litres)
• Water 320 US gal (1,211 litres)

• Hull 58-019
• Hull 58-009
• Hull 58-001
• Hull 58-028

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Fleming 58 Contact us

On the 25th anniversary of the founding of the company, Fleming Yachts were proud to announce the introduction of the all-new Fleming 58.

After extensive research and input from existing Fleming owners, we identified the need for a boat to bridge the gap between the Fleming 55 and the 65. While retaining the Fleming classic lines, the 58 is an entirely new boat designed from the keel up. The naval architects selected to assist the in-house Fleming design team were Norman Wright and Sons in Brisbane, Australia who, with their special expertise in hull design and tank testing, have been designing semi-displacement passagemakers for more than 100 years.

The latest 3D modeling and CAD software were employed during the design process and a 1/12 scale model was built and tank tested at the Australian Maritime College in Tasmania. Several load conditions were simulated at varying speeds to determine resistance, trim and other performance parameters. 

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2024 Fleming 58

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Description.

New Fleming 58 Build – Contact us or visit our website for full details on new Fleming Yachts as well as view our list of Previously Cruised Flemings for sale.

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The Company offers the details of this vessel in good faith but cannot guarantee or warrant the accuracy of this information nor warrant the condition of the vessel. A buyer should instruct his agents, or his surveyors, to investigate such details as the buyer desires validated. This vessel is offered subject to prior sale, price change, or withdrawal without notice.

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On the 25th anniversary of the founding of the company, Fleming Yachts were proud to announce the introduction of the all-new Fleming 58.

After extensive research and input from existing Fleming owners, we identified the need for a boat to bridge the gap between the Fleming 55 and the 65. While retaining the Fleming classic lines, the 58 is an entirely new boat designed from the keel up. The naval architects selected to assist the in-house Fleming design team were Norman Wright and Sons in Brisbane, Australia who, with their special expertise in hull design and tank testing, have been designing semi-displacement passagemakers for more than 100 years.

The latest 3D modeling and CAD software were employed during the design process and a 1/12 scale model was built and tank tested at the Australian Maritime College in Tasmania. Several load conditions were simulated at varying speeds to determine resistance, trim and other performance parameters. 

Standard Specifications

65' 9 (19.9 m)

56' 8 (17.3 m)

17' 6 (5.33 m)

5' (1.52 m)

17' (5.18 m)

Displacement Light:

88,000 lbs (40,000 kg)

Displacement Full:

105,600 lbs (48,000 kg)

1,450 US gal (5,488 l)

320 US gal (1,211 l)

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Fleming 58 Specifications

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Hull 58-019

Hull 58-009

Hull 58-001

Hull 58-028

Performance Curves

Complete Overview

The Flybridge — Familiar but with More Function

More Amenities

The larger flybridge can accommodate a top-loading freezer, a refrigerator, BBQ and a 13ft (3.9m) Tender. The double Stidd helm seat provides comfortable, adjustable seating.

A fully hydraulic 1,000 lb. Steelhead davit, with power rotation and telescopic boom makes launching and retrieving the tender an easy and safe task, even single handed.

Refined Salon and True Pilothouse with Twin Helm Seats

Among the Innovations being offered on this and all Fleming Yachts is "Burrwood" a composite substitute for teak rail capping. This fiberglass material, manufactured and installed at the yard, replicates the exact appearance of varnished teak without the need for continual varnishing.

Anchor Platform accommodates dual Maxwell RC12 vertical windlasses to handle the 100 lb (45 Kg) stainless steel Ultra anchor and 7/16" Grade-60 stainless steel chain.

Easy Boarding is retained through the wide side deck boarding gates. Port and starboard gates through the Portuguese Bridge lead to the foredeck.

Large Access Hatch into the engine room is just aft of the salon doors.

More Space - The wider pilothouse, has space for twin Stidd helm seats.

Traditional Layout - The "Flow" of the Fleming

The 58 employs much of the same technology used in the Fleming 65 including the Fleming First Mater (FFM) ship monitoring system with two 15" color touchscreens, Hypro fly-by-wire precision power steering, and Seatorque's enclosed shaft system.

Placement of air-conditioning compressors and watermaker are all located in the expanded engine room - leaving the lazarette clear for storage.

Significantly more headroom in the engine room and more space forward and outboard of the engines. The standard engines on the Fleming 58 are the MAN i6-800.

Pilothouse with Enough Space for Twin Helm Seats and a Day-Head

The Fleming 58 provides an ideal intermediate size between the existing F55 and F65, and is easily operated by a couple.

The Cockpit is capacious - larger than the Fleming 55 by 25 sq. ft. (2.3 sq. meters). The built-in cabinets either side of the salon aft doors provide for a variety of options including a fridge/freezer, sink, and an aft control station

Two inward opening gates on either side of the Fleming 58 make boarding easy and safe.

A Built-in settee or matching barrel chairs provide additional seating in the salon, the extra beam of the Fleming 58 is most noticeable in the Salon & Pilothouse.

The Convenience of a Day-Head.

Lockers on either side of the anchor platform and storage bins in the cabin trunk provide stowage for lines and fenders.

The New Full Beam Master Cabin

New Layout - The Fleming 58 offers a variety of accommodation layouts, including a full beam, master cabin with access from the pilothouse.

Engine Room

Standard Power is a pair of MAN i6-800 engines. Standard equipment is the very efficient Seatorque shaft system which transfers thrust from the propellers directly to the hull structure and eliminates the need for cutless bearings and stuffing boxes.

The Tank Tested semi-displacement hull is a modern design based on the well proven Fleming 55. A fine entry and generous flare on the bow makes for an efficient, comfortable, and safe ride.

Spacious walk-in engine room - with access to all equipment and systems.

Proud Craftsmanship and a Passion for Yacht Building.

The Fleming 58 is, of course, built at the renowned Tung Hwa yard in Southern Taiwan, where every Fleming ever built has been constructed, starting with Fleming 50 hull 001 in 1985. Tung Hwa build exclusively for Fleming and many craftsmen from the early days are still with us. They are very proud of their work and their experience, passion and skill are passed down from one generation to the next.

Specifications

• LOA (Hull): 62' 9" (19.1m)
• LOA (w/ swim and anchor platforms):  65' 9" (19.9m)
• LWL: 56' 8" (17.3m)
• Beam: 17' 6" (5.33m)
• Draft: 5' (1.52m)
• Air draft (to top of radar arch): 17' (5.18m)
• Minimum Operating Condition: 88,000 Lbs. (39,916kg)
• Loaded Condition: 105,600 Lbs. (47,899kg)
• Main Engines: Twin MAN i6-800 (800 HP @ 2300 RPM)
• Transmission:  Twin Disc MGX-5126A or ZF 360A with electric shift and troll valves
• Reduction Ratio: 2.50:1
• Engine Controls: Glendinning EEC3 (with back-up system)
• Generator: 17Kw, 60Hz Onan eQD (European model 13.5Kw, 50Hz)
• Stabilizers: ABT TRAC 7.5 Sq. Ft fins with winglets 250 model actuators
• Fuel Tanks: 1,450 USG (5,488 Liters) in two fibreglass tanks
• Water Tanks: 320 USG (1,211 Liters) in two polyethylene tanks
• Black Water Tank: 165 USG (625 Liters)

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Our Inventory

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58 Pilothouse In Stock

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Factory Options Included

• Side power Bow and Stern Thrusters, with proportional speed control
• Fuel transfer and polishing system
• Second Generator - Onan 17KW
• Auto anchor chain counter, wireless, two station
• 50' long 220VAC, 50amp Shore power cord (custom)
• Additional 110V-30A aft shore power connection
• House battery bank to be 900A/H
• Install owner supplied transducers (3)
• CCTV System  4 pan/tilt/zoom camera (E/R, Cockpit, F/B) Boning System control
• Docking Cameras (fwd/aft) installed port / stbd connected to Boning System
• Install "T" drain fittings for winterizing exterior water outlets
• Fin cutters forward of stabilizer fins
• Webasto cooling/heating system in lieu of Cruisair and prep for diesel heat
• Teak on swim step (non skid is standard)
• Illuminated name boards, with name in stainless steel letters
• FRP "Burrwood" cap rails in lieu of teak
• "Smart" spray rails
• Teak on forward deck ( Beige non-skid is standard)
• Teak on anchor platform lids ( white non-skid is standard)
• Anchor platform stainless steel dirty water catchment fence
• Anchor chain wash system, on/off switches at P/H  & F/B & foot switch on foredeck
• Cockpit console, starboard side with lid, engine & thruster controls & start & stop buttons
• Port side cockpit cabinet with storage, wet locker and molded stairs to flybridge
• 50 amp Cablemaster installed starboard side
• Warping winch starboard side only
• Two removable stainless steel rails on swim step
• Fold-up cleats on swim step
• Opening lid on port cockpit seat locker
• Factory Options Included - Fleming 58- Hull #025
• Aft boatdeck control station with engine and thruster controls
• Teak on flybridge
• Low level LED courtesy lighting under seating around flybridge
• Cushion forward of starboard settee on fly bridge
• 2 x 10lb propane cylinders with regulators and plumbing under flybridge port side seat
• Isotherm refrigerator in cabinet aft of port fly bridge seating
• Hardtop with opening skylights and LED lighting
• Two aft facing flood lights at aft end of boatdeck
• Section of flybridge rail removable at liferaft location portside
• BBQ plumbing in cabinet on aft deck
• High gloss teak table top
• Layout A - 3 cabins, 2 heads, central passageway and pilothouse day head
• 2 x Barrel chair for salon, Ultra-leather - Brisa Distressed Chamois
• Corian"Sandlewood"  finish in guest head, countertop and shower stall
• Corian "Sandalwood" finish in master head, countertop and shower stall
• High gloss on leerails

Master cabin

• Teak on upper bulkheads (in lieu of ultraleather) 
• Lift up vanity with mirror and lights on port side hull locker
• Upper berth (outboard sliding type)
• Starboard cabin
• AC outlet inside pilothouse console, behind airconditioning return grill
• Install Ultra-leather upholstery on pilothouse seating - Brisa Distressed Chamois
• Install circuit breaker and two 24VDC power cables to helm seat pedestal
• Custom finish on pilothouse table - Compass Rose inlay
• Stidd seat to have port and starboard armboxes for remote joysticks
• High gloss finish on pilothouse table
• Upgrade microwave to stainless steel finish
• Miele slim-line 18" dishwasher with teak front panel
• Granite on galley counter top - Galassia Gold
• Bullnose finish on galley granite
• Custom L-shaped bar aft of salon settee, with overhead lockers, glass doors 
• U-Line wine cooler in cabinet aft of galley fridge
• Bennett TV lift in aft starboard corner of salon
• Install Ultra-leather upholstery on salon settee Brisa Distressed Chamois with double stitching
• High Gloss finish on salon table
• Overhead teak handrail

Local Commissioning Completed

Electronics

• 2 - Hatteland 24" Touch Screen Monitors
• 2 - Hatteland 15" Touch Screen Monitors
• 1 - Hatteland 17" Touch Screen Monitor
• Furuno DRS12AX Radar Base and  XN13A/6 Open Array Antenna  
• Furuno FA50 AIS  Class B Transceiver
• Furuno Hub 101 Network Hub
• Furuno NAVPILOT 711C Auto Pilot
• Furuno FAP 7011A Remote Autopilot 
• 5 - Furuno FI-70 Displays Color Data Organizer
• 3 - Furuno TZTBB Black Box System
• Furuno GP330B GPS 
• Furuno DST800L Retractable Smart Sensor Thru Hull
• Furuno 525SSTID-MSD7 Bronze Transducer
• Mareton WSO100 Weather System
• Furuno SC30 Satellite Compass
• Furuno MCU-004 Remote Controllers
• 2 - Icom M506 VHF Radio
• Icom HM195 Command Mic
• Wave WFI 
• mounting brackets, microphones, antennas, cables, hardware, etc.
• Sea Recovery Aqua Matic A14C1800-2 Watermaker
• Remote Colour Display in Pilothouse 
• Victron Blue Power 3000kw Inverter
• Golight 30204 Search Light
• 2 x Blank Domes ( for later installation of antenna & satellite receiver)
• Custom Aluminium / Folding Yacht style mast

Safety Equipment

• Life Line & Throw Bag
• First Aid Kit & Safety Kit
• Dock Lines & Fenders
• Life Jackets & Life Rings
• Fire Extinguishers

Flybridge 

• Full Canvas Enclosure  

More Information

Please contact us  directly for more information

The Company offers the details of this vessel in good faith but cannot guarantee or warrant the accuracy of this information nor warrant the condition of the vessel. A buyer should instruct his agents, or his surveyors, to investigate such details as the buyer desires validated. This vessel is offered subject to prior sale, price change, or withdrawal without notice.

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Call us at Vancouver: 604-687-8943 or Sidney: 250-656-8909. Don't feel like talking? You can contact us using the form below.

Disclaimer: The Company offers the details of this vessel in good faith but cannot guarantee or warrant the accuracy of this information nor warrant the condition of the vessel. A buyer should instruct his agents, or his surveyors, to investigatge such details as the buyer desires validated. Price, if shown, may not include applicable state or government fees, taxes, destination charges, preparation charges, or finance charges (if applicable). Final actual sales price may vary depending on options or accessories selected. This vessel is offered subject to prior sale, price change, manufacturer revision, or withdrawal without notice.

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proposing a research study

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• Knowledge Base
• Starting the research process
• How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates

How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates

Published on October 12, 2022 by Shona McCombes and Tegan George. Revised on November 21, 2023.

A research proposal describes what you will investigate, why it’s important, and how you will conduct your research.

The format of a research proposal varies between fields, but most proposals will contain at least these elements:

Introduction

Literature review.

• Research design

Reference list

While the sections may vary, the overall objective is always the same. A research proposal serves as a blueprint and guide for your research plan, helping you get organized and feel confident in the path forward you choose to take.

• Table of contents

Research proposal purpose, research proposal examples, research design and methods, contribution to knowledge, research schedule, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research proposals.

Academics often have to write research proposals to get funding for their projects. As a student, you might have to write a research proposal as part of a grad school application , or prior to starting your thesis or dissertation .

In addition to helping you figure out what your research can look like, a proposal can also serve to demonstrate why your project is worth pursuing to a funder, educational institution, or supervisor.

Research proposal length

The length of a research proposal can vary quite a bit. A bachelor’s or master’s thesis proposal can be just a few pages, while proposals for PhD dissertations or research funding are usually much longer and more detailed. Your supervisor can help you determine the best length for your work.

One trick to get started is to think of your proposal’s structure as a shorter version of your thesis or dissertation , only without the results , conclusion and discussion sections.

Download our research proposal template

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Writing a research proposal can be quite challenging, but a good starting point could be to look at some examples. We’ve included a few for you below.

• Example research proposal #1: “A Conceptual Framework for Scheduling Constraint Management”
• Example research proposal #2: “Medical Students as Mediators of Change in Tobacco Use”

Like your dissertation or thesis, the proposal will usually have a title page that includes:

• The proposed title of your project
• Your supervisor’s name
• Your institution and department

The first part of your proposal is the initial pitch for your project. Make sure it succinctly explains what you want to do and why.

Your introduction should:

• Introduce your topic
• Give necessary background and context
• Outline your  problem statement  and research questions

To guide your introduction , include information about:

• Who could have an interest in the topic (e.g., scientists, policymakers)
• How much is already known about the topic
• What is missing from this current knowledge
• What new insights your research will contribute
• Why you believe this research is worth doing

Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting

Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

• Academic style
• Vague sentences
• Style consistency

See an example

As you get started, it’s important to demonstrate that you’re familiar with the most important research on your topic. A strong literature review  shows your reader that your project has a solid foundation in existing knowledge or theory. It also shows that you’re not simply repeating what other people have already done or said, but rather using existing research as a jumping-off point for your own.

In this section, share exactly how your project will contribute to ongoing conversations in the field by:

• Comparing and contrasting the main theories, methods, and debates
• Examining the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches
• Explaining how will you build on, challenge, or synthesize prior scholarship

Following the literature review, restate your main  objectives . This brings the focus back to your own project. Next, your research design or methodology section will describe your overall approach, and the practical steps you will take to answer your research questions.

To finish your proposal on a strong note, explore the potential implications of your research for your field. Emphasize again what you aim to contribute and why it matters.

For example, your results might have implications for:

• Improving best practices
• Informing policymaking decisions
• Strengthening a theory or model
• Challenging popular or scientific beliefs
• Creating a basis for future research

Last but not least, your research proposal must include correct citations for every source you have used, compiled in a reference list . To create citations quickly and easily, you can use our free APA citation generator .

Some institutions or funders require a detailed timeline of the project, asking you to forecast what you will do at each stage and how long it may take. While not always required, be sure to check the requirements of your project.

Here’s an example schedule to help you get started. You can also download a template at the button below.

Download our research schedule template

If you are applying for research funding, chances are you will have to include a detailed budget. This shows your estimates of how much each part of your project will cost.

Make sure to check what type of costs the funding body will agree to cover. For each item, include:

• Cost : exactly how much money do you need?
• Justification : why is this cost necessary to complete the research?
• Source : how did you calculate the amount?

To determine your budget, think about:

• Travel costs : do you need to go somewhere to collect your data? How will you get there, and how much time will you need? What will you do there (e.g., interviews, archival research)?
• Materials : do you need access to any tools or technologies?
• Help : do you need to hire any research assistants for the project? What will they do, and how much will you pay them?

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Methodology

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

Once you’ve decided on your research objectives , you need to explain them in your paper, at the end of your problem statement .

Keep your research objectives clear and concise, and use appropriate verbs to accurately convey the work that you will carry out for each one.

I will compare …

A research aim is a broad statement indicating the general purpose of your research project. It should appear in your introduction at the end of your problem statement , before your research objectives.

Research objectives are more specific than your research aim. They indicate the specific ways you’ll address the overarching aim.

A PhD, which is short for philosophiae doctor (doctor of philosophy in Latin), is the highest university degree that can be obtained. In a PhD, students spend 3–5 years writing a dissertation , which aims to make a significant, original contribution to current knowledge.

A PhD is intended to prepare students for a career as a researcher, whether that be in academia, the public sector, or the private sector.

A master’s is a 1- or 2-year graduate degree that can prepare you for a variety of careers.

All master’s involve graduate-level coursework. Some are research-intensive and intend to prepare students for further study in a PhD; these usually require their students to write a master’s thesis . Others focus on professional training for a specific career.

Critical thinking refers to the ability to evaluate information and to be aware of biases or assumptions, including your own.

Like information literacy , it involves evaluating arguments, identifying and solving problems in an objective and systematic way, and clearly communicating your ideas.

The best way to remember the difference between a research plan and a research proposal is that they have fundamentally different audiences. A research plan helps you, the researcher, organize your thoughts. On the other hand, a dissertation proposal or research proposal aims to convince others (e.g., a supervisor, a funding body, or a dissertation committee) that your research topic is relevant and worthy of being conducted.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

McCombes, S. & George, T. (2023, November 21). How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved September 2, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/research-process/research-proposal/

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How to Write a Research Proposal: (with Examples & Templates)

• Table of Contents

Before conducting a study, a research proposal should be created that outlines researchers’ plans and methodology and is submitted to the concerned evaluating organization or person. Creating a research proposal is an important step to ensure that researchers are on track and are moving forward as intended. A research proposal can be defined as a detailed plan or blueprint for the proposed research that you intend to undertake. It provides readers with a snapshot of your project by describing what you will investigate, why it is needed, and how you will conduct the research.  

Your research proposal should aim to explain to the readers why your research is relevant and original, that you understand the context and current scenario in the field, have the appropriate resources to conduct the research, and that the research is feasible given the usual constraints.  

This article will describe in detail the purpose and typical structure of a research proposal , along with examples and templates to help you ace this step in your research journey.  

What is a Research Proposal ?  

A research proposal¹ ,²  can be defined as a formal report that describes your proposed research, its objectives, methodology, implications, and other important details. Research proposals are the framework of your research and are used to obtain approvals or grants to conduct the study from various committees or organizations. Consequently, research proposals should convince readers of your study’s credibility, accuracy, achievability, practicality, and reproducibility.   

With research proposals , researchers usually aim to persuade the readers, funding agencies, educational institutions, and supervisors to approve the proposal. To achieve this, the report should be well structured with the objectives written in clear, understandable language devoid of jargon. A well-organized research proposal conveys to the readers or evaluators that the writer has thought out the research plan meticulously and has the resources to ensure timely completion.  

Purpose of Research Proposals  

A research proposal is a sales pitch and therefore should be detailed enough to convince your readers, who could be supervisors, ethics committees, universities, etc., that what you’re proposing has merit and is feasible . Research proposals can help students discuss their dissertation with their faculty or fulfill course requirements and also help researchers obtain funding. A well-structured proposal instills confidence among readers about your ability to conduct and complete the study as proposed.  

Research proposals can be written for several reasons:³  

• To describe the importance of research in the specific topic  
• Address any potential challenges you may encounter  
• Showcase knowledge in the field and your ability to conduct a study  
• Apply for a role at a research institute  
• Convince a research supervisor or university that your research can satisfy the requirements of a degree program  
• Highlight the importance of your research to organizations that may sponsor your project  
• Identify implications of your project and how it can benefit the audience  

What Goes in a Research Proposal?    

Research proposals should aim to answer the three basic questions—what, why, and how.  

The What question should be answered by describing the specific subject being researched. It should typically include the objectives, the cohort details, and the location or setting.  

The Why question should be answered by describing the existing scenario of the subject, listing unanswered questions, identifying gaps in the existing research, and describing how your study can address these gaps, along with the implications and significance.  

The How question should be answered by describing the proposed research methodology, data analysis tools expected to be used, and other details to describe your proposed methodology.   

Research Proposal Example  

Here is a research proposal sample template (with examples) from the University of Rochester Medical Center. 4 The sections in all research proposals are essentially the same although different terminology and other specific sections may be used depending on the subject.  

Structure of a Research Proposal  

If you want to know how to make a research proposal impactful, include the following components:¹  

1. Introduction  

This section provides a background of the study, including the research topic, what is already known about it and the gaps, and the significance of the proposed research.  

2. Literature review  

This section contains descriptions of all the previous relevant studies pertaining to the research topic. Every study cited should be described in a few sentences, starting with the general studies to the more specific ones. This section builds on the understanding gained by readers in the Introduction section and supports it by citing relevant prior literature, indicating to readers that you have thoroughly researched your subject.  

3. Objectives  

Once the background and gaps in the research topic have been established, authors must now state the aims of the research clearly. Hypotheses should be mentioned here. This section further helps readers understand what your study’s specific goals are.  

4. Research design and methodology  

Here, authors should clearly describe the methods they intend to use to achieve their proposed objectives. Important components of this section include the population and sample size, data collection and analysis methods and duration, statistical analysis software, measures to avoid bias (randomization, blinding), etc.  

5. Ethical considerations  

This refers to the protection of participants’ rights, such as the right to privacy, right to confidentiality, etc. Researchers need to obtain informed consent and institutional review approval by the required authorities and mention this clearly for transparency.  

6. Budget/funding  

Researchers should prepare their budget and include all expected expenditures. An additional allowance for contingencies such as delays should also be factored in.  

7. Appendices  

This section typically includes information that supports the research proposal and may include informed consent forms, questionnaires, participant information, measurement tools, etc.  

8. Citations  

Important Tips for Writing a Research Proposal  

Writing a research proposal begins much before the actual task of writing. Planning the research proposal structure and content is an important stage, which if done efficiently, can help you seamlessly transition into the writing stage. 3,5  

The Planning Stage  

• Manage your time efficiently. Plan to have the draft version ready at least two weeks before your deadline and the final version at least two to three days before the deadline.
• What is the primary objective of your research?  
• Will your research address any existing gap?  
• What is the impact of your proposed research?  
• Do people outside your field find your research applicable in other areas?  
• If your research is unsuccessful, would there still be other useful research outcomes?  

  The Writing Stage  

• Create an outline with main section headings that are typically used.  
• Focus only on writing and getting your points across without worrying about the format of the research proposal , grammar, punctuation, etc. These can be fixed during the subsequent passes. Add details to each section heading you created in the beginning.   
• Ensure your sentences are concise and use plain language. A research proposal usually contains about 2,000 to 4,000 words or four to seven pages.  
• Don’t use too many technical terms and abbreviations assuming that the readers would know them. Define the abbreviations and technical terms.  
• Ensure that the entire content is readable. Avoid using long paragraphs because they affect the continuity in reading. Break them into shorter paragraphs and introduce some white space for readability.  
• Focus on only the major research issues and cite sources accordingly. Don’t include generic information or their sources in the literature review.  
• Proofread your final document to ensure there are no grammatical errors so readers can enjoy a seamless, uninterrupted read.  
• Use academic, scholarly language because it brings formality into a document.  
• Ensure that your title is created using the keywords in the document and is neither too long and specific nor too short and general.  
• Cite all sources appropriately to avoid plagiarism.  
• Make sure that you follow guidelines, if provided. This includes rules as simple as using a specific font or a hyphen or en dash between numerical ranges.  
• Ensure that you’ve answered all questions requested by the evaluating authority.  

Key Takeaways   

Here’s a summary of the main points about research proposals discussed in the previous sections:  

• A research proposal is a document that outlines the details of a proposed study and is created by researchers to submit to evaluators who could be research institutions, universities, faculty, etc.  
• Research proposals are usually about 2,000-4,000 words long, but this depends on the evaluating authority’s guidelines.  
• A good research proposal ensures that you’ve done your background research and assessed the feasibility of the research.  
• Research proposals have the following main sections—introduction, literature review, objectives, methodology, ethical considerations, and budget.  

Frequently Asked Questions  

Q1. How is a research proposal evaluated?  

A1. In general, most evaluators, including universities, broadly use the following criteria to evaluate research proposals . 6  

• Significance —Does the research address any important subject or issue, which may or may not be specific to the evaluator or university?  
• Content and design —Is the proposed methodology appropriate to answer the research question? Are the objectives clear and well aligned with the proposed methodology?  
• Sample size and selection —Is the target population or cohort size clearly mentioned? Is the sampling process used to select participants randomized, appropriate, and free of bias?  
• Timing —Are the proposed data collection dates mentioned clearly? Is the project feasible given the specified resources and timeline?  
• Data management and dissemination —Who will have access to the data? What is the plan for data analysis?  

Q2. What is the difference between the Introduction and Literature Review sections in a research proposal ?  

A2. The Introduction or Background section in a research proposal sets the context of the study by describing the current scenario of the subject and identifying the gaps and need for the research. A Literature Review, on the other hand, provides references to all prior relevant literature to help corroborate the gaps identified and the research need.  

Q3. How long should a research proposal be?  

A3. Research proposal lengths vary with the evaluating authority like universities or committees and also the subject. Here’s a table that lists the typical research proposal lengths for a few universities.  

Q4. What are the common mistakes to avoid in a research proposal ?  

A4. Here are a few common mistakes that you must avoid while writing a research proposal . 7  

• No clear objectives: Objectives should be clear, specific, and measurable for the easy understanding among readers.  
• Incomplete or unconvincing background research: Background research usually includes a review of the current scenario of the particular industry and also a review of the previous literature on the subject. This helps readers understand your reasons for undertaking this research because you identified gaps in the existing research.  
• Overlooking project feasibility: The project scope and estimates should be realistic considering the resources and time available.   
• Neglecting the impact and significance of the study: In a research proposal , readers and evaluators look for the implications or significance of your research and how it contributes to the existing research. This information should always be included.  
• Unstructured format of a research proposal : A well-structured document gives confidence to evaluators that you have read the guidelines carefully and are well organized in your approach, consequently affirming that you will be able to undertake the research as mentioned in your proposal.  
• Ineffective writing style: The language used should be formal and grammatically correct. If required, editors could be consulted, including AI-based tools such as Paperpal , to refine the research proposal structure and language.  

Thus, a research proposal is an essential document that can help you promote your research and secure funds and grants for conducting your research. Consequently, it should be well written in clear language and include all essential details to convince the evaluators of your ability to conduct the research as proposed.  

This article has described all the important components of a research proposal and has also provided tips to improve your writing style. We hope all these tips will help you write a well-structured research proposal to ensure receipt of grants or any other purpose.  

References  

• Sudheesh K, Duggappa DR, Nethra SS. How to write a research proposal? Indian J Anaesth. 2016;60(9):631-634. Accessed July 15, 2024. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5037942/  
• Writing research proposals. Harvard College Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships. Harvard University. Accessed July 14, 2024. https://uraf.harvard.edu/apply-opportunities/app-components/essays/research-proposals  
• What is a research proposal? Plus how to write one. Indeed website. Accessed July 17, 2024. https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/research-proposal  
• Research proposal template. University of Rochester Medical Center. Accessed July 16, 2024. https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/MediaLibraries/URMCMedia/pediatrics/research/documents/Research-proposal-Template.pdf  
• Tips for successful proposal writing. Johns Hopkins University. Accessed July 17, 2024. https://research.jhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Tips-for-Successful-Proposal-Writing.pdf  
• Formal review of research proposals. Cornell University. Accessed July 18, 2024. https://irp.dpb.cornell.edu/surveys/survey-assessment-review-group/research-proposals  
• 7 Mistakes you must avoid in your research proposal. Aveksana (via LinkedIn). Accessed July 17, 2024. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-mistakes-you-must-avoid-your-research-proposal-aveksana-cmtwf/  

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Writing a Research Proposal

• Generative AI and Writing
• Acknowledgments

The goal of a research proposal is twofold: to present and justify the need to study a research problem and to present the practical ways in which the proposed study should be conducted. The design elements and procedures for conducting research are governed by standards of the predominant discipline in which the problem resides, therefore, the guidelines for research proposals are more exacting and less formal than a general project proposal. Research proposals contain extensive literature reviews. They must provide persuasive evidence that a need exists for the proposed study. In addition to providing a rationale, a proposal describes detailed methodology for conducting the research consistent with requirements of the professional or academic field and a statement on anticipated outcomes and benefits derived from the study's completion.

Krathwohl, David R. How to Prepare a Dissertation Proposal: Suggestions for Students in Education and the Social and Behavioral Sciences . Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005.

How to Approach Writing a Research Proposal

Your professor may assign the task of writing a research proposal for the following reasons:

• Develop your skills in thinking about and designing a comprehensive research study;
• Learn how to conduct a comprehensive review of the literature to determine that the research problem has not been adequately addressed or has been answered ineffectively and, in so doing, become better at locating pertinent scholarship related to your topic;
• Improve your general research and writing skills;
• Practice identifying the logical steps that must be taken to accomplish one's research goals;
• Critically review, examine, and consider the use of different methods for gathering and analyzing data related to the research problem; and,
• Nurture a sense of inquisitiveness within yourself and to help see yourself as an active participant in the process of conducting scholarly research.

A proposal should contain all the key elements involved in designing a completed research study, with sufficient information that allows readers to assess the validity and usefulness of your proposed study. The only elements missing from a research proposal are the findings of the study and your analysis of those findings. Finally, an effective proposal is judged on the quality of your writing and, therefore, it is important that your proposal is coherent, clear, and compelling.

Regardless of the research problem you are investigating and the methodology you choose, all research proposals must address the following questions:

• What do you plan to accomplish? Be clear and succinct in defining the research problem and what it is you are proposing to investigate.
• Why do you want to do the research? In addition to detailing your research design, you also must conduct a thorough review of the literature and provide convincing evidence that it is a topic worthy of in-depth study. A successful research proposal must answer the "So What?" question.
• How are you going to conduct the research? Be sure that what you propose is doable. If you're having difficulty formulating a research problem to propose investigating, go here for strategies in developing a problem to study.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Failure to be concise . A research proposal must be focused and not be "all over the map" or diverge into unrelated tangents without a clear sense of purpose.
• Failure to cite landmark works in your literature review . Proposals should be grounded in foundational research that lays a foundation for understanding the development and scope of the the topic and its relevance.
• Failure to delimit the contextual scope of your research [e.g., time, place, people, etc.]. As with any research paper, your proposed study must inform the reader how and in what ways the study will frame the problem.
• Failure to develop a coherent and persuasive argument for the proposed research . This is critical. In many workplace settings, the research proposal is a formal document intended to argue for why a study should be funded.
• Sloppy or imprecise writing, or poor grammar . Although a research proposal does not represent a completed research study, there is still an expectation that it is well-written and follows the style and rules of good academic writing.
• Too much detail on minor issues, but not enough detail on major issues . Your proposal should focus on only a few key research questions in order to support the argument that the research needs to be conducted. Minor issues, even if valid, can be mentioned but they should not dominate the overall narrative.

Procter, Margaret. The Academic Proposal.  The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Sanford, Keith. Information for Students: Writing a Research Proposal. Baylor University; Wong, Paul T. P. How to Write a Research Proposal. International Network on Personal Meaning. Trinity Western University; Writing Academic Proposals: Conferences, Articles, and Books. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Writing a Research Proposal. University Library. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Structure and Writing Style

Beginning the Proposal Process

As with writing most college-level academic papers, research proposals are generally organized the same way throughout most social science disciplines. The text of proposals generally vary in length between ten and thirty-five pages, followed by the list of references. However, before you begin, read the assignment carefully and, if anything seems unclear, ask your professor whether there are any specific requirements for organizing and writing the proposal.

A good place to begin is to ask yourself a series of questions:

• What do I want to study?
• Why is the topic important?
• How is it significant within the subject areas covered in my class?
• What problems will it help solve?
• How does it build upon [and hopefully go beyond] research already conducted on the topic?
• What exactly should I plan to do, and can I get it done in the time available?

In general, a compelling research proposal should document your knowledge of the topic and demonstrate your enthusiasm for conducting the study. Approach it with the intention of leaving your readers feeling like, "Wow, that's an exciting idea and I can’t wait to see how it turns out!"

Most proposals should include the following sections:

I.  Introduction

In the real world of higher education, a research proposal is most often written by scholars seeking grant funding for a research project or it's the first step in getting approval to write a doctoral dissertation. Even if this is just a course assignment, treat your introduction as the initial pitch of an idea based on a thorough examination of the significance of a research problem. After reading the introduction, your readers should not only have an understanding of what you want to do, but they should also be able to gain a sense of your passion for the topic and to be excited about the study's possible outcomes. Note that most proposals do not include an abstract [summary] before the introduction.

Think about your introduction as a narrative written in two to four paragraphs that succinctly answers the following four questions :

• What is the central research problem?
• What is the topic of study related to that research problem?
• What methods should be used to analyze the research problem?
• Answer the "So What?" question by explaining why this is important research, what is its significance, and why should someone reading the proposal care about the outcomes of the proposed study?

II.  Background and Significance

This is where you explain the scope and context of your proposal and describe in detail why it's important. It can be melded into your introduction or you can create a separate section to help with the organization and narrative flow of your proposal. Approach writing this section with the thought that you can’t assume your readers will know as much about the research problem as you do. Note that this section is not an essay going over everything you have learned about the topic; instead, you must choose what is most relevant in explaining the aims of your research.

To that end, while there are no prescribed rules for establishing the significance of your proposed study, you should attempt to address some or all of the following:

• State the research problem and give a more detailed explanation about the purpose of the study than what you stated in the introduction. This is particularly important if the problem is complex or multifaceted .
• Present the rationale of your proposed study and clearly indicate why it is worth doing; be sure to answer the "So What? question [i.e., why should anyone care?].
• Describe the major issues or problems examined by your research. This can be in the form of questions to be addressed. Be sure to note how your proposed study builds on previous assumptions about the research problem.
• Explain the methods you plan to use for conducting your research. Clearly identify the key sources you intend to use and explain how they will contribute to your analysis of the topic.
• Describe the boundaries of your proposed research in order to provide a clear focus. Where appropriate, state not only what you plan to study, but what aspects of the research problem will be excluded from the study.
• If necessary, provide definitions of key concepts, theories, or terms.

III.  Literature Review

Connected to the background and significance of your study is a section of your proposal devoted to a more deliberate review and synthesis of prior studies related to the research problem under investigation . The purpose here is to place your project within the larger whole of what is currently being explored, while at the same time, demonstrating to your readers that your work is original and innovative. Think about what questions other researchers have asked, what methodological approaches they have used, and what is your understanding of their findings and, when stated, their recommendations. Also pay attention to any suggestions for further research.

Since a literature review is information dense, it is crucial that this section is intelligently structured to enable a reader to grasp the key arguments underpinning your proposed study in relation to the arguments put forth by other researchers. A good strategy is to break the literature into "conceptual categories" [themes] rather than systematically or chronologically describing groups of materials one at a time. Note that conceptual categories generally reveal themselves after you have read most of the pertinent literature on your topic so adding new categories is an on-going process of discovery as you review more studies. How do you know you've covered the key conceptual categories underlying the research literature? Generally, you can have confidence that all of the significant conceptual categories have been identified if you start to see repetition in the conclusions or recommendations that are being made.

NOTE: Do not shy away from challenging the conclusions made in prior research as a basis for supporting the need for your proposal. Assess what you believe is missing and state how previous research has failed to adequately examine the issue that your study addresses. Highlighting the problematic conclusions strengthens your proposal. For more information on writing literature reviews, GO HERE .

To help frame your proposal's review of prior research, consider the "five C’s" of writing a literature review:

• Cite , so as to keep the primary focus on the literature pertinent to your research problem.
• Compare the various arguments, theories, methodologies, and findings expressed in the literature: what do the authors agree on? Who applies similar approaches to analyzing the research problem?
• Contrast the various arguments, themes, methodologies, approaches, and controversies expressed in the literature: describe what are the major areas of disagreement, controversy, or debate among scholars?
• Critique the literature: Which arguments are more persuasive, and why? Which approaches, findings, and methodologies seem most reliable, valid, or appropriate, and why? Pay attention to the verbs you use to describe what an author says/does [e.g., asserts, demonstrates, argues, etc.].
• Connect the literature to your own area of research and investigation: how does your own work draw upon, depart from, synthesize, or add a new perspective to what has been said in the literature?

IV.  Research Design and Methods

This section must be well-written and logically organized because you are not actually doing the research, yet, your reader must have confidence that you have a plan worth pursuing . The reader will never have a study outcome from which to evaluate whether your methodological choices were the correct ones. Thus, the objective here is to convince the reader that your overall research design and proposed methods of analysis will correctly address the problem and that the methods will provide the means to effectively interpret the potential results. Your design and methods should be unmistakably tied to the specific aims of your study.

Describe the overall research design by building upon and drawing examples from your review of the literature. Consider not only methods that other researchers have used, but methods of data gathering that have not been used but perhaps could be. Be specific about the methodological approaches you plan to undertake to obtain information, the techniques you would use to analyze the data, and the tests of external validity to which you commit yourself [i.e., the trustworthiness by which you can generalize from your study to other people, places, events, and/or periods of time].

When describing the methods you will use, be sure to cover the following:

• Specify the research process you will undertake and the way you will interpret the results obtained in relation to the research problem. Don't just describe what you intend to achieve from applying the methods you choose, but state how you will spend your time while applying these methods [e.g., coding text from interviews to find statements about the need to change school curriculum; running a regression to determine if there is a relationship between campaign advertising on social media sites and election outcomes in Europe ].
• Keep in mind that the methodology is not just a list of tasks; it is a deliberate argument as to why techniques for gathering information add up to the best way to investigate the research problem. This is an important point because the mere listing of tasks to be performed does not demonstrate that, collectively, they effectively address the research problem. Be sure you clearly explain this.
• Anticipate and acknowledge any potential barriers and pitfalls in carrying out your research design and explain how you plan to address them. No method applied to research in the social and behavioral sciences is perfect, so you need to describe where you believe challenges may exist in obtaining data or accessing information. It's always better to acknowledge this than to have it brought up by your professor!

V.  Preliminary Suppositions and Implications

Just because you don't have to actually conduct the study and analyze the results, doesn't mean you can skip talking about the analytical process and potential implications . The purpose of this section is to argue how and in what ways you believe your research will refine, revise, or extend existing knowledge in the subject area under investigation. Depending on the aims and objectives of your study, describe how the anticipated results will impact future scholarly research, theory, practice, forms of interventions, or policy making. Note that such discussions may have either substantive [a potential new policy], theoretical [a potential new understanding], or methodological [a potential new way of analyzing] significance.   When thinking about the potential implications of your study, ask the following questions:

• What might the results mean in regards to challenging the theoretical framework and underlying assumptions that support the study?
• What suggestions for subsequent research could arise from the potential outcomes of the study?
• What will the results mean to practitioners in the natural settings of their workplace, organization, or community?
• Will the results influence programs, methods, and/or forms of intervention?
• How might the results contribute to the solution of social, economic, or other types of problems?
• Will the results influence policy decisions?
• In what way do individuals or groups benefit should your study be pursued?
• What will be improved or changed as a result of the proposed research?
• How will the results of the study be implemented and what innovations or transformative insights could emerge from the process of implementation?

NOTE:   This section should not delve into idle speculation, opinion, or be formulated on the basis of unclear evidence . The purpose is to reflect upon gaps or understudied areas of the current literature and describe how your proposed research contributes to a new understanding of the research problem should the study be implemented as designed.

ANOTHER NOTE : This section is also where you describe any potential limitations to your proposed study. While it is impossible to highlight all potential limitations because the study has yet to be conducted, you still must tell the reader where and in what form impediments may arise and how you plan to address them.

VI.  Conclusion

The conclusion reiterates the importance or significance of your proposal and provides a brief summary of the entire study . This section should be only one or two paragraphs long, emphasizing why the research problem is worth investigating, why your research study is unique, and how it should advance existing knowledge.

Someone reading this section should come away with an understanding of:

• Why the study should be done;
• The specific purpose of the study and the research questions it attempts to answer;
• The decision for why the research design and methods used where chosen over other options;
• The potential implications emerging from your proposed study of the research problem; and
• A sense of how your study fits within the broader scholarship about the research problem.

VII.  Citations

As with any scholarly research paper, you must cite the sources you used . In a standard research proposal, this section can take two forms, so consult with your professor about which one is preferred.

• References -- a list of only the sources you actually used in creating your proposal.
• Bibliography -- a list of everything you used in creating your proposal, along with additional citations to any key sources relevant to understanding the research problem.

In either case, this section should testify to the fact that you did enough preparatory work to ensure the project will complement and not just duplicate the efforts of other researchers. It demonstrates to the reader that you have a thorough understanding of prior research on the topic.

Most proposal formats have you start a new page and use the heading "References" or "Bibliography" centered at the top of the page. Cited works should always use a standard format that follows the writing style advised by the discipline of your course [e.g., education=APA; history=Chicago] or that is preferred by your professor. This section normally does not count towards the total page length of your research proposal.

Develop a Research Proposal: Writing the Proposal. Office of Library Information Services. Baltimore County Public Schools; Heath, M. Teresa Pereira and Caroline Tynan. “Crafting a Research Proposal.” The Marketing Review 10 (Summer 2010): 147-168; Jones, Mark. “Writing a Research Proposal.” In MasterClass in Geography Education: Transforming Teaching and Learning . Graham Butt, editor. (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), pp. 113-127; Juni, Muhamad Hanafiah. “Writing a Research Proposal.” International Journal of Public Health and Clinical Sciences 1 (September/October 2014): 229-240; Krathwohl, David R. How to Prepare a Dissertation Proposal: Suggestions for Students in Education and the Social and Behavioral Sciences . Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005; Procter, Margaret. The Academic Proposal. The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Punch, Keith and Wayne McGowan. "Developing and Writing a Research Proposal." In From Postgraduate to Social Scientist: A Guide to Key Skills . Nigel Gilbert, ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006), 59-81; Wong, Paul T. P. How to Write a Research Proposal. International Network on Personal Meaning. Trinity Western University; Writing Academic Proposals: Conferences , Articles, and Books. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Writing a Research Proposal. University Library. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Home » How To Write A Research Proposal – Step-by-Step [Template]

How To Write A Research Proposal – Step-by-Step [Template]

How To Write a Research Proposal

Writing a Research proposal involves several steps to ensure a well-structured and comprehensive document. Here is an explanation of each step:

1. Title and Abstract

• Choose a concise and descriptive title that reflects the essence of your research.
• Write an abstract summarizing your research question, objectives, methodology, and expected outcomes. It should provide a brief overview of your proposal.

2. Introduction:

• Provide an introduction to your research topic, highlighting its significance and relevance.
• Clearly state the research problem or question you aim to address.
• Discuss the background and context of the study, including previous research in the field.

3. Research Objectives

• Outline the specific objectives or aims of your research. These objectives should be clear, achievable, and aligned with the research problem.

4. Literature Review:

• Conduct a comprehensive review of relevant literature and studies related to your research topic.
• Summarize key findings, identify gaps, and highlight how your research will contribute to the existing knowledge.

5. Methodology:

• Describe the research design and methodology you plan to employ to address your research objectives.
• Explain the data collection methods, instruments, and analysis techniques you will use.
• Justify why the chosen methods are appropriate and suitable for your research.

6. Timeline:

• Create a timeline or schedule that outlines the major milestones and activities of your research project.
• Break down the research process into smaller tasks and estimate the time required for each task.

7. Resources:

• Identify the resources needed for your research, such as access to specific databases, equipment, or funding.
• Explain how you will acquire or utilize these resources to carry out your research effectively.

8. Ethical Considerations:

• Discuss any ethical issues that may arise during your research and explain how you plan to address them.
• If your research involves human subjects, explain how you will ensure their informed consent and privacy.

9. Expected Outcomes and Significance:

• Clearly state the expected outcomes or results of your research.
• Highlight the potential impact and significance of your research in advancing knowledge or addressing practical issues.

10. References:

• Provide a list of all the references cited in your proposal, following a consistent citation style (e.g., APA, MLA).

11. Appendices:

• Include any additional supporting materials, such as survey questionnaires, interview guides, or data analysis plans.

Research Proposal Format

The format of a research proposal may vary depending on the specific requirements of the institution or funding agency. However, the following is a commonly used format for a research proposal:

1. Title Page:

• Include the title of your research proposal, your name, your affiliation or institution, and the date.

2. Abstract:

• Provide a brief summary of your research proposal, highlighting the research problem, objectives, methodology, and expected outcomes.

3. Introduction:

• Introduce the research topic and provide background information.
• State the research problem or question you aim to address.
• Explain the significance and relevance of the research.
• Review relevant literature and studies related to your research topic.
• Summarize key findings and identify gaps in the existing knowledge.
• Explain how your research will contribute to filling those gaps.

5. Research Objectives:

• Clearly state the specific objectives or aims of your research.
• Ensure that the objectives are clear, focused, and aligned with the research problem.

6. Methodology:

• Describe the research design and methodology you plan to use.
• Explain the data collection methods, instruments, and analysis techniques.
• Justify why the chosen methods are appropriate for your research.

7. Timeline:

8. Resources:

• Explain how you will acquire or utilize these resources effectively.

9. Ethical Considerations:

• If applicable, explain how you will ensure informed consent and protect the privacy of research participants.

10. Expected Outcomes and Significance:

11. References:

12. Appendices:

Research Proposal Template

Here’s a template for a research proposal:

1. Introduction:

2. Literature Review:

3. Research Objectives:

4. Methodology:

5. Timeline:

6. Resources:

7. Ethical Considerations:

8. Expected Outcomes and Significance:

9. References:

10. Appendices:

Research Proposal Sample

Title: The Impact of Online Education on Student Learning Outcomes: A Comparative Study

1. Introduction

Online education has gained significant prominence in recent years, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This research proposal aims to investigate the impact of online education on student learning outcomes by comparing them with traditional face-to-face instruction. The study will explore various aspects of online education, such as instructional methods, student engagement, and academic performance, to provide insights into the effectiveness of online learning.

2. Objectives

The main objectives of this research are as follows:

• To compare student learning outcomes between online and traditional face-to-face education.
• To examine the factors influencing student engagement in online learning environments.
• To assess the effectiveness of different instructional methods employed in online education.
• To identify challenges and opportunities associated with online education and suggest recommendations for improvement.

3. Methodology

3.1 Study Design

This research will utilize a mixed-methods approach to gather both quantitative and qualitative data. The study will include the following components:

3.2 Participants

The research will involve undergraduate students from two universities, one offering online education and the other providing face-to-face instruction. A total of 500 students (250 from each university) will be selected randomly to participate in the study.

3.3 Data Collection

The research will employ the following data collection methods:

• Quantitative: Pre- and post-assessments will be conducted to measure students’ learning outcomes. Data on student demographics and academic performance will also be collected from university records.
• Qualitative: Focus group discussions and individual interviews will be conducted with students to gather their perceptions and experiences regarding online education.

3.4 Data Analysis

Quantitative data will be analyzed using statistical software, employing descriptive statistics, t-tests, and regression analysis. Qualitative data will be transcribed, coded, and analyzed thematically to identify recurring patterns and themes.

4. Ethical Considerations

The study will adhere to ethical guidelines, ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of participants. Informed consent will be obtained, and participants will have the right to withdraw from the study at any time.

5. Significance and Expected Outcomes

This research will contribute to the existing literature by providing empirical evidence on the impact of online education on student learning outcomes. The findings will help educational institutions and policymakers make informed decisions about incorporating online learning methods and improving the quality of online education. Moreover, the study will identify potential challenges and opportunities related to online education and offer recommendations for enhancing student engagement and overall learning outcomes.

6. Timeline

The proposed research will be conducted over a period of 12 months, including data collection, analysis, and report writing.

The estimated budget for this research includes expenses related to data collection, software licenses, participant compensation, and research assistance. A detailed budget breakdown will be provided in the final research plan.

8. Conclusion

This research proposal aims to investigate the impact of online education on student learning outcomes through a comparative study with traditional face-to-face instruction. By exploring various dimensions of online education, this research will provide valuable insights into the effectiveness and challenges associated with online learning. The findings will contribute to the ongoing discourse on educational practices and help shape future strategies for maximizing student learning outcomes in online education settings.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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• Research process

Published on 30 October 2022 by Shona McCombes and Tegan George. Revised on 13 June 2023.

While the sections may vary, the overall objective is always the same. A research proposal serves as a blueprint and guide for your research plan, helping you get organised and feel confident in the path forward you choose to take.

Research proposal purpose, research proposal examples, research design and methods, contribution to knowledge, research schedule, frequently asked questions.

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

• Example research proposal #1: ‘A Conceptual Framework for Scheduling Constraint Management’
• Example research proposal #2: ‘ Medical Students as Mediators of Change in Tobacco Use’
• Explaining how will you build on, challenge, or synthesise prior scholarship

To finish your proposal on a strong note, explore the potential implications of your research for your field. Emphasise again what you aim to contribute and why it matters.

Once you’ve decided on your research objectives , you need to explain them in your paper, at the end of your problem statement.

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

McCombes, S. & George, T. (2023, June 13). How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved 3 September 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/the-research-process/research-proposal-explained/

Other students also liked, what is a research methodology | steps & tips, what is a literature review | guide, template, & examples, how to write a results section | tips & examples.

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Blog Business How to Write a Research Proposal: A Step-by-Step

How to Write a Research Proposal: A Step-by-Step

Written by: Danesh Ramuthi Nov 29, 2023

A research proposal is a structured outline for a planned study on a specific topic. It serves as a roadmap, guiding researchers through the process of converting their research idea into a feasible project. 

The aim of a research proposal is multifold: it articulates the research problem, establishes a theoretical framework, outlines the research methodology and highlights the potential significance of the study. Importantly, it’s a critical tool for scholars seeking grant funding or approval for their research projects.

Crafting a good research proposal requires not only understanding your research topic and methodological approaches but also the ability to present your ideas clearly and persuasively. Explore Venngage’s Proposal Maker and Research Proposals Templates to begin your journey in writing a compelling research proposal.

What to include in a research proposal?

In a research proposal, include a clear statement of your research question or problem, along with an explanation of its significance. This should be followed by a literature review that situates your proposed study within the context of existing research. 

Your proposal should also outline the research methodology, detailing how you plan to conduct your study, including data collection and analysis methods.

Additionally, include a theoretical framework that guides your research approach, a timeline or research schedule, and a budget if applicable. It’s important to also address the anticipated outcomes and potential implications of your study. A well-structured research proposal will clearly communicate your research objectives, methods and significance to the readers.

How to format a research proposal?

Formatting a research proposal involves adhering to a structured outline to ensure clarity and coherence. While specific requirements may vary, a standard research proposal typically includes the following elements:

• Title Page: Must include the title of your research proposal, your name and affiliations. The title should be concise and descriptive of your proposed research.
• Abstract: A brief summary of your proposal, usually not exceeding 250 words. It should highlight the research question, methodology and the potential impact of the study.
• Introduction: Introduces your research question or problem, explains its significance, and states the objectives of your study.
• Literature review: Here, you contextualize your research within existing scholarship, demonstrating your knowledge of the field and how your research will contribute to it.
• Methodology: Outline your research methods, including how you will collect and analyze data. This section should be detailed enough to show the feasibility and thoughtfulness of your approach.
• Timeline: Provide an estimated schedule for your research, breaking down the process into stages with a realistic timeline for each.
• Budget (if applicable): If your research requires funding, include a detailed budget outlining expected cost.
• References/Bibliography: List all sources referenced in your proposal in a consistent citation style.

How to write a research proposal in 11 steps?

Writing a research proposal template in structured steps ensures a comprehensive and coherent presentation of your research project. Let’s look at the explanation for each of the steps here:  

Step 1: Title and Abstract Step 2: Introduction Step 3: Research objectives Step 4: Literature review Step 5: Methodology Step 6: Timeline Step 7: Resources Step 8: Ethical considerations Step 9: Expected outcomes and significance Step 10: References Step 11: Appendices

Step 1: title and abstract.

Select a concise, descriptive title and write an abstract summarizing your research question, objectives, methodology and expected outcomes​​. The abstract should include your research question, the objectives you aim to achieve, the methodology you plan to employ and the anticipated outcomes. 

Step 2: Introduction

In this section, introduce the topic of your research, emphasizing its significance and relevance to the field. Articulate the research problem or question in clear terms and provide background context, which should include an overview of previous research in the field.

Step 3: Research objectives

Here, you’ll need to outline specific, clear and achievable objectives that align with your research problem. These objectives should be well-defined, focused and measurable, serving as the guiding pillars for your study. They help in establishing what you intend to accomplish through your research and provide a clear direction for your investigation.

Step 4: Literature review

In this part, conduct a thorough review of existing literature related to your research topic. This involves a detailed summary of key findings and major contributions from previous research. Identify existing gaps in the literature and articulate how your research aims to fill these gaps. The literature review not only shows your grasp of the subject matter but also how your research will contribute new insights or perspectives to the field.

Step 5: Methodology

Describe the design of your research and the methodologies you will employ. This should include detailed information on data collection methods, instruments to be used and analysis techniques. Justify the appropriateness of these methods for your research​​.

Step 6: Timeline

Construct a detailed timeline that maps out the major milestones and activities of your research project. Break the entire research process into smaller, manageable tasks and assign realistic time frames to each. This timeline should cover everything from the initial research phase to the final submission, including periods for data collection, analysis and report writing. 

It helps in ensuring your project stays on track and demonstrates to reviewers that you have a well-thought-out plan for completing your research efficiently.

Step 7: Resources

Identify all the resources that will be required for your research, such as specific databases, laboratory equipment, software or funding. Provide details on how these resources will be accessed or acquired. 

If your research requires funding, explain how it will be utilized effectively to support various aspects of the project. 

Step 8: Ethical considerations

Address any ethical issues that may arise during your research. This is particularly important for research involving human subjects. Describe the measures you will take to ensure ethical standards are maintained, such as obtaining informed consent, ensuring participant privacy, and adhering to data protection regulations. 

Here, in this section you should reassure reviewers that you are committed to conducting your research responsibly and ethically.

Step 9: Expected outcomes and significance

Articulate the expected outcomes or results of your research. Explain the potential impact and significance of these outcomes, whether in advancing academic knowledge, influencing policy or addressing specific societal or practical issues. 

Step 10: References

Compile a comprehensive list of all the references cited in your proposal. Adhere to a consistent citation style (like APA or MLA) throughout your document. The reference section not only gives credit to the original authors of your sourced information but also strengthens the credibility of your proposal.

Step 11: Appendices

Include additional supporting materials that are pertinent to your research proposal. This can be survey questionnaires, interview guides, detailed data analysis plans or any supplementary information that supports the main text. 

Appendices provide further depth to your proposal, showcasing the thoroughness of your preparation.

Research proposal FAQs

1. how long should a research proposal be.

The length of a research proposal can vary depending on the requirements of the academic institution, funding body or specific guidelines provided. Generally, research proposals range from 500 to 1500 words or about one to a few pages long. It’s important to provide enough detail to clearly convey your research idea, objectives and methodology, while being concise. Always check

2. Why is the research plan pivotal to a research project?

The research plan is pivotal to a research project because it acts as a blueprint, guiding every phase of the study. It outlines the objectives, methodology, timeline and expected outcomes, providing a structured approach and ensuring that the research is systematically conducted. 

A well-crafted plan helps in identifying potential challenges, allocating resources efficiently and maintaining focus on the research goals. It is also essential for communicating the project’s feasibility and importance to stakeholders, such as funding bodies or academic supervisors.

Mastering how to write a research proposal is an essential skill for any scholar, whether in social and behavioral sciences, academic writing or any field requiring scholarly research. From this article, you have learned key components, from the literature review to the research design, helping you develop a persuasive and well-structured proposal.

Remember, a good research proposal not only highlights your proposed research and methodology but also demonstrates its relevance and potential impact.

For additional support, consider utilizing Venngage’s Proposal Maker and Research Proposals Templates , valuable tools in crafting a compelling proposal that stands out.

Whether it’s for grant funding, a research paper or a dissertation proposal, these resources can assist in transforming your research idea into a successful submission.

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Designing and Proposing Your Research Project

Available formats, also available from.

• Contributor bios
• Reviews and awards
• Book details
• Supplemental Resources

Designing your own study and writing your research proposal takes time, often more so than conducting the study. This practical, accessible guide walks you through the entire process.

You will learn to identify and narrow your research topic, develop your research question, design your study, and choose appropriate sampling and measurement strategies.

The figures, tables, and exhibits offer a wealth of relatable examples, and students can use the many activities and worksheets to explore and apply concepts, as individuals or in groups.

This book is part of APA's Concise Guides to Conducting Behavioral, Health, and Social Science Research series. Aimed at undergraduate students in research methods courses or others with a lab or research project, each book describes a key stage in the research process. Collectively, these books provide a solid grounding in research from start to finish.

Series Foreword

• Choosing Your Research Question and Hypotheses
• Choosing Your Study's Purpose
• Choosing Whether to Use a Qualitative, Quantitative, or Mixed-Methods Approach
• Understanding Terms for Quantitative Studies: Concepts, Constructs, and Variables
• Choosing Your Design
• Choosing Your Sample
• Planning Your Measurement Strategy for Collecting Data
• Establishing Validity for Quantitative Studies
• Establishing Validity for Qualitative Studies

About the Authors

About the Series Editor

Jennifer Brown Urban, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Family Science and Human Development at Montclair State University, where she also directs the Research on Evaluation and Developmental Systems Science lab.

She is trained as a developmental scientist with specific expertise in youth development and program evaluation. Her scholarship is encapsulated under the umbrella of systems science, including both theoretical approaches and methodologies.

Dr. Urban's most recent research focuses on character development and innovative approaches to program evaluation and planning. She is currently principal investigator on several grant-funded projects. The goals of this work are to build the capacity of youth program practitioners and evaluators to engage in high-quality evaluation of character development programs, to determine the key features of character development programs that promote positive youth development, and to advance the application of character science in multiple contexts to enhance human flourishing across the lifespan.

She uses mixed-method approaches in her own research and has mentored many undergraduate and graduate students in designing and executing applied research projects.

Bradley Matheus van Eeden-Moorefield, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Family Science and Human Development at Montclair State University and director of the PhD program.

His research includes a strong social justice commitment to understanding and strengthening marginalized families, with his most recent work focused on stepfamilies headed by same-sex couples. Much of this research focuses on identifying how factors in the social world (e.g., stigma, stereotypes, policy) influence everyday family life and how each influence various indicators of individual (e.g., depression, happiness) and family well-being (stability).

Dr. van Eeden-Moorefield uses various qualitative and quantitative methodologies and has particular expertise in Internet-based methodologies.

He has provided training to various family and childcare practitioners and uses his previous clinical experiences to translate research into practice and practice into research.

The chapters are organized around the choices students need to make, rather than the types of research and issues specific to each type — an important distinguishing feature that sets this book apart from other research methods text…. In the current environment of increasing interdisciplinarity, this text is very useful to students who find themselves coming to social science research from other disciplines, or to students in need of clear guidelines who do not have the time to complete another entire research methods course. — Choice

Urban and van Eeden-Moorefield take the often daunting topic of research methods and make it — dare I say — fun and engaging. Through personal stories and good humor, they demystify the research process and find ways to connect research to everyday life and experiences. This book should be a required supplementary text for every introductory research methods course. —William M. Trochim, PhD Professor, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

The authors use vivid and engaging examples and masterfully crafted exhibits to create an irresistible proposition to students: "You can do excellent research and enjoy doing it!" They creatively help readers understand and make the choices involved in exemplary research. This book is an invaluable asset for students in psychology and in the social and behavioral sciences more generally. —Richard M. Lerner, PhD Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science and Director, Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development, Tufts University, Medford, MA

This book will help beginning researchers identify a meaningful and testable research question as well as deal with basic choices in designing their study. The accessible text and a host of tables guide readers through key issues in designing and proposing a research project. —Melvin M. Mark, PhD Professor and Head of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park

Welcome to the supplemental resources for Designing and Proposing Your Research Project . The links below provide copies of many of the worksheets seen throughout the text for ease of use.

We also have included several features referred to, but not discussed at length, in the text. These include handouts on ethics, mixed-methods designs, writing integrated literature reviews, and an example research proposal format.

We hope you find these extra features useful. Good luck!

• Anatomy of a Research Article and Comparison of Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches to Research (PDF: 35KB)
• Research Design and Ethics (PDF: 18KB)
• Integrated Literature Review, Research Question-Hypothesis (PDF: 9KB)
• Mixed Methods Approaches (PDF: 32KB)
• Research Proposal Format Example (PDF: 9KB)
• Worksheet: Planning for Trustworthiness in My Study (PDF: 7KB)
• Worksheet: Planning and Tracking Validity in My Study (PDF: 28KB)

Writing Your Research Proposal

5 Things You Need To Keep Top Of Mind

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Reviewer: Eunice Rautenbach (DTech) | June 2023

W riting a   high-quality research proposal   that “sells” your study and wins the favour (and approval) of your university is no small task. In this post, we’ll share five   critical dos and don’ts   to help you navigate the proposal writing process.

This post is based on an extract from   our online course ,   Research Proposal Bootcamp . In the course, we walk you through the process of developing an A-grade proposal, step by step, with plain-language explanations and loads of examples. If it’s your first time writing a research proposal, you definitely want to check that out.

Overview: 5 Proposal Writing Essentials

• Understand your university’s   requirements   and   restrictions
• Have a clearly articulated   research   problem
• Clearly communicate the   feasibility   of your research
• Pay very close attention to   ethics   policies
• Focus on writing   critically   and   concisely

1. Understand the rules of the game

All too often, we see students going through all the effort of finding a  unique and valuable topic  and drafting a meaty proposal, only to realise that they’ve missed some  critical information  regarding their university’s requirements. 

Every university is different, but they all have some sort of requirements or expectations regarding what students can and can’t research. For example:

• Restrictions regarding the  topic area  that can be research
• Restrictions regarding  data   sources  – for example, primary or secondary
• Requirements regarding  methodology  – for example, qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods-based research
• And most notably, there can be varying expectations regarding  topic originality  – does your topic need to be super original or not?

The key takeaway here is that you need to  thoroughly read through any briefing documents provided  by your university. Also, take a look at past dissertations or theses from your program to get a feel for  what   the norms are . Long story short, make sure you understand the rules of the game before you start playing.

2. Have a clearly articulated research problem

As we’ve explained many times on this blog, all   good research starts with a strong   research problem   – without a problem, you don’t have a clear justification for your research. Therefore, it’s essential that you have clarity regarding the research problem you’re going to address   before you start drafting   your proposal. From the research   problem , the   research   gap   emerges and from the research gap, your   research   aims , objectives and research   questions   emerge. These then guide your entire dissertation from start to end. 

Needless to say, all of this starts with the literature – in other words, you have to   spend time reading the existing literature   to understand the current state of knowledge. You can’t skip this all-important step. All too often, we see students make the mistake of trying to write up a proposal without having a   clear understanding of the current state   of the literature, which is just a recipe for disaster. You’ve got to take the time to understand what’s already been done before you can propose doing something new.

3. Demonstrate the feasibility of your research

One of the key concerns that reviewers or assessors have when deciding to approve or reject a research proposal is the   practicality/feasibility of the proposed research , given the student’s resources (which are usually pretty limited). You can have a brilliant research topic that’s super original and valuable, but if there is any question about whether the project is something that you can realistically pull off, you’re going to run into issues when it comes to getting your proposal accepted.

So, what does this mean for you?

First, you need to make sure that the research topic you’ve chosen and the methodology you’re planning to use is   100% safe in terms of feasibility . In other words, you need to be super certain that you can actually pull off this study. Of greatest importance here is the data collection and analysis aspect – in other words, will you be able to get access to the data you need, and will you be able to analyse it?

Second, assuming you’re 100% confident that you can pull the research off, you need to   clearly communicate that   in your research proposal. To do this, you need to proactively think about all the concerns the reviewer or supervisor might have and ensure that you clearly address these in your proposal. Remember,   the proposal is a one-way communication   – you get one shot (per submission) to make your case, and there’s generally   no Q&A opportunity . So, make it clear what you’ll be doing, what the potential risks are and how you’ll manage those risks to ensure that your study goes according to plan.

If you have the word count available, it’s a good idea to   present a project plan , ideally using something like a Gantt chart. You can also consider presenting a   risk register , where you detail the potential risks, their likelihood and impact, and your mitigation and response actions – this will show the assessor that you’ve really thought through the practicalities of your proposed project. If you want to learn more about project plans and risk registers, we cover these in detail in our proposal writing course,   Research Proposal Bootcamp , and we also provide templates that you can use. 

Need a helping hand?

4. Pay close attention to ethics policies

This one’s a biggy – and it can often be a dream crusher for students with lofty research ideas. If there’s one thing that will sink your research proposal faster than anything else, it’s   non-compliance with your   university’s research ethics policy . This is simply a non-negotiable, so don’t waste your time thinking you can convince your institution otherwise. If your proposed research runs against any aspect of your institution’s ethics policies,   it’s a no-go.

The ethics requirements for dissertations can vary depending on the field of study, institution, and country, so we can’t give you a list of things you need to do, but some common requirements that you should be aware of include things like:

• Informed   consent   – in other words, getting permission/consent from your study’s participants and allowing them to opt out at any point
• Privacy   and   confidentiality   – in other words, ensuring that you manage the data securely and respect people’s privacy
• If your research   involves   animals   (as opposed to people), you’ll need to explain how you’ll   ensure ethical treatment , how you’ll reduce harm or distress, etc.

One more thing to keep in mind is that certain types of research may be acceptable from an ethics perspective, but will require   additional levels of approval . For example, if you’re planning to study any sort of vulnerable population (e.g., children, the elderly, people with mental health conditions, etc.), this may be allowed in principle but requires additional ethical scrutiny. This often involves some sort of review board or committee, which   slows things down   quite a bit. Situations like this aren’t proposal killers, but they can create a much   more rigid environment , so you need to consider whether that works for you, given your timeline.

5. Write critically and concisely

The final item on the list is more generic but just as important to the success of your research proposal – that is,   writing   critically   and concisely . 

All too often, students fall short in terms of critical writing and end up   writing in a very descriptive manner   instead. We’ve got a   detailed blog post and video   explaining the difference between these two types of writing, so we won’t go into detail here. However, the simplest way to distinguish between the two types of writing is that   descriptive writing focuses on the what , while   analytical writing draws out the “so what”   – in other words, what’s the impact and relevance of each point that you’re making to the bigger issue at hand.

In the case of a research proposal, the core task at hand is to   convince the reader that your planned research deserves a chance . To do this, you need to show the reviewer that your research will (amongst other things) be   original ,   valuable   and   practical . So, when you’re writing, you need to keep this core objective front of mind and write with purpose, taking every opportunity to link what you’re writing about to that core purpose of the proposal.

The second aspect in relation to writing is to   write concisely . All too often, students ramble on and use far more word count than is necessary. Part of the problem here is that their writing is just too descriptive (the previous point) and part of the issue is just a   lack of editing .

The keyword here is editing – in other words, you   don’t need to write the most concise version possible on your first try   – if anything, we encourage you to just thought vomit as much as you can in the initial stages of writing. Once you’ve got everything down on paper, then you can get down to   editing and trimming down your writing . You need to get comfortable with this process of iteration and revision with everything you write – don’t try to write the perfect first draft. First,   get the thoughts out of your head and onto the paper , then edit. This is a habit that will serve you well beyond your proposal, into your actual dissertation or thesis.

Wrapping Up

To recap, the five essentials to keep in mind when writing up your research proposal include:

If you want to learn more about how to craft a top-notch research proposal, be sure to   check out our online course   for a comprehensive, step-by-step guide. Alternatively, if you’d like to get hands-on help developing your proposal, be sure to check out our   private coaching service , where we hold your hand through the research journey, step by step. 

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Writing a Scientific Research Project Proposal

• 5 minute read
• 113.8K views

The importance of a well-written research proposal cannot be underestimated. Your research really is only as good as your proposal. A poorly written, or poorly conceived research proposal will doom even an otherwise worthy project. On the other hand, a well-written, high-quality proposal will increase your chances for success.

In this article, we’ll outline the basics of writing an effective scientific research proposal, including the differences between research proposals, grants and cover letters. We’ll also touch on common mistakes made when submitting research proposals, as well as a simple example or template that you can follow.

What is a scientific research proposal?

The main purpose of a scientific research proposal is to convince your audience that your project is worthwhile, and that you have the expertise and wherewithal to complete it. The elements of an effective research proposal mirror those of the research process itself, which we’ll outline below. Essentially, the research proposal should include enough information for the reader to determine if your proposed study is worth pursuing.

It is not an uncommon misunderstanding to think that a research proposal and a cover letter are the same things. However, they are different. The main difference between a research proposal vs cover letter content is distinct. Whereas the research proposal summarizes the proposal for future research, the cover letter connects you to the research, and how you are the right person to complete the proposed research.

There is also sometimes confusion around a research proposal vs grant application. Whereas a research proposal is a statement of intent, related to answering a research question, a grant application is a specific request for funding to complete the research proposed. Of course, there are elements of overlap between the two documents; it’s the purpose of the document that defines one or the other.

Scientific Research Proposal Format

Although there is no one way to write a scientific research proposal, there are specific guidelines. A lot depends on which journal you’re submitting your research proposal to, so you may need to follow their scientific research proposal template.

In general, however, there are fairly universal sections to every scientific research proposal. These include:

• Title: Make sure the title of your proposal is descriptive and concise. Make it catch and informative at the same time, avoiding dry phrases like, “An investigation…” Your title should pique the interest of the reader.
• Abstract: This is a brief (300-500 words) summary that includes the research question, your rationale for the study, and any applicable hypothesis. You should also include a brief description of your methodology, including procedures, samples, instruments, etc.
• Introduction: The opening paragraph of your research proposal is, perhaps, the most important. Here you want to introduce the research problem in a creative way, and demonstrate your understanding of the need for the research. You want the reader to think that your proposed research is current, important and relevant.
• Background: Include a brief history of the topic and link it to a contemporary context to show its relevance for today. Identify key researchers and institutions also looking at the problem
• Literature Review: This is the section that may take the longest amount of time to assemble. Here you want to synthesize prior research, and place your proposed research into the larger picture of what’s been studied in the past. You want to show your reader that your work is original, and adds to the current knowledge.
• Research Design and Methodology: This section should be very clearly and logically written and organized. You are letting your reader know that you know what you are going to do, and how. The reader should feel confident that you have the skills and knowledge needed to get the project done.
• Preliminary Implications: Here you’ll be outlining how you anticipate your research will extend current knowledge in your field. You might also want to discuss how your findings will impact future research needs.
• Conclusion: This section reinforces the significance and importance of your proposed research, and summarizes the entire proposal.
• References/Citations: Of course, you need to include a full and accurate list of any and all sources you used to write your research proposal.

Common Mistakes in Writing a Scientific Research Project Proposal

Remember, the best research proposal can be rejected if it’s not well written or is ill-conceived. The most common mistakes made include:

• Not providing the proper context for your research question or the problem
• Failing to reference landmark/key studies
• Losing focus of the research question or problem
• Not accurately presenting contributions by other researchers and institutions
• Incompletely developing a persuasive argument for the research that is being proposed
• Misplaced attention on minor points and/or not enough detail on major issues
• Sloppy, low-quality writing without effective logic and flow
• Incorrect or lapses in references and citations, and/or references not in proper format
• The proposal is too long – or too short

Scientific Research Proposal Example

There are countless examples that you can find for successful research proposals. In addition, you can also find examples of unsuccessful research proposals. Search for successful research proposals in your field, and even for your target journal, to get a good idea on what specifically your audience may be looking for.

While there’s no one example that will show you everything you need to know, looking at a few will give you a good idea of what you need to include in your own research proposal. Talk, also, to colleagues in your field, especially if you are a student or a new researcher. We can often learn from the mistakes of others. The more prepared and knowledgeable you are prior to writing your research proposal, the more likely you are to succeed.

One of the top reasons scientific research proposals are rejected is due to poor logic and flow. Check out our Language Editing Services to ensure a great proposal , that’s clear and concise, and properly referenced. Check our video for more information, and get started today.

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11.2 Steps in Developing a Research Proposal

Learning objectives.

• Identify the steps in developing a research proposal.
• Choose a topic and formulate a research question and working thesis.
• Develop a research proposal.

Writing a good research paper takes time, thought, and effort. Although this assignment is challenging, it is manageable. Focusing on one step at a time will help you develop a thoughtful, informative, well-supported research paper.

Your first step is to choose a topic and then to develop research questions, a working thesis, and a written research proposal. Set aside adequate time for this part of the process. Fully exploring ideas will help you build a solid foundation for your paper.

Choosing a Topic

When you choose a topic for a research paper, you are making a major commitment. Your choice will help determine whether you enjoy the lengthy process of research and writing—and whether your final paper fulfills the assignment requirements. If you choose your topic hastily, you may later find it difficult to work with your topic. By taking your time and choosing carefully, you can ensure that this assignment is not only challenging but also rewarding.

Writers understand the importance of choosing a topic that fulfills the assignment requirements and fits the assignment’s purpose and audience. (For more information about purpose and audience, see Chapter 6 “Writing Paragraphs: Separating Ideas and Shaping Content” .) Choosing a topic that interests you is also crucial. You instructor may provide a list of suggested topics or ask that you develop a topic on your own. In either case, try to identify topics that genuinely interest you.

After identifying potential topic ideas, you will need to evaluate your ideas and choose one topic to pursue. Will you be able to find enough information about the topic? Can you develop a paper about this topic that presents and supports your original ideas? Is the topic too broad or too narrow for the scope of the assignment? If so, can you modify it so it is more manageable? You will ask these questions during this preliminary phase of the research process.

Identifying Potential Topics

Sometimes, your instructor may provide a list of suggested topics. If so, you may benefit from identifying several possibilities before committing to one idea. It is important to know how to narrow down your ideas into a concise, manageable thesis. You may also use the list as a starting point to help you identify additional, related topics. Discussing your ideas with your instructor will help ensure that you choose a manageable topic that fits the requirements of the assignment.

In this chapter, you will follow a writer named Jorge, who is studying health care administration, as he prepares a research paper. You will also plan, research, and draft your own research paper.

Jorge was assigned to write a research paper on health and the media for an introductory course in health care. Although a general topic was selected for the students, Jorge had to decide which specific issues interested him. He brainstormed a list of possibilities.

If you are writing a research paper for a specialized course, look back through your notes and course activities. Identify reading assignments and class discussions that especially engaged you. Doing so can help you identify topics to pursue.

• Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) in the news
• Sexual education programs
• Hollywood and eating disorders
• Americans’ access to public health information
• Media portrayal of health care reform bill
• Depictions of drugs on television
• The effect of the Internet on mental health
• Popularized diets (such as low-carbohydrate diets)
• Fear of pandemics (bird flu, HINI, SARS)
• Electronic entertainment and obesity
• Advertisements for prescription drugs
• Public education and disease prevention

Set a timer for five minutes. Use brainstorming or idea mapping to create a list of topics you would be interested in researching for a paper about the influence of the Internet on social networking. Do you closely follow the media coverage of a particular website, such as Twitter? Would you like to learn more about a certain industry, such as online dating? Which social networking sites do you and your friends use? List as many ideas related to this topic as you can.

Narrowing Your Topic

Once you have a list of potential topics, you will need to choose one as the focus of your essay. You will also need to narrow your topic. Most writers find that the topics they listed during brainstorming or idea mapping are broad—too broad for the scope of the assignment. Working with an overly broad topic, such as sexual education programs or popularized diets, can be frustrating and overwhelming. Each topic has so many facets that it would be impossible to cover them all in a college research paper. However, more specific choices, such as the pros and cons of sexual education in kids’ television programs or the physical effects of the South Beach diet, are specific enough to write about without being too narrow to sustain an entire research paper.

A good research paper provides focused, in-depth information and analysis. If your topic is too broad, you will find it difficult to do more than skim the surface when you research it and write about it. Narrowing your focus is essential to making your topic manageable. To narrow your focus, explore your topic in writing, conduct preliminary research, and discuss both the topic and the research with others.

Exploring Your Topic in Writing

“How am I supposed to narrow my topic when I haven’t even begun researching yet?” In fact, you may already know more than you realize. Review your list and identify your top two or three topics. Set aside some time to explore each one through freewriting. (For more information about freewriting, see Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” .) Simply taking the time to focus on your topic may yield fresh angles.

Jorge knew that he was especially interested in the topic of diet fads, but he also knew that it was much too broad for his assignment. He used freewriting to explore his thoughts so he could narrow his topic. Read Jorge’s ideas.

Conducting Preliminary Research

Another way writers may focus a topic is to conduct preliminary research . Like freewriting, exploratory reading can help you identify interesting angles. Surfing the web and browsing through newspaper and magazine articles are good ways to start. Find out what people are saying about your topic on blogs and online discussion groups. Discussing your topic with others can also inspire you. Talk about your ideas with your classmates, your friends, or your instructor.

Jorge’s freewriting exercise helped him realize that the assigned topic of health and the media intersected with a few of his interests—diet, nutrition, and obesity. Preliminary online research and discussions with his classmates strengthened his impression that many people are confused or misled by media coverage of these subjects.

Jorge decided to focus his paper on a topic that had garnered a great deal of media attention—low-carbohydrate diets. He wanted to find out whether low-carbohydrate diets were as effective as their proponents claimed.

Writing at Work

At work, you may need to research a topic quickly to find general information. This information can be useful in understanding trends in a given industry or generating competition. For example, a company may research a competitor’s prices and use the information when pricing their own product. You may find it useful to skim a variety of reliable sources and take notes on your findings.

The reliability of online sources varies greatly. In this exploratory phase of your research, you do not need to evaluate sources as closely as you will later. However, use common sense as you refine your paper topic. If you read a fascinating blog comment that gives you a new idea for your paper, be sure to check out other, more reliable sources as well to make sure the idea is worth pursuing.

Review the list of topics you created in Note 11.18 “Exercise 1” and identify two or three topics you would like to explore further. For each of these topics, spend five to ten minutes writing about the topic without stopping. Then review your writing to identify possible areas of focus.

Set aside time to conduct preliminary research about your potential topics. Then choose a topic to pursue for your research paper.

Collaboration

Please share your topic list with a classmate. Select one or two topics on his or her list that you would like to learn more about and return it to him or her. Discuss why you found the topics interesting, and learn which of your topics your classmate selected and why.

A Plan for Research

Your freewriting and preliminary research have helped you choose a focused, manageable topic for your research paper. To work with your topic successfully, you will need to determine what exactly you want to learn about it—and later, what you want to say about it. Before you begin conducting in-depth research, you will further define your focus by developing a research question , a working thesis, and a research proposal.

Formulating a Research Question

In forming a research question, you are setting a goal for your research. Your main research question should be substantial enough to form the guiding principle of your paper—but focused enough to guide your research. A strong research question requires you not only to find information but also to put together different pieces of information, interpret and analyze them, and figure out what you think. As you consider potential research questions, ask yourself whether they would be too hard or too easy to answer.

To determine your research question, review the freewriting you completed earlier. Skim through books, articles, and websites and list the questions you have. (You may wish to use the 5WH strategy to help you formulate questions. See Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” for more information about 5WH questions.) Include simple, factual questions and more complex questions that would require analysis and interpretation. Determine your main question—the primary focus of your paper—and several subquestions that you will need to research to answer your main question.

Here are the research questions Jorge will use to focus his research. Notice that his main research question has no obvious, straightforward answer. Jorge will need to research his subquestions, which address narrower topics, to answer his main question.

Using the topic you selected in Note 11.24 “Exercise 2” , write your main research question and at least four to five subquestions. Check that your main research question is appropriately complex for your assignment.

Constructing a Working ThesIs

A working thesis concisely states a writer’s initial answer to the main research question. It does not merely state a fact or present a subjective opinion. Instead, it expresses a debatable idea or claim that you hope to prove through additional research. Your working thesis is called a working thesis for a reason—it is subject to change. As you learn more about your topic, you may change your thinking in light of your research findings. Let your working thesis serve as a guide to your research, but do not be afraid to modify it based on what you learn.

Jorge began his research with a strong point of view based on his preliminary writing and research. Read his working thesis statement, which presents the point he will argue. Notice how it states Jorge’s tentative answer to his research question.

One way to determine your working thesis is to consider how you would complete sentences such as I believe or My opinion is . However, keep in mind that academic writing generally does not use first-person pronouns. These statements are useful starting points, but formal research papers use an objective voice.

Write a working thesis statement that presents your preliminary answer to the research question you wrote in Note 11.27 “Exercise 3” . Check that your working thesis statement presents an idea or claim that could be supported or refuted by evidence from research.

Creating a Research Proposal

A research proposal is a brief document—no more than one typed page—that summarizes the preliminary work you have completed. Your purpose in writing it is to formalize your plan for research and present it to your instructor for feedback. In your research proposal, you will present your main research question, related subquestions, and working thesis. You will also briefly discuss the value of researching this topic and indicate how you plan to gather information.

When Jorge began drafting his research proposal, he realized that he had already created most of the pieces he needed. However, he knew he also had to explain how his research would be relevant to other future health care professionals. In addition, he wanted to form a general plan for doing the research and identifying potentially useful sources. Read Jorge’s research proposal.

Before you begin a new project at work, you may have to develop a project summary document that states the purpose of the project, explains why it would be a wise use of company resources, and briefly outlines the steps involved in completing the project. This type of document is similar to a research proposal. Both documents define and limit a project, explain its value, discuss how to proceed, and identify what resources you will use.

Writing Your Own Research Proposal

Now you may write your own research proposal, if you have not done so already. Follow the guidelines provided in this lesson.

Key Takeaways

• Developing a research proposal involves the following preliminary steps: identifying potential ideas, choosing ideas to explore further, choosing and narrowing a topic, formulating a research question, and developing a working thesis.
• A good topic for a research paper interests the writer and fulfills the requirements of the assignment.
• Defining and narrowing a topic helps writers conduct focused, in-depth research.
• Writers conduct preliminary research to identify possible topics and research questions and to develop a working thesis.
• A good research question interests readers, is neither too broad nor too narrow, and has no obvious answer.
• A good working thesis expresses a debatable idea or claim that can be supported with evidence from research.
• Writers create a research proposal to present their topic, main research question, subquestions, and working thesis to an instructor for approval or feedback.

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Writing Research Proposals

The research proposal is your opportunity to show that you—and only you!—are the perfect person to take on your specific project. After reading your research proposal, readers should be confident that…

• You have thoughtfully crafted and designed this project;
• You have the necessary background to complete this project;
• You have the proper support system in place;
• You know exactly what you need to complete this project and how to do so; and
• With this funding in hand, you can be on your way to a meaningful research experience and a significant contribution to your field.

Research proposals typically include the following components:

• Why is your project important? How does it contribute to the field or to society? What do you hope to prove?
• This section includes the project design, specific methodology, your specific role and responsibilities, steps you will take to execute the project, etc. Here you will show the committee the way that you think by explaining both how you have conceived the project and how you intend to carry it out.
• Please be specific in the project dates/how much time you need to carry out the proposed project. The scope of the project should clearly match the timeframe in which you propose to complete it!
• Funding agencies like to know how their funding will be used. Including this information will demonstrate that you have thoughtfully designed the project and know of all of the anticipated expenses required to see it through to completion.
• It is important that you have a support system on hand when conducting research, especially as an undergraduate. There are often surprises and challenges when working on a long-term research project and the selection committee wants to be sure that you have the support system you need to both be successful in your project and also have a meaningful research experience. 
• Some questions to consider are: How often do you intend to meet with your advisor(s)? (This may vary from project to project based on the needs of the student and the nature of the research.) What will your mode of communication be? Will you be attending (or even presenting at) lab meetings? 

Don’t be afraid to also include relevant information about your background and advocate for yourself! Do you have skills developed in a different research experience (or leadership position, job, coursework, etc.) that you could apply to the project in question? Have you already learned about and experimented with a specific method of analysis in class and are now ready to apply it to a different situation? If you already have experience with this professor/lab, please be sure to include those details in your proposal! That will show the selection committee that you are ready to hit the ground running!

Lastly, be sure to know who your readers are so that you can tailor the field-specific language of your proposal accordingly. If the selection committee are specialists in your field, you can feel free to use the jargon of that field; but if your proposal will be evaluated by an interdisciplinary committee (this is common), you might take a bit longer explaining the state of the field, specific concepts, and certainly spelling out any acronyms.

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Chapter 14: The Research Proposal

14.3 Components of a Research Proposal

Krathwohl (2005) suggests and describes a variety of components to include in a research proposal. The following sections – Introductions, Background and significance, Literature Review; Research design and methods, Preliminary suppositions and implications; and Conclusion present these components in a suggested template for you to follow in the preparation of your research proposal.

The introduction sets the tone for what follows in your research proposal – treat it as the initial pitch of your idea. After reading the introduction your reader should:

• understand what it is you want to do;
• have a sense of your passion for the topic; and
• be excited about the study’s possible outcomes.

As you begin writing your research proposal, it is helpful to think of the introduction as a narrative of what it is you want to do, written in one to three paragraphs. Within those one to three paragraphs, it is important to briefly answer the following questions:

• How is the topic of your research proposal related to the problem?
• What methods will you utilize to analyze the research problem?
• Why is it important to undertake this research? What is the significance of your proposed research? Why are the outcomes of your proposed research important? Whom are they important?

Note : You may be asked by your instructor to include an abstract with your research proposal. In such cases, an abstract should provide an overview of what it is you plan to study, your main research question, a brief explanation of your methods to answer the research question, and your expected findings. All of this information must be carefully crafted in 150 to 250 words. A word of advice is to save the writing of your abstract until the very end of your research proposal preparation. If you are asked to provide an abstract, you should include 5 to 7 key words that are of most relevance to your study. List these in order of relevance.

Background and Significance

The purpose of this section is to explain the context of your proposal and to describe, in detail, why it is important to undertake this research. Assume that the person or people who will read your research proposal know nothing or very little about the research problem. While you do not need to include all knowledge you have learned about your topic in this section, it is important to ensure that you include the most relevant material that will help to explain the goals of your research.

While there are no hard and fast rules, you should attempt to address some or all of the following key points:

• State the research problem and provide a more thorough explanation about the purpose of the study than what you stated in the introduction.
• Present the rationale for the proposed research study. Clearly indicate why this research is worth doing. Answer the “so what?” question.
• Describe the major issues or problems to be addressed by your research. Do not forget to explain how and in what ways your proposed research builds upon previous related research.
• Explain how you plan to go about conducting your research.
• Clearly identify the key or most relevant sources of research you intend to use and explain how they will contribute to your analysis of the topic.
• Set the boundaries of your proposed research, in order to provide a clear focus. Where appropriate, state not only what you will study, but what will be excluded from your study.
• Provide clear definitions of key concepts and terms. Since key concepts and terms often have numerous definitions, make sure you state which definition you will be utilizing in your research.

This key component of the research proposal is the most time-consuming aspect in the preparation of your research proposal. As described in Chapter 5 , the literature review provides the background to your study and demonstrates the significance of the proposed research. Specifically, it is a review and synthesis of prior research that is related to the problem you are setting forth to investigate. Essentially, your goal in the literature review is to place your research study within the larger whole of what has been studied in the past, while demonstrating to your reader that your work is original, innovative, and adds to the larger whole.

As the literature review is information dense, it is essential that this section be intelligently structured to enable your reader to grasp the key arguments underpinning your study. However, this can be easier to state and harder to do, simply due to the fact there is usually a plethora of related research to sift through. Consequently, a good strategy for writing the literature review is to break the literature into conceptual categories or themes, rather than attempting to describe various groups of literature you reviewed. Chapter 5   describes a variety of methods to help you organize the themes.

Here are some suggestions on how to approach the writing of your literature review:

• Think about what questions other researchers have asked, what methods they used, what they found, and what they recommended based upon their findings.
• Do not be afraid to challenge previous related research findings and/or conclusions.
• Assess what you believe to be missing from previous research and explain how your research fills in this gap and/or extends previous research.

It is important to note that a significant challenge related to undertaking a literature review is knowing when to stop. As such, it is important to know when you have uncovered the key conceptual categories underlying your research topic. Generally, when you start to see repetition in the conclusions or recommendations, you can have confidence that you have covered all of the significant conceptual categories in your literature review. However, it is also important to acknowledge that researchers often find themselves returning to the literature as they collect and analyze their data. For example, an unexpected finding may develop as you collect and/or analyze the data; in this case, it is important to take the time to step back and review the literature again, to ensure that no other researchers have found a similar finding. This may include looking to research outside your field.

This situation occurred with one of this textbook’s authors’ research related to community resilience. During the interviews, the researchers heard many participants discuss individual resilience factors and how they believed these individual factors helped make the community more resilient, overall. Sheppard and Williams (2016) had not discovered these individual factors in their original literature review on community and environmental resilience. However, when they returned to the literature to search for individual resilience factors, they discovered a small body of literature in the child and youth psychology field. Consequently, Sheppard and Williams had to go back and add a new section to their literature review on individual resilience factors. Interestingly, their research appeared to be the first research to link individual resilience factors with community resilience factors.

Research design and methods

The objective of this section of the research proposal is to convince the reader that your overall research design and methods of analysis will enable you to solve the research problem you have identified and also enable you to accurately and effectively interpret the results of your research. Consequently, it is critical that the research design and methods section is well-written, clear, and logically organized. This demonstrates to your reader that you know what you are going to do and how you are going to do it. Overall, you want to leave your reader feeling confident that you have what it takes to get this research study completed in a timely fashion.

Essentially, this section of the research proposal should be clearly tied to the specific objectives of your study; however, it is also important to draw upon and include examples from the literature review that relate to your design and intended methods. In other words, you must clearly demonstrate how your study utilizes and builds upon past studies, as it relates to the research design and intended methods. For example, what methods have been used by other researchers in similar studies?

While it is important to consider the methods that other researchers have employed, it is equally, if not more, important to consider what methods have not been but could be employed. Remember, the methods section is not simply a list of tasks to be undertaken. It is also an argument as to why and how the tasks you have outlined will help you investigate the research problem and answer your research question(s).

Tips for writing the research design and methods section

Specify the methodological approaches you intend to employ to obtain information and the techniques you will use to analyze the data.

Specify the research operations you will undertake and the way you will interpret the results of those operations in relation to the research problem.

Go beyond stating what you hope to achieve through the methods you have chosen. State how you will actually implement the methods (i.e., coding interview text, running regression analysis, etc.).

Anticipate and acknowledge any potential barriers you may encounter when undertaking your research, and describe how you will address these barriers.

Explain where you believe you will find challenges related to data collection, including access to participants and information.

Preliminary Suppositions and Implications

The purpose of this section is to argue how you anticipate that your research will refine, revise, or extend existing knowledge in the area of your study. Depending upon the aims and objectives of your study, you should also discuss how your anticipated findings may impact future research. For example, is it possible that your research may lead to a new policy, theoretical understanding, or method for analyzing data? How might your study influence future studies? What might your study mean for future practitioners working in the field? Who or what might benefit from your study? How might your study contribute to social, economic or environmental issues? While it is important to think about and discuss possibilities such as these, it is equally important to be realistic in stating your anticipated findings. In other words, you do not want to delve into idle speculation. Rather, the purpose here is to reflect upon gaps in the current body of literature and to describe how you anticipate your research will begin to fill in some or all of those gaps.

The conclusion reiterates the importance and significance of your research proposal, and provides a brief summary of the entire proposed study. Essentially, this section should only be one or two paragraphs in length. Here is a potential outline for your conclusion:

Discuss why the study should be done. Specifically discuss how you expect your study will advance existing knowledge and how your study is unique.

Explain the specific purpose of the study and the research questions that the study will answer.

Explain why the research design and methods chosen for this study are appropriate, and why other designs and methods were not chosen.

State the potential implications you expect to emerge from your proposed study,

Provide a sense of how your study fits within the broader scholarship currently in existence, related to the research problem.

Citations and References

As with any scholarly research paper, you must cite the sources you used in composing your research proposal. In a research proposal, this can take two forms: a reference list or a bibliography. A reference list lists the literature you referenced in the body of your research proposal. All references in the reference list must appear in the body of the research proposal. Remember, it is not acceptable to say “as cited in …” As a researcher you must always go to the original source and check it for yourself. Many errors are made in referencing, even by top researchers, and so it is important not to perpetuate an error made by someone else. While this can be time consuming, it is the proper way to undertake a literature review.

In contrast, a bibliography , is a list of everything you used or cited in your research proposal, with additional citations to any key sources relevant to understanding the research problem. In other words, sources cited in your bibliography may not necessarily appear in the body of your research proposal. Make sure you check with your instructor to see which of the two you are expected to produce.

Overall, your list of citations should be a testament to the fact that you have done a sufficient level of preliminary research to ensure that your project will complement, but not duplicate, previous research efforts. For social sciences, the reference list or bibliography should be prepared in American Psychological Association (APA) referencing format. Usually, the reference list (or bibliography) is not included in the word count of the research proposal. Again, make sure you check with your instructor to confirm.

Research Methods for the Social Sciences: An Introduction Copyright © 2020 by Valerie Sheppard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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17 Research Proposal Examples

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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A research proposal systematically and transparently outlines a proposed research project.

The purpose of a research proposal is to demonstrate a project’s viability and the researcher’s preparedness to conduct an academic study. It serves as a roadmap for the researcher.

The process holds value both externally (for accountability purposes and often as a requirement for a grant application) and intrinsic value (for helping the researcher to clarify the mechanics, purpose, and potential signficance of the study).

Key sections of a research proposal include: the title, abstract, introduction, literature review, research design and methods, timeline, budget, outcomes and implications, references, and appendix. Each is briefly explained below.

Watch my Guide: How to Write a Research Proposal

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Research Proposal Sample Structure

Title: The title should present a concise and descriptive statement that clearly conveys the core idea of the research projects. Make it as specific as possible. The reader should immediately be able to grasp the core idea of the intended research project. Often, the title is left too vague and does not help give an understanding of what exactly the study looks at.

Abstract: Abstracts are usually around 250-300 words and provide an overview of what is to follow – including the research problem , objectives, methods, expected outcomes, and significance of the study. Use it as a roadmap and ensure that, if the abstract is the only thing someone reads, they’ll get a good fly-by of what will be discussed in the peice.

Introduction: Introductions are all about contextualization. They often set the background information with a statement of the problem. At the end of the introduction, the reader should understand what the rationale for the study truly is. I like to see the research questions or hypotheses included in the introduction and I like to get a good understanding of what the significance of the research will be. It’s often easiest to write the introduction last

Literature Review: The literature review dives deep into the existing literature on the topic, demosntrating your thorough understanding of the existing literature including themes, strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in the literature. It serves both to demonstrate your knowledge of the field and, to demonstrate how the proposed study will fit alongside the literature on the topic. A good literature review concludes by clearly demonstrating how your research will contribute something new and innovative to the conversation in the literature.

Research Design and Methods: This section needs to clearly demonstrate how the data will be gathered and analyzed in a systematic and academically sound manner. Here, you need to demonstrate that the conclusions of your research will be both valid and reliable. Common points discussed in the research design and methods section include highlighting the research paradigm, methodologies, intended population or sample to be studied, data collection techniques, and data analysis procedures . Toward the end of this section, you are encouraged to also address ethical considerations and limitations of the research process , but also to explain why you chose your research design and how you are mitigating the identified risks and limitations.

Timeline: Provide an outline of the anticipated timeline for the study. Break it down into its various stages (including data collection, data analysis, and report writing). The goal of this section is firstly to establish a reasonable breakdown of steps for you to follow and secondly to demonstrate to the assessors that your project is practicable and feasible.

Budget: Estimate the costs associated with the research project and include evidence for your estimations. Typical costs include staffing costs, equipment, travel, and data collection tools. When applying for a scholarship, the budget should demonstrate that you are being responsible with your expensive and that your funding application is reasonable.

Expected Outcomes and Implications: A discussion of the anticipated findings or results of the research, as well as the potential contributions to the existing knowledge, theory, or practice in the field. This section should also address the potential impact of the research on relevant stakeholders and any broader implications for policy or practice.

References: A complete list of all the sources cited in the research proposal, formatted according to the required citation style. This demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with the relevant literature and ensures proper attribution of ideas and information.

Appendices (if applicable): Any additional materials, such as questionnaires, interview guides, or consent forms, that provide further information or support for the research proposal. These materials should be included as appendices at the end of the document.

Research Proposal Examples

Research proposals often extend anywhere between 2,000 and 15,000 words in length. The following snippets are samples designed to briefly demonstrate what might be discussed in each section.

1. Education Studies Research Proposals

See some real sample pieces:

• Assessment of the perceptions of teachers towards a new grading system
• Does ICT use in secondary classrooms help or hinder student learning?
• Digital technologies in focus project
• Urban Middle School Teachers’ Experiences of the Implementation of
• Restorative Justice Practices
• Experiences of students of color in service learning

Consider this hypothetical education research proposal:

The Impact of Game-Based Learning on Student Engagement and Academic Performance in Middle School Mathematics

Abstract: The proposed study will explore multiplayer game-based learning techniques in middle school mathematics curricula and their effects on student engagement. The study aims to contribute to the current literature on game-based learning by examining the effects of multiplayer gaming in learning.

Introduction: Digital game-based learning has long been shunned within mathematics education for fears that it may distract students or lower the academic integrity of the classrooms. However, there is emerging evidence that digital games in math have emerging benefits not only for engagement but also academic skill development. Contributing to this discourse, this study seeks to explore the potential benefits of multiplayer digital game-based learning by examining its impact on middle school students’ engagement and academic performance in a mathematics class.

Literature Review: The literature review has identified gaps in the current knowledge, namely, while game-based learning has been extensively explored, the role of multiplayer games in supporting learning has not been studied.

Research Design and Methods: This study will employ a mixed-methods research design based upon action research in the classroom. A quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test control group design will first be used to compare the academic performance and engagement of middle school students exposed to game-based learning techniques with those in a control group receiving instruction without the aid of technology. Students will also be observed and interviewed in regard to the effect of communication and collaboration during gameplay on their learning.

Timeline: The study will take place across the second term of the school year with a pre-test taking place on the first day of the term and the post-test taking place on Wednesday in Week 10.

Budget: The key budgetary requirements will be the technologies required, including the subscription cost for the identified games and computers.

Expected Outcomes and Implications: It is expected that the findings will contribute to the current literature on game-based learning and inform educational practices, providing educators and policymakers with insights into how to better support student achievement in mathematics.

2. Psychology Research Proposals

See some real examples:

• A situational analysis of shared leadership in a self-managing team
• The effect of musical preference on running performance
• Relationship between self-esteem and disordered eating amongst adolescent females

Consider this hypothetical psychology research proposal:

The Effects of Mindfulness-Based Interventions on Stress Reduction in College Students

Abstract: This research proposal examines the impact of mindfulness-based interventions on stress reduction among college students, using a pre-test/post-test experimental design with both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods .

Introduction: College students face heightened stress levels during exam weeks. This can affect both mental health and test performance. This study explores the potential benefits of mindfulness-based interventions such as meditation as a way to mediate stress levels in the weeks leading up to exam time.

Literature Review: Existing research on mindfulness-based meditation has shown the ability for mindfulness to increase metacognition, decrease anxiety levels, and decrease stress. Existing literature has looked at workplace, high school and general college-level applications. This study will contribute to the corpus of literature by exploring the effects of mindfulness directly in the context of exam weeks.

Research Design and Methods: Participants ( n= 234 ) will be randomly assigned to either an experimental group, receiving 5 days per week of 10-minute mindfulness-based interventions, or a control group, receiving no intervention. Data will be collected through self-report questionnaires, measuring stress levels, semi-structured interviews exploring participants’ experiences, and students’ test scores.

Timeline: The study will begin three weeks before the students’ exam week and conclude after each student’s final exam. Data collection will occur at the beginning (pre-test of self-reported stress levels) and end (post-test) of the three weeks.

Expected Outcomes and Implications: The study aims to provide evidence supporting the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions in reducing stress among college students in the lead up to exams, with potential implications for mental health support and stress management programs on college campuses.

3. Sociology Research Proposals

• Understanding emerging social movements: A case study of ‘Jersey in Transition’
• The interaction of health, education and employment in Western China
• Can we preserve lower-income affordable neighbourhoods in the face of rising costs?

Consider this hypothetical sociology research proposal:

The Impact of Social Media Usage on Interpersonal Relationships among Young Adults

Abstract: This research proposal investigates the effects of social media usage on interpersonal relationships among young adults, using a longitudinal mixed-methods approach with ongoing semi-structured interviews to collect qualitative data.

Introduction: Social media platforms have become a key medium for the development of interpersonal relationships, particularly for young adults. This study examines the potential positive and negative effects of social media usage on young adults’ relationships and development over time.

Literature Review: A preliminary review of relevant literature has demonstrated that social media usage is central to development of a personal identity and relationships with others with similar subcultural interests. However, it has also been accompanied by data on mental health deline and deteriorating off-screen relationships. The literature is to-date lacking important longitudinal data on these topics.

Research Design and Methods: Participants ( n = 454 ) will be young adults aged 18-24. Ongoing self-report surveys will assess participants’ social media usage, relationship satisfaction, and communication patterns. A subset of participants will be selected for longitudinal in-depth interviews starting at age 18 and continuing for 5 years.

Timeline: The study will be conducted over a period of five years, including recruitment, data collection, analysis, and report writing.

Expected Outcomes and Implications: This study aims to provide insights into the complex relationship between social media usage and interpersonal relationships among young adults, potentially informing social policies and mental health support related to social media use.

4. Nursing Research Proposals

• Does Orthopaedic Pre-assessment clinic prepare the patient for admission to hospital?
• Nurses’ perceptions and experiences of providing psychological care to burns patients
• Registered psychiatric nurse’s practice with mentally ill parents and their children

Consider this hypothetical nursing research proposal:

The Influence of Nurse-Patient Communication on Patient Satisfaction and Health Outcomes following Emergency Cesarians

Abstract: This research will examines the impact of effective nurse-patient communication on patient satisfaction and health outcomes for women following c-sections, utilizing a mixed-methods approach with patient surveys and semi-structured interviews.

Introduction: It has long been known that effective communication between nurses and patients is crucial for quality care. However, additional complications arise following emergency c-sections due to the interaction between new mother’s changing roles and recovery from surgery.

Literature Review: A review of the literature demonstrates the importance of nurse-patient communication, its impact on patient satisfaction, and potential links to health outcomes. However, communication between nurses and new mothers is less examined, and the specific experiences of those who have given birth via emergency c-section are to date unexamined.

Research Design and Methods: Participants will be patients in a hospital setting who have recently had an emergency c-section. A self-report survey will assess their satisfaction with nurse-patient communication and perceived health outcomes. A subset of participants will be selected for in-depth interviews to explore their experiences and perceptions of the communication with their nurses.

Timeline: The study will be conducted over a period of six months, including rolling recruitment, data collection, analysis, and report writing within the hospital.

Expected Outcomes and Implications: This study aims to provide evidence for the significance of nurse-patient communication in supporting new mothers who have had an emergency c-section. Recommendations will be presented for supporting nurses and midwives in improving outcomes for new mothers who had complications during birth.

5. Social Work Research Proposals

• Experiences of negotiating employment and caring responsibilities of fathers post-divorce
• Exploring kinship care in the north region of British Columbia

Consider this hypothetical social work research proposal:

The Role of a Family-Centered Intervention in Preventing Homelessness Among At-Risk Youthin a working-class town in Northern England

Abstract: This research proposal investigates the effectiveness of a family-centered intervention provided by a local council area in preventing homelessness among at-risk youth. This case study will use a mixed-methods approach with program evaluation data and semi-structured interviews to collect quantitative and qualitative data .

Introduction: Homelessness among youth remains a significant social issue. This study aims to assess the effectiveness of family-centered interventions in addressing this problem and identify factors that contribute to successful prevention strategies.

Literature Review: A review of the literature has demonstrated several key factors contributing to youth homelessness including lack of parental support, lack of social support, and low levels of family involvement. It also demonstrates the important role of family-centered interventions in addressing this issue. Drawing on current evidence, this study explores the effectiveness of one such intervention in preventing homelessness among at-risk youth in a working-class town in Northern England.

Research Design and Methods: The study will evaluate a new family-centered intervention program targeting at-risk youth and their families. Quantitative data on program outcomes, including housing stability and family functioning, will be collected through program records and evaluation reports. Semi-structured interviews with program staff, participants, and relevant stakeholders will provide qualitative insights into the factors contributing to program success or failure.

Timeline: The study will be conducted over a period of six months, including recruitment, data collection, analysis, and report writing.

Budget: Expenses include access to program evaluation data, interview materials, data analysis software, and any related travel costs for in-person interviews.

Expected Outcomes and Implications: This study aims to provide evidence for the effectiveness of family-centered interventions in preventing youth homelessness, potentially informing the expansion of or necessary changes to social work practices in Northern England.

Get your Detailed Template for Writing your Research Proposal Here (With AI Prompts!)

This is a template for a 2500-word research proposal. You may find it difficult to squeeze everything into this wordcount, but it’s a common wordcount for Honors and MA-level dissertations.

Your research proposal is where you really get going with your study. I’d strongly recommend working closely with your teacher in developing a research proposal that’s consistent with the requirements and culture of your institution, as in my experience it varies considerably. The above template is from my own courses that walk students through research proposals in a British School of Education.

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8 thoughts on “17 Research Proposal Examples”

Very excellent research proposals

very helpful

Very helpful

Dear Sir, I need some help to write an educational research proposal. Thank you.

Hi Levi, use the site search bar to ask a question and I’ll likely have a guide already written for your specific question. Thanks for reading!

very good research proposal

Thank you so much sir! ❤️

Very helpful 👌

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Organizing Academic Research Papers: Writing a Research Proposal

• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• Executive Summary
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tertiary Sources
• What Is Scholarly vs. Popular?
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• How to Manage Group Projects
• Reviewing Collected Essays

Acknowledgements

The goal of a research proposal is to present and justify a research idea you have and to present the practical ways in which you think this research should be conducted. The forms and procedures for such research are defined by the field of study, so guidelines for research proposals are generally more exacting and less formal than a project proposal. Research proposals contain extensive literature reviews and must provide persuasive evidence that there is a need for the research study being proposed. In addition to providing rationale for the proposed research, a proposal describes detailed methodology for conducting the research consistent with requirements of the professional or academic field and a statement on anticipated outcomes and/or benefits derived from the study.

• Develop your skills in thinking about and designing a comprehensive research study.
• Help learn how to conduct a comprehensive review of the literature to ensure a research problem has not already been answered [or you may determine the problem has been answered ineffectively] and, in so doing, become familiar with scholarship related to your topic.
• Improve your general research and writing skills.
• Practice identifying what logical steps must be taken to accomplish one's research goals.
• Nurture a sense of inquisitiveness within yourself and to help see yourself as an active participant in the process of doing scholarly research.

A proposal should contain all the key elements involved in designing a complete research study, with sufficient information that allows readers to assess the validity and usefulness of your proposed study. The only elements missing from a research proposal are the results of the study and your analysis of those results. Finally, an effective proposal is judged on the quality of your writing. It is, therefore, important that your writing is coherent, clear, and compelling.

• What do you plan to accomplish? Be clear and succient in defining the research problem and what it is you are proposing to research.
• Why do you want to do it? In addition to detailing your research design, you also must conduct a thorough review of the literature and provide convincing evidence that it is a topic worthy of study. Be sure to answer the "So what? question.
• How are you going to do it? Be sure that what you propose is doable.
• Failure to be concise; being "all over the map" without a clear sense of purpose.
• Failure to cite landmark works in your literature review.
• Failure to delimit the contextual boundaries of your research [e.g., time, place, people, etc.].
• Failure to develop a coherent and persuasive argument for the proposed research.
• Failure to stay focused on the research question; going off on unrelated tangents.
• Sloppy or imprecise writing. Poor grammar.
• Too much detail on minor issues, but not enough detail on major issues.

Procter, Margaret. The Academic Proposal .  The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Sanford, Keith. Information for Students: Writing a Research Proposal . Baylor University; Wong, Paul T. P. How to Write a Research Proposal . International Network on Personal Meaning. Trinity Western University; Writing Academic Proposals: Conferences, Articles, and Books . The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Writing a Research Proposal. University Library. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

As with writing a traditional research paper, research proposals are generally organized the same way throughout the social sciences. Most proposals are between ten and fifteen pages in length. However, before you begin, read the assignment carefully and, if anything seems unclear, ask your professor whether there are any specific requirements for organizing and writing the proposal.

• What do I want to study, and why?
• How does it build upon [and hopefully go beyond] research already conducted on my topic?

In the end, your research proposal should document your knowledge of the topic and highlight enthusiasm for conducting the study. Approach it with the intention of leaving your readers feeling like--"Wow, that's an exciting idea and I can’t wait to see how it turns out!"

In general your proposal should include the following sections:

In the real world of higher education, a research proposal is most often written by scholars seeking grant funding for a research project or it's the first step in getting approval to write your doctoral dissertation. Even if this is just a course assignment, treat your introduction as the initial pitch of an idea. After reading the introduction, your readers should not only have an understanding of what you want to do, but they should also be able to sense your passion for the topic and be excited about its possible outcomes.

Think about your introduction as a narrative written in one to three paragraphs that succinctly answers the following four questions :

• What is the topic of study related to that problem?
• Why is this important research, and why should someone reading the proposal care about the outcomes from the study?

This section can be melded into your introduction or you can create a separate section to help with the organization and flow of your proposal. This is where you explain the context of your project and outline why it's important. Approach writing this section with the thought that you can’t assume your readers will know as much about the research problem as you do. Note that this section is not an essay going over everything you have learned about the research problem; instead, you must choose what is relevant to help explain your goals for the study.

To that end, while there are no hard and fast rules, you should attempt to deal with some or all of the following:

• State the research problem and give a more detailed explanation about the purpose of the study than what you stated in the introduction.
• Present the rationale of your proposed study and clearly indicate why it is worth doing. Answer the "So what? question [i.e., why should anyone care].
• Describe the major issues or problems to be addressed by your research.
• Explain how you plan to go about conducting your research. Clearly identify the key sources you intend to use and explain how they will contribute to the analysis of your topic.
• Set the boundaries of your proposed research in order to provide a clear focus.
• Provide definitions of key concepts or terms, if necessary.

Connected to the background and significance of your study is a more deliberate review and synthesis of prior studies related to the research problem under investigation . The purpose here is to place your project within the larger whole of what is currently being explored, while demonstrating to your readers that your work is original and innovative. Think about what questions other researchers have asked, what methods they've used, and what is your understanding of their findings. Assess what you believe is still missing, and state how previous research has failed to examine the issue that your study addresses.

Since a literature review is information dense, it is crucial that this section is intelligently structured to enable a reader to grasp the key arguments underpinning your study in relation to that of other researchers. A good strategy is to break the literature into "conceptual categories" [themes] rather than systematically describing materials one at a time.

To help frame your proposal's literature review, here are the "five C’s" of writing a literature review:

• Cite : keep the primary focus on the literature pertinent to your research problem.
• Contrast the various arguments, themes, methodologies, approaches and controversies expressed in the literature: what are the major areas of disagreement, controversy, or debate?
• Critique the literature: Which arguments are more persuasive, and why? Which approaches, findings, methodologies seem most reliable, valid, or appropriate, and why? Pay attention to the verbs you use to describe what an author says/does [e.g., asserts, demonstrates, etc.] .
• Connect the literature to your own area of research and investigation: how does your own work draw upon, depart from, or synthesize what has been said in the literature?

This section must be well-written and logically organized because you are not actually doing the research . As a consequence, the reader will never have a study outcome from which to evaluate whether your methodological choices were the correct ones. The objective here is to ensure that the reader is convinced that your overall research design and methods of analysis will correctly address the research problem. Your design and methods should be absolutely and unmistakably tied to the specific aims of your study.

Describe the overall research design by building upon and drawing examples from your review of the literature. Be specific about the methodological approaches you plan to undertake to collect information, about the techniques you will use to analyze it, and about tests of external validity to which you commit yourself [i.e., the trustworthiness by which you can generalize from your study to other people, places or times].

When describing the methods you will use, be sure to cover these issues:

• Specify the research operations you will undertake and the way you will interpret the results of these operations in relation to your research problem. Don't just describe what you intend to achieve from applying the methods you choose, but state how you will spend your time while doing it.
• Keep in mind that a methodology is not just a list of research tasks; it is an argument as to why these tasks add up to the best way to investigate the research problem. This is an important point because the mere listing of tasks to perform does not demonstrate that they add up to the best feasible approach.
• Be sure to anticipate and acknowledge any potential barriers and pitfalls in carrying out your research design and explain how you plan to get around them.

Just because you don't have to actually conduct the study and analyze the results, it doesn't mean that you can skip talking about the process and potential implications . The purpose of this section is to argue how and in what ways you believe your research will refine, revise, or extend existing knowledge in the subject area under investigation. Depending on the aims and objectives of your study, describe how the anticipated results of your study will impact future scholarly research, theory, practice, forms of interventions, or policy. Note that such discussions may have either substantive [a potential new policy], theoretical [a potential new understanding], or methodological [a potential new way of analyzing] significance.   When thinking about the potential implications of your study, ask the following questions:

• What might the results mean in regards to the theoretical framework that frames the study?
• What will the results mean to practitioners in the "real world"?
• How will the results of the study be implemented, and what innovations will come about?

The conclusion reiterates the importance or significance of your proposal and provides a brief recap of the entire study . This section should be only one or two paragraphs long, emphasizing why your research study is unique, why it advances knowledge, and why the research problem is worth investigating.

• Why the study was done,
• The specific purpose of the study and the research questions it attempted to answer,
• The research design and methods used,
• The potential implications emerging from your proposed study of the research problem, and

As with any scholarly research paper, you must cite the sources you used in composing your proposal. In a standard research proposal, this section can take two forms, so speak with your professor about which one is preferred.

• References -- lists only the literature that you actually used or cited in your proposal.
• Bibliography -- lists everything you used or cited in your proposal with additional citations of any key sources relevant to understanding the research problem.

In either case, this section should testify to the fact that you did enough preparatory work to make sure the project will complement and not duplicate the efforts of other researchers. Start a new page and use the heading "References" or "Bibliography" at the top of the page. Cited works should always use a standard format that follows the writing style advised by the discipline of your course [i.e., education=APA; history=Chicago, etc]. This section normally does not count towards the total length of your proposal.

Develop a Research Proposal: Writing the Proposal . Office of Library Information Services. Baltimore County Public Schools; Krathwohl, David R. How to Prepare a Dissertation Proposal: Suggestions for Students in Education and the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005; Procter, Margaret. The Academic Proposal . The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Punch, Keith and Wayne McGowan. Developing and Writing a Research Proposal. In From Postgraduate to Social Scientist: A Guide to Key Skills. Nigel Gilbert, ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006), 59-81; Sanford, Keith. Information for Students: Writing a Research Proposal . Baylor University; Wong, Paul T. P. How to Write a Research Proposal . International Network on Personal Meaning. Trinity Western University; Writing Academic Proposals: Conferences, Articles, and Books . The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Writing a Research Proposal . University Library. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Parts of a research proposal, prosana model, introduction, research question, methodology.

• Structure of a Research Proposal
• Common Proposal Writing Mistakes
• Proposal Writing Resources

A research proposal's purpose is to capture the evaluator's attention, demonstrate the study's potential benefits, and prove that it is a logical and consistent approach (Van Ekelenburg, 2010).  To ensure that your research proposal contains these elements, there are several aspects to include in your proposal (Al-Riyami, 2008):

• Objective(s)
• Variables (independent and dependent)
• Research Question and/or hypothesis

Details about what to include in each element are included in the boxes below.  Depending on the topic of your study, some parts may not apply to your proposal.  You can also watch the video below for a brief overview about writing a successful research proposal.

Van Ekelenburg (2010) uses the PROSANA Model to guide researchers in developing rationale and justification for their research projects.  It is an acronym that connects the problem, solution, and benefits of a particular research project.  It is an easy way to remember the critical parts of a research proposal and how they relate to one another.  It includes the following letters (Van Ekelenburg, 2010):

• Problem: Describing the main problem that the researcher is trying to solve.
• Root causes: Describing what is causing the problem.  Why is the topic an issue?
• fOcus: Narrowing down one of the underlying causes on which the researcher will focus for their research project.
• Solutions: Listing potential solutions or approaches to fix to the problem.  There could be more than one.
• Approach: Selecting the solution that the researcher will want to focus on.
• Novelty: Describing how the solution will address or solve the problem.
• Arguments: Explaining how the proposed solution will benefit the problem.

Research proposal titles should be concise and to the point, but informative.  The title of your proposal may be different from the title of your final research project, but that is completely normal!  Your findings may help you come up with a title that is more fitting for the final project.  Characteristics of good proposal titles are (Al-Riyami, 2008):

• Catchy: It catches the reader's attention by peaking their interest.
• Positive: It spins your project in a positive way towards the reader.
• Transparent: It identifies the independent and dependent variables.

It is also common for proposal titles to be very similar to your research question, hypothesis, or thesis statement (Locke et al., 2007).

An abstract is a brief summary (about 300 words) of the study you are proposing.  It includes the following elements (Al-Riyami, 2008):

• Your primary research question(s).
• Hypothesis or main argument.
• Method you will use to complete the study.  This may include the design, sample population, or measuring instruments that you plan to use.

Our guide on writing summaries may help you with this step.

The purpose of the introduction is to give readers background information about your topic.  it gives the readers a basic understanding of your topic so that they can further understand the significance of your proposal.  A good introduction will explain (Al-Riyami, 2008):

• How it relates to other research done on the topic
• Why your research is significant to the field
• The relevance of your study

Your research objectives are the desired outcomes that you will achieve from the research project.  Depending on your research design, these may be generic or very specific.  You may also have more than one objective (Al-Riyami, 2008).

• General objectives are what the research project will accomplish
• Specific objectives relate to the research questions that the researcher aims to answer through the study.

Be careful not to have too many objectives in your proposal, as having too many can make your project lose focus.  Plus, it may not be possible to achieve several objectives in one study.

This section describes the different types of variables that you plan to have in your study and how you will measure them.  According to Al-Riyami (2008), there are four types of research variables:

• Independent:  The person, object, or idea that is manipulated by the researcher.
• Dependent:  The person, object, or idea whose changes are dependent upon the independent variable.  Typically, it is the item that the researcher is measuring for the study.
• Confounding/Intervening:  Factors that may influence the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable.  These include physical and mental barriers.  Not every study will have intervening variables, but they should be studied if applicable.
• Background:   Factors that are relevant to the study's data and how it can be generalized.  Examples include demographic information such as age, sex, and ethnicity.

Your research proposal should describe each of your variables and how they relate to one another.  Depending on your study, you may not have all four types of variables present.  However, there will always be an independent and dependent variable.

A research question is the main piece of your research project because it explains what your study will discover to the reader.  It is the question that fuels the study, so it is important for it to be precise and unique.  You do not want it to be too broad, and it should identify a relationship between two variables (an independent and a dependent) (Al-Riyami, 2008).  There are six types of research questions (Academic Writer, n.d.):

• Example: "Do people get nervous before speaking in front of an audience?"
• Example: "What are the study habits of college freshmen at Tiffin University?"
• Example: "What primary traits create a successful romantic relationship?"
• Example: "Is there a relationship between a child's performance in school and their parents' socioeconomic status?"
• Example: "Are high school seniors more motivated than high school freshmen?"
• Example: "Do news media outlets impact a person's political opinions?"

For more information on the different types of research questions, you can view the "Research Questions and Hypotheses" tutorial on Academic Writer, located below.  If you are unfamiliar with Academic Writer, we also have a tutorial on using the database located below.

Compose papers in pre-formatted APA templates. Manage references in forms that help craft APA citations. Learn the rules of APA style through tutorials and practice quizzes.

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If you know enough about your research topic that you believe a particular outcome may occur as a result of the study, you can include a hypothesis (thesis statement) in your proposal.  A hypothesis is a prediction that you believe will be the outcome of your study.  It explains what you think the relationship will be between the independent and dependent variable (Al-Riyami, 2008).  It is ok if the hypothesis in your proposal turns out to be incorrect, because it is only a prediction!  If you are writing a proposal in the humanities, you may be writing a thesis statement instead of a hypothesis.  A thesis presents the main argument of your research project and leads to corresponding evidence to support your argument.

Hypotheses vs. Theories

Hypotheses are different from theories in that theories represent general principles and sets of rules that explain different phenomena.  They typically represent large areas of study because they are applicable to anything in a particular field.  Hypotheses focus on specific areas within a field and are educated guesses, meaning that they have the potential to be proven wrong (Academic Writer, n.d.).  Because of this, hypotheses can also be formed from theories.

For more information on writing effective thesis statements, you can view our guide on writing thesis statements below.

In a research proposal, you must thoroughly explain how you will conduct your study.  This includes things such as (Al-Riyami, 2008):

• Research design:  What research approach will your study take?  Will it be quantitative or qualitative?
• Research subjects/participants:  Who will be participating in your study?  Does your study require human participants?  How will you determine who to study?
• Sample size:  How many participants will your study require?  If you are not using human participants, how much of the sample will you be studying?
• Timeline:  A proposed list of the general tasks and events that you plan to complete the study.  This will include a time frame for each task/event and the order in which they will be completed.
• Interventions:  If you plan on using anything on human participants for the study, you must include information it here.  This is especially important if you plan on using any substances on human subjects.
• Ethical issues:  Are there any potential ethical issues surrounding this study?
• Potential limitations:  Are there any limitations that could skew the data and findings from your study?
• Appendixes:  If you need to present any consent forms, interview questions, surveys, questionnaires, or other items that will be used in your study, you should include samples of each item with an appendix to reference them.  If you are using a copyrighted document, you may need written permission from the original creator to use it in your study.  A copy of the written permission should be included in your proposal.
• Setting:  Where will you be conducting the study?
• Study instruments:  What measuring tools or computer software will you be using to collect data?  How will you collect the data?
• How you will analyze the data:  What strategies or tools will you use to analyze the data you collect?
• Quality control:  Will you have precautions in place to ensure that the study is conducted consistently and that outside factors will not skew the data?
• Budget:  What type of funding will you need for your study?  This will include the funds needed to afford measuring tools, software, etc.
• How you will share the study's findings:  What will you plan to do with the findings?
• Significance of the study: How will your study expand on existing knowledge of the subject area?

For more information on research methodologies, you can view our guide on research methods and methodologies below.

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How to write a research proposal?

Department of Anaesthesiology, Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Devika Rani Duggappa

Writing the proposal of a research work in the present era is a challenging task due to the constantly evolving trends in the qualitative research design and the need to incorporate medical advances into the methodology. The proposal is a detailed plan or ‘blueprint’ for the intended study, and once it is completed, the research project should flow smoothly. Even today, many of the proposals at post-graduate evaluation committees and application proposals for funding are substandard. A search was conducted with keywords such as research proposal, writing proposal and qualitative using search engines, namely, PubMed and Google Scholar, and an attempt has been made to provide broad guidelines for writing a scientifically appropriate research proposal.

INTRODUCTION

A clean, well-thought-out proposal forms the backbone for the research itself and hence becomes the most important step in the process of conduct of research.[ 1 ] The objective of preparing a research proposal would be to obtain approvals from various committees including ethics committee [details under ‘Research methodology II’ section [ Table 1 ] in this issue of IJA) and to request for grants. However, there are very few universally accepted guidelines for preparation of a good quality research proposal. A search was performed with keywords such as research proposal, funding, qualitative and writing proposals using search engines, namely, PubMed, Google Scholar and Scopus.

Five ‘C’s while writing a literature review

BASIC REQUIREMENTS OF A RESEARCH PROPOSAL

A proposal needs to show how your work fits into what is already known about the topic and what new paradigm will it add to the literature, while specifying the question that the research will answer, establishing its significance, and the implications of the answer.[ 2 ] The proposal must be capable of convincing the evaluation committee about the credibility, achievability, practicality and reproducibility (repeatability) of the research design.[ 3 ] Four categories of audience with different expectations may be present in the evaluation committees, namely academic colleagues, policy-makers, practitioners and lay audiences who evaluate the research proposal. Tips for preparation of a good research proposal include; ‘be practical, be persuasive, make broader links, aim for crystal clarity and plan before you write’. A researcher must be balanced, with a realistic understanding of what can be achieved. Being persuasive implies that researcher must be able to convince other researchers, research funding agencies, educational institutions and supervisors that the research is worth getting approval. The aim of the researcher should be clearly stated in simple language that describes the research in a way that non-specialists can comprehend, without use of jargons. The proposal must not only demonstrate that it is based on an intelligent understanding of the existing literature but also show that the writer has thought about the time needed to conduct each stage of the research.[ 4 , 5 ]

CONTENTS OF A RESEARCH PROPOSAL

The contents or formats of a research proposal vary depending on the requirements of evaluation committee and are generally provided by the evaluation committee or the institution.

In general, a cover page should contain the (i) title of the proposal, (ii) name and affiliation of the researcher (principal investigator) and co-investigators, (iii) institutional affiliation (degree of the investigator and the name of institution where the study will be performed), details of contact such as phone numbers, E-mail id's and lines for signatures of investigators.

The main contents of the proposal may be presented under the following headings: (i) introduction, (ii) review of literature, (iii) aims and objectives, (iv) research design and methods, (v) ethical considerations, (vi) budget, (vii) appendices and (viii) citations.[ 4 ]

It is also sometimes termed as ‘need for study’ or ‘abstract’. Introduction is an initial pitch of an idea; it sets the scene and puts the research in context.[ 6 ] The introduction should be designed to create interest in the reader about the topic and proposal. It should convey to the reader, what you want to do, what necessitates the study and your passion for the topic.[ 7 ] Some questions that can be used to assess the significance of the study are: (i) Who has an interest in the domain of inquiry? (ii) What do we already know about the topic? (iii) What has not been answered adequately in previous research and practice? (iv) How will this research add to knowledge, practice and policy in this area? Some of the evaluation committees, expect the last two questions, elaborated under a separate heading of ‘background and significance’.[ 8 ] Introduction should also contain the hypothesis behind the research design. If hypothesis cannot be constructed, the line of inquiry to be used in the research must be indicated.

Review of literature

It refers to all sources of scientific evidence pertaining to the topic in interest. In the present era of digitalisation and easy accessibility, there is an enormous amount of relevant data available, making it a challenge for the researcher to include all of it in his/her review.[ 9 ] It is crucial to structure this section intelligently so that the reader can grasp the argument related to your study in relation to that of other researchers, while still demonstrating to your readers that your work is original and innovative. It is preferable to summarise each article in a paragraph, highlighting the details pertinent to the topic of interest. The progression of review can move from the more general to the more focused studies, or a historical progression can be used to develop the story, without making it exhaustive.[ 1 ] Literature should include supporting data, disagreements and controversies. Five ‘C's may be kept in mind while writing a literature review[ 10 ] [ Table 1 ].

Aims and objectives

The research purpose (or goal or aim) gives a broad indication of what the researcher wishes to achieve in the research. The hypothesis to be tested can be the aim of the study. The objectives related to parameters or tools used to achieve the aim are generally categorised as primary and secondary objectives.

Research design and method

The objective here is to convince the reader that the overall research design and methods of analysis will correctly address the research problem and to impress upon the reader that the methodology/sources chosen are appropriate for the specific topic. It should be unmistakably tied to the specific aims of your study.

In this section, the methods and sources used to conduct the research must be discussed, including specific references to sites, databases, key texts or authors that will be indispensable to the project. There should be specific mention about the methodological approaches to be undertaken to gather information, about the techniques to be used to analyse it and about the tests of external validity to which researcher is committed.[ 10 , 11 ]

The components of this section include the following:[ 4 ]

Population and sample

Population refers to all the elements (individuals, objects or substances) that meet certain criteria for inclusion in a given universe,[ 12 ] and sample refers to subset of population which meets the inclusion criteria for enrolment into the study. The inclusion and exclusion criteria should be clearly defined. The details pertaining to sample size are discussed in the article “Sample size calculation: Basic priniciples” published in this issue of IJA.

Data collection

The researcher is expected to give a detailed account of the methodology adopted for collection of data, which include the time frame required for the research. The methodology should be tested for its validity and ensure that, in pursuit of achieving the results, the participant's life is not jeopardised. The author should anticipate and acknowledge any potential barrier and pitfall in carrying out the research design and explain plans to address them, thereby avoiding lacunae due to incomplete data collection. If the researcher is planning to acquire data through interviews or questionnaires, copy of the questions used for the same should be attached as an annexure with the proposal.

Rigor (soundness of the research)

This addresses the strength of the research with respect to its neutrality, consistency and applicability. Rigor must be reflected throughout the proposal.

It refers to the robustness of a research method against bias. The author should convey the measures taken to avoid bias, viz. blinding and randomisation, in an elaborate way, thus ensuring that the result obtained from the adopted method is purely as chance and not influenced by other confounding variables.

Consistency

Consistency considers whether the findings will be consistent if the inquiry was replicated with the same participants and in a similar context. This can be achieved by adopting standard and universally accepted methods and scales.

Applicability

Applicability refers to the degree to which the findings can be applied to different contexts and groups.[ 13 ]

Data analysis

This section deals with the reduction and reconstruction of data and its analysis including sample size calculation. The researcher is expected to explain the steps adopted for coding and sorting the data obtained. Various tests to be used to analyse the data for its robustness, significance should be clearly stated. Author should also mention the names of statistician and suitable software which will be used in due course of data analysis and their contribution to data analysis and sample calculation.[ 9 ]

Ethical considerations

Medical research introduces special moral and ethical problems that are not usually encountered by other researchers during data collection, and hence, the researcher should take special care in ensuring that ethical standards are met. Ethical considerations refer to the protection of the participants' rights (right to self-determination, right to privacy, right to autonomy and confidentiality, right to fair treatment and right to protection from discomfort and harm), obtaining informed consent and the institutional review process (ethical approval). The researcher needs to provide adequate information on each of these aspects.

Informed consent needs to be obtained from the participants (details discussed in further chapters), as well as the research site and the relevant authorities.

When the researcher prepares a research budget, he/she should predict and cost all aspects of the research and then add an additional allowance for unpredictable disasters, delays and rising costs. All items in the budget should be justified.

Appendices are documents that support the proposal and application. The appendices will be specific for each proposal but documents that are usually required include informed consent form, supporting documents, questionnaires, measurement tools and patient information of the study in layman's language.

As with any scholarly research paper, you must cite the sources you used in composing your proposal. Although the words ‘references and bibliography’ are different, they are used interchangeably. It refers to all references cited in the research proposal.

Successful, qualitative research proposals should communicate the researcher's knowledge of the field and method and convey the emergent nature of the qualitative design. The proposal should follow a discernible logic from the introduction to presentation of the appendices.

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Writing your research proposal

A doctoral research degree is the highest academic qualification that a student can achieve. The guidance provided in these articles will help you apply for one of the two main types of research degree offered by The Open University.

A traditional PhD, a Doctor of Philosophy, usually studied full-time, prepares candidates for a career in Higher Education.    

A Professional Doctorate is usually studied part-time by mid- to late-career professionals. While it may lead to a career in Higher Education, it aims to improve and develop professional practice.  

We offer two Professional Doctorates:  

• A Doctorate in Education, the EdD and
• a Doctorate in Health and Social Care, the DHSC.

  Achieving a doctorate, whether a PhD, EdD or DHSC confers the title Dr.  

Why write a Research Proposal?  

To be accepted onto a PhD / Professional Doctorate (PD) programme in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS) at The Open University, you are required to submit a research proposal. Your proposal will  outline the research project you would like to pursue if you’re offered a place.  

When reviewing your proposal, there are three broad considerations that those responsible for admission onto the programme will bear in mind:    

1.     Is this PhD / PD research proposal worthwhile?

2.     Is this PhD / PD candidate capable of completing a doctorate at this university?

3.     Is this PhD / PD research proposal feasible?  

Writing activity: in your notebook, outline your response to each of the questions below based on how you would persuade someone with responsibility for admission onto a doctoral programme to offer you a place:

• What is your proposed research about & why is it worthy of three or more years of your time to study?
• What skills, knowledge and experience do you bring to this research – If you are considering a PhD, evidence of your suitability will be located in your academic record for the Prof Doc your academic record will need to be complemented by professional experience.
• Can you map out the different stages of your project, and how you will complete it studying i) full-time for three years ii) part-time for four years.

The first sections of the proposal - the introduction, the research question and the context are aimed at addressing considerations one and two.  

Your Introduction

Your Introduction will provide a clear and succinct summary of your proposal. It will include a title, research aims and research question(s), all of which allows your reader to understand immediately what the research is about and what it is intended to accomplish. We recommend that you have one main research question with two or three sub research questions. Sub research questions are usually implied by, or embedded within, your main research question.  

Please introduce your research proposal by completing the following sentences in your notebook: I am interested in the subject of ………………. because ……………… The issue that I see as needing investigation is ………………. because ………………. Therefore, my proposed research will answer or explore [add one main research question and two sub research questions] …... I am particularly well suited to researching this issue because ………………. So in this proposal I will ………………. Completing these prompts may feel challenging at this stage and you are encouraged to return to these notes as you work through this page.

Research questions are central to your study. While we are used to asking and answering questions on a daily basis, the research question is quite specific. As well as identifying an issue about which your enthusiasm will last for anything from 3 – 8 years, you also need a question that offers the right scope, is clear and allows for a meaningful answer.  

Research questions matter. They are like the compass you use to find your way through a complicated terrain towards a specific destination. 

A good research proposal centres around a good research question. Your question will determine all other aspects of your research – from the literature you engage with, the methodology you adopt and ultimately, the contribution your research makes to the existing understanding of a subject. How you ask your question, or the kinds of question you ask, matters because there is a direct connection between question and method.  

You may be inclined to think in simplistic terms about methods as either quantitative or qualitative. We will discuss methodology in more detail in section three. At this point, it is more helpful to think of your methods in terms of the kinds of data you aim to generate. Mostly, this falls into two broad categories, qualitative and quantitative (sometimes these can be mixed). Many academics question this distinction and suggest the methodology categories are better understood as unstructured or structured.  

For example, let’s imagine you are asking a group of people about their sugary snack preferences.  

You may choose to interview people and transcribe what they say are their motivations, feelings and experiences about a particular sugary snack choice. You are most likely to do this with a small group of people as it is time consuming to analyse interview data.  

Alternatively, you may choose to question a number of people at some distance to yourself via a questionnaire, asking higher level questions about the choices they make and why.

Once you have a question that you are comfortable with, the rest of your proposal is devoted to explaining, exploring and elaborating your research question. It is probable that your question will change through the course of your study.  

At this early stage it sets a broad direction for what to do next: but you are not bound to it if your understanding of your subject develops, your question may need to change to reflect that deeper understanding. This is one of the few sections where there is a significant difference between what is asked from PhD candidates in contrast to what is asked from those intending to study a PD. There are three broad contexts for your research proposal.  

If you are considering a PD, the first context for your proposal is professional:

This context is of particular interest to anyone intending to apply for the professional doctorate. It is, however, also relevant if you are applying for a PhD with a subject focus on education, health, social care, languages and linguistics and related fields of study.  

You need to ensure your reader has a full understanding of your professional context and how your research question emerges from that context. This might involve exploring the specific institution within which your professionalism is grounded – a school or a care home.  It might also involve thinking beyond your institution, drawing in discussion of national policy, international trends, or professional commitments. There may be several different contexts that shape your research proposal. These must be fully explored and explained.  

Postgraduate researcher talks about research questions, context and why it mattered

The second context for your proposal is you and your life:

Your research proposal must be based on a subject about which you are enthused and have some degree of knowledge. This enthusiasm is best conveyed by introducing your motivations for wanting to undertake the research.  Here you can explore questions such as – what particular problem, dilemma, concern or conundrum your proposal will explore – from a personal perspective. Why does this excite you? Why would this matter to anyone other than you, or anyone who is outside of your specific institution i.e. your school, your care home.  

It may be helpful here to introduce your positionality . That is, let your reader know where you stand in relation to your proposed study. You are invited to offer a discussion of how you are situated in relation to the study being undertaken and how your situation influences your approach to the study.  

The third context for your doctoral proposal is the literature:

All research is grounded in the literature surrounding your subject. A legitimate research question emerges from an identified contribution your work has the potential to make to the extant knowledge on your chosen subject. We usually refer to this as finding a gap in the literature. This context is explored in more detail in the second article.

You can search for material that will help with your literature review and your research methodology using The Open University’s Open Access Research repository  and other open access literature.

Before moving to the next article ‘Defining your Research Methodology’, you might like to explore more about postgraduate study with these links:  

• Professional Doctorate Hub  
• What is a Professional Doctorate? 
• Are you ready to study for a Professional Doctorate? 
• The impact of a Professional Doctorate

Applying to study for a PhD in psychology

• Succeeding in postgraduate study - OpenLearn - Open University
• Are you ready for postgraduate study? - OpenLearn - Open University
• Postgraduate fees and funding | Open University
• Engaging with postgraduate research: education, childhood & youth - OpenLearn - Open University

We want you to do more than just read this series of articles. Our purpose is to help you draft a research proposal. With this in mind, please have a pen and paper (or your laptop and a notebook) close by and pause to read and take notes, or engage with the activities we suggest. You will not have authored your research proposal at the end of these articles, but you will have detailed notes and ideas to help you begin your first draft.

More articles from the research proposal collection

Defining your research methodology

Your research methodology is the approach you will take to guide your research process and explain why you use particular methods. This article explains more.

Level: 1 Introductory

Addressing ethical issues in your research proposal

This article explores the ethical issues that may arise in your proposed study during your doctoral research degree.

Writing your proposal and preparing for your interview

The final article looks at writing your research proposal - from the introduction through to citations and referencing - as well as preparing for your interview.

Free courses on postgraduate study

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This free course, Are you ready for postgraduate study, will help you to become familiar with the requirements and demands of postgraduate study and ensure you are ready to develop the skills and confidence to pursue your learning further.

Succeeding in postgraduate study

This free course, Succeeding in postgraduate study, will help you to become familiar with the requirements and demands of postgraduate study and to develop the skills and confidence to pursue your learning further.

This free OpenLearn course is for psychology students and graduates who are interested in PhD study at some future point. Even if you have met PhD students and heard about their projects, it is likely that you have only a vague idea of what PhD study entails. This course is intended to give you more information.

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Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Shady Atia. I'm going to present today a presentation on writing a research proposal. This is a very important presentation for postgraduates in order to learn how to write a research proposal. My presentation will go through four main axes. I will present how to write a what is actually a research proposal, how to define your topic, how to organize your research proposal and finally how to write it technically and presented. Well, let's see the first question. What is a research proposal? A research proposal is a statement of intent where you describe your intentions and simply we can describe it into a motivational intention manuscript where you declare your intentions and show your motivations and it's very important in this sense that you define the scope of your topic, the subject enough it has to be specific enough and you have to have a specific aim and objective related to your topic and definitely it would reflect your interest and it should be your own research so therefore you should also explain why is this topic better than other topics and you have to show that this is the first time subject that will be innovative you not previously addressed in a way and that you will carry that responsibility and present it through the research proposal. Well, the next question comes to what are the types of research proposal that we have. Many people get confused about that. We have a research proposal that is mainly under a thesis. A thesis is mainly a manuscript that you write for a master degree and it answers a research question based on existing knowledge. And here we are looking to your capacity to critical think and analyze deep information and process that and presented as new knowledge. While there is another type of manuscript that is called dissertations, the dissertations that are mainly for PhD doctoral degrees and in this sense you have to create a significant new contribution to knowledge and you have to come up with a new solution for a problem or a cure for a certain contextual problem. Well there is a third type of research proposal that you could write for funding grants like the Belgian research institutes or you write it for national research organizations in order to go through a competition process to win a funding to cover research topic okay well these are the three type of proposal that you can write next I will move to the second important question how to define your topic this is a not an easy task because you are most probably not having large experience with doing research and sometimes it's very difficult to do that so in this sense you have to define your topic and the process should start by identifying a general idea or an area of research and then develop it and focus on a certain research question so you have to ask yourself the following question is the topic related to real life because we are looking to applied science we are looking applied research So you have to make sure that this is related to real life. When you answer this question, you have to come to the next question. Is your topic related to societal problem? Is it a real problem in the society that your research is addressing? Is your topic going to be useful and interesting or did someone before answer it? So you must make sure that the topic is useful and interesting. Is your topic focused and specific or is it very broad and large? The more the topic is large and generic, the more it's difficult to come up with something new, it's difficult to process the work. Can your idea fill a gap in research? Do we have a problem or a topic that was not addressed previously by another researcher? So you have also to make sure that your research topic is not a kind of common topic that has been processed by many people. Always you must look for a gap or something that is missing and make sure that your research will cover that area and definitely you should ask yourself will this study generate new knowledge and this is very important because when you generate new knowledge then you have a real contribution and your research is worthy and you should also ask would the benefit from it the architects the engineers the professional in your field is it going to advance the understanding or influence policy this is very important and definitely finally should ask yourself Will this study fill a gap in existing knowledge or resolve current controversies? So these kind of series of questions, you can use them as a kind of checklist, as a starting approach, after defining a general topic you are interested in, and go step by step trying to answer them until you can define and shape your research topic. Well, there are some golden rules you should keep in mind while defining your research topic. You must be passionate about the topic because it should come from you. It should be your interest that you are related. You might ask your supervisor or follow a previously developed idea or concept from your supervisor or your professor. But in the same time, you must have the passion related to this topic. So this is very important. The second Gordon rule is related to the discoveries. Could the topic lead to discoveries? you should not promise to guarantee a discovery, but you should have a kind of estimation this could topic lead to discoveries or not. And you have to make sure that this is catchy topic. It catch the attention. People will be interested in it. It's grabby. It's really related to society. People will really would like to listen to what you are going to present and read it through your manuscripts. And definitely you have to formulate very clearly your objectives and aims so that you are focused in your research and having a very specific topic. And finally, you should select a supervisor, he or she that can help you through this process and has the ability and the skills to guide you through the process. So these are kind of five golden rules I would like to highlight. You must follow them to make sure that you are on the right track. Now, after describing what is a research proposal and how to do it, I would start to talk about the content. The content is very important. Many people don't know how to write a proposal, what should be the order of the information. And here are kind of 10 major elements you should focus on in writing a research proposal. You should cover issues related to the title and the keywords related to your research topic, brief abstract describing your topic, a problem statement, aims and objectives, the significance and importance of your topic and the audience that your research is catering for, the state of the art, the methodologies, your expected results and definitely you should describe the project outline and the impact and the biography of your research. Well let's start with this and and I'm going to describe everyone into detail. Well, when I'm talking about title and keywords, this is very important. Why? Because a title and a keyword is not an easy task. A title in general should be catchy and should be precise. So these are some rules that you should follow to have a good title. It has to be a specific title, accurate, not too long, catchy, and it has to contain the main idea. I should read the title and figure out most probably what is this thesis about or what is this dissertation about. So you have to look at the title in a way and revise it and think about it and most of the time good titles start with an action verb let's say like simulation of comparison of assessment of these are all examples that you can look at and start with them your title. Once you have an action verb it shows already that you are trying to do something to cater or to address a certain problem and most of the time a researcher doing a master thesis or a PhD thesis or even a research for grant proposals he or she should look at these verbs as a starting to identify and formulate their title well once you are done with your title that's not enough you have to define next to the title keywords well you will ask what's the point I just defined the topic and I have a title now why should I use keywords well keywords are very important they should not exceed six to eight words and actually we use terminologies or we will use words that are not in the title in this sense you are helping the search engine to extend the topic so I let me let me give you an example. My topic of my research is called Dynamic Building Kit for Adaptable and Reusable Wall Solutions. That's the title. The title is talking about developing a building kit that could be adaptable, that could be assembled and disassembled for materials or building components that could be reused, okay, and specifically on walls. This is the title and I understand it like that? Well, I can add to that some keywords. These keywords can help me to describe more. I can say that I'm talking about design solutions. I'm talking specifically on post-war housing. I can add a context or a city to describe where I am, Liège in this case. I can add the keyword energy efficiency renovation like that I am extending my title and amending additional words that can help in the understanding of topic and once you do a research with these keywords the topic will pop up in the search engine much much easier so actually this is very important to define your keywords associated with your topic and in this sense they are very complementary well the next step is to move to the abstract well the abstract is one of the things you do at the end so you don't start with an abstract but let me tell you first what is an abstract an abstract simply is a text a piece of text that is not longer than 250 words and it describes simply your topic the research problem the objectives the methodology your results and the audience and the impact of your work so simply the abstract should be read by somebody in less than 3-4 minutes he or she can directly grasp the whole overview of your topic so you summarize the essence of your whole master thesis or PhD thesis in 250 words and therefore it should be really well thought well written and following this structure well let me give you an example here is a topic related to health the topic title is called the effect of exposure to natural environment on health inequalities and observational population study. As we can see those words are not exceeding 250 words, we have a background statement just two sentences, we have a methodology fully described where it has been done, what is the population, the population size, the sampling and finally we find the findings talking about this observational study results with some statistical analysis and the rates of the study that the rates of the study and finally we have to look at the final two sentences talking about interpretation in this sense this is an abstract it's compact but it's describing the whole study into a systematical approach so this is actually you do when you finish your thesis you write your abstract in order to communicate to people and actually when you publish your work on your abstract will be an open source and then after that when a researcher looking on internet they will be interested by your topic by title by keywords then when they will go through your abstract if they find the topic interesting they find interesting findings and interpretation they come up with the idea of investing in reading the whole manuscript or ordering the master thesis from another library or from another country okay so this is very important to start with after having defining the title and the keyword the third step is mainly related to the problem statement and here we are really starting the real work the serious work related to the research proposal well what is a problem statement you must start in your problem statement to contextualize your problem and you have to be concise you have to define exactly what's the what's the problem and most of the time it's good to link your background problem with authorities. So you start by saying the European Union has this objective, the national government has this objective, the region or the province or the city has these objectives. So you relate your background and the problem with political, governmental or non-governmental the United Nations, the World Health Organization, whatever authority that is stating something related to the topic. Also it's important to quantify this information and quantify the background. So it's advised here to define the problem into numbers, give some statistics, some figures related to the issue and you must also contain an overview of most relevant work. You should also try to cover others work saying in this context of this problem those stakeholders are doing that or doing that or covering this problem or addressing it from an angle or another. It's also important here to describe clearly your hypothesis that you have been done and how you are going to enter to propose the problem. Well, after describing this background and preparing the reader for the topic, you can directly now start to propose the problem and you have to show a really significant problem that is related to a a topic. So you should not make the reader get lost on the opposite. You should start to define a statement clearly and make sure that it's a societal problem in a certain context. Well this is an example. Just remember that at the end of the day a research proposal maybe in a master's thesis or a dissertation you will get funding or sometimes you don't get funding you do it work for free but at the end no one will fund a research proposal or find it reasonable as long as it's not solving a local or global problem. So my advice in writing a research proposal, make sure that your problem definition is by default solving a local or a global problem, trying to solve it in a way or another, linking to reality, linking to statistics, putting some figures, variables, and contextualizing the problem, describing it in a way that is viable, up-to-date, related to our current practice. Once you are done with that, you can start to define your aim and objectives. And you should take into account that an aim is not an objective. An aim is like a bullet. It's very important to define your aim. Once you define a good aim, you are sure that you will do a good research. So, aim well and you should hit your target cleanly. If you don't write a clear aim that is targeting a specific goal, you'll not succeed in doing your research. And simply you have to say what you want to simply and directly want to say. You have to explain what is this research going to do and who will benefit from it. I will give you some examples related to aims, but keep into account it has to be short, it has to be to the point, and it's like a bullet. you don't need to write a lot. It's the shorter the better. Well, what's the definition of an aim? An aim simply provides an answer to a general problem. So, so far we are not talking about the specific problem. This is the objective. In an aim I'm talking about the general problem. And the aim goes along with an adjective. It has to be concise. You should be aware that your grandmother can read the aim and understand it. And you should also keep in mind that it should be related to what's motivating you so this is very important and it should assist on improving the decision lead this is very important some examples of aims you can have a look lowering the dependency or the dependence on fossil fuel increasing the energy efficiency of improving the situation of increasing renovation rate dissemination knowledge sharing information general overall aims related to a serious problem and in this sense you don't need to write it more than one sentence maximum and then you are describing the topic in general in a sense in an aim that a non-technical person can understand it when I say here my aim of my research is to increase energy efficiency in the building sector this is a very broad generic aim anybody can understand and that's the purpose you should have this aim now once you define the aim you cannot be more specific and focus on the objective. But let me tell you what's the objective. The objective is more specific to your study, it's more accurate than the aim, and it's operational. So there is an action in it, you have to do something in it. In the aim, in the objective also it has to correspond to what you will try to produce and generate. So it has to be very precise in description, it has to focus on the central research question, and often contextualize it to a specific climate, context, country, region. Very important and these are some examples for objectives. So here I'm saying my objective to develop a software or a program to calculate turbulent nonlinear equation. Here the objective became very clear. Analyze the reason of low renovation rate identify barriers understand study the impact of assess compare so the objective has to be very clear very precise to the point talking about a specific aspect so in general it should be combined with the aim but let me give you an example with a good description of an aim with an objective well have a a look and read this sentence sorry just have a look I have a aim here the main aim of this research is this to disseminate technological knowledge on adaptive facade at a European level that's the overall aim very general I want to spread or share information related to a specific type of building facades in Europe and do it on a European level so this is a very broad aim and this is very successful one sentence like a bullet now how I'm going to do this aim I need to describe at least three four objectives to do this aim first of all I'm aiming to increase knowledge sharing secondly I'm looking to develop a new knowledge thirdly I'm starting new collaboration so in this sense I am precisely describing how I'm going to achieve this aim through operational tactical objectives. Another example could be interesting here, have a look at that. The project is aiming to improving building energy labeling schemes. So I would like to improve the labeling of buildings, so like you buy any food product you have a label telling what's the ingredients, I want to improve the labeling of buildings. But how I'm going to do that? These are the objectives that I'm going to do. I'm going to review different building labeling. I'm going to review different performance indicators. I will investigate possibilities for developing other labels. I will choose some case studies. I will examine the robustness of labeling schemes. I will evaluate their social acceptance. I will analyze the results. I will create a fair framework. Directly, you can see that we have here at least something around eight objectives serving one aim. So it's very important in your research proposal to keep this structure in your writing. You have an overall overarching aim with a very specific objectives that serves to achieve this aim and they as I told you it has to be operational with adjectives. Also a criteria to make sure that your objectives are well or right good written we call objective smart smart stands for specific measurable attainable realistic and time bound every reviewer reading your research proposal he or she will look at these objectives are the objectives specific are they measurable are they attainable realistic and time bound and this is very important you have to make sure that you have a pointed topic you are covering it you can measure the objective and measure what you are doing you must make sure that you can reach this objectives and that you have a realistic objective it's not a dream you have calculated the time and the effort and you can do it and definitely it should be time bound so you must put it in a frame of a deadline with a certain start and an end date once you make sure sure that your objectives are smart you can pass now and validate your topic and in this sense you can look to the topic and say I have smart objectives and you need some time to do it it's not easy to write it but you need just to take some time brainstorm your topic once you defined well the problem you can then define good the aim and from the aim you can break it down into specific objective. This is how it works. Another final advice for the aim and objective, don't forget to frame it. You need always to frame it. So these are the questions you should ask yourself at the end of writing your aim and objective. So first question, is it worth it answering your research question and the aim? What will benefit, am I going to benefit from it? Is the society, the community, the professional or the scientific community going to benefit from it? Is it specific, your aim and objective? Are they answerable? Can we answer them in this frame of thesis or dissertation? Is the topic original? Is it contribution to knowledge? Did somebody else do it or I'm really doing something new? What about the outcomes? Are they appropriate? Do they think ahead are the expected outcomes really achievable this is very important and finally you should ask yourself is this topic interesting to you there is many students who start a thesis and after a while they say I don't like this problem I don't like this topic they stop this means that you are not certain that you are motivated you are passionate and this topic is for your own personal interest is triggering you so these are some important advices to validate and to make sure that your aims and objectives are well written and this is a very fast example you can have a look for a winning proposal. This is simply an example showing the specific measurable and attainable realistic time-bound objectives. You can see here I have a precise problem. Agriculture is the backbone of Belgium's economy for example and it's central to the government development strategy but although the agricultural sector employs more than 75% of countries workforce and accounts both directly and indirectly for approximately 51% of countries Belgium's gross domestic product little is known about the scale of livestock farming livestock diversity distribution of livestock farms so here I have a problem very specific well described it's contextual there is a background on the national level I find some figures and statistics and the researcher simply wanted to say one thing we don't have information about the livestock farming in this country but instead of writing it directly he put a context he gives some numbers he put some figures he shows the importance of the topic and right after he will or she starts to write the objective. So the objective here is not a aim, he is directly talking about operational specific tasks. A team of eight researchers defining who will do that, eight researchers at the livestock research unit of Agricultural College for example at Liège University will research the types and extent of livestock farming in the country. A comprehensive report will be published and an online database and website will be created the project will be presented in its entirely four years after the start of the project at the sub-saharan agricultural summit in Botswana in November 2016 so you have here a very clear objective operational with steps following up and I can measure it it's specific it's attainable it's realistic it's time bound so this is the way how to write a good research aim and a research objective and this will be the start of your research proposal and just to remind you keep in mind that in the beginning of your search proposal you have to have a catchy and informative title the summary and the abstract leave it for the end you will not do it when you start this is after you finish write your six eight keywords that are not included in your title make sure that you have a good problem statement description with a problem related to contextual societal issues, define an overall aim and go for your operational step-by-step specific objectives. In this way if you keep this slide in mind while developing your first part of your proposal you are on the road to success. Well I'm done with the aims and objectives and I will move to the fifth component or element which is the significance and audience. It's very important in research to define why is this research important and who are the users of this research, who are the end users who should benefit from this study. Am I doing this study for myself, for fun? You should not do that in university. Even though that some people try to do explorational work, you can do it, but you should just succeed in translating your own interest into a common interest. Once you did it, you are on the track. So significance is meant the importance the importance here so you have to make sure and describe in your text what is the added value what is original about this work why is it important even if some people are not finding it important you have to defend the work and present it and write it in a way that is important something you should show that this is something never that was never did before and once you contextualize your topic you succeed to have a significance For example, if I'm talking about renovation using prefabricated units or if I'm talking about prefabricated housing. Once you open or would like to research the topic, you might get some feedback saying, yeah, but prefabricated construction, there is many countries who do it in the United States, in Canada, it's nothing new. But once you contextualize it, you can make it new. If you say studying prefabricated housing in Liège or in Wallonia or in Belgium or in the province X or in the region X or for residential housing or for a specific context, for a specific region. Once you contextualize a topic, you directly make it original. So there is many topics in your society, in our context here at Liège universities. Maybe there is advancement in Finland or in other European countries, but they are not contextualized. So you can also borrow ideas from abroad, from other researchers, and contextualizing and study how to implement them in our context here. Once you do that, your topic becomes significant and important and becomes unique because we don't have answers for that. Also, it's important that it does not mean that the question is new, but never approached like you. even some researchers they select a topic that has been selected or researched by many people before but you can show that how you will do it in a unique way how you will go through personal endeavor that looks differently to process the topic so don't be afraid and saying yeah I when you look at the depository of previous master seasons if you find somebody else before you did the same topic that you are interested in, you should not stop. Take the topic, read it well and see how you can do it different. Once you define this difference and set it as a significant, as added value, you can guarantee that your research topic is significant and important. Also, your topic should lead to added value. At the end of the day, you should add value and make sure that you have important and significance has to take into account of the principal aim. It should be at the end related to your principal aim. Some other questions you could look at. Questions have to be open in general when you describe your topic. Here you can add a list of keywords not included in the title and the motivation is linked to the context. Well, defining the significance is important. Now you defined your problem, your title, your aim, your objective, why is this topic important, how is it significant. Now comes a very important topic people forget about and I think personally you might start by that. The audience. Why are you doing this study? Who is going to benefit from this study? Who you want to reach? Define your target audience very clearly and from the beginning. The easier the target audience is described, the easier you can do your research. Many people forget that it could be politicians your target, your target could be professional community, it could be the research community, it could be managers, it could be whoever, community or stakeholders. But leaving your research proposal without defining the audience, there is no meaning. Because many people do interesting studies, but then they don't contact their audience. If I'm doing a study, for example, about the green area spaces in Liège city, so I want to know how much green area per square meter per citizen is in the city of Liège. And I did a very beautiful analysis and I went through the neighborhoods of Liège and And I then identified through my analysis how much square meter of green spaces are available for the citizens of Liège. If at the end of this study I did not contact the community or the local authority of Liège city or the province and tell them here is my work, how can you benefit from them? If I didn't go and do an interview with them, if I didn't contact them to make sure that the municipality is benefiting from the study, then I failed to connect my research to the audience. So you must always to make sure what's the research and ask yourself, what's the relation between my research topic and the audience? And did I allow the audience to intervene in my study? In this sense, I should have maybe went to the municipality and asked the urbanism sector or unit and tell them, I'm doing a study about Liège. Can you help me with this information? Is this information for you helpful? How can this information, can I modify it to meet a kind of certain requirement from your side? So it's very important to define the audience and not to define it theoretically on paper. No, you have to go engage with those people, contact them before starting your study, during your study, and after your study. You can even invite them to your defense. If you don't do this step, our research will have no impact. It will be just theoretical research hidden in research university without having any impact on society. So therefore, make sure always what is the audience of your research. Get in contact with these people. And as I told, why you have to reach those people? Because you have to consider your motives and why you feel this group should be targeted. You have to know why you want to reach a particular group. And you should provide insight that will help develop effective study. and you should say also why should they be interested in my research this is very important once you define that you can start now your research I'm moving now to the step number six but I would say that this is the first chunk of your research proposal it does not need to be more than one or two pages defining clearly from the title going to the keywords talking about your problem statement and the background defining the aim and objective the significance of your work and finally the audience once you define this one or two pages i can guarantee you that you have a good topic well defined and make sure that you revise it with your supervisor well you are now ready to embark and start your topic more clearly but you have to describe another additional component in your proposal? The state of the art or the literature review. What is the state of the art? Why do we do a research related to state of the art? Why do we review literature for a research proposal? Number one, you have to improve your own understanding. You have to understand, you have to become an expert because now you are talking about a topic, you don't know enough information about it. So you have to understand what has been done before and you have to read literature so number one why we do a literature review to improve the understanding number two you have to build your expertise in the specific domain number three you have to demonstrate knowledge and show that you understand a specific knowledge related to the topic and you have to update the reader with the state of the art because at the end of the of the end of the day the master thesis or the phd you will submit it to a jury or a reader or you will set it online and you would like the community to read it. Once they read it, they must make sure that they are up to date to the latest information related to this topic and therefore we should do a literature review. To do a good literature review, you must guarantee that you have good resources. You should look at major published work, you should look at a narrow specific topic and you should start your review. The review should cover the major concepts, snapshots relationships classifications and extractions so the literature review actually is like an essence you go through different publications different sources and you extract the most important information and you provide me with a snapshot with a pattern image describing what has been done before what are the major publication related to this topic and like that you can put me up-to-date related to the topic. Does one of the criteria that anybody would like a professor will look at a research proposal will ask does the proposal advance the state of the art? Does it introduce innovative approaches? This is very important and the more you go into this a PhD or a grant proposal the more the answer for these questions is very important. If the proposal shows it does it show a good understanding of the major work? Does it identify the gaps of existing knowledge and so on so this is very important and you should also say what is currently available in Liège in Belgium in Europe and worldwide so this is the aim of the literature review to make sure what is done also in the North America what's done in Asia to make sure that I am up-to-date related to this topic well you should also capture the major concept and ideas related to research and finally you should ask yourself how is your research you are doing compared with similar research in other contexts so you should not only describe your research topic and forget that others maybe did the same idea 90% of ideas are not new we are processing others ideas so 90% of ideas are not new So you should keep in mind, put an assumption in your mind, that maybe somebody else, someone, somewhere else, tried to address the same problem. What about looking, exploring, how did those other people do my work? So this is the aim of literature review, to make sure that I cover the literature, I am up to date, I am covering the major concepts and publications that describe the topic, and also similar studies related to my research topic. once you did that you can move to the methodology and the methodology should describe how you are going to do your research in the proposal and this could not should not be a long text it could be a couple of paragraphs or maybe maximum three paragraphs describing how we are going to do your research there is in general different methodologies you can do strategic research you can do applied research you can do experimental research and these are all examples of researchers that you can do if you like to do lab work and monitoring then it's experimental work if you would like to do applied then it's more like simulation case studies system analysis comparison analysis if you are looking to develop concepts model standards prototypes solutions you are more into strategical basic research and definitely if you are looking for developing things beyond applied research, pure basic research, a theory, an equation, a philosophy, then you are looking at basic research. So you should define clearly what is your methodology and these are all examples for different methodologies as you can see and every researcher and every specialization, every group of specialization has its own collection of methodologies they use. People in social sciences, we know that they use a lot interview and they use surveying techniques. This is their methodology they come up with. People working in engineering, for example, they go more for experimentation and so on and so forth. So you must make sure your domain, your expertise, your field of expertise, what are the common methodology. In the field of architecture or buildings in general, we use analysis research, development research, we do a lot of case studies research, evidence-based design, parametric research, optimization, also participatory or action research, operational research, post-occupancy evaluation, lab research, and system analysis research. So just you must be familiar with these types of methodology and describe them in your research proposals and now I will move to another thing which is called a method which means that like in the aims and objective there is an aim and there is an objective here there is something called methodology and method. A method is a small action of research done to achieve a methodology for example I can have a case study as a methodology but in order to achieve this methodology, I have several methods that I can do. I can do some drawings, photography, videotaping, visualization, sketching, mapping, process analysis, technology review, history review. These are all methods that I can use in my research to achieve my methodology. So it's very important in your research proposal that you define in the beginning your research methodological on this level. Is it basic research, is it strategical, is it applied, is it experimental. Then you pick up a methodology and don't hesitate, you can have several methodology in a research. You can combine evidence-based design with case studies, there is no problem at all. But once you define your methodology, you have to pick up a collection of methods. A systematic review is a method, data analysis is a method, GIS or simulation, visualizing, classification and categorization, These are all methods. So your research proposal should address these methods and simply your methodology in general should describe how are you going to approach your work. So as I said you start with a literature review and from the literature review you see what has been done by previous researchers. You have to outline the instrument, fix boundaries of diseases and we should look at different methodology, describe them well, make sure that you have qualitative and quantitative approaches for your methodology, and make sure how you will collect the information, how this information will be robust. I give you a very important example here you should keep into account. When we talk about methodology, one of the big problems we see today in research, the methodology should be replicable, which means that any independent researcher is going to do the same research you have been doing, he or she should be able to repeat the same methodology and come up with the same research. One of the problems we find today in research, very common, that researchers, they do the research without describing it well, without a clear methodology, and as a consequence, the results are fake, because they didn't have a methodology. And once you describe your methodology, keep into account that it should be replicable and repeatable by others. So this is very important. And how to present a methodology, this is how to do it. You have to come up with a study design. A study design is simply a specific plan or a protocol for conducting the study. and it allows you to investigate and translate the conceptual hypothesis into operational research. So actually in this section of methodology I should see this overview design. I'm saying that my methodology is based on quantitative and qualitative research methods. I have here case studies and so on and so forth and I here have my own other quantitative approaches and you draw it into a sort of diagram and this is another representation I have descriptive analysis I have analytical here I'm going to do a survey here I'm going to do experiment here I'm going to do a cross-sectional analysis once you think about your methodology and represented in a graph like that and describe it into a couple of paragraphs you are done with the methodology it's accessible and I have a very interesting document you can ask me for it it describes the different research methodologies in architecture. So you can go from theoretical research, interpretative research, experimental, survey, simulation, qualitative, even action research, and for each of these methodologies there are different ontological assumptions, epistemological assumptions also, methodologies, how you validate, how you have examples for each of those so this is very important very helpful you might use it and I would like to ask you to start your methodology by sketching drawing thinking about picking up some methods making sure how you will address it you have to define your method your sample your case studies what are the target users are you going to use equipment analysis this is very important and you can draw a study design scheme for that and the study design scheme like I showed you based on this analysis using this Excel or this table I provided previously. Make sure that you draw a study design scheme and integrate it in your proposal, discuss it with your supervisor, explain why it is the most appropriate to effectively answer your research question and you have also to explain what alternatives have been considered when and why these have been disregarded. So these are the golden rules for the methodology. Don't forget you have to come up with a study design scheme, describe your methodology on the level of what is the strategical level of your research, what is the methodologies you are using, what are the methods and summarize it into a scheme and present it and describe it. Well now I would like to move to the expected results even in a research proposal before doing your research you should describe your expected results this is very important and how are you going to do that it's mainly based on your literature review if you are going to read some major publication related to your topic you can be able to expect what will be the results of your work you may fragment you may grab fragments from other studies but you can predict possible outcomes and that's all what you are expected to report in this sense. You have to be based on the literature review, linked to the aims and objectives, explain what you will be producing, something concrete, evidence-based with numbers, you have to define how is it going to be usable, is it some rules of thumb, is it findings, is it guidelines, is it advice, is it a strategy, what it is and for example you can say I'm going to come up with a prototype, with a design concept, with a solution. These are all important to define in the expected results. So it's not here meant that you will say exactly what will come out from the study but you will define what parameters, what outcomes you are looking at and these are examples of outcomes you must keep into account that you answer this question very important in your research proposal because if you are just putting facts they are called data if you are classifying them they can become information they will become only knowledge if you are adding an analysis and interpretation kind of working the information into a useful information and once you have knowledge you can help in decisions and actually that's the cycle of knowledge so your thesis is mainly looking to collect the data and information and process them to generate knowledge so that this knowledge can help the community and the decision makers to take decision and become more informed, more knowledgeable. Well, what could be examples of outcomes? This is a series of outcomes. It could be a product, rules of thumb, guidelines, a manual, a website, an application, even an app. Don't hesitate to develop an app for your master's thesis. This could be interesting, a map, a tool, a website, a program, a book, an infographic, a cartographic guide, equation, model, benchmark, simulation, a checklist, sometimes some students come up with their master outcome, a checklist, a policy, a strategy, a theory. You must be sure that you come up with a concrete outcome that you will present at the end of your thesis and you link this outcome to the audience as described previously. So this is very important and to validate that you have good expected result describe how the work will be validated. You must make sure that your outcomes and what you are going to present will be compared with results published and other works. Are you going to use a user group or a case study to test this outcome because it's not enough to tell me I will come up with a map or a tool and then it was not used by anyone or it was not tested by anyone. Make sure that you have a validation process and in the validation process you have some groups or users who make sure that your outcome that you use was developed for them in a useful way and you should look for internal and external validity of your result. If this research is repeated by someone else, would they get the same results you did or not? Is your work accurate enough? Do you have a systematic approach? Can the result be generalized in another similar context? These are interesting discussion questions that you can use to develop your final conclusion later in the thesis, but also you could address them in your proposal writing to make sure that you are not only looking to produce an information and through it without making sure that it works that it function that will have an effect and impact well by that I am approaching almost the end now you are described you have described those major topics from the keywords until the research results and outcomes now it's time to talk about outline and talk in the language of professional language professional language this is not a research topic this is more related to professionalism and any institution should talk about it. Once you go through any professional document you must develop an organizational chart. Organizational chart it's a chart that tells me what are the parts and the component of your research or your research thesis. In this sense you should have a description of your chapters maybe you can put your chapters you can put the topics you are talking about and it should represent your work and it should predict the possible progress of your work. So here I'm drawing all the component of my research in one diagram. In French we call it Organigramme, in English it's called the organizational chart and any research proposal must include an organizational chart to describe the components of the work and the main work packages that you will do and in every work packages I have associated activities. This is very important to clarify the topic. I have many master students, they come up at the end of their master thesis and they are not able even to write a structure or a table of content of their own thesis. Why? Because they didn't do an organizational chart. Once you do it early enough, you know that you will start with an introduction chapter, you will have something about a methodology, what are your case studies, your results, what would be the validation part, what would be your conclusion part, the discussion. So therefore it's very important it's also important to be added you can add it in the annex of your research proposal don't hesitate to do that and you should do use it also to discuss with your supervisor in the beginning how are you going to proceed with your master's thesis or your PhD dissertation very important to include it another important organizational chart related to the professional work the Gantt chart. Any master student graduating from Liège University he or she must know what is a Gantt chart because without that you are not going to be able to process tasks on long term. A Gantt chart is a professional diagram it is a methodology used to define milestones and work packages and activities and in this sense you describe your work in sufficient details and you set up deliverables, steps, deadlines. Very important. More detail than the organizational chart. So if you look at the organization chart, it's mainly chunky. It's looking at big scale component of your research. While here you are going more into detail and it's very important to be also placed in the annex of your research proposal. As you can see, here's a list of activities. Here is the master thesis. It takes an average in Liège four months I can define every month in two weeks and define with these dark bars when I'm going to do the literature review, the interviews, the case study analysis, the simulation work, when I'm going to start to write my thesis. Very important to do that as early as possible to make sure that you go psychologically through the process of your thesis writing. Because if you leave everything till the end you will be improvising and improvising you can never become professional with improvisation as long you have a lot of time and in fact you don't have time you must try your thesis to graduate so this is the best way to do it as early as possible and try to explore previous master's thesis of older students who graduated and see how they did it to make sure that what could be the tasks and activities that you must come up and how much time they will take Some people would say, I will do a literature review in two months. In reality, it might need three months. Maybe it will need eight weeks. You never know. Six weeks. You never know. So it's very important to have this translation into deliverable steps and time. And it's very important once you finish this, that you have a section in your research proposal called project outline. The project outline. You link it to the organizational chart and you link it to your Gantt chart and your proposal must describe where are you going to start. You say when are you going to start, what steps are you going to do and where are you heading to, where will you get to, how you will get there. Very important. If you don't do this in the project outline, the certainty that you will do successful work is very weak. So make sure that you have defined the step of your research, you say where are you starting, describe what's the problem, the literature view where are you heading and make sure that you will describe that accurately and what are the final aim to go for well the last step that you should look at before leaving that I have just forgot to say that you should describe every milestone into activity description and evidence of progress the last thing you should look at is the impact and biography this This is the last part of your proposal and the last element that you should address in your proposal. And first I will start with the impact. It's very important to identify, does the proposal clarify clearly how it is relevant and realistic on the short-term and long-term. By definition, impact is the effect or influence on short-term to long-term scientific, technological or socio-economical changes produced by a research, directly or indirectly, intended or unintended. And you should ask yourself, are the impacts identified by the proposal relevant to the society at large? Can the impact be listed and realistically achieved? And let me give some examples. The impact should be able to be explained. is different from the objective and it's the only way to do an impact is to publish your work because if I'm going to spend maybe six months of my life on a manuscript for a thesis or maybe four years for my PhD work if this document is going to be in the depository of the library of Liège University no one on earth will access it even it's not on Google so forget about it the only way make sure that your work has an impact and other researchers and other professionals and the society in large is going to access it, read it, benefit from it is to publish the work and study or look at the impact of your work. Here is an example of a work I will read you I will read you this very fast energy certification labels increases the awareness of energy consumption and enables consumers to compare buildings therefore providing builders with an incentive to improve energy efficiency in buildings? Improving energy efficiency in buildings is one of the most cost-effective ways across all sectors to reduce energy consumption and hence green gas house emissions. Energy efficiency is the most cost-effective method to improve energy security. From the household perspective, energy efficiency seems to be profitable. you are telling how energy efficiency or the labels are you how is this impact of this topic energy efficient lighting and appliances can save about 465 euro per year per household in energy bills much more savings can be easily insured when the whole building is energy efficient the energy efficiency of buildings can only be guaranteed by creditable building energy label so here you are describing what is the impact of your research you are saying that while studying the labeling of buildings already I can promise to have a cost-effective savings and I can guarantee a security and independence from fossil fuels and you try to quantify it with some example saying that for example a building that has energy label a for example can save up to 465 euro per year so we give an example so this is a very important aspect that you should include what would be the impact of your study and this is difficult you have to brainstorm you have to think if I come up with my research and I publish it could it be useful examples for dissemination activities also to spread dissemination means spreading your research findings is there a clear or attainable plan for dissemination for results this is a question. Is the dissemination plan targeted, clear and attainable? Is it relevant and you have a clear exploitation of the results? These are all important topics and you can disseminate your work by publishing it, by having internal seminars, regular reporting, publication, conferences, exhibition or reaching out communicating with the community. If you go to an NGO and tell them I would like to present my master's thesis to you, I would like to share with you my document. These are all important activities you must guarantee to make sure that you are disseminating your knowledge. In a PhD it's very important to do a lot of effort to disseminate the information. In a master thesis it would be enough to publish in a conference or publish in a journal, your results, and this is the only way to validate and make sure that your information now is available to the public, it's accessible, and it could be shared and become beneficial to the society. Last part is the biography. In your research proposal, you should include a bibliographical sector. You should have references cited in a specific format. In my lab, I prefer the APA standard, and I have a presentation on that. But you should make sure that many reviewers, they go at the end of your research proposal and read the biography. And based on the quality of biography they find, they start to say this is a good research or not. This means that the more you are describing the key publication-related topic, it means that you did your homework, you read, and you should pay attention how you write it, because there are rules in citation. You should write, for example, the family name, and then the year, and then the title, and then the city, and so on. There are different styles. Make sure that you are using the right style. You just ask your supervisor for that. You can show your motivation on the subject also based on that. Use a reference management system. There are many softwares. Previously, there was a software called EndNote. Today, the most commonly used is Zotero, and I advise you to use Zotero. Well, I'm going to the end. This is it. This is the research proposal. It sounds maybe dense, very informative, but keep in mind that a research proposal does not need to be more than five, six pages. Sometimes the research proposal, a large European project, can be something like 25 pages. I'm talking about funding of millions. So in your case, all you need to have five pages, six pages, describing and covering these issues and just start to write and go through it I give you some golden final tips structure your text make sure you have headings address every topic into a heading structure section and write under it write short sentences this is a very important thing many I figured out that in the French speaking word many students seems to write long sentences chop your sentence keep it short and follow your ideas and don't make it complex just write you can write down first in a sketch what ideas you want to communicate and start to make them short sentences in a row use bullets bullets are very important because readers get bored when they find a full block of text try to make bullets to highlight important topics provide images charts i already told you that you need a gun chart an organizational chart a study research design for the methodology try as maximum to have a kind of visual component don't make it exceed 30 40 percent of the proposal so that the proposal is readable and accessible and the keys are access to success are important that you should assure that all relevant chapters of the proposal have been addressed accurately the ten themes that I described are addressed in detail be brief and concise as possible you should support your information with empirical and proof try to have always statistics numbers references to cite your work right don't hesitate don't leave it till the end if you have time write a part of the proposal later on write another part so just keep writing it's very easy it's not a difficult thing it's just that you have to get used to answer these kind of questions and do it and improvise it ask for peers you can send it to colleagues to a teaching assistant to your supervisor don't hesitate to do that to review the proposal and improve it you can make draft 1 draft 2 until you are satisfied and willing to submit it you can get expert help you can talk to the audience people you can talk to somebody who knows about the problem go consult a professor or any person who is professional you should be well organized synthesized and don't forget that we are looking for a master student a master student who has a critical appraisal who can criticize who can build up a case with new information and this is very important by describing any controversies that you find in the objectives include the evidence as possible whether it's against or with your proposition these are the key rules of success I would like to go back just to remind you that this is very important to respect this structure cover it go step by step until you have a good proposal one thing I can promise you if you developed and invested as much as possible time in writing your research proposal your master thesis process will go as smooth as possible because you thought ahead about what you are going to do so instead of going reactive and just reacting on everyday crisis the simulation is not working the interviews is not doing you have here something that protects you it makes you more certain stable and you see what are you going to do and already you are certain that you can achieve the goal easier so this is very important I would like to thank you for your presentation here are my reference and those don't hesitate to contact me I'm looking forward for your proposals thank you very much

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• Published: 02 September 2024

Genetics and Genomics

Peritumoral tissue (PTT): increasing need for naming convention

• Dzenis Koca   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4838-3090 1 ,
• Behnoush Abedi-Ardekani 2 ,
• Joel LeMaoult 3 , 4 &
• Laurent Guyon   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7674-2348 1  

British Journal of Cancer ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

• Cancer genomics
• Surgical oncology
• Tumour biomarkers

Various terms are used to describe non-malignant tissue located in the proximity of a tumor, belonging to the organ from which the tumor originated. Traditionally, these tissues, sometimes called “normal adjacent tissue” have been used as controls in cancer studies, and were considered representative of morphologically healthy, non-cancerous tissue. However, with the advancement of OMIC technologies, such tissues are increasingly recognized to be distinct from both tumor and healthy tissues. Furthermore, properties, characteristics, and role of these tissues in cancer formation and progression is increasingly studied. In order to make future research in this area more harmonized and more accessible, as well as to counter the widespread perception of normalcy, we are advocating the need for standardized naming convention. For this purpose, we propose the use of neutral and comprehensive term “Peritumoral Tissue” along with the acronym “PTT”. While significant amount of data on these tissues are publicly available, reuse of such data remains limited due to a lack of information on sample collection procedures. In order to facilitate future reuse of the data, we suggest a list of features that should be documented during sample collection procedures. These recommendations can aid the definition of Standard Operating Procedures.

Cancer accounts for almost 20% of premature death worldwide [ 1 ]. Peritumoral tissues (PTT), which are non-tumor tissues located in close proximity to a tumor and originate from the same organ, are increasingly recognized to harbor complementary information on early tumorigenesis, metastasis, recurrence, and treatment response, as well as prognosis [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]. While most cancer studies focus on cancer itself, this growing body of research suggests the importance of also investigating PTT. To emphasize that PTT differs from healthy tissue (referring to tissue from individuals unaffected by cancer), and to facilitate scientific communication and knowledge dissemination, we draw attention to the growing need for an appropriate naming convention. Additionally, we will highlight key information about the peritumoral tissue sampling procedure that can enhance the precision and informativeness of bioinformatics analysis.

Advancements in molecular biology and sequencing technologies, along with reduced costs and increased accessibility, have revolutionized cancer research. These approaches have resulted in a more profound understanding of cancer pathology, as well as molecular abnormalities that lead to cancer formation, sustenance, progression, and metastasis. In many studies, tumors are analyzed alongside PTT, where PTT serves as a control or baseline [ 7 , 8 ]. Due to the absence of macroscopic Footnote 1 and microscopic Footnote 2 signs of malignancy, PTT is considered to adequately represent morphologically healthy, non-tumoral tissue and is often used as a “healthy” control [ 5 , 7 ]. Furthermore, the use of paired tumor-PTT samples is often justified due to the experimental advantages it brings. First, the use of paired tumor-PTT samples reduces interpatient genetic variability, as both tumor and PTT samples originate from the same patient. The second advantage is decreased anatomical variability as PTT samples are taken from the same tissue type from which the tumor originated. This is usually the case for proteomic, transcriptomic, and epigenetic studies (methylation and genome-wide associations), as for genomic studies, DNA is often isolated from peripheral blood leukocytes. The third advantage is that PTT samples are more accessible than healthy tissue samples from non-cancer patients, especially in cases where radical surgeries (partial or total organ removal) are necessary steps in cancer treatment.

While most studies operate under the assumption that PTT is representative of healthy tissue, a growing amount of evidence suggests that this is not the case. The concept that PTT is “healthy” was first debated by Slaughter et al. in 1953 [ 9 ]. Namely, the authors propose that the high rate of recurrence of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma originates from the fact that PTT has been preconditioned by the same carcinogenic event that led to the rise of tumors in the first place, leading to the formation of “field cancerization”. Since this seminal paper, genetic and epigenetic abnormalities that lead to the formation of cancerized fields have been described in various tumors and pre-malignant diseases [ 5 , 8 , 10 ]. In 2017, Aran and colleagues conducted a pan-cancer study, comparing the transcriptomic profiles of primary tumors, corresponding PTT (from the TCGA database), and healthy tissues from autopsies (from the GTEx database) of eight tumor types [ 7 ]. They found that PTT is transcriptionally different from both primary tumor tissues and healthy tissues and is instead found in the transcriptional middle ground. Similar results, showing that PTT is transcriptionally distinct from healthy tissues of corresponding organs, have been reported by other groups as well [ 6 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ]. Aran and colleagues suggested that the distinct transcriptome of PTT could arise from the process of field cancerization, as well as from the cancer-induced inflammation and putative signals that originate from the tumor with the latter being the most probable source [ 7 ].

Additionally, the authors show that increased expression of a tumor-adjacent-specific signature can be detected up to 4 cm from the tumor (maximum distance in the dataset), with a tendency for gradual decrease after 2 cm [ 7 ]. Other groups, as reviewed by Gadaleta et al., have also shown that genomic instability, telomere content, allelic imbalance, and transcriptomic aberrations decrease as a function of distance from the tumor [ 8 ]. On the other hand, a recent study that investigated the impact of the distance of the transcriptomic subtype of PTT of breast cancer patients showed no clear distinction in PTT subtype based on the distance from the tumor [ 16 ]. Overall, the impact of distance from the tumor on peritumoral tissue, as well as the underlying cause, is still elusive, and more research is needed.

Furthermore, an increasing body of evidence suggests that PTT could be useful in understanding early mutational events in tumorigenesis, as well as understanding the impact of tumors on surrounding tissue, angiogenesis, and even serve as a source of prognostic and diagnostic biomarkers [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 10 , 16 , 17 ].

Need for naming convention

As presented, increasing evidence shows that PTT is not entirely representative of healthy tissue. However, the term “normal adjacent tissue” (“NAT”), and various permutations thereof, are still commonly used to denote PTT (Supplementary Fig.  1 , Supplementary Table  1 ). While one can argue that PTT is often confirmed to be “histologically normal”, a growing body of evidence is suggesting that histological normalcy does not always imply molecular normalcy [ 4 , 7 , 11 ]. Therefore, the term “normal adjacent tissue” can lead to misconception that PTT is normal, and in turn to misinterpretation of results. Subsequently, some key information can be missed due to this misconception.

In addition to the term “normal adjacent tissue”, other terms, such as ones presented in Table  1 are interchangeably used in literature. It is important to note that terminology can be context-dependent, and can vary across different disciplines and research areas, as well as across organs affected by tumor. However, it seems that such variations are not always based on standard medical/histological definitions and are prone to be used based on personal interpretations. There is a variation among terminologies used by different researchers. For example, researchers commonly use the term ‘mucosa’ to address the entire wall thickness, which is not correct. In standard medical and histological terminology, mucosa applies to the first layer of the entire wall thickness in some organs such as the gastrointestinal or the lower urinary tract, while such specific layering is not part of the histological structure of most of the organs such as breast, pancreas, kidney, etc. Although using the term ‘mucosa’ in some organs (such as gastrointestinal tract) could be correct, it is prone to lead to misinterpretation or misunderstanding, and can even be inappropriately applied to the areas where such a structure does not exist. On the other hand, this term an be appropriate if the tissue is collected by some specific procedures, such as endoscopy, in which the procedure of punch biopsy by endoscopy does not allow to penetrate deeper than mucosa. Although such precisions might be respected by some registries during sample collection and addressing the method of sample collection could help to clarify the depth of wall thickness, we recommend using a more general and less confusing terminology such as ‘tissue’ when registering the collected sample. Another example of terminology misuse is that the terms “adjacent non-neoplastic tissue” or “benign adjacent tissue” are often used when histological normalcy is not implied, particularly in studies that investigate immune infiltration and cell composition of PTT. All things considered, such jargon poorly transfers between fields, is not standardized, and limits the use of “keywords” for literature discovery [ 18 ]. Additional problems can arise when one of the terms used to describe PTT has different meanings between different fields. For example, the term “tumor macroenvironment” is sometimes used to denote PTT, while in research on systemic effects of cancer (such as cachexia and paraneoplastic syndrome) “tumor macroenvironment” is used to describe distant organs and even the whole human body [ 19 ]. Such diversity of names and lack of clear naming convention makes it harder to discover and understand adequate literature, and particularly limits usage of keywords in search engines. To the best of our knowledge, various names used to denote PTT are not incorporated into “The Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)” thesaurus [ 20 ]. Additionally, poor transfer of meaning across disciplines can obscure “the big picture” and confuse readers, especially if a reader is new to the field. On the other hand, common names can in turn bring the community closer, and spark new interest in research particularly oriented towards investigation of peritumoral tissues.

Given the rapid developments in the field of cancer research and application of more and more sophisticated technologies that require precise data, standardization of terminology becomes a necessary element to avoid confusion and misinterpretation. This is an important element to be considered while creating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). With the aim of harmonization of future literature, and in order to counter the misconception of “normalcy”, we are encouraging use of a common and neutral term “peritumoral tissue” and the acronym “PTT,” when referring to tissues that are found in proximity to the tumor, and are of same anatomical origin as a tumor.

Rich metadata on PTT improves reusability of data

With the establishment of FAIR data principles, and to facilitate reuse of data and research reproducibility, authors are encouraged to share data obtained from an experiment [ 21 ]. Often, data on tumor tissue samples are well annotated and clinical data of patients are made available; however, this is not the case for metadata of PTT. As mentioned earlier, PTT is often used as a control in cancer studies, and as a result, metadata on PTT samples are often not recorded and remain incomplete. For example, the distance from the tumor at which each PTT sample is taken is rarely specified. The impact of the distance on molecular and transcriptional aberrations remain unclear. Some previous studies have suggested ‘safe’ distances from a diseased or malignant tissue based on the ‘back to normal’ function of the organ and have reported it to be as short as 5 mm in kidney [ 22 ]. Khemees et al. reported renal glomerular viability improving from 58% to 92% in 2.5 mm and 10 mm from tumor, respectively [ 23 ]. If molecular features also follow such clinical improvements in distance from tumor is not clear [ 7 ]. It is also possible that the ‘safe’ distance from a disease status is organ dependent and variable, and is based on the morphology and function of each organ. Supporing this notion is the fact that in even in routine practice of pathology there is not a unique distance from surgical resection margin of a malignant lesion which is considered as safe margin. Instead required distance for surgical recection margine is organ dependent. Additionally, based on the tumor size and the method of surgery (partial versus total resection), providing a fixed distance from tumor as a guideline is not feasible. As a result, we strongly recommend collecting PTT as far as possible from a tumoral lesion and emphasize to record the distance. The inclusion of such information in publicly available datasets can facilitate research on this topic and improve the precision of guidelines on PTT sampling. Furthermore, such information can also be used as a confounding variable during bioinformatics analysis. We have included some of the important information about PTT samples in Table  2 as well as graphical representation of such variables in Fig.  1 . We are well aware that tumors can have irregular shapes and orientations, and that most of the mentioned information can be hard or impossible to capture correctly. Nevertheless, capturing as much information as possible can prove useful during downstream data analysis and can be essential when data is reused later on.

Sample is 1 cm 3 in size, taken 3 cm from superior from the tumor border. Tumor is oval, with longer axis set in transverse (horizontal) plane.

Peritumoral tissues (PTT) are increasingly a topic of scientific research, offering complementary information on early steps of tumorigenesis, as well as mechanisms of metastasis, progression, and recurrence of cancer. While investigating literature on PTT, we have identified two major issues that could hinder PTT-oriented research: variable and often imprecise nomenclature and insufficiently characterized data. The proposed standardization of terminology aims to improve how we communicate and understand research in which peritumoral tissue is used, especially studies where investigation of properties of PTT is the primary goal. Structured and precise terminology can improve the dissemination of information and in turn can lead to better understanding and critical assessment of results. Additionally, standardized terminology can facilitate the sharing and reuse of data and can prevent the loss of valuable information. An important goal of standardization is to streamline future research and point to the role that PTT plays in some of the key steps of tumor pathology. It is important to note that search engines, such as PubMed or Google Scholar, are valuable scientific tools, and a lack of consistent terminology can hinder the discovery of adequate literature. We provide as Supplementary Material a link to search publications with at least one of the terms in abstract through these search engines to ease the identification of relevant associated works (Supplementary Table  1 ).

While PTT is often used as a control in cancer studies, and a significant amount of data is publicly available, the reusability of such data is limited due to insufficient metadata. The lack of data regarding the sampling distance from the tumor has already been reported as a limitation in several retrospective studies [ 3 , 7 ]. Additionally, recent work by Lau et al. suggests that other information, such as anatomical orientation and tumor heterogeneity, can also prove to be useful [ 16 ]. The collection of samples and metadata, as well as the downstream analysis of samples (including bioinformatics analysis of resulting data), is a multi-disciplinary effort. Success in multi-omics studies require control of pre-analytical, analytical, and post-analytical elements, an effort that becomes more specialized and needs the application of multidisciplinary approaches. Experts in each field should work in teams and be involved from the study design to data analyses. As for the matter of sample and metadata collection, the opinion of a bioinformatician on potential confounding variables, or the expertise of a pathologist on sample collection, annotation and inclusion, can greatly reduce issues encountered during downstream data analysis and increase the reusability of the data themselves.

Referring to peritumoral tissue samples that are taken at substantial distance from tumor border.

Referring to practice where, in some studies, pathologists investigate peritumoral tissue for presence of malignant cells.

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DK was funded by the CEA Focus Biomarkers grant.

Open access funding provided by Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives.

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Interdisciplinary Research Institute of Grenoble, IRIG-Biosanté, University Grenoble Alpes, CEA, INSERM, UMR 1292, F-38000, Grenoble, France

Dzenis Koca & Laurent Guyon

International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO), Genomic Epidemiology Branch, Lyon, France

Behnoush Abedi-Ardekani

Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives, DRF, Francois Jacob Institute of Biology, Hemato-Immunology Research Department, Saint-Louis Hospital, Paris, France

Joel LeMaoult

INSERM U976 HIPI Unit, IRSL, Université Paris, Paris, France

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Correspondence to Dzenis Koca or Laurent Guyon .

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The insights of allied health professionals transitioning from a matrix structure to a centralized profession-based structure within a public hospital setting

• Published: 30 August 2024

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• Gemma Turato   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9589-7425 1 ,
• John Whiteoak 2 &
• Florin Oprescu 2  

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To manage the challenges associated with increasing costs and demand for healthcare, administrators often propose a re-structure of the workforce to gain more efficiencies. However, this can have detrimental impacts on professions such as allied health if the uniqueness of this workforce is not taken into consideration before, during and after re-structuring. In the dynamic setting of public hospital bed-based services, allied health is highly complex, consisting of diverse professionals (e.g., audiology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, podiatry, pharmacy, dietetics, social work, and speech pathology), each requiring different technical expertise, training pathways, professional governance, and accountability. This case study evaluates the outcomes of a re-structure of allied health professionals working in bed-based services who transitioned from a matrix to a centralized structure of service delivery. Qualitative data were collected in a survey across three years to gain the perceptions from allied health staff about the impacts of the new structure. The results demonstrated that a centralized profession-based structure with single points of accountability was superior to a matrix structure in this context. The benefits identified included improved governance, administration efficiencies and cost-savings gained by having the budget and professional management aligned. This resulted in improved workforce planning and flexibility that delivered care to patients based on clinical priority. Further benefits included professional skills training pathways and succession planning across clinical specialties which enhanced career opportunities, all of which improved wellbeing and morale. These findings add to the sparse research pertaining to the components (structural, human and systems) to consider when incorporating allied health professionals in a proposed organizational design and the contingencies they require to operate successfully within certain contexts.

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To manage challenges associated with increasing costs and demand for healthcare, administrators have been looking for more efficient approaches in delivering quality care and enhancing performance. A common approach aimed at improving overall performance in many large organizations such as public hospitals has been to re-structure. However, past evidence has suggested that implementing structural change without due consideration of the unique requirements of health professionals such as allied health employees can have negative implications (Braithwaite et al. 2006 ; Law and Boyce 2003 ; Mickan et al. 2019 ). A review of allied health professionals (AHPs) working in Victoria, Australia concluded that there is no one best structural model for AHPs as they are a support workforce that connects and contributes to local priority requirements and systems (Buchan and Law 2016 ). Consequently, avoiding the ‘one size fits all’ approach is critical when an organization proposes a new structure that involves AHPs (Braithwaite et al. 2006 ; Law and Boyce 2003 ). This is the basic premise of organizational design theory which recognizes that there is not just one most suitable solution for organizing and that different organizations are not equally effective or efficient (Galbraith 1973 ; Burton and Obel 2018 ).

Organizational theory is defined by Jones ( 2013 ) as the “study of how organizations function and how they affect and are affected by the environment in which they operate” (pp. 30). The focus of organizational theory is to understand how to organize people and resources in order to achieve the organizations objectives (Greenwood and Miller 2020 ). Hence, in order to achieve its goals, the organization needs to focus on both structure and culture. Additionally, organizational design is about how and why various functions are chosen and puts pressure on individuals and work groups to behave in certain ways. Therefore, if the proper balance is not achieved, this can have significant impact on the organization’s performance (Jones 2013 ).

The multi-contingency theory of organizational design developed by Burton and Obel ( 2004 ) explains this further, by relating variations in organizational design to variations in the situation of the organization (i.e., its contingencies), which they conclude should be chosen based on the particular context. Furthermore, the description of the context should be multi-dimensional, including structural components (i.e., goals, strategy, structure, and tasks), human components (i.e., leadership, work processes, and people) and coordination (i.e., control systems, decision systems, information systems, and incentive mechanisms).

In this view, organizational design is more a process than a structure that is constantly adapting and evolving and planning for contingencies that may arise (Burton and Obel 2004 ). Further, the design of an organization shapes the flow of information, resources, and support, which effectively determines the powerholders (Myers 1996 ). Allied health employees are a good example of when the power imbalance in large healthcare organizations can create perceptions of inequitable treatment and lead to workers feeling disenfranchised. Even though AHPs constitute the second largest workforce within the health industry in Australia and make a significant contribution to health improvements, this contribution remains under recognized due to much of the health policy and funding focused predominantly on medicine and nursing (Buchan and Law 2016 ). Subsequently, AHPs are often not visible enough on the health policy agenda and there is little evidence available regarding their cost benefit and value. Consequently, there has been a relative lack of examination of the allied health workforce and how they contribute and influence in healthcare organizations. This has resulted in organizational designs that have minimal consideration given to AHPs and the contingencies that may impact their performance and wellbeing, which has ultimately resulted in unfavorable outcomes (Boyce 2006 ; Robinson and Compton 1996 ; Turato et al. 2023 ).

While there is some debate on the correct definition of this workforce (Turnbull et al. 2009 ), according to the Allied Health Professions Australia (AHPA, 2022), they are considered as health professionals that are separate to medicine, dental and nursing and provide specialized support across a variety of health services. Typically, these include audiology, dietetics, exercise physiology, occupational therapy, pharmacy, physiotherapy, podiatry, psychology, radiography, social work, and speech pathology. They usually operate autonomously and practice in an evidence-based paradigm, using an internationally recognized body of knowledge to provide optimal patient outcomes (AHPA, 2022).

The focus of AHPs in public hospital bed-based services is to work within a multidisciplinary team that delivers a coordinated approach to patient care (AHPA, 2022). This fast-paced context requires AHPs to make rapid clinical decisions frequently and be adaptable and flexible across clinical areas when under pressure to meet clinical demands (Philip 2015 ). They require highly technical knowledge and skills to deliver care in this setting (e.g., social worker organizing crisis accommodation, physiotherapist managing a severe respiratory condition to avoid an admission to the intensive care unit, occupational therapist fabricating a complex hand splint following trauma surgery, pharmacist assisting the medical team with medication management and dosage for acutely unwell patients). These types of pressures distinguish a public hospital bed-based setting from a community or primary care setting, in which the client group is not in the acute stages of treatment or requiring highly technical expertise from AHPs (Philip 2015 ). The relatively limited evidence suggests that for AHPs to function optimally in public hospital bed-based services requires an efficient and effective organizational design that takes into consideration both the multi-faceted nature of the allied health workforce and the layers of professional and clinical governance required to manage them effectively.

Given the specific needs of AHPs working in this sector of the hospital, this case study provides distinctive insights from AHPs, to better understand their operating requirements. This is important for hospital systems to understand if they are proposing to re-structure with the aim of delivering more efficient, sustainable, and effective services. Not taking into consideration the unique requirements of AHPs to function optimally and treating them the same as nursing and medicine is likely to result in poorer outcomes and impact performance (Turato et al. 2023 ). One of the key differences of AHPs when compared to nursing and medicine is the need for each individual allied health professional to navigate multiple identities with respect to their profession, the overarching allied health structure and alignment, and their inter-professional teams (Porter and Wilton 2020 ). The diversity of AHPs, each with different technical expertise, training pathways, sectors of practice and professional governance, makes AHPs working in hospital bed-based services highly complex. Therefore, as healthcare becomes increasingly complex, requiring seamless interdisciplinary teamwork and maximal return on investments in the health workforce, it is critical that the organizations in which AHPs work have considered the structural, human and system components of their design so that the widespread potential AHPs represent is fully realized (Australian Health Workforce Advisory Committee 2006 ).

In this study, the insights and experiences of hospital bed-based AHPs who were involved in a transition from a matrix to a centralized allied health structure were explored. The focus of the research was a large multi-site Australian public hospital and health service with five clinical orientated groupings (i.e., medical, surgical, women’s and children’s, community, and mental health). In 2017, the organization expanded to tertiary level services with the addition of a new hospital. In preparation for this, AHPs were dispersed into each of the five clinical groups under the management of a medical and nursing director. However, the matrix structure did not deliver upon the anticipated outcomes for AHPs working in the medical and surgical clinical groups with a range of unfavorable concerns reported (e.g., ambiguity, reduced workforce flexibility, increased cost, and low morale). Following consultation with key stakeholders and AHPs, a centralized allied health structure was implemented for AHPs working in the medical and surgical clinical units. To measure the outcomes, qualitative data were collected through an online survey in June 2020, 2021 and 2022 through open-ended questions and confirmatory meetings to verify generated themes.

This paper presents the findings of this iterative process and highlights the importance of implementing the ‘right structure’ which has the appropriate governance and support systems for AHPs working within hospital bed-based services. Further, it demonstrates the importance of healthcare administrators needing to be well informed about the complexities of AHPs before they consider embarking on structural change that incorporates AHPs in this context. This research contributes to relevant theory and practice by providing a deeper understanding of the type of structure and functions that may enhance AHPs experience of working in hospital bed-based services. Furthermore, the paper emphasizes that the unique contextual nuances of the work of AHPs are often overlooked during a re-structure, and this can have detrimental outcomes (Turato et al. 2023 ). Given there is limited empirical research about AHPs re-structuring in public hospital bed base services, understanding the experiences and insights of AHPs going through structural change, adds to the evidence that may enhance future structural re-organizations pertaining to this workforce and further maximize their potential and productivity in public hospital settings.

Background/theory

Organizational theory.

Organizational theory has developed over three eras’, with early organizational theorists classifying organizational structures as either mechanistic or organic (Anand and Daft 2007 ). The first era predominantly adopted mechanistic structures during the mid-1800s to the late 1970s and were designed for stable and simple organizational environments with low to moderate uncertainty. They were described as self-contained, top-down pyramids containing internal organizational processes that took in raw materials, transformed them into products which were then distributed to customers (Anand and Daft 2007 ). The second era included organic organizational structures and systems which were designed for unstable, complex, and changing environments, which mechanistic structures could not manage. This era gained momentum in the 1980s and extended through the mid-1990s and incorporated horizontal organic organizational designs with a flattened hierarchical, hybrid structure and cross-functional teams (Daft 2016 ).

A third era formed in the mid-1990s and extends to the present day, being driven by factors, such as the internet, global competition with low-cost labor; automation of supply chains and outsourcing of expertise to speed up production and delivery of products and services. During this period, structures evolved, including the functional, divisional, matrix, global geographic, modular, team-based, and virtual (Daft 2016 ). Given this case study focuses on the centralized divisional and matrix structures, a brief outline of each will be covered next.

The divisional structure incorporates several functional departments grouped under a division head. Each functional group in a division has its own marketing, sales, accounting, manufacturing, and production team. The advantages include, each specialty area can be more focused on the business and budget; employees understand their responsibilities; improved efficiencies of services; and easier coordination due to all the functions being accessible. The disadvantages of this structure include divisions becoming isolated and insular from one another and different systems, such as accounting, finance, and sales, may suffer from poor and infrequent communication and coordination of the organizations mission, direction, and values (Daft 2016 ).

The matrix structure is an organic structure aimed at responding to environmental uncertainty, complexity, and instability (Burton et al. 2015 ; Daft 2016 ). The matrix structure originated at a time in the 1960s when the United States aerospace firms contracted with the government. Since that time, this structure has been imitated and used by other industries and companies since it provides flexibility and helps integrate decision-making in functionally organized companies. The matrix design has formal authority along two dimensions: employees report to a functional, departmental boss and simultaneously to a product or project team boss. This dual reporting has been described as one of the significant weaknesses of matrix structures due to the confusion and conflicts employees experience in reporting to two bosses. Hence, a detailed design of the decision-making process at each junction point is required for a successful matrix organization (Burton et al. 2015 ; Daft 2016 ). Further, to be successful a matrix structure requires important contingencies, such as climate, leadership, knowledge sharing, information technology and incentives that are correctly designed and aligned with one another (Burton et al. 2015 ). The next section will briefly outline specific allied health structural approaches and summarize the implications for the provision of care by AHPs reported in literature.

Allied health models

During the mid-1990s, AHPs were commonly incorporated into the emerging organizational structures in healthcare, with a growing body of research being published about the impacts on AHPs (Law and Boyce 2003 ). It is generally recognized that allied health structures can be classified into four types: (1) the traditional medical model, (2) division of allied health, (3) clinical matrix and (4) integrated decentralization model (Boyce 1991 ). The traditional medical model is where individual profession-based departments report to a medical director (Boyce 1991 ; Law and Boyce 2003 ). This model is common practice in many smaller hospitals in which there are small numbers of AHPs. However, the model is rare in larger hospital settings in Australia where there are high employee numbers within each profession requiring professional governance and oversight (Boyce 2006 ).

In the allied health division model (i.e., centralized profession-based structure), a director of allied health is a member of the executive leadership group and AHPs are centralized into one division (Boyce 2001 ; Law and Boyce 2003 ). The main advantages of this model are argued to be improved communication flow between senior management and departmental managers, and it positions allied health as having more status and a collective identity (Boyce 2001 ). Disadvantages purported are the concentration of power in management, competition between the professions and less identification with a whole of organization view (Boyce 2001 ).

In healthcare organizations implementing the matrix structure involved giving financial control to clinical units and services being organized around patients rather than providers (Braithewaite et al. 2006 ; Law & Boyce 2003 ). This resulted in dispersing individual AHPs into clinical units with a dual authority relationship between professional and operational reporting lines (Boyce 2006 ). Often, an allied health advisor position at the executive level is appointed to address allied health issues occurring within the clinical sub-units (Boyce 2001 ). In the public hospital setting, literature suggests that a matrix structure delivers multiple benefits, such as reduced hospitalization time and costs, better accessibility for patients, and improved coordination of care (Braithwaite et al. 2006 ; Burton et al. 2015 ; Callan et al. 2007 ; Mueller and Neads 2005 ). The aim of including AHPs was to encourage better collaboration and cooperation across the multidisciplinary team (Porter and Wilton 2020 ). However, the growing evidence available reports many negative outcomes, including operational inefficiencies, loss of professional identity, ambiguity over dual reporting lines, low morale, poor job satisfaction and negative impacts to service delivery (Braithwaite et al. 2006 ; Callan et al. 2007 ; Porter and Wilton 2020 ; Robinson and Compton 1996 ; Turato et al. 2023 ).

The hybrid model classified as the integrated decentralization model is a combination of the allied health division and matrix structure (Boyce 1991 ). In this structure, allied health budgets remain under the control of allied health; however, clear documentation of how AHPs will provide care to each of the clinic units is often required. In this model, it is suggested that collaboration brings benefits of transparent operational and strategic planning, including the ability to implement research, clinical education, individual staff development and professional specific quality clinical services (Mueller and Neads 2005 ). However, this model requires good relationships between key stakeholders to ensure its viability.

The allied health models described above provide a brief overview of each with some demonstrating more potential advantages for AHPs. While the insights available on the impacts of structural change on AHPs is growing there is still limited research about the impacts for AHPs going through such change. In this study, the perceptions and experiences of AHPs who have transitioned from a matrix to a centralized allied health structure within public hospital bed-based services are explored. The aims of the study being to first add to the current gap in knowledge about factors that may mitigate negative experiences of AHPs when hospital administrators are considering a re-structure in this setting. Second, what structures and/or supporting strategies are required to meet the complex needs of AHPs working in this dynamic context. Hence, this case study addresses the following research question:

RQ1: What are the insights and experiences of AHPs transitioning from a matrix to a centralized profession-based structure within public hospital bed-based services?

Research context and case background

The region in Australia in which the study took place is described as peri-urban with an estimated population of 400,000 people in 2022. It is the fifth most populated area in Queensland and has grown steadily at an average annual rate of 2.4% year-on-year since 2018. It is a center for tourism, attracting more than 3.2 million visitors each year. The economy has outpaced most other regional economies in Australia in terms of growth over the last 15 years across several key sectors including healthcare, education, finance, and professional business services (Connection Australia 2023 ). The case study research occurred at a multi-campus hospital and health service, with a new tertiary facility opening in 2017. This facility provides tertiary level services to the community and the clinical capability to care for highly complex inpatient and ambulatory care services. The health service is an independent statutory body governed by a Board under the Hospital and Health Boards Act 2011. The health service operates according to a service agreement which identifies the services to be provided, funding arrangements, performance indicators and targets to ensure the expected health outcomes for the community are achieved.

To prepare for this expansion, the allied health workforce (approximately 600 staff) was integrated into the broader organization’s matrix structure in 2014. The organization believed this would support a multidisciplinary culture that was collaborative, reduce service gaps and improve consistency of allied health services. This in turn would involve AHPs in clinical directorate operational planning and improve the reporting of AHPs performance. The individual AHPs were assigned to one of five clinical orientated service groupings. These five groups were medical, surgical, women’s and families, mental health, and community. Medical imaging and pharmacy remained as standalone groups that reported operationally and professionally to a director of those professions. Each director subsequently reported to the service director in the medical group. The new tertiary facility provided the hospital and health service with a total bed count of approximately 884 beds in 2018, which increased to 1032 beds by 2022. The staffing grew from approximately 4500 full time (FTE) equivalent employees to 6500 in 2022 with an operating budget in the 2021–22 annual report of 1.45 billion dollars.

A consequence of the matrix structure was that the allied health executive lead and professional director roles were abolished. Figure  1 illustrates that these roles were replaced by allied health operational manager roles for each service group that were part of the multidisciplinary service group leadership team and a clinical director of allied health role which provided overall professional leadership for allied health.

Allied Health organizational chart following alignment to the matrix-oriented clinical directorate structure

The AHPs in the matrix structure reported operationally to an allied health manager and professionally to a professional leader role (i.e., horizontal gray line in Fig.  1 ) that did not have operational or budgetary responsibility. This resulted in many AHPs having dual reporting responsibilities to either an allied health manager or lead for operational requirements and a professional lead for professional governance (Turato et al. 2023 ).

The structural change to a matrix alignment was met with a range of negative consequences particularly within the medical and surgical groups (Turato et al. 2023 ). Some of these included confusion over reporting lines with multiple conversations needed to resolve workforce matters. Another included increased costs and inefficiencies due to more administration (e.g., several AHPs were aggregate employees with more than one position number for each clinical unit they were working for, with some staff having up to four position numbers). The increase in position numbers multiplied the paperwork involved to manage the employee, hence increasing the cost, time, potential errors, and re-work required. This led to limited opportunities for staff rotations and career opportunities due to the administration needed to manage this. Others included limited growth in staffing levels due to the budget being owned by each clinical unit and often allied health staffing was not advocated for or understood by the clinical unit (e.g., decisions about increasing allied health FTE and in which profession often had no robust planning or reasoning). A further concern raised by AHPs was the overall voice of allied health in the organization was minimized due to the matrix structure, which resulted in AHPs reporting a perceived lower status within the organization. All these factors ultimately led to lowered morale and wellbeing being reported (i.e., public sector employee opinion survey results from 2017 to 2019).

The negative impacts reported led to a strategic decision to implement a centralized allied health structure by amalgamating AHPs in the medical and surgical groups. The posited aims of the shift back to a centralized structure included:

Reduce patient risk through an enhanced discipline lens.

Decrease confusion over reporting lines and improved communication.

Decrease duplication of tasks for AHPs within each service group.

Improve flexibility to mobilize AHPs based on clinical priority.

Improve governance and accountability for AHPs.

Decrease administration time and structural inefficiencies.

Improve support to the facilities outside of the tertiary facility.

Improve the ability to implement new models of care, innovation, and research.

The centralized allied health structure commenced in January 2020 and re-introduced what had been dismantled in 2014. The structure abolished the professional lead and allied health manager roles and created professional director roles that were responsible for both operational and professional requirements. The clinical director allied health role was re-aligned to an executive director allied health role which reported to the chief executive. Figure  2 illustrates the organizational chart for the centralized allied health structure.

Allied Health Centralized Structure

Study design

This research presents qualitative data that were collected through an open-ended questionnaire using an online survey. The questions focused on why and/or how AHPs perceived the new centralized structure and was repeated annually for 3 years (i.e., 2020, 2021 and 2022). Follow-up confirmatory meetings with each profession were also conducted to confirm the themes derived from the survey feedback.

The survey asked participants to consent for their data to be used for research. Participants who did not provide consent were removed from the final research analysis. The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Ethics Committee of The Prince Charles Hospital, Queensland Health Human Research Committee (HREC 18/QPCH/238 on 30/08/2021).

Participants/data collection

Table 1 provides the types of professions and number of staff who consented to participate in the study. The new allied health structure incorporated hospital bed-based services within the Medical and Surgical groups with a total FTE of approximately 400 by 2022. During the planning phase of the study, staff expressed concern over being identifiable if they participated in a survey. For example, the professions with small numbers of staff (i.e., audiology, podiatry, psychology) perceived they could be identifiable if they were asked to disclose gender, age range, years in the profession / organization, level of education etc. Therefore, to encourage increased participation, demographic data were kept to a minimum, with the focus of the survey being on gaining qualitative feedback on the structural change.

This sector of the workforce is typically made up of a range of staffing levels from assistants, new graduates, base grade, senior, advanced and management levels. The staff who took part within each profession are typically representative of the professional roles that work in this sector. Not surprisingly, the professions of physiotherapy, occupational therapy and social work have higher numbers of clinicians working within bed-based services and hence have higher representation in the survey results. Additionally, the total number of employees who participated in the survey by profession is indicated in brackets in Table  1 to demonstrate how representative the sample is of the total population for that profession.

The profession of pharmacy was initially not included in the new centralized structure. This profession was incorporated into the new structure in 2021, but after the 2021 survey was administered. This would explain the no response rate from this profession in 2020 and 2021, but a higher completion rate in 2022. Medical imaging was not incorporated within the new allied health centralized structure and did not participate in the survey.

The response rate ranged from 25% (2020), 23% (2021) and 24% (2022) across the three years. This is a comparable response rate to a similar study published by Porter & Wilton ( 2020 ) on professional identity, in which they collected data following an organizational re-structuring in which AHPs were integrated into a matrix structure, within a large multi-site health network in Victoria, Australia. The survey response rate for each survey conducted pre and post was 23.4% and 20.8%.

The survey asked two open-ended questions about what AHPs perceived to be the barriers or issues regarding the centralized structure and what they believed were the enablers or suggestions to improve the implementation. In addition, participants were asked to provide feedback on the structural change against the aims and reasons for implementing the change (see Appendix 1 for a copy of the survey).

To analyze the narrative data, a manual thematic analysis was completed using a six-phase thematic analysis methodology developed by Braun and Clarke, ( 2006 ). The data analysis method contains a rigorous coding and categorizing methodology that is driven by the data collected during the evaluation process, rather than any analytic preconceptions (Nowell et al. 2017 ). The analysis involved an inductive approach that first identifies themes, which are analyzed initially in a descriptive form before progressing to an interpretive form. The interpretive form attempts to look beyond the surface of the data where the broader meaning and ultimate implications of the themes/patterns are deduced via engagement with the literature (Braun and Clarke 2006 ).

To extrapolate the underlying themes, the first phase involved migrating the raw narrative data from the surveys to column A in a Microsoft Excel worksheet (one sheet per survey question 3, 4 and 5). The primary researcher spent time reading and re-reading the raw data for each of these questions, noting down initial ideas, thoughts, and potential codes/themes (in column B). The primary researcher used this part of the process as a key phase of data analysis—in other words, as an interpretive act (Lapadat and Lindsay 1999 ) in which the primary researcher looked for meaning in the data.

The second phase included generating a single column of all comments per question 3, 4 and 5. The single column of data per question was sorted and reviewed to remove any duplicate entries. The next step was the coding process to determine the potential themes emerging from the data. There were no pre-determined thematic areas in place before the coding process was initiated. For the coding process, each individual cell (participant comment) from the single column of data per question 3, 4, and 5 was reviewed and assigned a potential thematic area, to which a cell color code was applied (yellow, blue, orange, gray etc.).

This data-driven, inductive approach ultimately led to the identification of initial thematic areas, each labeled with a different color. The types of themes that came out of the data were based on similarities of words to create the theme. For example, for the barriers/issues question 4, many participants talked about the problems related to arduous administration tasks. These types of comments were then coded to capture the essence of what the participants were expressing e.g., inefficient, and arduous administration. The codes were then assigned to potential themes for question 4 of which one included “inefficient administration.” In contrast, for question 3 pertaining to whether the aims were being met, many perceived significant improvement and efficiencies with administration, with the code phrased as, “improved administration.” The codes from question 3 were then placed against potential themes with those related to better administration coming under the theme of “ improved systems / processes ” for further analysis and discussion. If some points fell under two themes, the worksheet cell with the raw data was duplicated and each cell color-coded appropriately to ensure everything was recorded. Using the Excel sorting tool, the data was sorted by the color assigned to each cell, and therefore by thematic area. This sorting and collation approach brought together all the key points on each theme which determined the frequency of a theme raised by participants, which in turn assisted the researchers in determining the prominence of a theme (e.g., for the aims question, the frequency of respondents perceiving whether they believed all the aims were being met, versus whether they thought one or more were not being met was carefully considered in the analysis). After sorting and combining similar statements, the initial color-coded data analysis resulted in a list of comments sorted against potential codes/themes by each of the selected questions.

In phase three, the researchers analyzed and interpreted the data to make overall sense of it, rather than just paraphrasing or describing the data. Following the initial coding exercise, the data was copied for each question to a second Excel worksheet. This step involved a “first pass” over the data and involved grouping similar comments to consolidate the data. Every time the pass was performed for each thematic area per question, the data was moved to a new excel worksheet. The reason for the multiple worksheets was that the researchers could go back a step to the previous unconsolidated data set if needed.

To limit researcher bias and ensure the data was credible and accurate, phase four involved a two-researcher confirmation approach, in which each stage of the data analysis was reviewed. The first level involved reviewing at the level of the coded data extracts to determine if they formed a coherent pattern. If this was the case, the researcher then moved onto the second level of this phase to determine the validity of individual themes in relation to the data set. The primary researcher completed a re-read of the entire data set to firstly ascertain whether the themes worked in relation to the data set and secondly to code any additional data within the themes that had been missed in earlier coding stages. The data pass steps were repeated five times (constant comparative analysis) to finally generate the most prominent themes. This process generated a thematic map of the analysis to ensure the analysis and data matched each other. The primary researcher stopped this process once the refinements of the data did not add anything substantial and used two ways to arrange and analyze the data. The first being most prevalent theme to the least prevalent related to the frequency of the information being raised by participants. The second included the Rashomon effect whereby the same event is described from the perspective of more than one participant (Sandelowski 1998 ).

Phase five defined and named the themes, which started once both researchers were satisfied with the thematic map of the data. This involved the researchers defining and further refining the themes to identify the essence of what each theme was about and determining what aspect of the data each theme captured. This phase included reporting of the themes and presenting these to AHPs who had the opportunity to complete the anonymous survey and who volunteered to attend one of a series of confirmation meetings. These meetings clarified and corroborated the generated themes, which confirmed the final set of emergent themes. It is important to note that the aims, barriers, and solutions will be discussed next under four key themes in a combined approach due to many of the solutions being similar to the aims of the new structure and a reverse of the barriers. This avoided duplicating information throughout the results/discussion section.

Results and discussion

Theme 1: systems and processes.

The most prominent theme across the three years was that the centralized structure had greatly improved the systems and processes necessary for AHPs to operate their essential functions within hospital bed-based services. The findings about improvement in systems and processes are similar to the studies outlined in the literature that describe comparable benefits of a centralized allied health profession-based structure in public hospital settings (Law and Boyce 2003 ; Mickan et al 2019 ; Robinson and Compton 1996 ). The following comment sums up the general sentiment of the participants across the three years, “I think overall things are going really well for allied health and the new structure is delivering on the aims it set out to achieve, there is a real sense of hope for the future” (occupational therapist). The survey data indicated a high proportion of AHPs perceived the posited aims of the new structure were being achieved and that a centralized structure in bed-based services for AHPs worked well. This was also confirmed at the confirmatory meetings; however, it was highlighted at these meetings that each profession needed a governance structure that could accommodate their diverse professional requirements.

Thus, a prominent and positive structural feature highlighted by participants was the single point of accountability for each profession, which they believed improved processes by decreasing ambiguity and improving communication (Mickan et al 2019 ). Comments highlighting this included, “ the clear reporting lines and channels of communication improves the speed of response to service needs” (physiotherapist) and “ the new structure is a positive change with less confusion around reporting lines” (speech pathologist). Furthermore, one reporting line decreased the duplication of tasks and subsequently streamlined payroll and administration duties. This resulted in significantly less employees with multiple position numbers, reducing the time required to perform many related administrative tasks, which resulted in improved efficiencies. The following comments reinforced this view point, “the reporting lines are easier to navigate for operational and clinical needs” (social worker) and “ direct reporting lines via each profession means that administrative tasks are more streamlined” (psychologist) and “communication and the ability to implement new models of care appear to be more streamlined and better supported” (physiotherapist) and “the new structure is much more efficient from an admin and payroll perspective, I don’t need to spend hours correcting payroll errors, thank you” (administration staff member). These benefits had substantial implications for not only the AHPs but also the organization due to more streamlined and efficient processes. For example, the grouping of each profession enabled the director of each professional area to complete and approve actions more promptly, reducing duplication of resources and costly administration errors.

Another prominent benefit of single lines of accountability included each director’s ability to flexibly mobilize their staff more seamlessly. This created better delivery of prioritized clinical services due to less arduous negotiations with medical and nursing administrators. It also significantly improved the governance and accountability of staff within each profession. Moreover, the feedback from the participants suggested they believed this reduced patient risk by having an enhanced professional lens through high standards of professional supervision, skills training and support. The following comments sums up the general sentiment, “there is a sense of team, improved accountability and enhanced professional support and career opportunities with the new structure, as well as improved staff mobilization to cover emergent leave” (speech pathologist). Participants reported satisfaction with being able to rotate between clinical specialties which enhanced their career opportunities and succession planning.

One of the few related examples in the literature included research by Robinson and Compton ( 1996 ) which provided practical learnings from their re-structuring from a matrix to a centralized model for physiotherapy staff. Similar to the findings in this case study, they demonstrated for the physiotherapy profession multiple benefits of a centralized model in hospital bed-based services when compared to a matrix model in a very short period. One prominent similarity found not only for physiotherapy, but for all the professions included the operating improvements such as maintenance of staffing levels due to being able to have control of the budget. This resulted in savings being made very quickly due to streamlining processes, such as recruitment, rostering, backfill, ordering non-labor stock, etc. The following comment highlights this, “ we can take a whole of profession approach to movement of staffing into areas of higher need which is appreciated and effective especially throughout times of significant unplanned leave due to COVID and needing to isolate” (occupational therapist).

Many of the system and process efficiencies gained from each profession having control of budget was due to the in-depth understanding and knowledge the directors had about their profession and how best to govern, roster and manage the workforce seamlessly when compared to the previous structure in which the operational manager was not of the same profession, which often resulted in arduous communications between multiple stakeholders to manage clinical demand across the clinical units.

Theme 2: professional identity

The second prominent theme demonstrated that the identity of each profession developed very quickly within the centralized structure and the participants generally expressed they felt more supported and comfortable within their own profession. The data analyzed from the survey results (and confirmed at profession meetings) reported that many respondents perceived that returning to a profession-based structure was positive. A high proportion of participants indicated that operating as professional groups and being in an allied health centralized structure was a better person-environment fit in comparison to the change associated with working in a matrix structure. For many of the AHPs, they perceived a strong sense of familiarity and belonging to their profession and to allied health when compared to their sense of belonging to their clinical unit and the organization. The following comment supports the general sentiment, “ profession specific led teams is proven to work, and this is how other tertiary facilities in Queensland run. Having a different profession govern a discipline they know very little about is a recipe for disaster which we have proven in our previous structure” (dietitian).

This aligns to findings in research which has previously identified the importance of professional identity among AHPs (Braithwaite et al. 2006 ; Porter andWilton 2020 ). This is consistent with the multitude of comments from participants that the new structure was providing strong governance and accountability for each profession. The following comment highlights the general perception from participants, “ the centralized structure provides stronger accountability across the organization and uniform governance and consistency for allied health staff” (psychologist). This is particularly important in hospital bed-based services given the highly specialized skills required to work competently in this setting. In contrast, there was a small number of respondents that identified more positively with the matrix structure, describing a strong allegiance with their multidisciplinary team and/or clinical unit. Therefore, the findings reinforce the importance of managing professional identity of AHPs during structural change, given their experiences of the structural alignment can be perceived differently (Beasley et al. 2020 ; Porter andWilton 2020 ).

This can be explained through Social Identity Theory in which an individual identifies with social groups partly to enhance self-esteem, which is probably why, in this case some of the AHPs did not adjust well to the new structure, even though transitioning to being a member of their own professional group would have been familiar to them (Ashforth and Mael 1989 ). Some AHPs felt a sense of loss for their multidisciplinary leader who provided them with positive reinforcement. The following comment highlights this, “I am concerned that the profession specific model loses the importance of multidisciplinary care and fails to acknowledge how this profession-based change impacts service delivery. I think we need to have the multidisciplinary allied health lead in each clinical unit like before we re-structured to ensure we don’t silo into professions when delivering care to patients” (Physiotherapist).

This case study highlights that any type of structural change in healthcare is likely to impact professional identity in allied health due to the diversity of professions and that this needs to be managed accordingly. Beasley et al. ( 2020 ) recommended organizations recognize that AHPs are autonomous clinicians, who are members of several groups (i.e., own profession, healthcare teams and the organization), with all of these diverse roles influencing both their response and adaption to change. They stated that clear communication and affording opportunities to make decisions and provide feedback can improve employees’ perceptions of change and positively impact their wellbeing (Beasley et al. 2020 ; Byers 2017 ). Furthermore, Braithewaite et al. ( 2005 ) recommended organizations concurrently consider both the previous and the new identities throughout a re-structure by explaining the change initiative and supporting employees to transition from the old to the new identity. This approach can help to ensure security for employees, whose group status is threatened by the change process, as well as broaden perceptions of the ingroup, thereby assisting their acceptance of the new, post-change structure. This point flows into the third prominent theme pertaining to staff morale and wellbeing.

Theme 3: morale and wellbeing

Although the written responses analyzed from the survey questions indicated that a high proportion of participants believed the centralized allied health structure was a positive change, the findings also demonstrated that staff perceived morale and wellbeing to be an issue and was negatively impacted across the time the matrix structure was in place. This case study found low morale and wellbeing before re-structuring AHPs working in hospital bed-based services into a centralized allied health structure. This was suggested to be more inherent in broader change that was occurring and associated with several years of ongoing budget cuts and organizational change in adjusting to a new tertiary facility. While there were many supporting statements the following comment expresses the general perception, “there has been many years of incessant change and a lack of support and resourcing for clinical practitioners, with an expectation to just keep doing more with less due to the ongoing issues with the organizations budget” (social worker).

Another influencing factor that occurred a few months following the re-structure was the COVID-19 pandemic, which participants perceived impacted morale and wellbeing. Literature describes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which overwhelmed and stretched healthcare systems past their limits in terms of capacity and resources, while striving to continue to deliver quality care (Søvold et al. 2021 ). This resulted in significant impacts on the mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of frontline healthcare workers (including AHPs) and increased risk of depression and burnout (Søvold et al. 2021 ; Willis et al. 2021 ). The following comment supports this view, “the workloads are unrelenting and leading to both overt and silent burnout. Increasing patient complexity and volume is beyond that which allied health staff can meet discharge planning and patient care demands” (occupational therapist).

Within the narrative feedback, many comments were made that staff were thankful of being in a profession-based structure at the time the pandemic started. Participants believed the one line of accountability and professional expertise allowed immediate decision-making such as being able to mobilize staff quickly to the areas of most need. The following comment highlights this point, “the new structure brought each profession together as a cohesive team which was invaluable during the pandemic where we needed the support from colleagues in our profession to cope and meet the demands” (physiotherapist). During the pandemic, it became very clear that having a flexible and adaptable workforce and an overall professional director that understood the complexities and skill sets of their professional group was extremely important due to managing higher numbers of emergent sick leave.

The negative impact of the pandemic on staff morale and wellbeing was a prominent theme in both the 2021 and 2022 survey results due to workforce shortages and staff feeling significant pressure to do more with less with comments like, “ although overall I agree the new allied health structure has improved a number of parameters, the projected benefits have been clouded by other variables notably budget constraints and ongoing emergent leave due to the pandemic impacting resources” (social worker). Even though the structure was considered positive, the pandemic added another layer of complexity that impacted staff morale negatively within the new structure. The pandemic placed added strain on staffing levels across allied health, nursing, medicine, operational and administration. The staff shortages impacted the organization’s budget as shifts needed to be replaced or staff paid overtime to ensure there were adequate levels of staffing on the inpatient units. Many staff commented, “staff morale could have been much worse in allied health if the matrix structure had still been in place as we would not have been able to be so adaptable and flexible within in our professions” (speech pathologist). Therefore, even with the pressures described, the perception from AHPs was that morale had improved because of the new structure due to increased collaboration and support within each profession. Even though improvement in morale was evident within the allied health workforce, many of the participants perceived low morale was still an issue that required a targeted approach by the allied health leaders, which is discussed next.

Theme 4: Leadership training and resources to support the change

The final prominent theme from the data analysis was extrapolated from the open-ended question pertaining to the enablers that could improve the re-structure. The most prominent were resources and leadership, with many respondents reporting a perceived lack of project support in implementing the new structure. Even though many of the respondents believed the new structure had improved the operating systems, they perceived there was not enough resourcing to support the leaders to implement the change effectively with comments like, “the structure is much better from an operating perspective, however more project resources are needed to help the leaders embed the new structure, particularly business, administration and human resource support for team building and helping staff to accept the change” (physiotherapist). Across the three years, the feedback continued to have a strong theme around lack of resourcing and the need to provide a dedicated project or workforce development officer role(s) so the professional directors could meet all the requirements to implement the change. There was the perception from participants that the under resourcing may have impacted the potential benefits of the re-structure.

Furthermore, the participants described concerns over the professional directors being reactive and that there was a lack of consistency between professions that was reinforcing the perception by participants that the professions were siloing and doing their own thing. The following comment sums up the general sentiment of the survey feedback, “ the professional directors need to establish consistency across the professions in relation to portfolios, expectations, accountability and workloads” (psychologist).

A related theme raised by some participants was the lack of perceived capability and competence pertaining to management and leadership. The director roles were new positions created as part of the re-structure, with some being new incumbents to the organization. It was suggested the directors were not provided with the training they needed to lead and manage complex change. Many participants reinforced this point by providing feedback that for the allied health culture to improve more training was required for some of the professional directors to gain the necessary skills to do this effectively. Comments that reinforce this include, “strong directorship is required to ensure a positive culture, and to support staff to provide safe clinical care, managers need to be empathetic, visible and connect with their staff” (physiotherapist) and “leadership and management training for some professional directors on how to effectively conduct strategic planning, communicate change, lead teams etc. is needed” (social worker).

Mickan et al. ( 2019 ) supported these findings, concluding from their study of allied health managers and employees that for a structure to be successful credible, skilled, and respected allied health leaders were required to enact the systems and processes between AHPs and clinical service managers to ensure the necessary integration within clinical teams. Turato et al. ( 2022 ) findings emphasized the importance of allied health leaders developing the necessary skills in human resource management in hospitals to effectively manage relationships among people. They concluded this would improve morale and wellbeing as allied health managers and leaders would be better equipped to manage incivility through complex change. The following comments emphasize this theme, “ the professional directors should be trained in advanced communication and management skills and they must have a sense of empathy which is almost always overlooked when appointing someone into a management position however, I believe it is a key attribute in managing a large team” (dietitian) and “the allied health leaders need to better understand the needs of clinical practitioners and make an effort to plan collaboratively, in a way that supports direct clinical care” (occupational therapist) .

Conclusions

This study reports on the perceptions, thoughts, and insights of AHPs working in hospital bed-based services that have re-structured from a matrix to a centralized allied health profession-based structure and the consequential impacts on the workforce. The results from the experiences and insights of participants in this case study demonstrated that within public hospital bed-based services, a centralized allied health structure was considered superior to a matrix structure (Boyce 2001 , 2006 ; Mickan et al. 2019 ; Robinson and Compton 1996 ).

The reasons why the centralized structure was superior for AHPs working in bed-based services can be explained through the theory of organizational design, which not only highlights the importance of context, but also in taking a systematic approach to aligning structures, processes, leadership, culture, people, practices, and metrics to enable optimal performance (Burton and Obel 2018 ). Ultimately, the centralized allied health structure was a better person-context fit than the matrix structure. The main reasons being that the centralized structure supported AHPs to operate both administration and clinical practices efficiently through single lines of accountability that could effectively govern and support each profession, all of which improved the culture and morale of AHPs in bed-based services.

In contrast, the previous matrix structure was described by AHPs in this context as complex and confusing, which is reinforced by past research regarding the tell-tale signs of when a matrix structure is failing. The signs included the operational managers not having the necessary knowledge to effectively solve problems being raised by the professional managers. The operations were not coordinated, resource utilization was inefficient and costly, the clinical units were spending excessive time trying to coordinate and negotiate with each other, all of which resulted in staff feeling unhappy and confused (Burton and Obel 2018 ). Further issues described in literature and found in this case study were loss of professional identity, ambiguity, inconsistency, and frequent disagreements which further contributed to lower staff morale among AHPs (Robinson and Compton 1996 ; Turato et al 2023 ).

Hence, this case study demonstrates that an acute and sub-acute bed-based setting is different to other environments in which AHPs work, such as community and primary care settings, outside of the hospital context. In community and primary care settings, staff work autonomously as case managers with a caseload of predominantly medically stable patients that are managed by their local doctor. The pace is slower with minimal pressure to discharge patients quickly from doctors, nurses and administrators that need access to inpatient beds. Therefore, the systems, processes and people can be managed more effectively to cope with sudden changes such as emergent leave, etc. Furthermore, staff who work in these contexts are often more senior AHPs who require less supervision, training, and governance due to having years of experience and expertise. Hence, the structural issues experienced in a fast-paced dynamic hospital setting do not appear to have the same impacts in settings where AHPs work as case managers.

In this case study, the matrix structure did not deliver on the anticipated outcomes for AHPs because the systems, processes and lines of authority required for AHPs to work effectively in this context were not appropriately executed and maintained. Moreover, the climate, leadership, knowledge sharing and decision-making processes at each junction point were not clearly defined or performing (Burton and Obel 2018 ). Further, the findings demonstrate for a matrix structure to work effectively, highly competent allied health managers who have good interpersonal communication, conflict management, negotiation, and political skills to manage up and down the organization is essential (Burton and Obel 2018 ).

This is also true for the centralized structure, even with single lines of accountability, the findings highlighted that leadership/management preparation and training for each professional manager is crucial before, during and after implementation to embed the new structure, manage complex change and ensure efficient performance. The findings demonstrated that this could have done better, including the provision of skilled project resources to support the professional managers to embed the new structure. Finally, the change in professional identity for AHPs is important to consider and manage to ensure consistency within and across professions, particularly in relation to the multidisciplinary team (i.e., individual professional identity versus the overall allied health identities at the clinical unit and management level). Even though the AHPs were returning to a familiar professional identity, it became clear that this needed to be more clearly defined, particularly for those clinicians who had an overall allied health leadership role within the multidisciplinary team.

This case study provides learnings that would be worth further investigation. The first being the importance of considering the evidence and theory of organizational design during the planning phase of a new structure so that all contingencies are considered in relation to AHPs working in contexts such as bed-based services. A number of factors may have contributed to this not being done in this case study, one of which included AHPs not having an allied health role on executive that could inform and provide counsel to administrators about the potential negative outcomes of the matrix structure for AHPs working in bed-based services. Another included the transitioning from regional to tertiary level services and the commissioning team not having a good understanding of what AHPs required to function, but rather taking a global organizational design perspective (i.e., one size fits all approach), which did not consider the specific needs of each professional group and what would be required for a matrix structure to be successful.

The findings in this case study add to the literature and emphasize that the context of public hospital bed-based services is not the same as other contexts and that the way AHPs are structured does have significant impact on their functioning. AHPs in this fast-paced setting need highly specialized skills and clearly defined operational and professional governance structures, systems, and processes in place to function optimally. Furthermore, competent profession-based management and leadership is required to ensure the unique and diverse requirements of each profession is being governed appropriately so AHPs can deliver high quality and prioritized clinical care. Additionally, both executive and professional director organizational representation and advocacy for AHPs in this context is vital so AHPs can contribute positively to the organization’s objectives and performance. In conclusion, there is a need for further research that investigates and reports upon AHPs unique and dynamic professional contexts in which they operate, their position in the healthcare system and the ways in which they respond and adapt to change during organizational re-structures, including the external impacts imposed upon them (Boyce 2001 ; Callan et al. 2007 ; Porter and Wilton 2020 ; Turato et al. 2023 ). Specifically, further research regarding hospital system organizational design components pertaining to AHPs is encouraged, such as resource availability, training, staff turnover, morale, creation of a shared identity, representation, and system efficiencies, such as cost reduction.

Practical implications

This case study warns against organizations re-structuring AHPs in hospital bed-based services without considering the diverse requirements for AHPs to operate successfully in this context. Lack of due diligence in the planning phases of a new or modified organizational design can have substantial detrimental impacts on professional identity, morale and wellbeing and productivity, all of which can lead to poor or delayed outcomes for professional groups such as allied health. Furthermore, Braithewaite (2005) suggests allied health service restructurings would benefit from a combination of process and outcome evaluation measures (e.g., professional identity, retention, staff satisfaction and clinical outcomes). Hence, the findings highlight the importance of considering an evidence-based approach when proposing a new structure in healthcare organizations so critical discussions about how organizational designs can be utilized to enhance service provision by AHPs within particular contexts are prominent. This approach would provide comprehensive evidence for healthcare administrators and commissioning teams to consider before they embark on widespread organizational change (Braithwaite et al. 2005 ; Turato et al. 2023 ).

Data availability

All data have been de-identified and is stored in a workplace drive that is protected by username and password, which can be made available upon request.

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The first author would like to acknowledge the support given by the Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Service with administrative and in-kind provisions.

Institutional review board statement

The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Ethics Committee of The Prince Charles Hospital, Queensland Health Human Research (HREC 18/QPCH/238 on 5 July 2018 with an additional approval letter received by TPCH HREC to complete a follow-up survey on 30/08/2021).

Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions. This research received no external funding.

Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Service, Sunshine Coast, Birtinya, Australia

Gemma Turato

University of the Sunshine Coast, Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, Australia

John Whiteoak & Florin Oprescu

G.T. designed the study and drafted the initial manuscript, which was reviewed and edited by J.W. & R.O. All the authors were equally involved in the analysis of the results and the discussions that led to G.T. finalising the manuscript, which J.W. and R.O reviewed / edited before G.T. submitted to the journal.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gemma Turato .

Consent for publication.

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Competing interests

The first author declares a conflict of interest due to being the executive allied health leader within the organization in which the study took place, which might be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results. This was mitigated with the oversight of the second and third authors who reviewed the representation or interpretation of the data to ensure there was no bias.

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Allied health survey

The new centralized allied health structure for hospital bed-based services went live on 28 January 2020. It was decided the best way to gain feedback about how the new structure is progressing was by an annual confidential survey and follow-up meetings with each profession. We are now asking for your feedback as your opinion is highly valued and very important. The survey will take about 15–20 min to complete; thank you very much for taking the time to answer the following questions:

Do you consent for the confidential data you input into this survey be utilized for research?

Yes, I give consent.

No, I would rather not give consent.

What is your discipline?

Administration.

Allied Health Assistant.

Nutrition & Dietetics.

Occupational Therapy.

Physiotherapy.

Psychology.

Social Work.

Speech Pathology.

Below are the aims and reasons for implementing the change. Please provide your feedback on which of the aims you believe the new structure is achieving and which require more work. Please be specific and provide as much detail as you can about why an aim is being achieved or not achieved.

Reduced patient risk through an enhanced discipline lens

Decreased confusion over reporting lines and improved communication to allied health staff

Decreased duplication of tasks for allied health staff within each service group, e.g., quality, education and training programs, supervision, rostering, mandatory training, and workforce planning tasks such as leave management

Improved flexibility to mobilize the allied health workforce based on clinical priority

Improved governance and accountability of allied health staff

Decreased administration time required to maintain the centralized allied health structure when comparted to the previous matrix (dispersed) structure: i.e., payroll tasks, maintaining rosters, workforce planning

Improved support to the facilities outside of the tertiary facility

Improved ability to implement new models of care, innovation, and research

Please provide as much detail as to whether you believe the reasons/aims for implementation are being achieved (or not achieved) and why.

Please list any barriers or issues you perceive regarding the new structure, providing as much detail as you can about the barrier and/or issue.

Please add any enablers or suggestions that would improve the new structure, providing as much detail as you can about the enabler or suggestion.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Turato, G., Whiteoak, J. & Oprescu, F. The insights of allied health professionals transitioning from a matrix structure to a centralized profession-based structure within a public hospital setting. J Org Design (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41469-024-00178-w

Received : 29 March 2023

Accepted : 20 August 2024

Published : 30 August 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s41469-024-00178-w

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2. literature review, 3. research design, 3.1. model construction, 3.2. data description, 4. empirical analysis, 4.1. stochastic frontier gravity model, 4.2. trade inefficiency model, 4.3. robustness test, 5. extended analysis, 6. discussion and conclusions, 6.1. discussion, 6.2. conclusions, 6.3. recommendations, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Wang, X.; Zhang, J.; Zhu, Y. Barriers to Digital Services Trade and Export Efficiency of Digital Services. Sustainability 2024 , 16 , 7517. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177517

Wang X, Zhang J, Zhu Y. Barriers to Digital Services Trade and Export Efficiency of Digital Services. Sustainability . 2024; 16(17):7517. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177517

Wang, Xiaomei, Jia Zhang, and Yixin Zhu. 2024. "Barriers to Digital Services Trade and Export Efficiency of Digital Services" Sustainability 16, no. 17: 7517. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177517

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An international rules system on digital trade that can satisfy multilateral interest appeal has not been formed yet despite the rapid growth of digital services trade. Using the panel data of 39 countries from 2010 to 2019, this study applied the stochastic frontier gravity model to analyze the influence of five types of barriers to digital services trade on the export efficiency of digital ...

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