Sections of a Research Report

Preamble:
We discussed in the previous Lesson:
Writing a Report for Research / Term Paper
 Purpose of a Research Report
 Common Mistakes to Avoid
 Structure and Writing Style
Learning Outcomes:
 Understanding and application of the content regarding research proposal and writing
it accordingly.
Topic of the day:
Writing a Report for Research / Term Paper
 Sections of a Research Proposal

In general your report should include the following sections:

I. Title
This is just a tentative title for your intended research. You will be able to revise your title
during the course of your research if you are accepted for admission.
II. Abstract
The report should include a concise statement of your intended research of no more than 100
words. This may be a couple of sentences setting out the problem that you want to examine or
the central question that you wish to address.
III. 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
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 thats
answers the following four questions:
1. What is the central research problem?
2. What is the topic of study related to that problem?
3. What methods should be used to analyze the research problem?
4. Why is this research important and why should someone reading the proposal care
about the outcomes from the study?
IV. Background and Significance
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.
You should therefore explain why your research is important (for example, by explaining
how your research builds on and adds to the current state of knowledge in the field or by
setting out reasons why it is timely to research your proposed topic).

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.

V. Research Questions
The proposal should set out the central aims and questions that will guide your research.
Before writing your proposal, you should take time to reflect on the key questions that you
are seeking to answer. Many research proposals are too broad, so reflecting on your key
research questions is a good way to make sure that your project is sufficiently narrow and
feasible (i.e. one that is likely to be completed with the normal period for an MPhil or PhD
degree).
You might find it helpful to prioritize one or two main questions, from which you can then
derive a number of secondary research questions. The proposal should also explain your
intended approach to answering the questions: will your approach be empirical, doctrinal or
theoretical etc?

VI. Literature Review

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:
1. Cite: keep the primary focus on the literature pertinent to your research problem.
2. 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?
3. Contrast the various arguments, themes, methodologies, approaches and
controversies expressed in the literature: what are the major areas of disagreement,
controversy, or debate?
4. 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.].
5. 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?

VII. Research Design and Methods

5. Research Methods
The proposal should outline your research methods, explaining how you are going to conduct
your research. Your methods may include visiting particular libraries or archives, field work
or interviews.
Most research is library-based. If your proposed research is library-based, you should explain
where your key resources (e.g. law reports, journal articles) are located (in the Law School’s
library, Westlaw etc). If you plan to conduct field work or collect empirical data, you should
provide details about this (e.g. if you plan interviews, who will you interview? How many
interviews will you conduct? Will there be problems of access?). This section should also
explain how you are going to analyse your research findings.
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.

VIII. Preliminary Suppositions and Implications

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 suggestions for subsequent research could arise from the potential outcomes of
the study?
 What will the results mean to practitioners in the "real world"?
 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?
 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 will come
about?

IX. Conclusion
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.
Someone reading this section should come away with an understanding of:
 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
 A sense of how your study fits within the broader scholarship about the research
problem.

X. Citations
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.
1. References -- lists only the literature that you actually used or cited in your proposal.
2. 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.

Challenging exercises:
Choose an appropriate topic for a research and explain how they plan to prepare a proposal
on that topic.
Home assignment:
Write a research proposal in the area of their interest for their end term research paper
References:
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/law/courses/research/research-proposal.aspx

https://owlcation.com/academia/How-To-Write-A-Proposal-Essay

https://library.sacredheart.edu/c.php?g=29803&p=185956

Next lesson preview:

 Writing a Research Paper