Crafting a research proposal

Hands-on Postgraduate Research Proposal Design

“…Fahy (2008) argues that the debate should be regarded as a formal method of taking a position and arguing what students want the people to believe. Heath and Tynan (2010) state that sometimes the literature review is incorporated into the introduction section. However, most academics prefer a separate section, which allow a more thorough review of the literature.…”

“…According to Heath and Tynan (2010), the following common mistakes are made when designing a research proposal: Lack of ideas or too many ideas; Ideas that are not feasible to research or that will not add to existing knowledge; it may not be clear about what is the problem or issue to for research; it is not always clear about, about the rationale for the research; identification of the problem to research comes too late in the text as well as failure to identify key studies and concepts; insufficient explanation of the claims is made lack of integration of contributions on particular themes and lack of critical analysis; and use of other authors' ideas without proper references (plagiarism).…”

“…According Heath and Tynan (2010), the following mistakes a student make are: failure to provide the proper context to frame the research question; failure to delimit the boundary condition for the research, and other researcher failure to name landmark studies; failure to accurately present the theoretical and empirical contribution by other researchers; too much time reading before starting to write; failure to develop a coherent and persuasive argument for the proposed research, and too much detail on minor issues, but not enough detail on major issues.…”

“…Understanding the common mistake in design the research proposal can help the researcher to (Heath & Tynan 2010) critical or strategically eliminate his or her own mistake. This is to try and eliminate the mistake of designing a quality research proposal.…”

A Longitudinal Case Study of the Impact of Democracy on Food Security in Ghana and Implications for Theory Development

“…A case study approach is more suitable to show the microprocesses that link variables. For these reasons, this study facilitated qualitative research, "a predominantly inductive, and discovery-oriented, approach …embodying a view of social reality as a constantly changing property of individuals' perceptions…and aiming to get an 'insider's' perspective…of the phenomena under study" (Heath and Tynan 2010). The study analyzed the following primary sources: surveys, Freedom House scores, news releases, GOG documents, policies and legislation, CSO programs, the Domestic Food Price Level Index, GHI, malnutrition and underweight percentages, and DES.…”