Adapted from: Guidelines for Writing Research Proposals, McGranaghan 2014

The proposal is a plan or blueprint for a research project that you could carry
out over a period sustained work spanning about 1 -2 years. The result would
be an MA thesis, a doctoral dissertation, or some kind of lengthy professional
report.

Your finished proposal will be about 20 double-spaced pages in length. It can

be longer if you wish. The elements needed for the proposal are listed here.
You can find more information about how to approach each part within the
course modules.

Title: The title should be informative, catchy, and creative, giving the reader
a good idea of both the content of the proposal and your approach to that
content. You may wish to start thinking seriously about the title at a late
stage of the proposal writing process, perhaps around half-way through the
semester. But, you can start playing around with title ideas earlier in the
process.

Abstract: This should be composed as a last step, after your entire proposal
is drafted. The abstract provides a concise overview of your work. Two
hundred words maximum, 150 words minimum.

Introduction: You may wish to write this section last, after all other sections
of the proposal are complete. In 1- 2 paragraphs, this section would be used
to draw the reader in to your proposal. This could be accomplished by using
a quote or an anecdote, or by stating the concerns of the project in an
engaging way that would be attractive to as wide an audience as possible.

Research question: To establish a sound research question, Follow Booth’s

formula outlined in chapters 3 & 4 ( esp. p. 51)

I am studying x_____________________________________ (topic of manageable

size)
In order to find out y_________________________________ (concrete, observable
phenomenon)
In order to understand z_______________________________ (a wider, more
abstract social or cultural process)

In the final version of the proposal, the explicit mention of x,y, and z falls
away. Eventually, the formula will simply provide an invisible buttress for
your question.

Background: In a few paragraphs, explain and clarify the research question.

Explain any complicated or technical terms in the research question. Restate
any elements of the x, y, or z lines to provide more information and make
these aspects comprehensible to non-specialist readers. List any sub-
questions that relate to your main research question. This part of your
proposal should provide a brief overview that tells a fairly well informed (but
perhaps non- specialist) reader what the proposal is about: its main
questions, its scope, its significance.

Literature review: Think of it this way: a person who is well-situated to

advance a field of study must intimately know the past and current state of
that field of study. Hence, the purpose of the literature review is to embed
your proposed research in the context of what is already known about a topic
and to demonstrate the originality of your own work when seen against this
backdrop. The literature review is not meant to provide a summary of past
studies for their own sake-- rather, each work is important to mention in so
far as you can show how it supports your own study and how your work both
builds upon and differs from these earlier works. Your literature review need
not be exhaustive, but it needs to show that you are aware of how various
studies have advance knowledge in the field over time. Your ability to
demonstrates your deep engagement with the field in this way positions you
as capable of taking the field even further.

In the literature review, you are demonstrating that you are taking an
original approach to your topic by combining bodies of literature and specific
authors that most likely never have been combined in exactly this way
before. You will provide an analysis and rationale for why and how you are
braiding together the earlier literature in these ways. Some of the questions
that should be answered in the literature review are as follows: What are the
key foundational texts that relate to your research topic? What are some
important texts that have come out recently about this topic? How does your
research build upon this previous scholarship? What are some of the major
schools of thought on the topic and how have they each advanced
knowledge about the topic? What are some of the main subtopics associated
with your main topic, and how has each been approached by scholars? How
has research on this topic contributed to building theory across different
disciplines, and how do you intend to take this further?

In a literature review you should give the reader enough ties to the literature
so that they feel confident that you have found, read, and assimilated some
of the main foundational scholarship in the field, and that you are also
familiar with current directions. You may wish to allocate a few sentences
each for the most important resources, while mentioning others more
parenthetically. But, while doing so, ensure that there is sufficient “mortar”
to hold the edifice together, meaning you provide a substantial analysis of
how these summaries relate to your own work and relate to each other. This
“mortar” can come from your notes while reading the material.
In your completed literature review, begin with a short overview of the field
in general, mentioning some foundational studies and some current
approaches. Then, identify each of the three sub-topics that your work will be
focusing on before going into depth about the three sub-topics. Then, devote
a sub-section to each of the three sub-topics, giving examples of literature
addressing these subtopics, and showing how your work contributes to
building scholarship on each of these subtopics.

Methodology/Data Analysis: The purpose of this section is to describe what

kinds of data you will use in your study, how it will be gathered, and how you
will analyze it. Part of the purpose of doing this is to think through and
demonstrate feasibility of the study, so that you may detect flaws in the plan
before they become problems in the research. For example, if you are
planning to devote 12 months to your study, perhaps it is not feasible or
advisable to carry out 100 in-depth interviews—perhaps 30 would be a more
feasible number considering other factors at play. For textual or archival-
based research, indicate which materials or sets of materials you will be
focusing on for the study. For ethnographic studies, you may include the field
site description, for example, a particular geographical or institutional
location, and a sense of who the research participants/collaborators might
be, for example, a group of religious practitioners, or online community, and
the extent to which you might use interviews, surveys, participant
observation, etc. You may draw on outside readings on particular methods if
you wish, or consult any readings in the “methods bank” for this course.

A hands-on, nuts and bolts account of who, what, where, when, how this data
gathering will take place. An indication of how long the research will take,
and when you are planning to undertake it?
If mainly archival: Which texts will you study. Which translations (if
applicable)? How will you access them? If qualitative: what field site(s) for
how long?

Who will you talk to? How many respondents? How will you gain access to
them?

Preparedness: What qualifies you to carry out the study? What educational,
career training, or life experiences do you have that will help you along the
way? Be specific about courses you have taken previous research
experience, language competency, familiarity with people, places, or ideas,
and any other experiences that you have had that demonstrate the fact that
you as an individual have what it takes to do this work.

Significance and Contribution: The final section outlines how your project will
help contribute to our larger understanding of the world, and to questions of
enduring significance in the humanities and social sciences. Why is this
proposed project important? What are some of the major implications of the
research, both practically and academically? How will your proposed project
advance scholarship in the field and across the disciplines? If applicable, how
might it impact social policy or human relations? At all costs, avoid “filling in
gaps.” It is never enough to say that you are engaging in a particular study
because it has never been done before, or because there are other studies
like it, but not identical to it. When you outline the unique aspects of your
research, this must never be an end unto itself. This claim to uniqueness
must always be secondary to the larger demonstration of how your research
proposal will advance knowledge in a particular issue of enduring
significance.

Final Paper Formatting Guidelines

Your final paper should be formatted as follows:

Length: About 20 pages, double-spaced.

Title Page: Your proposal should have its own title page, including the title of
the proposal, your name, date, and course name.

Sub-headings: Please use the following six bolded subheadings—and these

only-- for your paper.

 Abstract
 Research Question
 Literature Review
 Methodology
 Preparedness
 Significance and Contribution

For abstract, include Abstract: flush with the first line, separated by
colon, as follows.

Abstract: My proposed study centers on an ethnographic analysis of

how African American women are contributing to the community-
building and social activism efforts of Detroit’s Black churches. Etc. . .

Other Five Sections

Provide the bolded subheading, and then skip a line. As follows:

Research Question

This research sets out to understand how Michiganders make decisions

regarding fruit consumption at individual and familial levels. Etc.
 Some other formatting notes:

Introduction: Don’t include “Introduction” as a subheading, just start

paper with this material.

Research Question : At the final paper stage, be sure to omit the x,y,z
language. The x,y,z thinking should now provide an invisible buttress
to your thought. The statement of the research question should, in a
concise way, take us though each of the x,y,z factors.

Background: Do not use “background” subheading, just let this

information flow after the research question, in the same section

Literature review: After a literature review overview, divide the

remaining material into 3 subtopics while including the Sub-topic Name
Capitalized and in Italics with a Colon: to indicate where each subtopic
begins,

but no need to have this on a different line or to skip a line for these. For
example:

Literature Review

[Paragraph indent] Social scientists have been studying the fruit

consumption of Michiganders for at least two centuries, with varied and
contradictory results. The first such study, “The Michigan Journey of Johnny
Appleseed,” written by historian Michael Petosky (1819), established some of
the main questions in the field, but ended up inspiring terrible
controversy. . . etc. etc, etc. etc. (This could be the start of my overview
section).

[Paragraph indent] Cuisine and Family Relations: A recent trend in the

scholarship about fruit consumption addresses the role that fruit pies play in
cementing family ties, especially in holiday seasons. (This can be the start of
the first subtopic within the literature review).