THE RESEARCH PROPOSAL IN QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

MA students will be able to have an overview about the difference between qualitative and quantitative research project 

Every research attempt, in both qualitative and quantitative research, in every academic and professional field is preceded by research proposal. It informs your academic supervisor or promising research contract provider about your conceptualization of the overall research process that you suppose to conduct so that they can examine its validity and appropriateness. In any academic field, your research proposal will go through a number of committees for approval. Unless it is approved by all of them, you will not be allowed to start your research. Therefore, it is necessary for you to study closely what a research proposal is made up of.  

You have to write your research proposal whether your research study is quantitative or qualitative and in both cases, you use a similar structure. The main difference is in the proposed procedures and methodologies for carrying out the research endeavor. When providing details for different parts of the research proposal, for quantitative studies, you will detail quantitative methods, procedures and models, for qualitative studies, your proposed process will be based upon methods and procedures that shape the qualitative research methodologies.

Certain requirements for a research proposal may vary from university to university, and from discipline to discipline within a university. What is outlined here will fit most requirements but you should be selective taking into account what is needed in your situation.

A research proposal is total plan, scheme, structure and strategy designed to obtain answers to the research questions or problems that your research project is consisted of. A research proposal should outline the different tasks you plan to undertake to fulfill your research objectives, test hypotheses (if any) or obtain answers to your research questions. It should also state your reasons for conducting the study. Broadly, a research proposal’s main function is to detail the operational plan for acquiring answers to your research questions. In doing so, it ensures and reassures the reader of the validity of the methodology for obtaining answers to your research questions accurately and objectively.

In order to obtain this function, a research proposal must tell you, your research supervisor and reviewers the following information about your study

A research proposal should include the following information about your study

A research proposal should communicate the above contents clearly and specifically in such a way that anyone going through it should be able to undertake all tasks in the same manner as you would have. It should also:

- Enable you to return to the proposal for your own guidance in decision making at different stages of the research process.

 -  Convincing your research supervisor or a reviewer that your proposed methodology is meritorious, valid, appropriate and workable in terms of obtaining answers to your research questions or objectives.

Universities and other institutions may have differing requirements regarding the style and the content of a research proposal. Requirements may also vary within an institution, from discipline to discipline, or from supervisor to supervisor. (The guidelines set out in this course therefore provide a framework within which a research proposal should be written.)

Your proposal should follow the suggested guidelines and written in an academic style. It must contain appropriate references in the body of the text and a bibliography at the end. Your survey of the relevant literature should cover the major publications on the topic. The theoretical framework for your study must emerge from this literature review and must have its grounding in empirical evidence. As a rule, the literature review includes:

Your literature review should also raise issues relating to the methodology you are proposing. For example, it may examine how other studies operationalized the major variables of the relevance to your study and may include a critique of methodology relevant to your study. The critiques of methods and procedures should be included under their respective headings. For instance, a critique of the sampling design you adopt should be included under ‘sampling’ or a critique to the study design should be discussed under the ‘study design’.

Note that the suggested research proposal structure does not contain a section entitled’ survey of the literature’ or ‘literature review’. This because references to the literature should be integrated with your arguments conceptually rather than chronologically and should become a part of all the aspects of your research report from problem conceptualization to conclusions. The literature should be reviewed under main themes that emerge from your reading of the literature and should be included in the introduction and the problem. Issues identified in the literature to do with research methodology and problem pertinent to the various aspects of research procedures should be discussed under the respective headings. For example, issues pertaining to the study design ‘under study design’, issues relating to sampling under ‘sampling’ and the literature pertaining to the research instrument under ‘measurement procedure’.

In suggesting this format it is assumed that you are reasonably well acquainted with research methodology and academic style of writing. That is, you know how to write a set of objectives or construct a hypothesis, you are familiar with the various study designs and you can construct a research instrument and cite a reference.

The pages that follow outline a framework for research proposal. The contents under each heading may vary markedly from discipline to discipline, according to the academic level of the student (BA Hons, MA, and PhD) and whether your study is predominantly a quantitative or qualitative. For quantitative proposals you need to be very specific in proposing how you are going to undertake each step of the research journey, whereas for qualitative research proposals such details are not expected as your methodology is flexible and unstructured to accommodate in- depth search. However, you need to provide a broad approach to your enquiry as a part of your research proposal.

Each section of the proposed outline for a research proposal is divided into two parts.

1.      A suggested title for the section and an outline of its contents

2.      Examples outlining contents for the section – the same four examples of research projects, each taken from different discipline, are used as illustrations in each section.