What are the fundamental skills required to write a good
research proposal that captivates your potential
supervisor?
How skillful are you to write a good research proposal? In another word
how skillful are you to carry on the research you are proposing? What do
you know about your area of study or interest? This brings us to the
question of what are the required skills to enable you to write up a
good research proposal. These skills are what your readers are looking
for in your work. It is through these skills that you demonstrate
expertise in your area of interest/study.
You may wonder how these skills are fundamental in contributing to your
success: a
research proposal
is a comprehensive and careful planned work that needs some strong research
skills and potential. The document aims to present your idea or question in
the discipline area. The research proposal document must establish why your
idea is relevant and the identified gaps in your field of interest. It
should show how your research intends to fill those gaps. This document must
equally include how you plan to go about with the research to achieve your
goals and objectives_ What approaches, methods and resources will be used in
your research. This brings us back to the main question of research skills
again. The list of these skills is unlimited but the fundamentals are :
#1 Research skills and broad knowledge of the area of interest or
study
You must demonstrate your mastery of an area of interest and familiarity
with what is currently going on in that field. A good research skill
therefore will enable you to navigate yourself in your subject of
interest, to find out what has been done already and what you can do on
your part to bring innovations or new ideas.
#2 Methodological skills
This is where professional experience comes in. Keep in mind that
professional experience is not only a job base qualification, it could
be a professional experience you acquired through your previous
education for example from being a research assistant to your professor,
lab works in school and the ability to produce publications, and thesis,
experience attending conferences etc...
What your reader/supervisors intend to see here is an indication of the
methodology/ies that will be required for your proposed research project
and how your professional/academic experience has provided you with
relevant knowledge and skills to carry on this research successfully.
For instance would your study use:
-
A quantitative approach?
-
A qualitative approach?
-
or mixed methods? etc...
-
and what do you know about these approaches? Can you use
them?
#3 Analytic skills
The analytic skill is the technique that you are going to use from the
proposed methods to achieve the end goal. You will have to indicate the
analytical methods/techniques that will be required for your proposed
research project. This enables you to show your readers how your
professional/academic experience has provided you with relevant knowledge
and skills to carry on the given project. What analytical technique will
you be using in your research? For instance, to analyse your quantitative
data, will you be using multivariate data analysis? etc...or discourse
analysis technique to analyse your qualitative data? etc... This is the
kind of expertise your readers are searching to see in your research
proposal and this is what will attract that potential supervisor.
#4 Communication skills
One of the major aims of a research proposal is to display your ability to
express yourself in precise, logical and concise language. This is exactly
what your readers/potential supervisors want to see in you. The ability to
express what you have in mind in a scientific manner.
#5 Project management
You must be able to indicate that you have relevant project
management experience. You need to showcase a professional
experience with the relevant knowledge and skills to manage a
research project, including planning for deadlines, budgeting and
risk assessment.
#6 Additional skill
An additional skill but not mandatory that could help in your research proposal is professional/academic experience
particularly if it's relevant or related to your area of interest. These
are some of the skills that could attract potential supervisors/readers to
your research proposal. Have you been employed and gained professional
experience relevant to undertaking a higher degree by research?
Like I said before these employments are not specifically about the
regular job experience only, they are more related to academic
achievements such as the ability to have published articles, work in a
lab, be a research assistant, coordinate and supervise extensive
projects, produce a thesis etc...
Some helpful materials
-
If you are a beginner and really interested in building your research
skills and advancing yourself in this area of academic writing, then I
suggest you get best-selling books in the market on how to write
research proposals. I will recommend you try a search on google for
some good research proposal textbooks. Amazon has tons of these books
at affordable prices. Many free textbooks are available online also.
Refer to how to write a captivating research proposal for scholarship and admission application tips to study abroad,
for free research proposal samples, tips and guidelines, research
proposal examples for students etc...
-
You can equally check on online courses. Apart from big platforms
advertising amazing research skills materials for academic writing,
some of your dream Universities do offer these courses online also at
a premium cost and at your own convenience. The University of
Southampton for example currently offers an online course on "Developing Your Research Project". The online course aims to support students with every step of the
research process, from choosing the write methodologies and analytical
approaches for your research to developing a hypothesis and finding
sources to writing up etc... The course hopes to cover topics such as
-Drafting and developing research proposals, -Gathering information
from literature and from findings, -Research methods: choosing an
appropriate methodology, -Referencing, plagiarism, and academic
integrity, -Academic writing: organising sources, structuring essays
etc...
You can find more details on the course from the FutureLearn platform.
Please visit
link
for more details. The course will be for a duration of 8 weeks, a
certificate available upon successful completion of the course
And on the other hand,
-
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