When students are working on their thesis, they’ll need to submit what is known as a research paper before they begin. A university or college in a country like the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA ask their students to sometimes produce research proposals for small assignments.
In other words, a research proposal is a paper that talks about future research that other students can work on to add value to a particular topic. When putting this paper together, professional PhD writers from a research proposal writing service always advise students to ensure it is well-structured, concise, and clear. Research proposals can be stressful, but if one has a plan, one can successfully put together a compelling piece.
1. Pick a compelling topic
Choosing the right topic, especially if one hasn’t been provided to you, is easier said than done. It can be tricky for students who speak English as a second language to come up with the right topic, however, help can come from professional proposal writing services. If you can’t get help from an academic writing service and have to come up with a topic on your own, you need to avoid topics that are narrow and too general.
When a topic is too general, the result is always lacking in focus and messy. A narrow topic on the other hand can make finding the information you need extremely tricky and time-consuming. Pick a topic that is well polished and compelling; however, it’s not a big deal at this stage. You can always come back to your title later, the key is having a rough idea and creating a basis for your research.
2. Conduct research
Once you have an idea and base for your topic, it is time to conduct research. The way you find information for your research paper is the same way you find information for your essays. You can hit the library and look at several books related to your topic, or you can use the internet.
Use the method that produces the best results, however, you need to ensure the information you find is up-to-date. Putting information that is outdated in your research paper will make it lose credibility. Make notes if you have to do that, you can refer to the information you’ve found later.
3. Fine-tune your topic if you haven’t done it
If you haven’t come up with a compelling topic yet, now is the time to fine-tune it based on some of the research you’ve found. Look at the area of the topic that hasn’t been properly researched and focus on that. This will make your paper more original and fun to put together. Ensure that any questions you raise on your topic can be easily answered.
4. Add the research questions
When the steps above have been completed, it is time to come up with your research questions. These questions need to be well formulated and should center around your chosen topic. You need to make a good first impression with your questions because they are one of the first things readers will see in your paper. Make them as engaging as possible, and if you feel like you’ve hit a brick wall, you can look at samples available on PhD proposal writing services. You will easily be able to come up with your own if you get inspiration from work produced by writing services.
5. Gather literature for the preliminary bibliography
You need to refer to the notes you made before while researching because the sources on there will be your bibliography. In most cases, tutors will give students a set number of sources they’ll need to have for their assignments. If you are not given one, it’s best to ask your tutor before proceeding because the last thing you need is to have fewer or too many sources.
You have to make sure that the sources used are up-to-date because outdated sources will lower the credibility of your paper. Anything that was written more than a decade ago needs to be ignored because times have changed. It will not hold up in quality anymore, as it was good for its time back then and won’t be good enough now.
6. Come up with an amazing introduction
Apart from research questions, one of the first things your readers will see when they get hold of your piece is your introduction. You and other essay writers have to make sure that it is compelling, flawless, and will get their attention.
Some things your introduction should be a statement of the problems, a research gap, and a statement of purpose. In other words, this is why your topic needs looking into, what the things are that mean literature wise on the topic, and why readers should pay attention to your research. Your introduction has to be straight to the point, don’t make it too long. Leave all the other details for your main body.
7. Come up with a hypothesis
At this point, all you have is an idea and assumptions, but not the answer to your research question. This is where the hypothesis comes in, and this is a statement that research will prove whether something is right or wrong. It needs to be written from scratch and has to be personalized because copying and pasting it from other sources is plagiarism.
8. Talk about your methodology
You need to look at the course material before you begin working on your paper. Experts and even top-tier writers from well-known research proposal writing services often find themselves confused when it comes to picking the right method to use during their research. Data collected during the research process can either be primary or secondary.
Secondary data is information that is already available or published and found in places like books, articles, journals, online, reports, magazines, and more. Primary data on the other hand is information collected by the researcher, and it can be through observation, surveys, interviews, and questionnaires. Not all methods will work with your topic, you need to choose wisely.
9. Pick a sample and sampling procedures
In this section, you’ll need to highlight who your participants are and how you’ll locate them. You also need to talk about various sampling techniques like random, systematic, stratified, and more. The method that you pick has to be realistic, or your tutor won’t be sold on your ideas. Plenty of academic writing services recommend using systematic because it yields the best results
10. Explain how your information will be used
After the sampling section, you need to talk about data analysis tools and how you will use these to interpret the data gathered. This is very important, especially if you have done a lot of quantitative research. You’ll have to know how to use statistical tools, including medium and mean. You also need to know about regression, correlation, and more. If you are struggling in this department, you can get writing help from various research proposal services.
Final thoughts
According to many professional academic writers, writing a research proposal doesn’t differ much from writing any other homework assignment. The main thing that’s different about it is you’ll have to highlight tasks you intend to perform. The overall objective of a research proposal is to convince those reading it that the content is compelling, relevant, and interesting. If you can take the readers on a journey, you have succeeded in producing a stellar paper, just like a pro working for a top-tier online paper writing service.
