Building your research proposal

1. Building Your Research Proposal
Bruce Hargrave
Military Education Group

2. First Steps
• Scoping a research project
– Identify the problem domain
– Assess your position within it
– Identify the resources available to you
– Be clear about your interests
• MSc research projects are time constrained and
consequently cannot involve open-ended exploratory
research
• You need to know when to stop!

3. Clarity
• The Project Proposal gives clarity to the project
(at least initially)
• For some it is seen as an imposition for purely academic
reasons – not so
• ‘Framing’ the research is important to give clarity to what
you need to do
• ‘Pure’ research is not required here – it is too open-
ended and leads to failed (academic) projects
• Setting a research aim and then deconstructing it into
research objectives is an incredibly useful exercise.

4. The Research Question
• You need to define a research question which is as
specific as possible
• This research question also needs context
• The research question reframes the research problem
• An example:
– The problem: poor user interfaces
– Bad question: “What is a good user interface?”
– Better question: “What factors should be considered when
developing a user interface for soldiers engaged in desert
warfare?

5. Hypothesis
• Your research question may be articulated better as a
hypothesis:
– A formal statement made for the purpose of being tested
– You should not currently know the outcome of the test
• Example: In your project, you want to investigate whether
the use of night vision goggles impedes the use of PDA-
based location applications in desert warfare

6. Project Hypothesis
• Hypothesis: NVGs impede the tactical use of PDA
applications
• Context: The particular difficulties that are presented by
desert warfare
• Note: the context often gives you the specific contribution
that your project will make to world knowledge – the
uniqueness of your project.

7. Your Initial Review of the Literature
• You should use lots of different sources and source types
in your research
• Try to balance the ‘validity’ of your review with its
‘currency’
• You must not make unsupported assertions – your work
must be supported by as many sources as possible
• You cannot do too much reading!

8. When we see you next time (9 Sep?)
• You will present your project or research in context
• Presentations (~20 mins) and discussions about what
each of you are proposing to adopt as the subject of your
project or research
• A consideration of the methods that you might use along
with the resources that you might need.

9. Your Research Proposal Presentation Must Contain..
• The background to a problem or area of interest
– Context
– Explanation of the research problem
• Your research question or hypothesis
• The aim of your project and a set of objectives that fall out
of that aim
• Your initial outline project plan
– Who? What? When? Where? Why?
• Outline of the research methods you might use
– How?

10. Research Question Golden Rule
• You MUST NOT be able to answer a research question
with ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
• Example:
– Is a joint common remote viewing terminal (JCRVT) a viable
proposition? (Bad)
– To what extent is a joint common remote viewing terminal
(JCRVT) a viable proposition? (better)
– Investigating the viability of a pan-defence joint common
remote viewing terminal (JCRVT). (good project title)