GIA 4204 Independent Research Project

Research Project Report Outline

The goal of your report is to clearly communicate the process and the outcomes of your research
project. Here are some essential points that must be communicated in your report followed by a
suggested outline. Of course, no one outline will fit every type of project, but it offers you some
starting point.

The information provided in your Research Proposal Requirement is also useful here except that
the language and depth will be different. You are now embarking/have embarked on “your study”
and your write-up will be more detailed and relate to what you would have done rather than what
you propose to do.

INTRODUCTION: Should include the background to the study, a clear statement of the problem,
thesis statement and research questions/objectives. For a good grade on this part, a connection
between these three is required.

The background must provide an insight into where the problem emerged. It is often a historical
elaboration of the context (organizational, policy etc.) of the study.

The statement of the problem (what even got you thinking that this broad issue is worth addressing
with your research project?) should lead to the general question (what is the question of interest
that emerges from the broad issue or problem identified above?) which then clearly leads to some
specific/key research objectives/questions (so, given the general question, what specific aspect/s
of the question do you hope your research project will address?) You must establish that there is a
problem worth investigating or studying.

The introduction section should end with a clear statement of the research objectives/questions
(that logically emerge from your statement of the problem). This is important at this stage because
this is the standard you will be held to at the end. The examiner should be able to see if your
research project did, in fact, end up addressing some aspect of the general objective/question you
specify here.

The results of your research must be “actionable” in some way, meaning that it should provide
information leading to some actual decision. The examiner should also have a clear sense of the
key variables (dependent and independent) to be manipulated from your thesis statement or
objectives/questions.

LITERATURE REVIEW: What have other people looked at relating to the broad topic? This is
where you can justify a lot of your decisions regarding research design. The literature review looks
at prior work on the broader topic of your study. You need to present evidence that you did a fairly
thoughtful and thorough evaluation of past research on the topic you are addressing. A lower grade
will result if the literature review appears to be superficial or purely done “after the fact” (i.e. you
completed the project and then looked for research to support your findings).
Think of it as a spiral – starting with the outside ring (looking at research on your broad topic),
you end with the material that is directly related to your research. The literature review should be
organized in a logical and integrated way that links it to your key research objectives/question(s).
Note that the discussion and conclusion of your study must incorporate the pertinent findings of
the literature review and those from your study.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND TECHNIQUES: This is the section where you clearly explain what
you did. Your report should include the following sections where applicable:
a. Research Design: Generally, this addresses how you constructed the research situation in
order to proceed with a successful and complete research. Was the study exploratory,
descriptive or explanatory? If relevant, you should include details on your experimental
design. Otherwise talk about your survey. What were the strengths and weaknesses of your
chosen design? Did you do any follow-up to increase response rate? You can also include
some details on your questionnaire/interview design here. Elaborate on question wording
issues, attempts to ensure proper interpretation of questions, results of pretests etc.
b. Sampling Design (if sampling is being done)/relevant selection procedure: What
population/case are you studying? What sampling method did you use? (nothing wrong
with a convenience sample, just make sure you state the assumptions and how you
attempted to ensure the representativeness of the sample) What was your sampling frame?
How could your sampling decisions have introduced systematic biases into your data?
Make brief mention of these possible errors and your attempts to control them – major
potential issues should be discussed later in the limitations section. The point is to be
precise and address the most obvious concerns in your responses here.
c. Data Collection: This is where you describe the specifics of how you collected the data
viz. the sources, techniques and instruments. Did you use face-to-face interviews? Did you
use focus group interviews? Key sources/informants? Available data? Content Analysis?
Historical Analysis? Did you administer the survey yourself or utilized other people you
knew? How did you collect the responses? How much time did it take? What controls did
you have to ensure data authenticity/quality? What problems did you encounter in
collecting the data? Include brief statements about how your data collection procedure
could have impacted your results, but leave the bulk of that discussion to a later section on
limitations. Include all issues related to the collection of your data here.
d. Data Analysis: This should be a very brief section that simply refers to the methods for
data analysis and handling (how did you go about making sense of the findings? how did
you code the data? what software was used for analysis? Or whichever is applicable.)
e. Practical and Ethical Considerations: This is an important part of your report. Given the
time and spatial limits/constraints on doing this project, there should be several things that
could have or should have been done better. Here is where you get to lay out all the
challenges encountered in conducting your research project. What are all the things you
should have done differently? How did these “flaws” impact your results? It may be better
to simply number these limitations and give a brief subhead before explaining how these
considerations may have impacted your results. Don’t arbitrarily put things in here that
couldn’t possibly have had an impact on your particular study. However, the more you are
able to identify possible sources of error and bias, and explain how it could have affected
your results, the better your work will be.
RESULTS: Here, you will present the results of your research. The focus here should be on
explaining/discussing what you found rather than providing the interpretation (n.b. for qualitative
researches remember description and outline of context, key actors, actions, time and prevailing
circumstances) and recommendations (that will come in the next section). So, state what your
findings were, the outcomes of any statistical tests, the actual means for the relevant variables, etc.
Start with basic results regarding the sample/case you ended up with (age, gender, etc.) so it sets
the stage for the reader to interpret the more substantive findings. Make sure your results are
explained in meaningful terms that always keep your general and key research objectives/questions
in mind. Don’t forget that the goal of statistical analyses is to support the substantive conclusions
you are making. So, include appropriate tables and graphs here that serve to highlight your
findings. You don’t need to put everything in here, but everything that is relevant to your question
of interest. If your findings related to several separate questions of interest, use headings and sub-
headings to organize your results around these themes/topics. Here you also integrate the pertinent
findings from the review of literature into your discussion.

CONCLUSION: This is the final section of your paper and will take the results and provide
interpretations and recommendations based on the results. This section must at least contain the
following subsections (or the information in these subsections):
a. Summary: Since the “Results” section included all the analysis of your data, here you
summarize the key findings that form the basis of your recommendations. The most
important findings should be summarized here and should tie in well with the Thesis
statement/general question you started your report with.

b. IMPLICATIONS OF FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS: This brief section should

develop some very clearly stated recommendations based on your research findings. This
will be evaluated based on how well your research findings answered the general research
objective/question, validated or invalidated the thesis statement at the start of your report.
There should be something that is clear and actionable at this point (even if it is a clear and
specific direction for an additional research study). Make sure your recommendations are
clear, specific, and linked to the general research objective/question.

While we do not expect undergraduates to approach the length and sophistication of Masters and
Doctoral dissertations, their work should be more than a glorified term paper. It should (a) be a
minimum of 25 pages and a maximum of 30 pages, excluding the front matter, appendices
and bibliography; (b) make an argument of your own conception rather than just summarize facts
and conclusions found in books on the topic; (c) use primary source material and data to the extent
possible; and (d) conform to the format and style of good academic/scholarly writing and
documentation.
REFERENCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Full details of all sources used throughout the study should be documented. The reader should be
able to identify the exact source and refer to it directly. Use only the approved APA documentation
style. Please follow a consistent format throughout the paper.

DEADLINES
There are three key deadlines to meet:
 a) submission of the initial proposal
b) submission of the final draft report
c) the submission of the final report

At the commencement of the research effort, other deadlines will be set between supervisor and
students. Submissions a) and b) must be made to your supervisor while submission c) must be
made to the Assistant Registrar, Examinations Division.

N.B. Research Proposal. This document allows the student to establish the topic as well as
issues within the topic they are desirous of researching. Each student must provide a tentative
thesis statement, the reason for the research, establish the background of the research,
preliminary literature reviewed and establish research objectives/questions which will outline
specific areas to be addressed. This assignment should be about 5 to 10 full pages in length,
typed, double spaced, paginated and preceded by a standard cover page. (See Proposal
requirements).

SPECIFICATIONS FOR RESEARCH PROJECT

Number of Copies
A student is required to submit two (2) bound copies of the research report to the Assistant
Registrar, Examinations Division no later than 16:00 hrs on Friday, 13 July 2018. THERE
WILL BE NO EXTENSIONS OF THIS DEADLINE.

Corrections
An error free research report should be submitted.

Margins, Page Size and Printing

Paper size should 8 1/2 x 11 inches. The margins on the document must measure 1 inch on all sides
of the page. Printing should be done on one side of the paper.

Typeface, Font and Spacing

Typeface to be used throughout the thesis is Times New Roman with font size of 12 point. The
text of the document should be properly paragraphed at 1.5 line spacing.

Pagination and Numbering

Page numbers are to be placed at the bottom centre of the page and every page except the title must
be numbered. Preliminary pages are to be numbered in lower case Roman numerals.

Covers and Binding

The Research Project should be spiral bound and the typeface to be used on the cover is Times
New Roman with a font size of 18. The cover page should consist of the following information
only:
a) Title of Research Project
b) Name of Candidate,
c) Degree to be Awarded
 d) Date of Submission

Format
The Research Project should have three sections: the preliminary pages or the front matter, the text
or the body matter, and the references or back matter.

The PRELIMINARY PAGES should include:

a. Blank page
b. Title page
c. Declaration
d. Acknowledgements
e. Abstract (150-300 words)
f. Table of Contents
g. List of Tables
h. List of Figures, Illustration, etc
i. Preface

The TEXT should normally be divided into chapters/sections such as:

a. Introduction
b. Literature Review
c. Methodology
d. Results
e. Conclusions
f. References

The REFERENCES consists of:

a. Appendices
b. References
c. Glossary
d. Notes
e. Bibliography
f. Blank page

PRELIMINARY PAGES

Title Page
The form and contents of the title page must follow the format of the example given above. Titles
should be capitalised and the month and year cited on the title page are the month and year of
Research Project submission. The title page is counted as page "i", however, the number is not
printed.

Declaration
Sample of Declaration Page
DECLARATION
I hereby declare that this GIA 4204 Research Project is my original work except for quotations,
statements, explanations and summaries, for which I have already mentioned their sources. No
portion of this Research Project has been submitted in support of any application for any other
degree or qualification of this or any other university or institute of learning.

Student's Signature : ______________________ Date: _________________________

Student's Name : _________________________ Student ID: ____________________

Acknowledgements (if any)

This is a brief acknowledgement of assistance given to the author in researching and writing the
thesis. Its page is numbered with a consecutive lower-case Roman numeral. Typeface to be used
is Times New Roman and the font size is 12.

Abstract
This is a summary of the thesis, which will state the problem, the methods of investigation and the
general conclusion. An abstract should be approximately 300 words. Line spacing is one and a half
while typeface to be used is Times New Roman and the font size is 12.

Table of Contents
This must include entries for preliminary pages (declaration, abstract, dedication,
acknowledgements, lists of tables and figures, and preface), text (main divisions and subdivisions
of the thesis), appendices, notes, references and index. Typeface to be used is Times New Roman
and the font size is 12.

List of Figures
Figures (i.e graphs, photographs and other illustrative material) are to be listed on a separate page.
Number, title and page are to be given. Figures must be numbered in Arabic numerals
consecutively. (Fig 1,2,3 or 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, etc) in order of appearance and captioned. Typeface to
be used is Times New Roman and the font size is 12.

Preface
This is a brief explanatory statement of why the author came to study the subject of the thesis.
Typeface to be used is Times New Roman and the font size is 12.