Instructions for Writing Project Proposal

Title

 The title must not only be informative, but it should also be brief i.e. 10-12 words.
 Be sure your title describes as specifically as possible the content of your
research.
 A common format of title is to write the dependent variable as a function of the
independent variable. E.g. helping behavior as a function of level of religiosity.
 First letter of each word must be capital excluding helping words.
 Words that must be avoided in the title are: ‘a co relational study’, ‘method’ and
‘results’ do not normally appear in the title nor should such words like ‘a study of’
or ‘an experimental investigation’. Also avoid using abbreviations in the title.

1. Introduction

How to write an introduction?

 Your introductions should not exceed two pages (double spaced lines, typed).
 Use past tense except when referring to established facts. After all, the paper will
be submitted after all of the work is completed.
 Organize your ideas, making one major point with each paragraph. If you make
the four points listed above, you will need a minimum of four paragraphs.
 Present background information only as needed in order support a position. The
reader does not want to read everything you know about a subject.
 State the hypothesis/objective precisely - do not oversimplify.
 As always, pay attention to spelling, clarity and appropriateness of sentences and
phrases.

1.1 Literature Review

A literature review is an appraising description of information found in the literature

associated to your chosen area of research. The literature review illustrates,
summarizes, appraises and clarifies the literature for which you are writing literature
review. It should give a hypothetical foundation for the research and helps you establish
the nature of your research. It should portray the link of each work to the others. In
literature review, unrelated works are removed completely while the marginal ones are
considered critically.

A literature review should cover these 4 points:

1. The literature review explains how each work is similar to and how it varies from
the others.
2. Literature review should be well-structured around and directly linked to the
research question you are developing.
3. The literature review should present an overview of the subject, issue or theory
under consideration, along with the objectives of the literature review.
1.1.1 Citation Style for Literature Review
While writing references in literature review either your refer to the authors of the
article, book, research paper etc by citing their last name with the year in which the
paper was published appearing in parenthesis immediately after the names. For
example, I you are citing the study by Lorna Hemandez Jarvis and Ptricia V. Roehling
that was published in 2003 you would write either“Jarvis and Roehling (2003)
found…..” or “Recent research (Jarvis & Roehling, 2003) showed that …….”

You can only write those references in literature review that you have actually read. If
you read a paper by Barney (2002) in which the research of Ludwig (2000) is
described, you should not cite the Ludwig paper unless you have actually read the
paper. Instead you should use something like this “Ludwig (2000), as reported by
Barney (2002), found that …………”

1.1.2 How to Write a Literature Review?

Apply these tips to write a good literature review:

 You need to keep entire and exact records and references of what you read and
find during research.
 Learn the required citation style.
 Make notes or summaries of the articles, books journals, papers whatever you
read.
 You must infer and read between the lines when go through any written work.
 Broaden your vision and develop your own ideas without worrying that it might
not be accepted. Just don’t be relaxed with copying previous work.
 Divide the literature review into different thematic parts which will help you to
focus.
 Read the leading published material and search for the current issues for the latest
information.

1.1.3 Resources to Develop Literature Review

There is a wide range of sources to develop your literature review. These resources
include:

 Books  Conference proceedings

 Scholarly Journals  Thesis
 Previous Research papers  Empirical studies
 World wide web  Historical records
 Bibliographies  Commercial reports
 Encyclopedias  Government reports and
 Newspapers reports from other bodies
 Statistics
handbooks/information
1.1.4 Literature Review Revision
To revise and check of any flaw or lack in literature review, answer to these questions:
 What is the specific thesis, problem, or research question that my literature review
helps to define?
 How good was my information seeking?
 Was my search wide enough to ensure the availability of relevant material?
 Did I narrow enough the literature review to leave out irrelevant material?
 Have I used suitable number of sources for the length?
 Have I critically analyzed the literature I use?
 Hive I just summarized the material I read?
 Does it have my own thoughts and insight?
 Have I used the citation properly?
 Will the reader find my literature review appropriate, and useful?

1.2 Significance
Significance shows why your study is important or useful within the concerns of the
discipline or course. It lays down the importance or potential benefits of your project.
Describe the importance of the project to various stake holders.

1.3 Rationale of the study

Rationale shows what are the reasons of choosing your particular subject of study. For
example, if your project is about online learning then the rationale would be something
like this.
“The main reason to take the issue of online education is to explore that how students
learn effectively where minimum level of instructor-student interaction is prevalent. So
learning goals and achievement motivation takes even more crucial form.”

1.4 Objectives of the Project

State the objectives/goals of your project, keeping in mind the following points;
 These should state the purpose of the project
 These must be based on logical facts and figures
 Project objectives should be presented such that these should facilitate the
reader to locate various important points in the research work;
 At the end of study, the objectives must be assessed to see if they have been met

1.5 Hypothesis
Hypothesis is a tentative statement for a phenomenon. Often a hypothesis is stated in
the form of a prediction or some outcome, along with an explanation for the prediction.
Research hypotheses are the specific testable predictions made about the independent
and dependent variables in the study. Usually the literature review has given
background material that justifies the particular hypotheses that are to be tested.
Hypotheses are couched in terms of the particular independent and dependent variables
that are going to be used in the study.
An example would be
 "Children who are exposed to regular singing of the alphabet will show greater
recognition of letters than children who are exposed to regular pronouncing of the
alphabet"
You can easily identify the independent variables in the above mentioned example of
hypothesis is ‘regular singing of the alphabet’ and ‘regular pronouncing of the
alphabet’ and dependent variable is ‘recognition of letters’.

2. Research Method/ Methodology

The second major section of the body of research report is the method section. It
describes in detail how the study was conducted. Such a description enables the reader to
evaluate the appropriateness of your methods and the reliability and validity of your
results.

 Method section starts on the same page on which the Introduction ends.
 It is separated from the Introduction with a double spaced centered heading
(method), and the text of the method begins one double spaced line below the
heading.

The method section consists of the following parts:

 Participants
 Instruments
 Procedure

Here's a review of what should go into each section:

2.1 Participants/ Sample: A sample is a finite part of a statistical population

whose properties are studied to gain information about the whole (Webster, 1985).
When dealing with people, it can be defined as a set of respondents (people)
selected from a larger population for the purpose of study.
A population is a group of individuals, persons, objects, or items from which
samples are taken for measurement for example a population of presidents or
professors, books or students.

Review the targeted population and participants in your project. Most studies
review targeted demographics (e.g. gender, age, ethnicity, marital status,
socioeconomic status) and other important issues that describe your population
(medical history, medication use, legal history). Remember to include the mean,
standard deviation, median, frequency and range when reporting your
demographic variables.
When humans are the subjects of the study, report the procedures for selecting and
assigning them and the agreements and payments made.
 2.2 Research Tools/ Instruments: Give the details of the tools used for the
project e.g. Questionnaire, Interviews, Observations, etc according to the need of
the project.

Provide an overview and description of each instrument or measure. When

describing your instruments, remember to review issues such as the number of
questions, length of administration, readability and scoring. You can rely on the
instrument's manual and early normative articles to obtain a lot of this
information. After you describe the instrument, you will then need to review the
reliability (e.g. alpha coefficients, inter-rater reliability, test retest reliability, split
half reliability) and validity of the instrument (content validity, external validity
and discriminant validity). Remember to clearly label and review all of these
components in the text for all your instruments or measures.

2.2.1 Demographic information: Report major demographic information such as

sex, age, race/ ethnicity, and where possible and appropriate, characteristics such
as, socio economic status, disability status etc.

2.3 Procedure: In the procedure section describe what happened from the
beginning till the end of the process of whole project. Describe how you will
collect the data. You will want to review issues such as the agencies or
organizations you will approach for participant recruitment, the order of the
instrument administration, testing procedures and informed consent. If you are
conducting a project based upon archival research, you will need to review how
the data was collected and how you received permission to utilize another
agency's database.

3. Proposed Data Analysis

It will include what will be the proposed statistical analysis for the project. For example,
if you are interested in studying the relationship of two variables then you can propose
that you will use correlation for statistical analysis or if you have more than one
independent variable and only one dependent variable then you can use regression
analysis as statistical technique.

4. References
All citations used in the study must be given by arranging them alphabetically by the last
name of the author. (APA format should be used)

5. Appendices
This section will include data collection forms (instruments).
The appendix begins on the separate page and appears at the end of the paper following
the references. Instructor may require you to submit an appendix including your raw data,
worksheets for statistical analysis or the computer print out of the analysis. The appendix
can also be used to provide a verbatim copy of the instructions to the participant or a list
of a specific material used in study. Each appendix will be identified by a letter (A, B, C
and so on).