How to Write a Research Proposal - Undergrad, Masters, Doctoral

okay hi everyone this is david and welcome to today's live chat on the research proposal how to write one we'll follow our usual procedure i will present for about five to ten minutes and then open it up for all of your wonderful questions on this topic or any other that you wish to discuss today okay let's get started on how to write the research proposal first we want to ask ourselves what is a research proposal i want you to know that it is simply another academic document if you can write a literature review you can write a research proposal if you can write an abstract you can write a research proposal if you can write a research paper you can write a research proposal it's simply another type of document and if you have a template and if you follow the formula for a research proposal yours will come out just fine next point in a research proposal you have two audiences the supervisor who will approve and either delay or give you a go-ahead on the research proposal and yourself you are attempting to persuade two people that supervisor and you are trying to persuade that supervisor of two things thing number one is that you have a legitimate research topic that you have a legitimate research plan for addressing that topic and three that you understand the importance are the role or the significance that your research plays the other person the other thing that you're trying to convince people of is you're trying to convince your supervisor or your committee that you have what it takes you have the tools you have the knowledge you have the preparation and they should if they're being decent people they should approve your proposal so those are your two goals in a research proposal a third goal that it doesn't apply to that audience is yourself you are also attempting to prepare yourself you are getting ready to do something to do that thing successfully you need to have certain ducts in a line you need to have prepared yourself in certain ways we're going to go over those ways in just a moment keep in mind that this is a planning document and as it says here with great planning comes great success there are other famous people who have talked about this no one plans to fail but the first the person who fails often lacked planning and so on and so on if you want to get where you want to go if you are determined to get there you will need planning and this research proposal is simply a step in your direction toward what you want to accomplish okay next let's go over the basic template or outline for the research proposal now keep in mind that the university where you are getting your writing doing your research as well as the department and the supervisor all may have very different guidelines i'm just saying this is an overall view of what is in most research proposals they usually begin with a title page the formatting of that title page depends upon what citation style that you are being expected to follow then will come a table of contents or an abstract now if you're if you're writing on the undergraduate level your research is probably not going to be long enough to justify a table of contents or an abstract on the masters and the doctoral level it's probably long enough especially on the doctoral level to have a table of contents and of course that's something that you write last you will have an introduction section and that is a general section you will generally have a literature review section unless your degree program had you write a literature review separate from your dissertation that happens sometimes more often the literature review is incorporated in the thesis or the dissertation you will address your research design often called the methods in which you will plan out certain things that are necessary for the research to be valid and a success you will also have a section on the implications for your research it's important it's need for follow-up etc you will have a section on your sources this will be your references your bibliography whatever it's called and then finally you're usually asked to present some kind of schedule that indicates that you have the proper time allotted for each of these steps again this is just the general overview or general template for the parts let's go ahead and break down these different parts before you begin you want to define your topic how do you define your topic well first thing that you can do is to look at successful theses and dissertations from your school what kinds of topics were most successful in your discipline and you'll get some ideas from those especially how to structure your title you will review the academic literature this is a part of writing your research proposal it's also a part of defining your topic make a list you don't have to come up with a single research topic immediately it's okay to write down a list and then eventually as you narrow you might even combine items on that list into one research question and then of course show it to somebody else to have them help you evaluate the efficacy of your research question research problem finally after you have gotten some kind of approval and i hope that your thesis committee your thesis supervisor uh will provide you feedback on your research question your research topic after you have gotten that kind of validation of it make your decision and as you move forward it's okay to modify it but don't change topics once you have settled upon that particular topic sure they'll you'll there'll be revisions but you want to stay put not staying put is a red flag to your supervisor and also can put you way behind also changing your topic is often a signal of anxiety a lack of confidence and you definitely do not want to show those things at this important stage in your academic career next you want to study the methodologies as you are reviewing those different theses and dissertations as you're doing a preliminary research literature review you you should be looking at the kind of methodologies and the kind of data analyses that are taking place and that will help you settle upon the methodology and analysis that is best for your topic and within your capabilities next you want to and this is so important you want to acquire all of the requirements all of the details everything that you can collect about what your dissertation or thesis must look like how long it should be how it should be formatted you want to collect everything you can collect and then those guidelines from your department from your thesis committee from your supervisor those become your bible they supersede anything anybody else will tell you they are your living will so to speak so acquire everything you need make sure you understand exactly as much as you can what your supervisor wants and what your committee wants and then give it to them good it's as simple as that find out what they want then give it to them okay next let's start breaking down these parts i always encourage everyone to begin with a good title this is a habit that i have found very helpful that if i can get a good title then i am assured that i have a strong handle on my research so let's take a look at the requirements of the characteristics of a title for an academic research project your title should contain the following things you want to cover the topic the the who the population the overall context and how what methods you're going to use in other words to get those four things into a single title your titles got to be long and this is why the titles of academic research articles are long because they must contain as much as possible those four things here are some examples a randomized randomized controlled trial there you have the methodology to improve research skills there you have the topic in young adults with autism spectrum disorder there's the population and you're going to be doing it with the ucla pierce broker there's the context so do you see how that title incorporates all four of those things now not all titles do this some emphasize uh some aspects of some of those four more than others for example there's another title institutional analysis that somewhat hints at the methodology so it's going to be like a descriptive study of limitations to climate resilient urban development planning so there's there's the topic there's the problem there's the context limitations to climate resilient urban planning and here is the population the case of udon thunai province so this title has 16 words the previous one had 19 words take a look at this one it has 17 words so if you average those up you get an average of what 16 16 and a half words per title how to tackle complexity in urban climate resilience there's the topic in the context negotiating climate science adaptation and multi-level government in india there is the population so i encourage you before you do anything in terms of writing your proposal make sure that you have a solid title because getting a solid title is going to force you to think about population context methodology and as well as your topic we'll also force you to narrow it next section usually is the introduction or the background section a couple of things to keep in mind here this is an overview you're giving simply an introduction to a person who doesn't necessarily have your depth of knowledge so you're focusing on the broad topic you're focusing on key concepts key terminology you're just kind of painting the canvas so to speak with a lot of the details of that image of that picture to come later so this is just an overview your this section should also contain now that you've told the overall topic now you bring your reader down to the specific topic this is where you state your research problem this is where you talk about the research gap that you will be addressing this is where you make a case for your research significance because your research significance and research gap is one of the primary criterion on which your supervisor or committee will either approve or disapprove your research proposal this section should also contain your research aims and your research objectives here a lot of students get tripped up on the difference between the key difference between aims and objectives aims are goals that's where you're going objectives are things you're going to do to get there so an aim might be to investigate how to improve social skills in autistic young young adults that's your aim that's your goal your objectives to get there might be to collect a group of autistic young adults and divide them into a experimental group and a control group to devise a five-week program of study using the ucla peers program so those are your objectives those are the things you do to get to your aim to get to your goal now in your introduction section you need to make this clear distinction between your aim your overall goal and the things you will do to get there the objectives research question and sub question the research question usually is a single research question on some of the smaller projects a senior graduate thesis maybe even some shorter master theses however on some of the larger projects that are multi-sectional you're going to have not just one research question you're going to have a main question as well as sub questions because of the depth into which you're going in your investigation of this topic okay so there's a little bit of a preview an introduction in background next let's talk about the lit review the literature review in in your research proposal is different than the research review in your final research project this is a preliminary research literature review this is a provisional literature review so therefore in this type of literature review for your research proposal you want to review only key works and your supervisor will help you find those a librarian will help you find those you want to find the seminal studies that provide the framework for any discussion of this topic your goal in this preliminary literature review your goal in this provisional literature review is to provide an overall context for your topic so it's much shorter than your actual literature review when you write the dissertation or thesis and it has a much different purpose okay one of the purposes that you will have even in this preliminary research review and this is one of the key purposes is why you're kind of writing it now is to find that research gap in other words and the research gap is nothing holy it's nothing major the research gap is simply where you fit in this academic conversation are you writing something to complement someone else's finding that's a legitimate research gap previous findings need to be confirmed they need to be replicated that's a legitimate research need are you are you writing to to answer a weakness in the current research that's a gap are you writing to challenge something that has been found in the research that's a gap so there's nothing magical about this gap it's simply finding your place where you join in this conversation academic conversation in a unique and significant way in other words it counts for something it answers the question so what the answer to that question so what is well i showed i found and this is important because and that's all a research gap is don't over overthink that at all this is also where you're going to examine and highlight the methodologies and analysis data analyses that were done by others you want to say well in this descriptive study or in this experimental analysis or in this correlational analysis you want to highlight the kind of research designs as you are reviewing these literature these literature key moments why are you doing that because you are setting up yourself to say if these other people use these kinds of methodologies then i can use them too and that's why you want to highlight research methodologies in your literature review when you're talking about what other researchers did the important thing for your sanity and for your success that you're doing with this literature review you are initiating your catalog you if you're going to write this extended piece of research a thesis or a dissertation you need a way to catalog your sources why a lot of time is going to pass some dissertations take multiple years there are a lot of different sources 100 200 300 therefore your old methods of simply putting things in a word document are not going to hack it you need to get yourself a bibliographic management tool such as zotero endnote mendeley easy bib bib me you need to get yourself a tool that will allow you to keep a searchable catalog of all the sources from now in your in your research proposal all the way to the end when you finish your project so those are the some of the things you want to accomplish with the literature review let's talk briefly about methodology here methodology you are not expected to be because this is a research research proposal only you are not expected to be an expert in this particular methodology you want to simply demonstrate that you have a basic understanding of the different kinds of research methodologies and that you have a good understanding of the one that you wish to apply why it why it fits this is important why that methodology fits what you're doing that's your main goal here not to lay it all out so ask yourself whether you're doing a qualitative quantitative those are the two big divisions whether you're doing something that involves numbers quantitative or something that doesn't involve numbers and then after you've gotten that figured out are you going to be doing descriptive research would you describe the characteristics of a thing or a population correlational where you find out how two variables interact or experimental whether you follow the scientific method so you need to kind of place yourself into those one of those broad categories not showing expertise but just that you understand the category you're going for and that you understand why it fits for you and that's what this next bullet is about you need to indicate what data you're going to collect from whom you're going to collect it how you're going to go about collecting it survey research analysis and why you're going to collect that that specific data why that data is important for you to achieve your aims in this research study that you're that you're doing and finally in this section you want to indicate how you will analyze that data you're going to indicate how you're going to analyze the data because your research supervisor or your committee is going to be determining and you yourself are going to be determining whether you are capable of carrying out that kind of data analysis so being able to talk about it here in your methodology section will adequately indicate or should adequately indicate to someone reading your proposal whether or not you are skilled enough to carry out that kind of analysis okay finally you want to end up with some kind of management program to show that you can handle this whether it's a gantt chart or a simple microsoft word table or an excel table you want to indicate that you have a plan this plan should be adequate give you enough time i should say in order to carry this out this is where you will get help from your research survivor supervisor and you should make it as realistic as possible if you're going to change your plan you need to notify people that you are changing your your plan because these are more or less deadlines and you want to show good faith you want to show good discipline a good control to your supervisor and your committee that you have made a commitment to these deadlines and you are carrying them out you're meeting your deadlines of course if you have problems check in and make some adjust adjustment but do it in consultation not just willy-nilly on the fly okay a final checklist make sure that you have that good strong title that is what 16 17 18 words long and indicates uh who what when where and why uh have a clearly defined research problem that indicates a research gap and and your aim or your ultimate goal is clear as well as how you will the objective you use to achieve that goal and remember your objectives have to have to be measurable when you in other words when you when will you know that you have achieved those objectives uh in your methods have you given enough about your methods that other people would be able to replicate them because remember that is the purpose of the method section to indicate the validity to other researchers and so that if they carried out your methods they would arrive at essentially the same results by the way that's why we skip methods whenever we're reading these scholarly articles because your goal then is not to replicate your goal is to understand and is the timetable a real realistic that's your checklist okay well oh are you references catalog yeah um if i were a thesis and a visitation supervisor and i am at uh at one school uh there's no way that i'm going to let anybody go forward unless they show me that they have a handle on all of their references if you're not able to handle your references then things are going to blow up for you eventually okay well let me in this and get back to our screen here hello a lot of people have dropped in hello fadumo it's good to have you here d.d hawkins great dd and by all means we're about to enter the question and answer section and by all means please feel free to uh dd answer any questions you need salama hello missed your last week's llama i i by the way i recorded your absence and now you get three unexcused absences mr g excellent point i wish you would explain how to use theory to write a theoretical sure um if let's get to that in a minute mister let me go ahead through there hello doctor taylor happy to be part you great to have you emmy and uh tele tech technium great to have you here techlee may i say that and musa okay great to have all of you well let me go ahead and try to answer some of these uh some of these questions i'll go ahead and put misters up how to use theory to write a theoretical conceptual framework let me ask you a question mister and by the way it's titus question time so you guys for your questions go ahead and type them in let me ask you a question mr mr mr g uh where are you getting this i don't know pressure or encouragement to add in theory because i'm usually and usually research proposals are pretty straight straightforward research proposals are built around a conceptual framework now we can talk about and you should talk about to your supervisor what's what your conceptual framework is in a in other words or what kind of study are you doing are you doing a descriptive study a co-relational study or a experimental study those are the those are the kind of concepts that you should be thinking about now if your supervisor is asking you to include a chapter of determinism or positivism or something like that that that would uh those are good ways to introduce your your methodologies in other words i believe in positivism that's why i have chosen this method that is why i believe this data would be valid that kind of thing so let me know if that answered your question i get the feeling mr g that you're just at the beginning and to further answer your question i would need to know what is being said to you because remember it's all about pleasing your supervisor it's all about giving them what they want okay let's see perfect timing for kevin all right how's it going kevin okay here's a question from thoughts and guys let's take a look at that hello doctor i'd like to ask about the structure of the literature yeah i am a little bit confused whenever i review the relevant theory and how to set that out the structure of a literature review unfortunately thatch i'm sorry there is no set structure to the literature review you have to find your own structure for example you could structure it by chronology from early to late you could structure it by breakthroughs first breakthrough second breakthrough third breakthrough fourth breakthrough you could structure it by problems here here are here are works that address this problem here are works that address the second problem here are works that address this third problem basically let me say this any structure that you find is probably good enough because you must find your own structure you must find a way to link those those items together let me know if you have a follow-up question on that thoughts musa freehand english writing you mean uh i guess i don't understand freehand uh normally when i understand freehand it means writing with a pen or pencil am i misunderstanding that i'm sorry if i am tell me more about what you're saying there musa and i'll be able to comment on more specifically i guess i can take this down can okay salama salama so i have to use literature review to analyze novel that right no not at all islamic thank you for asking that absolutely not absolutely not your analysis of the novel is to come later the purpose of a literature review is not to use it to analyze something the purpose of the literature review is to provide adequate context and background to situate your research within a community or within a conversation so there are two types of literature reviews salama one is the literature review for that you do for your research proposal and that again is finding providing context you do key works only and the second type and you also use it to come up with your gap in your context the second type of literature review is one that you do for your actual thesis or dissertation and there you try to gather all of the significant uh published academic literature on on that topic and throughout your literature review saloma your goal is simply to provide what other people have said you can criticize them for what they said in that literature review you can you can link things together and show where they're strong or weak but no in a literature review you do not provide your analysis of the novel you only provide your analysis of the literature you have read uh aaliyah do replicating empirical analyses need theoretical framework depends upon your your supervisor i would say yes that if you are conducting a research study and your goal the goal or aim of that study is to replicate someone else's analysis or someone else's research then yes yeah you want to have a theoretical framework for that any research that you do you want to have provided a theoretical framework it sounds like with an empirical analysis your framework is is descriptive aaliyah if i did not answer that well let me know i was kind of taking a guess as to what you meant by theoretical framework it seems like that a number of you have been hit with this theoretical framework question wait a second a theoretical framework might be required in that theoretical framework and it sounds like some of you are being required to to write one in that theoretical framework you want to you're trying to describe the theory that explains why that research problem exists and that's that's often found in the social sciences um in the theoretical framework you are making problem statements and research questions such as company x is struggling with the problem that many online customers do not want to return their subsequent so that's that is that is providing your research question as well as a uh a a framework for your research i think it sounds like also like you you guys are confusing theoretical framework with the methods section let me ask this what what theories are you guys thinking about putting into your theoretical framework kevin i'm going to do my research problem on the efficacy of retention efforts on the lgbt students at my university okay that would be a co-relational study kevin you got two variables the retention efforts and the lgbt students and you certainly have a specific population you have a specific context at your university i think i think that's a that's a pretty strong general topic now you have to turn that into a i first turn it into a title uh you say something like a a qualitative or quantitative analysis of retention efforts for lgbt students during the during the academic year 2021 at such university that would be your that could be a decent title a good start on that kevin you've also got to find a research gap on that in other words i'm assuming you're in the field of of retention of student services that kind of thing academic services and so one of the areas that you'd be looking at in your literature review is how do universities retain students what are the most efficacious most successful retention efforts is it assigning tutors is it making sure you everyone has a success coach is it having meetings periodically of students in different different groups in other words you want to kind of have an overview of the retention efforts and how successful they have been in the past and then after you have acquired all that then you can turn to your school your population lgbt and uh and your efforts but i think you're i think you're on a good start there kevin aaliyah thank you doctors of rehearsal does replicating ethereum okay we answered that i think i just had that question above yes um so tell me a little bit are you writing a research study in which you are trying to replicate an empirical study is that correct in my theoretical framework i'm assuming that you mean one of the kinds of conceptual frameworks that we have talked about assad should i outline some probable subtopics where my research could go if it plays out like additional sources available as a probable separate publication expansion okay or let me ask you some questions are you writing a doctoral dissertation if you are writing a dissertation then i would not call them subtopics at all assad i would call them a research question and sub questions topics is too broad so that is my that is my feedback there and you want to make sure that other people have looked at those your research question and the sub questions which flow from it and that those are legitimate and expected and flow together or are connected together in a legitimate way that's what i'm trying to say musa writing good on any topic oh sure okay yeah happy to do that musa happy to do that i think i have a pretty strong video on that and i'll be happy to kind of put that information together i've also found a formula for writing each part of the essay a formula for the intro paragraph a formula for body paragraphs and a formula for conclusion paragraphs so i can share a formula for the overall structure as well as formulas for the different parts of an academic essay be happy to share that with you and this is where i get my ideas for these live streams musa the reason i'm doing this research proposal today is that someone asked about it last week so i will definitely put that down for next work next week your basic academic essay got it mr g thank you doctor i'm writing a thesis for your degree oh you're in social that's why you got all this theoretical framework you're in social sciences that's why okay i thought so so you're writing about minorities i want to use crt theory along with ethnic conflict theory the point is that i don't know where to start i'm going to have to take that in under advisement can you tell me where you are in your research process have you written a research proposal yet have you been asked to write a research proposal could you answer that question for me mr g it really does seem like and somebody else can chime in on this that you're that the writing here is getting hung up with theories and i would say maybe you could put off the theory for a while and focus just on writing the parts of a research proposal as i outlined them in this lecture and then once those other parts are clear mr g i would say that at that point you can go back and take a look at how to add in more of a conceptual theoretical framework but i i think you're getting caught up in the the generalities and you need to move on to the specifics and then circle back okay other questions best boo hey best boo good to see you keywords yeah um i left out keywords best boo that that is often a part of a of a literature review i i didn't i didn't go into them by the way you can find keywords in every relevant article that you find it's going to have an abstract and keywords and you can often mine those articles for your keywords as well as when you do re research in a library it often has a list of the keywords associated with that particular article that you found so keywords are not hard to find and and yes you should use keywords to help you get into the literature but let me say that once you get started finding good things best boo the best keywords are the ones that previously worked in other words keywords can take you on tangents unless you are careful whenever you find a direction into the research and you're finding what you want i would stay hooked into those keywords at that point uh chin hi chin so literature review is to recite the research in the past yes yes recite it evaluate it connect it challenge it the literature review is all about what people said in the past yes sir and you allow it you allow it to give you a direction for the future let me give this example i'm about to meet my college roommate that i haven't seen in 20 years and i go hey neil god it's great to see you man i can't wait to catch up tell me what have you been up to right and neil tells me what he's been doing for the last 20 years and then once i've gotten all those understand those past 20 years then i can say hey you know what let's do something new let's take all of that and let's build upon our relationship by doing this i know we can do this well because we have all those past things in common i don't know if that was a good analogy or not okay salama yes salama yes i'm assuming you are writing a thesis or a dissertation is that correct if so then you're good you're good to go okay thank you doctor for your explanation i have one more question related to the literature review can i use the theory from the books or textbooks or i need to do youtube all the time no anywhere you can get it doc anywhere you can get it by the way your literature review is not limited to articles only you also want to be looking at books and textbooks absolutely whatever you can find you can also look at unpublished theses and dissertations which don't fit into the books or textbooks category aaliyah my work is quantitative and i am replicating someone else's rig using data from different perfect then yes aaliyah you would go through the same steps thank you for providing that clarification you would go through the same steps as any researcher would do with your research proposal yes and your research your research proposal is to replicate your research problem is is this valid research and you have your methods all laid out for you unless you unless you're going to change them due to your circumstances i mean you're going to you know replicate them as closely as possible but there might be certain things that that need to be changed they're not necessarily going to affect the results you know what i'm saying excellent i'm glad you have that topic alia in some ways it makes it easier um but you are in effect because you're replicating a study you are in effect repeating that study and that that means you kind of start from scratch and work your way through it is that what your supervisor has told you best boo i don't want to risk your research topic how to avoid a risky one i think by risking you mean one that ends up not working very simple bezboo you have a solid research proposal like the one that we have outlined in this live chat you get feedback on it from your supervisor or your committee and you keep revising it until it's really strong the second way you can you can avoid that kind of disaster that you're talking about is to always be in touch with your supervisor and to have him or her or them take a look at your work in progress no surprises you want to avoid surprises when it comes to your supervisor in business we had a saying no surprises no excuse my french but that's the way it is you never want to surprise your thesis advisor thesis advisor and you never want to give him or her bulldookie either musa theories are those related with my title my research problem and related concepts will be placed in developing theoretical framework are you in the social sciences musa it sounds like that in in in this portion what you're doing is saying the kind of research that i'm doing is valid how i am doing it is valid the manner in which i am doing it addresses my research problem and as long as you are doing those things musa you are fulfilling your theoretical framework you know i might want to write down and maybe do a session on theoretical framework because it sounds like some of you are definitely getting hung up on it in other words your journey into theory here is become kind of a tar pit swamp in which your feet are kind of stuck and it's my experience that it's not that big of a deal you simply choose one and describe how you're going to use it to solve to solve your problem so i i might be missing the boat here but uh i think i'm seeing some people who are seeing the theory part as a as a stumbling block and it shouldn't be the the purpose of that theory is simply to provide you a framework in which to work a framework in which to decide um [Music] how to choose a a group how to uh how to go about analyzing the data how go how to go about collecting the data producing the data how to determine if that data is is valid i think the the your the approach the theory that i'm seeing is too is not being related enough to the practical application that is necessary in order to carry out your work kevin i'm basically a paper that i read about some of the student voice oh okay but i got to go back up to your previous post to see what we're talking about here oh here he goes kevin uh here's your previous post kevin i'm going to do my research probably okay yeah all right and i think i think you're at a great start and then you wrote i'm basically a paper right what's up cool cool um and i bet you can find other other papers that also studied uh retention efforts i know since i teach at a university and i'm in student services uh retention is something we live every day and are always studying and meeting and theorizing uh about ways to get better retention so i'm sure you'll find a lot of studies about about that okay chin kim you mentioned context several times in this topic can you provide some example and such as geography schools for social context sure yeah context i'm trying to think of a social sciences topic and then generate the the context that i would expect around it let's say your social sciences topic is um discrimination against lgbtq students in high school phys ed classes okay so you're interested in knowing more about the experiences that these students have in those kinds of classes what is the context there the context is several fold one it is how lgbtq students students are seen as a whole as students what rights they have how are they being discriminated against in other venues how are they being being treated in other venues whether it comes to bathrooms uh uh misgendering and all those kinds of of issues uh what what does what do transgender or lgbtq rights look like in america today those that's that's context um how many laws are being passed for or against are there states where lgbtq are more free than less here you go the supreme court's incredibly important decision about about recognizing gay marriage and what was that because i forget what year it was that that's context that's huge context and while i'm assuming i'm i'm talking about america here i don't know what culture uh you are writing about but in my explanation uh ken it was i'm talking about america but that's that's context in this case social social context i hope that helps i saw it it's a phd redundant some i'm sorry i'd have to look back up to know what some meant there assad i'm sorry i'm very sorry let me look back up here okay it was about subtopics i got you i got you i would say i thought focus on getting your dissertation done first and worry about publication second because writing for publication is different than writing your dissertation when you're writing for publication you have to conform what you're writing to the guidelines of a specific publication and i would not worry about that now that's a different audience you want to please the audience that's before you right now and that audience is your dissertation committee and your dissertation supervisor please them first reach that milestone first and then you can take that core of what you did then you could adapt it customize it to other publications okay uh leah oh here we go art history but if you were to write about two is it like semiotics which makes decoding rpgs well uh if you're going to use semiotics in in your dissertation on art history well certainly you would have to discuss semiotics in your introduction that's for sure semiotics is a french invention uh forget the philosopher who i think was darina and dorita uh formulated a new way of categorizing phenomena it has often been used to analyze uh literature and other pieces of art basically thank you very much aaliyah great house okay theoretic yeah i will do elita will will do because it sounds like that it is a significant concern for a lot of you baseball how do you know ph.d has to be changing um you're worrying you're projecting too far into the future bespo you're projecting way too far into the future this is what i was talking about earlier about choosing a topic deciding upon a topic and committing to that topic that's why i think you are imagining yourself choosing a topic and getting in trouble with the topic and having to change the topic maybe trying to change the topic to get a better outcome and i i think you're you're thinking ahead you do have to choose a topic you do have to commit to that topic and you do have to proceed ahead full steam ahead full full throttle pedal to the metal and know that along the way you will be able to overcome whatever obstacles you face but i i i detect a lot of second guessing there i saw it it was really hard to put theory into words because you don't have much choice anyway we all do the same thing the reason there are two by my seniors well first i would say google it and then once you have a kind of basic understanding of it then apply it to yourself that's what it's all about assad yeah sure you you can give a couple of sentences maybe a paragraph defining that particular theory and that's fine that's well and good but it's no good unless you apply it to yourself unless you apply it to what you're doing that's where the rubber meets the highway hello sarah how you doing jason hi doctor nowadays students have to write high impact publication order to graduate is that right yes i did a live chat two weeks ago or three weeks ago on how to get published i did not know that one of the requirements for your dissertation was to make it publishable thank you for telling me that jason here is what you do you go find yourself a target publication you write to the editor or look on the website and find the editorial guidelines for that publication you ask the editor or find out what topics that editor is looking for in the future and then you shape everything you write for that editor and for that publication and if your thesis supervisors have a problem with that then say guys gals you caught you got me caught between a rock and a hard place you told me to write something that can be published that's what i'm doing and yet you're restricting me to your format done here in school which one it which one is it guys do you want me to write for here you here in school or do you want me to write for publication jason if you go look on my channel uh and if you look on the live chats the live streams i think i did that you got somebody help me out i think i did that live stream two weeks ago so jason i did not know that was being required of you i would say make a commitment to being published and go for it and suppose hopefully your supervisors will help you get that publication assad thank you for the publications i used to stay in phd programs required to have two publicational dispensations a month so i have this in the back of my head all the time what kind of publications were they expecting if you didn't have your doctoral degree yet if you didn't have your phd yet what publications i guess you were supposed to kind of publish something before you hadn't finished with it i don't know i'm i am confused by that that when i saw it i have to tell you i am confused brandon hey brandon how different from the less of the literature will your paper have to be to succeed yes you're right brandon it would be considered inferior that's why so much emphasis brandon is placed upon the research gap that's why so much emphasis is blessed upon the unique research question unique research problem but then if you have that gap if you found that gap then you don't have to worry about being meaningless by the way once you finish with the literature review brand and you put it away once you finish with a literature review you're done with that section now it's time to do your own you know now it's time to do your own now you do your own study you come up with a framework for that study descriptive correlational experimental you come up with a framework you come up with a theory all these people talking about about theories theories that you're going to use and you get to work on your own study brandon what makes undergrad mastery length and depth brandon length and depth they're they're basically the same in their underlying structure except of course one expects was it when it as you go up it's more is expected out of the researcher bez beau i'm happy it is not what is happening to my topic it's just oh general question in case i'll become a young supervisor you're welcome vespa you're welcome let me know however i can help helen person jason was rich for the research gap and research problem they're they're the same they're the same jason they're simply phrased differently yeah one is phrased as a statement one is phrased as a as a kind of question let's say um okay let's take your research gap your research gap is knowing how to best retain lgbtq students at a university not enough is known there are there aren't enough there aren't enough studies that show successful retention practices that's your research gap and so you simply phrase that into a research problem the research problem is would be something like what will be the effect of blank blank blank blank retention strategy on the retention of lgbtq students at a midwestern university they're they're one is phrased differently and they're used differently too was just for an open access journal and a no pay need journal peer review is less hard i some people say so it it all depends uh some people it depends a lot upon the journal there's some open access journals that are as rigorous as as highly respected in old peer review journals um with open access i think you have to be a lot more careful about the journal's reputation than you do with more formally peer-reviewed journal articles i'd just be more careful with its reputation brandon how big are research gaps yeah that's a that's a good point brandon in your research uh as an undergraduate master's even doctoral thesis in most cases you're you're not looking for any kind of major breakthroughs you aren't at that point in your career again you're looking at uh maybe you are confirming previous research so the research gap is simply there haven't been enough studies done on this yet and so you're confirming previous findings that's a research gap assad i'm confused as well but i can see a lot of publications i'm sorry what were you confused about assad i'm sorry i can see a lot of publications in local journals what are local journals of extra poor quality published only for the sake of pledging okay so you're expected to achieve a certain compass level scopus level yeah for those who don't know scopus levels are ratings given to peer-reviewed journals they're usually published on the website usually in the library holdings page and i think overall i thought once you get into open access journals and local journals i'm not quite sure what what those are i guess we're not widely distributed on an international scale yeah you do have to be very careful but please remember a thought that it ultimately comes down to you and your ability to assess the validity of another person's research and as someone on the masters of the doctoral level you should be able to assess somebody else's research regardless of where it was published that's the bottom line russian journals and russia of course you would have to have a pretty good russian to make that work for you but um yeah i would just say that just because just because it is not distributed internationally doesn't mean that the research there isn't any good and that that's really kind of your call as a fellow researcher okay it looks like we've gone through all the questions today thank you very much what a what a lively discussion i have come up with a couple of areas that i need to brush up on and get back to you on one is a presentation on theoretical frameworks and how they become a part of your research proposal and the other one is a formula for the uh for the academic essay okay uh one last question from jason then we gotta take it out of here as i am in social science economics and the economics issue found around me be the research problem i'm sorry jason we would have to discuss that a little bit more it's kind of hard to give me enough context and in just a a chat box reply please feel free to email me i'll put in my uh my email put my email in the chat box and tell me more about what it is that that you are planning on researching and writing about before i can i really feel comfortable in answering your question brandon still got questions brandon emailed them to me by all means happy happy to take your questions uh but uh youtube kind of limits me here i i gotta get out of here um salama you're welcome salama thank you very much aaliyah thank you very much assad oh you're welcome assad you're welcome one of the reasons we're here absolutely okay i'm gonna go ahead and broadcast you guys susan talk to you later let me hear from you anything i can do talk to you later guys bye bye

Channel: David Taylor

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Keywords: research proposal, how to write a research proposal, research proposal example, writing a research proposal, how to write a dissertation proposal, research proposal writing, thesis proposal, research proposal sample, research proposal introduction, how to write research proposal, how to write a research proposal for undergraduate, how to write a research proposal for masters, how to write a research proposal example, how to write a research proposal outline

Id: t2xL68ZsP6Q

Length: 72min 39sec (4359 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 20 2022