Hey guys, welcome to Grad Coach TV, where
we demystify and simplify the oftentimes perplexing world of academic research. My name
is Derek, and today I am going to be speaking with one of our own trusted coaches, David Fair.
David's got a BSC, an MSC, and of course a PHD, he has been involved in tutoring and lecturing
students on all things research related, and he has also been involved in
supervising various research projects, such as dissertations and theses. Long story
short, David really knows what he is talking about when it comes to all things research related.
In this video, we are going to be talking about eight common mistakes that we see in
research proposals here at Grad Coach. We work with students on research proposals
day in and day out, and we see a lot of the same issues coming up, time and time again, so, in
this video we are going to be digging into those, explaining what the eight common mistakes are, and
how you can avoid them, so that you can approach your research proposal with confidence. This
discussion is going to be based on one of the many, many blog posts over on the Grad Coach blog,
so, if you are writing up your research proposal, if you are undertaking research, you would
probably want to check out the Grad Coach blog for a whole lot more content like this. You
can find that at www.gradcoach.com/blog. Also, if you are looking for a helping hand with your
research, whether that is a dissertation, thesis, or some other sort of research project, you might
be interested in checking out our one-on-one coaching services, where we work with you
one-on-one to hold your hand through the research process, A to Z. If that sounds interesting
to you, you can check out more information, and you can book a free consultation with one
of our friendly Coaches over at gradcoach.com. All right, so, let us get started. David, welcome
to the Coach cast, good to have you here. Cool, thanks for having me, Derek, I am really excited,
it is always nice to help our people with sort of these issues that we all come into,
right? Exactly, exactly, so, let us talk about these nasty proposal killers that we see, we
have got a list of eight proposal mistakes that we commonly see, we are probably going to digress
into a whole lot of other pointers, but anyway, let us get started on issue number one, and I
would say this is possibly the most common one, perhaps not at the proposal stage, more at the
topic ideation stage. It carries through into the proposal, and mistake number one that we see
is that the research topic, or the research focus, is just too broad, or perhaps it is not that
broad, but rather just poorly articulated, and therefore it looks broad, but certainly
a very common issue we see is that research topics are just too broad, so, let us talk about
that one. Yeah, I mean it is definitely an issue, and as you rightly raised up, it is definitely
a problem, particularly at that topic ideation stage. I think the most important part to think
there is, when you are looking for a topic, you want to be finding a topic that is doable in your
time frame, and often enough that means actually, it is really important to find a narrow-focused
topic. You want to be really digging deeply into something, rather than going very broad,
and then actually not having that depth that is required. And one of the key ways
that I find that is helpful, at least for me, when I am thinking about a topic, is really
asking some really straightforward questions, which I will get to, but more importantly
than that even is to really just focus on identifying an issue, right, or a problem,
and that might be a problem in your field, might be a problem in your industry or company, or
just something that has not been assessed yet, but having that key issue in mind, really helps you
to then answer the following questions, which is, who or what does it affect, how does it do
that, and why and when, so, really you want to be getting quite a bit of those questions,
so, for instance, if we are thinking about a project on, let us say, psychology, right, you
are looking at people who are experiencing loss as a result of Covid, and maybe you are interested
to see how they are perceiving stress. So, maybe you would say, you know, let us look at stress
in people who have experienced loss as a result of Covid. Now, if I think about that topic just
like that, that is way too broad, right, you know, are we looking at the entire population, are we
looking at all the gentlemen, are we looking at youth, are we looking at teenagers, what Country,
so, really start specifying down into a focused point, and then you can get to, you know,
let us look at how people deal with Covid related deaths as a result of stress, and we
can specifically ask that within an UK context at teenage level in this region, and that really
helps focus in that research question, or topic, which is super helpful in ensuring that you get
that nice clear focused topic. And then I think context is always super important in this as well,
you know, that is the easiest way to narrow down, is just provide your context, if you
are looking at antecedents of trust, you know, what is the context of that, are we in
sales, are we in manufacturing, are we in finance, each of those are super important, and then
I guess making sure it is achievable, right. So, for a broad topic, that is often
also a problem we see is, that it is, you know, aiming for the moon, but realistically,
we just need to get to, you know, the next Country, so, definitely making sure you are not
aiming too high can be super helpful, as well. And then finally, I guess, a really helpful one
is to just check recent literature, so, if you are interested in a topic, or a specific field, take
a look at papers in the last year or two, and see what they are saying in their conclusion section.
Often enough, that is an excellent place to find gaps in research, and that can really help you
to also frame your context of your research, and I guess lastly, as well, just take a look at
what other studies are using, and other theses have done, because that really helps you to
identify sort of the scale you are looking at, you know, for a fourth year project, you are not
going to need to be answering as deep a question as you are for say a PHD. So, for me that is
a super helpful thing, to think about as well. Absolutely, absolutely, and I think, you
know, just the, as you alluded to, the who, what, where, when type questions, are really
just helpful in getting you to narrow down the topic, and the who, just the demographic
component, is very often where you can sharpen down your topic quite specifically. People will
generally start with the topic, kind of thinking about, okay, so, if we are talking about, let
us just say trust, or what cultivates trust, we generally, when we start thinking about a
topic like that, we are thinking about like, everyone, but with many topics, you need to really
narrow it down in circles, so, are we looking at a certain gender, or we are looking at
a certain ethnicity, or we are looking at certain age groups, and yeah, really, just narrow
it down to who exactly are we interested in, yeah, and that will give you a lot of focus. Definitely.
So, I think, you know, the who, the what, in this perspective, okay, what kind of trust,
in what context, as you say, that is really key, and it is really important for students to
understand there is something that is often misunderstood, for first time researchers, is
that, especially for a dissertation, or a thesis, the aim is not to go ultra-broad, depth is really
where it is at, and in order for you to achieve depth in the topic, you have got a word
count limit, maybe that is fifteen thousand, or twenty thousand, twenty five thousand words,
you have got a word count limit, so, the only way that you can achieve the required depth is to
go narrow, so, a lot of students kind of think if I go too narrow I am going to be, my scope
is too tight, I am going to be missing a whole lot of things, and the nature of the beast
is just that, that is what research is, at least at this level, is that you need
to narrow your focus, and you have to say, I am going to look at, you know, only this
group in this area within this age range though, that is who I am really interested in, with
justification, you have got to be able to say, this is why I am interested in it. Which
will lead us to another literature, or rather proposal issue, that we see. So, I guess
the point I am trying to make is just that, do not be afraid of going narrow and tight. Yeah. You
have got it, the more you can narrow it down, the more success you are going to have, because
then you can really go deep into that topic. Yeah, just following on from that, I think also
a narrower topic at the initial phase, at this, you know, when you are first identifying,
really helps you to focus on your literature search, and also your methodology section as well,
it really helps you to know explicitly, this is what I am pursuing, and this is what I want to
find out. So, as you said, that depth is really important, you know, it might seem like you are
covering very little, but there is always so much, and what I can say from personal experience
is, everyone I have ever spoken to who has done a research project, the more they know about
something, the more they realize they do not know, so, there is always depth to find.
So, definitely, that is a great point. Awesome, so let us jump on to mistake number two
that we see. Mistake number two is that it is really an issue of alignment, or rather,
misalignment, and the issue that we see here is that the students come along with the research
proposal, and there is three things that a research proposal needs to have, well, there is
many things a research proposal needs to have, but three important things that need to go in,
obviously, a discussion of the research aims, the research objectives, and the research questions,
and these things need to all align, these are the trinity that needs to align, and so mistake
number two that we see is this misalignment between research aims, research objectives,
and research questions, and in bad cases, one or two of those is missing, but that is an
issue all together. So, let us talk about that misalignment. Yeah, this is definitely an issue
that comes up quite frequently, and it is really something that is a smaller issue to actually deal
with in terms of fixing it, if it is an issue, but if you do not, then it is one of those glaring
issues, and you know, most marking rubrics are really explicit about, you know, okay, do the
alignment, all the aims align with the hypotheses, do the research questions answer the aim, and
really, my key bit of advice here is, you have got to think back to that meme of, what is his
name, Keanu Reeves saying it is all connected man, because it really is, so, and I would take it even
a step further, your topic is related to your aim, is related to your objectives, this relates
to your research questions, and even then your research questions are related to any hypotheses,
is if you are taking a quantitative approach, and really, it is very important to just
follow that logic step. So, if you know what your topic is, let us say we are doing a
topic on the impacts of social media marketing, on the fashion industry, in let us say Australia,
right, Brisbane, if we are being real specific, and in that regard, we want to know what
are the drivers of fast fashion purchases, and so that is our topic. Our aim is then
to explore and identify those topics, all those factors that influence fast fashion,
so that is our broad aim, it is generally, aims are quite broad, they are overarching,
and then you want to get to your objectives, and I always like to think of objectives as just
the steps you have to take to get to that research aim, right, and so for this we need to then
find out what are factors that exist that are ahead of fast fashion choices in general, then
we want to test check this out in Australia, overall, and then you want to make sure that
you are also qualifying those as well, because identifying them might be one factor, but then
you need to qualify to make sure that they are, and really you just want your objectives
to be clear things that can be achieved, in order to answer that research aim, and then
following that the research question are those specific questions, so, like your objectives,
you know, you are thinking, these are the fast fashions that we have identified, does this
hold, and so, your research question is, does factor A, B, C and D relate to fast fashion
purchase intention in Australian fashion industry for instance, and so, it is really key
to just follow that focus point through, and the most important thing here is, once you
have written some aims, objectives, hypotheses, go back and just relate each step to the one
before it, as well as to the top aim, and just make sure there is a nice alignment throughout
there. I think a point that is worth making is, so, as you have mentioned, there is this, you have
got to have this golden thread, you have got to have this alignment between aims, objectives,
research questions, your aims are sort of in the high level thing that you are that
you are trying to achieve with your research, your objective, so, sort of your path to achieving
that aim, and then the research questions get even more specific. Obviously, this is golden thread,
but I think potentially what throws students off sometimes, is that when they are presenting
their aims, objectives, and research questions, they feel like they are getting repetitive,
and this is actually something that happens throughout the dissertation thesis, right? Oh
yeah. This is that it feels like there is a lot of repetition, and I think it is just important to
raise that, is that, yes, it will feel repetitive, and if it feels repetitive, you are probably on
the right track, because it means that you have got this consistency between. So, sometimes I feel
like, especially between the research objectives, and the research questions, and it can
feel like, oh well, we have just put the objectives into a question format, yeah, and
so, that is something worth noting, is that if you are doing this right, it probably is going
to feel repetitive, that is not a bad thing, you have got to ensure tight alignment.
So, yeah, that is just a really important thing to achieve there, and a mistake to avoid,
because, if you are, if your aims objectives and questions do not align, let us say two of them
do align, one do not, just say, or let us say, all three do not align, what you are going
to have is a research project that just pulls in so many different directions, you are going
to end up kind of not achieving any of those, because you are going to be pulling in all
sorts of directions, and the worst part is that, you, at the proposal stage, you might not really
realize it, but then when you actually get down to your analysis stage, and you are going back to
your research aims, and your objectives, which you should, and your research questions, you are
going to sort of find your analysis being pulled in so many different directions, so, you have got
to get everything tightly connected there, and it will feel a bit repetitive. I think that is a
great point to bring up, specifically in terms of that repetitive. You mentioned a term there that I
absolutely love, is the golden thread, I use that all the time, and really it is just making sure
that the key focus of your project is carried through every step of the way, so, for your
proposal, it is in your introduction section, it is in your justification, it is in your
research question, aims, hypotheses, objectives, really keeping that line key, and making sure each
of the objectives, and aims, and hypotheses that you put in, are related to that, it is great, a
little repetition is good for in making sure it is clear, and that it is concise, because you really
just want to be going down one single path. It is only really, maybe at the PHD level where you
might want to be splitting a little bit, but then you have to have a clear objective about how you
bring those two ideas back together again. Right. All right, so let us jump on to mistake number
three. Mistake number three is also a common one, and that is that the research topic is not well
justified, and by research topic, by extension, that means the research aims objectives, research
questions, so, lack of justification is a problem that we see here, so, what can you tell us
about this issue? This is an issue that comes up sort of not quite as frequently as others, because
most people have a fairly good justification, but when it is not there, you feel it, right, it
definitely makes the proposal less likely to be approved, obviously you really want to be making
sure you are getting that right. And there is sort of two main aspects you want to be covering
in terms of justification. The first point is originality, or novelty is another word for
that, and the other one is importance, right, so, if we go to originality and novelty,
the first thing to keep in mind there is it has got to be level appropriate, right,
so, if you are doing a fourth year project, that is going to be one level of novelty required,
not pretty much more looking at applying something in a local context. Masters, it gets a little
bit more advanced, and then it is only really in the PHD where you should be, you know, really
truly pushing the boundaries of a research field, and so, in terms of novelty, you have got to
have novelty in any paper, or article, or thesis, but do not stretch too far that you are going to
get completely out of the comfort zone and support of the literature, as well. And one of the keyways
that you can do that, and justify your research, is take a look at recent papers. I mentioned
this before, but you know, a review paper from the last two or three years in your field, or
a recent paper, sort of a 2021, 2020 paper, if you look at what suggestions they are making in
terms of what research should be conducted, if you have support from that, then that is great, you
know, a study saying future studies should assess this issue in this context, that is what you are
doing, then you have got that justification. And then, again, here context is important, if you are
worried that your research is not novel enough, consider what are you looking at it, from what
perspective, for instance you might be looking at technology adoption rates in industry, for four
point, industry 4.0 right, so, that is a pretty cool idea, but it is pretty well researched at
the moment, everyone is looking at that, but, maybe your context is you are looking
at it from a West Cameron perspective, that is not been assessed, so, really just adding
in one level of context, and you have already got that novelty that you need. And so, really, that
is a key aspect to think about. And then the next one is importance, right, because you can have the
most novel research, the most interesting research about, you know, some really key topic, but if
it is only going to affect one person, i.e. you, or your supervisor, it is unlikely to get much
traction at the proposal stage, so, you really want to be identifying a key issue that affects
people in an ideal case, or an organization, or even the research field in general. So, if
I think from a science perspective, you know, you might be looking at the way a
methodology is implemented, and how that current method is actually decreasing the amount
of data that can be generated, yeah, and so, you have got to have an issue, or a problem, and
that is a great way to first include importance, and then the next one you want to be doing is,
who will it affect, if you find a good answer, or not even a good answer, an answer, how will
it improve the field, how will it help people etcetera. I mean, for instance, everyone always
is chasing after a significant finding, but simply finding a non-significant finding can
tell you just as much, I mean, for instance, a portion of my PHD as well, I was chasing an
idea, went to a conference and presented it, and someone said, wow that is really great, you
know, I looked at the same thing three years ago, and someone else said, oh, I looked at that two
years ago, but I did not find significance, so, I did not publish it, and so, it is just that
idea of, you know, every finding is important, but then you also need to make sure that it is
relatable, and interesting, and engaging, and so, for that justification, always take a look at
the current literature, but also if you are in, say the, in an industry, talk about how it is
going to make changes, or how it could feed into the industry moving forward. So, I think that
is really important to think about for that, and then, have some literature to support
it, I think that is always a key issue you, that is one of the places where we find it gets a
bit weak, and I think that is already calling into our next topic, that we are going to be chatting
about as well, right. So, just to recap on this justification point, and it is so important,
because a research proposal, you know, the proposal that you are making, the purpose of that
proposal, the function of that proposal is to say, here is my research idea, and here is why it
is worth doing. So, you know, the second part of that sentence is justifications, all about
justifications. Exactly. You know, you can have, you can present a fantastic, proposed piece of
research, but if you cannot justify why it is original, and why it is important, chances
are, you are not going to get through, and you know, we are leading into another area
here. But another factor, as you mentioned, it has got to be manageable as well, so, you
know, research proposal, the recipe for success, is you know, well justified topic that is
manageable within the limitations of the study, so, it is just really important that, what we see
so often in research proposals, is that people spend a lot of time talking about the what, in
other words, what are they going to research, they do not spend enough time talking about
the why, why is this important. Definitely. Why is this novel, so, that is just
a really an important one to have. All right, so, let us jump on to our fourth point,
our fourth issue mistake that we see in research proposals, is a weak theoretical foundation,
which you just sort of lightly alluded to in the last point, so, let us talk about this issue of a
wonky theory base for a research proposal. Yeah, this is definitely something that comes up, and
it is a bit of a killer for a proposal, right, you know, you are reading a proposal, you
are like, oh, this sounds like a great idea, I like where their thoughts are going, have
they supported this with the literature, no, then I might go and look at the literature and
say, oh, this has been done already, or something like that, and so, really, it is super important
to have that strong foundation. And unfortunately, not all sources are equal, and, yeah, it is
just the way of the academic world, you know, the gold standard is an academic article published
in a peer-reviewed place, and if you can support your entire thesis on those, great. What I will
say is that does differ between fields, so, particularly in the more industry focused
fields, bringing in industry reports can really help as well, data from other sources, but
you really want to make sure that you have got support for the research that you are pursuing.
So, as we mentioned that justification, you need to also have justification from the
literature side, and to be really apparent that literature support should be within the
last five to one year, it really depends on the speed of your field, that, my rule of thumb
is I need papers at least published within the three years supporting my literature, and the,
I also need those key seminal papers, right. So, for instance if you are looking at a specific
topic, you are going to have to refer the guy who defined it in the first place, as well as anyone
who has made major adjustments to it, and so, really you want to make sure you have
got recent literature, but also those key seminal papers that were really important
for setting up the field. Yeah. And then, make sure you have got enough support, and a good
balance of sort of literature. One of the other things that I really encourage a lot of clients,
and people I work with, is to look at your problem from both sides of the argument as well. That
really is where you can show criticality, which is something we are always looking for
when we are assessing a proposal, or any thesis, is that you are looking at both sides of the
argument, so, if you are looking at a specific topic, look at, it might not be a direct conflict,
but look at pros and cons, look at the support for it, and the support against an idea, and
really use that to help build up your argument. Yeah. And then, finally show the gap, so, if you
have been building up literature and finding that support for your idea, we are really trying to
go from a wide base of broad general information, down through the specifics giving the support
we need, but at some point you will get to that point of your triangle where there is not any
literature looking at your specific question, and that is really great, because then
that leads perfectly into your aims, and hypotheses, and that is your key project. So,
definitely making sure you have got that flow, that you have got the support that you
need, and that you use that support to show that gap in the research. Yeah, yeah. Just to add
to that and to take a step back, I think it is just really important to understand this concept
of standing on the shoulders of giants, especially for students who are new to academia, or been away
from academia for a while, that have been in the in the business world, we often see this with
MBA students for example, you know, in academia, the hard line I always use is that your opinion
does not mean anything, you know, what you need to do is build, if you are going to
present an argument, you need to present that argument based on, you know, a collection
of literature, and you need to show how, this is where the state of knowledge is at,
and therefore it presents this issue, so, it is not just you saying, okay, my opinion is
we need to investigate this. So, you know, you really do need to build on, stand on the shoulders
of giants in terms of, your entire argument for justifying your research needs to be based on the
existing literature, and that does not mean that, you know, you need to find everyone that agrees
with you, and as you said, you want to show as a balance that you have considered both sides of the
argument, if there is any contention about whether the topic requires research, but you do need
to base your arguments on the literature, and a mistake that I see that that I think underlies
this is that, very often students think of, okay, I am going to do my research proposal now,
and find some literature that supports my argument for presenting this proposal,
and then I will do the literature review, you know, once it gets approved, you know, I
will dive into the literature and it's totality, you know, once we go down the road, and that is a
difficult one, because I do not want to say, oh, it is totally wrong, because you cannot invest,
you know, the huge amount in a full literature review before the topic is even approved, or your
proposal is approved, but you do need to really sink your teeth into that. Yeah. To think that
you can just sort of dabble in the literature, come up with a topic, and then put it forward, you
are going to end up getting burnt, because you are not going to be familiar enough with the with the
literature, and whoever is assessing your proposal will be more familiar with the literature, their
job, and they are going to go, oh, yeah, but you know so-and-so already did this, and clearly the
student just has not read that paper, so, there is a balancing act in terms of investing the time to
really familiarize yourself with the literature, and use that as your theoretical base, and, you
know, trying to cut corners, so, yeah, I think it is just really an important point to make, is that
your proposal needs to be based on the literature, not on a feeling that you have, not on a hunch
that, yeah, there is a need for this research, and especially when you come from like a business
context, and as I say, we saw this with MBA students, they see a real problem in the industry,
they see a massive problem in the industry, and they assume that I killed this, this is
totally unique and totally unsolved, and no one has ever researched it before, but the reality
is that very often things have been researched, but in other contexts, and so, you have got to
dig, you have got to sink your teeth into the literature beforehand, and build your entire
proposal on a solid theoretical foundation. Yeah, I think that is a great point, particularly
standing on the shoulders of giants, I think one of the best ways to stand on those said
giant shoulders is review papers, meta-analyses, systematic reviews, those kind of papers are there
to help set the scene for where literature is at the moment, what research has been done, so
those are key ones to look at, and then, yeah, definitely you need support for your argument.
Sometimes, your support can even come from, this is what the giant has said before me, this
is the way the research field is going, however I do not know if that is the right stance to
take, because so and so has suggested that it is not, so, again even, if you are going against
the prevailing view of literature, which, do so with caution, but sometimes that is where the key
issues do come up, you still need support, or good strong reasoning for why you are pursuing that,
but yeah, I think it is super important, and it is, let us be honest, one of the major parts about
what we do as researchers, and for any project, is it is half research, half collecting data,
and then we are going right back to the research again, so, yeah, you have got to definitely
have that foundation from a theoretical basis. All right, cool, so, on to mistake number
five that we see in research proposals, and that is, that the research
design, and the research methodology, are not well articulated enough, or that
there is problems within them, but very often the first issue is that this part of the
proposal is just not fleshed out enough, and again, it is one of those things where, just
like the literature review, students think, ah, let me get this topic approved, and then I will
figure it out later, which is hugely problematic, because your research design and your methodology,
these are usually practical components, of the proposal, and of the study, and
whoever is going to approve your proposal, needs to see that, okay, well you thought about
the practicalities, and you worked it out. So, let us talk about this issue. Yeah, this is one
of my favourite things to talk about, I am a quantitative stats guy by training, so,
I get really excited when it comes to methodologies and data analysis techniques, so,
I apologize if I get a bit crazy into it, but really, I think the most important point, and
you have alluded to this as well, is, it is not something to skimp on, which I know a lot of
people feel like it is the place where you can, because, you know, you have shown, you really
did, dived into the literature, you have justified your research, great, you know, you have put so
much effort into this, and the methodology, it will come right, but unfortunately, that is a real
Achilles heel moment, right, where you have left a glaring opening for your reviewer to say,
listen, I do not know if this is doable, so, really make sure it is complete, and when
you make making sure it is complete, that means from start to the end, you need to have a plan
for what is happening, and ideally that plan should be well based in the literature as
well. We keep going back to this topic, but, stand on the shoulders of giants, you know, do not
reinvent the wheel, you know, there is techniques, philosophies and approaches that exist already,
so, really just applying it, is super helpful, and I mean, just to give some advice in terms
of some aspects that you will need to cover, always you are going to have to start off with
your research philosophy, that is generally, are you taking a pragmatist approach, are you
taking a positivist approach, or are you taking interpretivist, there is a whole thing to go into
there, that having that philosophy really sets the scene for how you are going to be pursuing
the research. Then you are going to be thinking about your research approach, that is sort of,
you know, are you using deductive approaches, or inductive approaches, are you building up
to an idea, or are you testing something that is already been assessed. You also want to be
talking about quantitative versus qualitative, what kind of data are you generating, then you
want to get into the actual research strategy, how are you going to be collecting the data,
or how are you going to be assessing something, and this is where you are going to be
talking about an experimental approach, survey designs, case studies, etcetera, and
that is really just setting the overview. And a key aspect to cover for this as well
is, in your proposal, justify these choices, both in terms of your context, and in terms of the
literature as well, and that really makes me as a marker see, that looks great, you know, they have
thought about this, they have got support for it, and they have put it into words.
Then you can also think about your time horizon. I mean, that really goes
hand in hand with the previous point, that are you doing a longitudinal study where you
are assessing changes in something over time, or are you taking a cross-sectional view, where
you are taking one sample right at the point, and then you can go into the specific processes
and techniques that you are going to be pursuing. Yeah. And for that I think it is super
important to think about your sample size, if you are doing something like a survey, you
want to know how many people am I going to sample, if you are doing experiments, what is your
replication rate, how many times are you repeating this experiment to make sure you get enough data,
if you are doing secondary data analysis, how many sources are you going to have to take a look
at, and so, it is really key to get all of those ideas in place, and again, we come back to it
again, but build on the shoulders of giants, previous studies will be able to help you get
an idea of how much you are going to need for each of these aspects. And there are even tools
out there to calculate things like sample size, so, you can do what is called a power analysis,
or anything like that, and so, there is really a lot to cover in this section, but you need to
make sure you have all of those steps, and an important thing to think about as well, relating
back to an earlier topic we had as well, of misalignment of your aims, and objectives, in this
case for your methodology, you need to take a look at your methods that you are using,
and the data that you hope to develop, and you need to see will that answer the question
that I had, will it solve that objective, and so, that is really super important to think
about. Again, this is the proposal stage so it can change, you can alter it, but you need to
have a good solid plan of action, and that is really what is going to sell a proposal as well,
because great ideas are perfect, but if it does not look like it is achievable, then you might
not get that approval. Yeah. And then lastly, make it practical and clear, ideally if I read
your methodology section in your proposal, I should be able to take that methodology and go
and do your project, as horrible as that sounds, you want it to be clear and relatable and easily
implemented. I think that as you just said, the detail, the level of detail is really key, you
want to, you want to essentially be providing something that is so detailed that whoever is
reading it could go, okay cool, I could create a study just like this, one based on the specifics
that have been outlined here, and that is what is lacking, that is the mistake that we see,
is that students sort of put in a wishy-washy, not clear, poorly articulated section in
the methodology, sometimes that is because they do not really understand the technicalities
of the methodology that they will end up using, and they think, okay, we will figure it out later,
sometimes it is because they do not want to commit to a methodology without those kind of, sinking
their teeth into the project, and as you said it is okay, what you put down in your proposal,
you are not committed for life, methodologies can evolve based on, you know, in terms of your
research, so, there is no reason not to commit, so, yeah, really, you know, getting detail,
getting specific, that is essential, yeah, and I think another thing that students think
is like, I just, I do not want to put all that work into the proposal, but really it is
an important way to look at the proposal is, your proposal, if done really well, if
you really put the effort into detailing or going into detail in your proposal, that is your
first three chapters pretty much taken care of, because your proposal will feed directly
into your introduction chapter, it will feed directly into literature review, and will feed
directly into your methodology chapters, so, of course you are not going to copy paste
your proposal straight into your dissertation, but, if you, the point I am trying to make is
if you do the work now, and you really go into detail in all of these sections, your first three
chapters are halfway written already, so, it is really just worth it, but in the time and effort,
and get specific right up front about all of these details, especially about the research design,
because this is the how of your whole research, your whole proposal, this is, previously we spoke
about the white, in order words, your topic, your aims, objectives and research questions, we
spoke about the why, being that justification, but the research design is the how, is how do
we really do this, and as we alluded to earlier, your proposal has got to be practical, it has got
to be achievable, it has got to be doable, and so, if you are not clear here, you are not going
to get it through, so, it is really important, put in the time and effort and get that research
design, get that methodology chapter down path. Yeah, I mean, Derek, you literally took it out
of my mouth, I was about to say exactly the same idea, a really well-written methodology in your
proposal makes writing it up for your final paper absolutely a breeze, because you just
have to make any adjustments and changes, and then it is there. Another aspect to just
keep in mind is, do you think about your data analysis, this is one of the aspects that
I find is often enough the weakest area, in a methods chapter, and it is just because
people are really frightened by it, but again, just have a broad idea of what you would like to
be doing, are you doing descriptive statistics, are you doing inferential statistics, if you are
doing qualitative research, how are you going to be analysing that data, are you using grounded
theory, or arithmetic analysis, having that set, really takes it to the next level, because then
it is not just about how you generate the data, it is also how you are going to
analyse and explore the data, and that gets me excited when I see a project
that got that well put out in clear language. All right, so let us get on to mistake number
six, and this one drives me a little bit crazy when I see it, and that is just poor writing
and sloppy presentation in a research proposal, I think what underpins this quite often is just,
people, students have a misconception that well, it is just the proposal, you know, it is just
the proposal, it does not need to be, you know, absolutely polished, this is just my, it is
my rough plan this is my back of a napkin, tough plan, and really, that could
not be less accurate, because your proposal should be sort of first class,
in in terms of the quality of the writing, and the quality of the presentation, because
this is your pitch, this is your sales pitch to your institution, or your supervisor to say,
hey, let me do this research, and I am proposing a plan, and I want your agreement, so, yeah, poor
writing and sloppy presentation are issues that we see, so what is, what are your thoughts,
what would you like to add to my ramble. Just as you pointed out there, it is super
important, because the best idea in the World, if presented poorly, does not come across
that way, it is the same idea of sales, you know, a good salesman can sell you, ice
to Eskimos, but if you are not doing that, then it is going to be a problem, and so, really,
there is quite a range of things that you can struggle with in terms of presentation, and
really, there is so much, I mean there is the simple ones of grammar, and spelling, and
those things, definitely I suggest giving it to a friend, or you know, sending it to an editing
service, because those aspects are easily miscible when you are writing, but they make a huge
difference, because if I am reading a paper with really terrible grammar, it grinds my gears, and
it puts me as the reader on the negative side. Ideally, I should be looking at your research
objectively, but you cannot really take that out, and so, what I would suggest there is also some
great tools that you can use, like Grammarly and, I mean, even Microsoft’s spell checker does a
pretty decent job, but it is not going to be perfect. Yeah. Related to that as well is getting
someone else to read your work is super helpful, because I do not know about anyone else,
but I know I am precious about what I write, you know, it is my baby, I have worked on it, and
created it, and so you can feel you do not want to be removing any aspects. Another one that
is really a bigger issue that I find comes up, is the lack of flow or structure to a proposal,
and this is really unfortunate, because it just makes it feel like a collection of facts, or
points, or ideas, and really it is important to be having a narrative flow in your writing, so,
we have mentioned it before, but a golden thread, you want to make sure that that thread is being
sewn through your paper, that you are linking ideas and concepts together, and a great way to
do that is to just use some of the basic writing tools that are used elsewhere in the academic
centre setting, and so, for instance, you know, signpost in your writing, you know, make a
transition to a new section happen by a small paragraph that just facilitates that transition.
I think also in paragraph structure as well, you can have a topic sentence that
says what the paragraph is about, then you have your body, which has all the detail
in it, and then you have a leading sentence that makes the one paragraph idea lead to the next
paragraph idea, so, those are really great ways that you can improve that. Then having support for
arguments as well is a major issue, we often see, you know, you mentioned earlier you have this
great idea, but if you have no support for it, then it comes across as weak, so, definitely
having those arguments well developed, and there is a whole bunch of literature
out there on how to develop an argument, so, definitely you can take a look at that,
and then one of the big ones for me is style. You know, it is difficult, because not everyone
has been steeped in academic writing style, but you really want to be fitting
with what the papers are written, and the best advice I can give is read papers,
look at the language they use, and then try to use similar language, but really, as much
as we like conversational talking language, it is not really always applicable in academic
writing. Yeah. And so, that can be a way that you also lose credibility as a writer, definitely
important, and then for something like references, in the past was a crazy issue, but now we have
wonderful things called reference managers, so I am a firm believer in using those, but it is
still important to take a look at your references, and what I would advise, if you are using a
reference manager, make sure you are using the tools that check your papers to see that you
have got the right citations, because really, that presentation is key, poor presentation means
the idea might not sell well, as great as it could be. Yeah, just to circle back to a point you
made around the use of language, and naturally when you are writing a research proposal, for
academic purposes, informal, casual language, slang etcetera, you know, that that does not flow.
Anything that is overly extreme and intense, that tends to sort of not flow, but it is also worth
saying that in writing a good proposal, you do not need to sort of climb your way up the ivory towers
of academia, and writing in a very convoluted and cumbersome way, good writing is, at least at
the proposal stages, it is just writing that is formal enough, but more than anything, clear,
you know, writing that is easy to understand, you do not want to present your ideas in
complex, roundabout ways, you want to, you spoke about arguments, you know, the
foundations of an argument is premise one, premise two, conclusion, you know, you want to
make sure that you are following that style of this, and then this, therefore that, you know,
making very clear flow through your document, and then to the point you made earlier,
is get someone else to read it, the advice that I always used to dispense was,
you should write for the intelligent layman, so, someone who is not familiar with the topic, but
someone who is, you know, at least smart and interested enough to say, okay, well, I want to
try wrap my head around this. So, you know, if you are writing, and you are just relying fully on,
you know, all sorts of jargon and industry lingo, without introducing any of that stuff, chances
are even your supervisor, whoever is reading your proposal is going to go, well, what did he mean
there, well there might be multiple meanings, or multiple ways to interpret something, so,
it is really a good idea to take someone who is not an academic, you know, take a friend
that has an interest, and ask them to have a read through it, and to give you brutal,
brutal feedback about what they understood, and what they did not understand, in fact, a good
litmus test is to have someone read your proposal, and then ask them, okay, now you explain back to
me, you know, what am I trying to do, and you will very quickly see what they understood, and what
they did not understand, and, you know, that sort of gets around them trying to candy coat the fact
that they did not understand something, if they cannot give you research proposal, they cannot
give you the essence of what you are trying to do back to you, you probably have not communicated
it well, so, there really is value to that. You do not need, you know, to spend loads of money on an
editing service, of course that can help polish up your work but, you know the tools like Grammarly,
plus one or two friends that are willing to just take the time and give you some feedback, that
can go a long way to just improve this stuff, and then, yeah, just in terms of presentation, you
know, you may as well, you are going to go write, you are writing up a proposal, you are going
to go write another twenty thousand, twenty five thousand, who knows, fifty thousand words in
your dissertation or your thesis, you may as well start getting into the habit of just writing or
developing high quality documents, So, there is no use cutting corners here, and again, you will
be able to repurpose a lot of what you put into your proposal, into your actual dissertation,
or thesis, so, it is really worth it. Cool, so let us jump on to proposal issue number
seven, and that is around the how again, that is an issue that we see is poor project planning
and risk management, and by this we mean when you are proposing your research, you do
not really have, apart from the methodology that kind of says what you will be doing, you
have not put forward any sort of project plan, any sort of roadmap for, okay, this is
how this project is going to unfold. So, yeah, what are your thoughts on that? This
is also super important, because again, we are going to come down to when your marker
is looking at it, they are going to be saying, can this be done, and really, you need to be
clear and explicit. One of the main issues that we see is people biting off more than they
can do within a time frame. Yeah. And so really, one of the keyways to do this is, Gantt charts are
great for this, you know, you can have your entire project period that you have access to, and then
just split that up between the different sections. Yeah. Remember, it is also possible to overlap
certain aspects, but you need to ensure that for aspects like data collection, you have enough
time to collect data, plus a little wiggle room, because issues can arise. Also, for your writing
phase, do not think it is just going to take a weekend to knock together all those words, it will
take a while, so, you really want to make sure that you have decent chunks of time set aside,
but also reasonable, for instance, you know, if you are writing up the methodology section,
if you have done it really well in your proposal, you should not need as much time for that, as you
would for, let us say, data analysis, or final checks. Again, wiggle room is great, and really
importantly as well, so, it is the timing of things that you need to account for in the
section, but also how you are going to manage any potential issues that may come up, and for me this
shows real criticality, and a good risk management strategy makes me as a reader of your work feel
confident that you can do it, right. Yeah. And so, if you are worried about potentially having issues
with survey respondents, have some ideas on what you can do if you are struggling, is it maybe on
offering an incentive, is it widening your pool of participants. If you are doing experiments, how
are you going to account for weather effects, or lab access, and really, so, having a plan of
action to potentially mitigate a risk, that risk might not happen, but if you show me that you
have thought about the risks that could happen, and you have plans of actions to fix that, that
is absolutely great, that is gold standard. And really, again, I cannot stress enough,
make sure you set enough time aside for this, particularly, this is important for students that
are part-time students, it is really tough playing that juggling game, but setting aside that time
is important for self-development, and what I can suggest there is, in your risk management, talk
about how you are going to manage that balance. The other thing to consider is, you do need to
balance work and life, right, you need some time to shut down, switch off, because otherwise it
is, you are doing damage to your project as well. Yeah. But yeah, really, clear Gantt charts are
a great, great, way to present this information, and you just want to make sure each of the steps
in your methodology, and your thesis project, they are all there in your plan. You do not want
to be missing out anything, so you will need to do writing for the intro methods, results,
analysis, discussion, you will need to do the data collection itself, you need to think about
how you are going to be collecting that, yeah, planning is key. I think the mistake
that we see is that for many students the process of developing a dissertation,
developing a thesis, is proposal, black box, lots of squiggly lines, printed dissertation,
and it is, you know, that is really what you are trying to solve here with good project
planning, you are essentially looking at, what you need to be looking at is, what are all
the steps that I need to take, what are the all the actions that I need to take that might, you
know, that is breaking it down to, you know, reading, you know, digging into the
literature review, right, thinking, you know, you can break it to a very fine level
of detail, but you have got to go, okay, well, you know, what is the path that I need to walk,
and what are all of the action points that I am going to need to take for each chapter that I am
going to have to ultimately write up. And then, you know, the second question is, what could
go wrong, you know, you are drawing out this map and as you say, beautiful, if you can put
that into a Gantt chart, that is a great way of demonstrating that you have thought it out, and it
will also be a super practical tool for you as you as you undertake your research, that you
can actually keep on track, and you know, whether you are on time, or behind schedule,
or whatever the case may be, but also just being sort of, being able to track where you are
at, and being able to foresee the pitfalls, the potential potholes in in the road ahead of you.
The more you can think critically, you got to be a bit of a pessimist, yeah, the more you can
think about what all could go wrong, you know, how, what are the million ways in which my project
could derail, the more you can think about that, the better it is for your proposal, but
also the better it is for you, because you got to plan for these things, you know, we
always see that things take fifty percent longer than you anticipate, they cost fifty percent more
than you anticipate, if there is a cost factor, and you know, there is always problems,
there is always problems, you never get as many survey respondents as you anticipated, your
schedule for interviewing people gets derailed, because this one cancels on you, and that one
has a meeting, and you know, there is always, this is life, you know, it is so tempting when you
are writing up a research proposal, and you sort of in the hallways of academia and think okay,
well I can do this, do that, okay, everything is just going to unfold, but the reality is that
research is messy, and you are dealing with, you know, if you are doing research in the social
sciences, and you are collecting data from people, those people are not, you know, their number one
priority is not to help you do your research, you know, they have lives to live, so, you know, you
cannot expect that everyone is just going to fit into your schedule, so, you have got to think of
all the things that could potentially go wrong, and be prepared for that, and that is what good,
good planning is, and good risk management is, identify the risks, identify, okay, well,
if this happens, what will I do about it, how will I fix it, how can I get back on
track, and just be super conservative about your timeline. Everything always takes longer
than you anticipate, it is uncanny, you know, however long you allocated for something, it will
definitely take at least that long, but it will most likely take longer, you know, it seldom
goes faster than you anticipate, and that is because if you are a first-time researcher,
you have never done this before, you know, the way that your budgeting time is probably
just far too optimistic, and so, you have got to, you know, you really just got to put the
pessimist hat on when your project planning, and risk managing, and if you do that you will
have a research proposal that really impresses the market, where they go, wow, the person really
thought these things through. So, yeah, I think that is important. Yeah, just one key thing that
I like to always talk about is, planning is super important, even in the writing phase, and so, this
is a little outside of the scope of just proposal writing, but when you are writing up a chapter,
plan it out, set up a rough structure for it, it will help you, because what we know is writing
is an iterative process, you are going to write something, you are going to think about it,
you are going to write some more, you are going to think about it, you are going to make
changes, but doing that planning session early means that you have time to think
about the way things are going to progress, and yeah, things take longer than we anticipate,
and if it does not, that is great, right, but you would rather not be pushing right
up against your deadline. Exactly, exactly. All right, so let us get on to the final mistake
that we see made in proposals. I wish that this was the final, final, and that there were only
eight mistakes you can make, unfortunately there is many more, but the very last one that we see is
really something you would not expect to come up, but it is the simple issue of students just not
following the University's specific criteria, so, a research proposal is a research
proposal to a certain extent, you know, for the most part. You will have to include all
the same bits, maybe some extra bells and whistles for different Universities, but every University
has their style, and they have their level of detail that they are looking for, they might
have word count requirements, they might have presentation requirements, you know,
I have seen stuff go down to like, you know, the specific size font you have to
use for a proposal, and what happens is, because a research proposal is a big new overwhelming
project for a student, as they get so sucked into making a research proposal, that they kind
of forget to pay attention to, you know, just the little things that the University required,
and then that can end up biting them, and usually these are such small menial requirements that
it is just a terrible place to lose marks, and to lose the favour of a of a supervisor, so, yeah,
tell us a little bit more about this pitfall. It is definitely something that comes up, and one
of the unfortunate situations is, you know, you are coming in to a proposal most often new to
the institution, new to the way they do things, but the people marking your work, it has been
business for a thousand times, so they will know when it is not fitting that standard and then it
will bug them, so, really, it us super important, and the key gold standard here is, if they have a
formatting document, find that document, if it is, it should be online, we are in the digital age,
if it is not, email your course coordinator, it is better to ask, and slightly inconvenience
the course coordinator and get access to that, then not to, and really you need to be
looking at every aspect of the study, making sure your references are formatted
correctly, that your tables and figures are in the right places, you know, some guidelines will
want it in text, others will want it at the end, and that makes a difference, and it can get down
to real specifics like font size, line spacing, a key one that comes up is line counting, or page
numbering, because some guidelines want that, and then even it can get real specific like, in
a table you can only use letters not numbers. Yeah. Worth your citation, so really, just take
a look at that. One of the other things that I could suggest, and not everyone has access to
this, but if you get a marking rubric from your University, read that intensely, because
you need to read the bottom side of it, and the top side of it, because you need to
know what to avoid, and really what to pursue, but if you can find that, and if you can make
sure you have got those answers, then you are in a great place, and then just in terms of
meeting those guidelines and structures, again, check it through yourself, but if you have got a
friend who has got a bit of time on their hands, ask them to just make sure that you have
checked through, because it is the unfortunate case when you are writing something, it
is your work, you can get a bit of bias in not seeing changes, when it needs to be made. I
always suggest that whatever briefing document the University of the Institution has given you
with regards to what they want for the proposal, that should be your starting point and your ending
point, so, to be aware of those criteria, no matter how menial they might be, or aesthetic they
might be, and be aware of them from the outset, so that you can sort of tailor your work around that,
and then revisit it right at the end, because as you say, it can be tiny little things, it can
be the line spacing, it can be the margin size, you know, so, some Universities are
particularly pickety about it, but as you said, for you, you would not notice it, the first
time you are doing this, the first time you are using their requirements, for the marker
or the person who is reviewing the proposal, they have done this a thousand times, and the
things that are the easiest for them to spot that is, you know, that is naturally what they are
going to see straight away, so they will notice that that margin is out, well the line spacing is
awful, that you used British English instead of US English, or whatever the case may be. Small, small
details, and they might not be deal breakers, might not be the end of the World, but just like
mistake number six, around poor writing, sloppy presentation, is that you are just immediately
putting yourself on the back foot, because the reviewer is going to be going, ah, yeah, well,
they already messed up on this, so, they are going to be heading into your proposal with the sour
taste in their mouth, and that is not what you want, so, ticking those tiny little boxes can
really go far. All right, so, I think that pretty much wraps up our eight common research proposal
mistakes. David, thank you so much for your time, it has been really good talking, and that
everyone has got a lot of value out of this, and hopefully avoids these common pitfalls
when they are doing their research proposal. All right, so, that pretty much wraps
up today's episode of Grad Coach TV, remember if you want to learn more about
research proposals, or just research in general, there is a wealth of content, all completely free
over on the Grad Coach blog. You can get that access over at www.gradcoach.com/blog. Also,
remember, if you are looking for a helping hand, if you want some guidance on your research,
if you want some feedback on your ideas, if you want some critical review of work that you
have already written up, you will definitely want to check out our one-on-one private coaching
service, you can learn more about that and book a free consultation with a friendly Coach
just like David over at www.gradcoach.com. So, that is all for today,
until next time, good luck.
