Writing a dissertation proposal is only difficult for the undergraduate who is writing it for the first time. But graduate as well as doctorate students, who have written a full dissertation for getting their previous research degree, is a bit easy. The only difficulty that they must deal with is the selection of a new research topic. Having hands-on research experience is a trick to write a dissertation proposal, even for PhD scholars. Moreover, there are also a lot of other minor details that you must complete for drafting a perfect proposal. Thus, this article will describe the best approach to write a dissertation proposal for your rapid progression towards the research phase of a doctorate degree.
Dissertation Proposal – A Brief Introduction:
A dissertation proposal is simply an outline of a thesis that must highlight all points necessary to plan a new research project. It must contain all necessary information about what your research will explore, how you plan your research, how others resolved similar problems, and which methods, approaches, and techniques will be most suitable to reach the expected outcomes of a study.Â
Part of PhD Dissertation Or Research Proposal:
To start, you must know about different points essential to write a dissertation proposal. It must include an eye-catching title, so a reader makes a first impression about your research. The abstract must place right after the title with a brief highlight of the nature or scope of your study. A table of content is helpful for readers who want to search and jump directly to a particular piece of information. The introduction aims to give background information about the problem statement, research questions, and hypothesis if formulated. The purpose of the literature review is to convince your reader, in light of already published work, that your research problem must have a logical solution.
The materials and methods must present a research map containing the method of collection, analysis and interpretation of data to conduct research. The second last part must be a short section that will allow the reader to know what your expectations are for a given research project or simply what will be the proposed outcomes of a study. Lastly, you can wrap up the proposal by giving references to all external sources you explored to write a dissertation proposal.
The following is a brief list of all these important parts of a proposal:
- Title
- Abstract
- Table of contents
- Introduction
- Literature review
- Material and methods
- Proposed outcomes
- Bibliography
A Step-By-Step Approach To Writing A Dissertation Proposal:
Whenever you are on a new path, to prevent yourself from getting lost, you must use navigation. Likewise, to write a dissertation proposal striving for originality, you must also use a step-by-step guide and seek help from sample proposals written by academic researchers. However, to get yourself aware of the steps to write a dissertation proposal, you must follow the following steps:
- Search for an idea or area of interest
- Describe the background of your idea in the introduction
- Compile literature to prove your idea valid or logical
- Choose and write methodology for your dissertation research
- Give potential implications of your research
- End the discussion with a brief section describing proposed outcomes shortly
To take a head start, you must come up with a strong area of interest. For doctorate students, exploring a new interest is not at all a rocket science. You can discuss your ideas with colleagues and supervisors to find the best one. Once you become confident about your choice, the next step must be to search for the background information, conduct a literature review and select the right method to produce useful insights. After conducting a literature review, you will have hands full of information about the best methods of selection of appropriate data collection and analysis techniques. A draft containing these three sections (Introduction, literature review, and method) will be more than enough for your research or dissertation proposal. However, the addition of future implications and the possible outcome will complete your scientific story. At this step, many students fail to conclude the future implications. Therefore, getting dissertation proposal help from experts is the only option that can make your dissertation proposal perfect.
Final Thoughts:
All in all, to write a dissertation proposal, the best approach is to follow a step-by-step approach. It will not let you down at any stage of PhD proposal writing. Thereby, the article has summarised the whole process of writing a doctoral dissertation proposal into six simple steps. Following these steps, you can surely write a good proposal.
