In this video I will show you how to write a research proposal what is the structure
of a research proposal what are the elements and how to put these elements in a document
which you can submit somewhere so let's get started hello my name is Tahir and welcome
to my channel if this is your first time please hit the subscribe button and also the notification
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and Friday.This video was demanded by three of my viewers junaid, Zia and Joe, hello guys
and I listen to my viewers and i reply to all your comments so if you also have some
questions you can write in the comments below so lets talk about research proposal a research
proposal is a document which outlines your intended research so this is the simplest
definition of a research proposal why would you need a research proposal so there are
two main reasons one is that this is part of your phD admission application and the
second is that you have PhD you are working as a lecturer or as a professor somewhere
and you want to apply for funding so in both these situations the structure of the research
proposal will stay roughly the same however the strategy will be different and this I
will discuss in another video, because in this video we are only going to discuss the
structure of a research proposal although some universities try to assist students by
giving them a template or a set of questions so that they can answer those questions and
in this way they make their research proposal but these are some of the elements which are
globally accepted as part of a research proposal so the title of course a research proposal
has a title then there is a problem statement then you have to prove that the research you
are intending to do is significant and I will explain how you can do that then you also
need to prove that this research or this project is achievable then the committee, the review
committee or the admission committee wants to see that you have the passion and the motivation
you are self-motivated for a project, for a research project which is PhD then on your
research proposal you have to describe the methodology you are going to use for your
research also because it is not an indefinite project so you have to describe your work
plan and your timeline and you also have to prove that you know what you are talking about
so let's say assume a situation in which you don't know anything about a specific research
area and you go somewhere and you say OK I am going to do this and may be hindered people
have already done that then the only thing you can get out of it is embarrassment so
how to avoid that now I will discuss first all these elements what does it mean how you
can do that and then at the end I will show you two more things first is how to put these
elements in a section of a document which is your research proposal and the second thing
is a slide which will show you some general tips about writing a research proposal so
lets talk about title title is mentioned at the top of this list but you will reach the
title at the end of your proposal and by the end of this video you will understand why
so the first and most important thing about your title is that your title must be accurate
at this stage because at the later stages of your PhD the title of your research will
change in most cases it will definitely change but at this stage, you must be able to describe
this accurately the second thing is that you should give your title a very interesting
angle you should present your title in a very interesting way giving it an interesting angle
interesting point of view the third thing is that your title should be a little bit
catchier not too catchy like YouTube videos but a little bit catchier so that it gets
the attention of the committee now the next important thing is that if possible your title
should contain some benefit some benefit to humanity, some benefit to your organization
some benefit to general industry and the next point is your title should be novel or modern
it should contain something novel your methodology part of your solution and your title should
be easy to understand if you cannot describe your research work in one or maximum two sentences
to someone then you don't understand it well you should be able to present the title in
an easy to understand manner and this is also important because some of your committee members
may not be from your field so they should understand what are you talking about what
is your intending to do and the last point is that you should not use any acronyms in
your title so these were some of the points about title now the next element of a research
proposal is the problem statement this is very important because you are trying to solve
a problem and in this regards what you need to do is whatever you present in this problem
statement should base upon some data you can get this data from department of statistics
like bureau of statistics or some other department whatever is the relevant department but you
should make this foundation that there is data available that there is a problem so
you should consider 4 important things about problem statement number 1 your problem statement
must have a question a problem what is the problem you are addressing in your research
and the second important thing is all the negative points of the current situation what
are the negative points why there is a gap in the research what are the problems due
to this gap so these are all negative points so these you will mention in your problem
statement and the third very important thing which you must mention in your problem statement
is that why does it matter why it is important to solve this problem what are the benefits
and what is the size of the benefit again some data if possible so this is the third
very important element and the last very important element is that your problem statement must
not contain any solution this is problem statement after all ! now the third element is significant
how you will prove that the research you are intending to do is significant so the most
important thing you should note here is that this you can only evaluate if you have done
the literature review now here is a point if you are applying for a PhD position a comprehensive
literature review is not required but if you applying for a funding, a comprehensive literature
review is required so I would recommend that you at least do literature review using google
Scholar because you may not have access to other databases so with this literature review
you should be able to realize that there is a gap in research and this gap if filled because
not all gaps need to be filled some gaps are useless there is no point of doing research
in some bizarre area which nobody has done so you have to prove that this gap is important
and it has some benefits for the community or for the industry which is the target industry
for your research so literature review will give you an information about a research gap
and then you have to prove that this gap is important to be filled the third thing you
can do here to prove that your research will be significant is by showing that your method
or your approach is a novel approach and this novel approach has certain advantages may
be for environment or for anything it depends on your field so I am not going into specifics
I am trying to keep this video very general so that students from any discipline can get
some idea so these are three important points about significance and how you can demonstrate
that now the fourth element which you need to address is that this is achievable your
intended research is achievable so the first thing is that there must be some literature
some published peer-reviewed literature should be available in that field of research and
sometimes people get it wrong they think that if there is no literature, it is easy for
us to do the research but actually it is wrong not everyone is Einstein and if there is no
literature available it would be difficult for you to do research in that field so make
sure that there is some public literature available but that literature must be peer
reviewed authentic literature a Journal article for example so this is one thing the second
thing you should keep in mind that you must keep the scope very limited if you say that
I am going to remove the hunger from this world that is not achievable so therefore
if you keep the scope limited if you narrow down your research topic that basically you
trying to achieve is that this goal is achievable at least this part this narrowed down part
is achievable so don't keep your scope very big because the committee will think that
is not achievable now the third component of this is that you can do this OK this is
achievable a scientist has recommended this method and he proved that this is achievable
then the scope is also limited but how will you prove that you can do this you also have
to discuss this thing that you can do this there are few things you can demonstrate here
the first is that if you have some published work in that area some students are smart
they have publications while they are doing masters so if you have these you can straight
away put your publications on the table and that it the second thing you can do is that
if you have done some case study then you can prove this that i have done this case
study so and so because some disciplines they do research by using case studies and the
third thing which is most common you can do this that you have done a very relevant coursework
so you can say that I have done a very good course work in this particular field and i
am able to do this so this is these are some of the ways you can show that this is achievable
and you can also do that now the next point is that the people looking at your proposal
want to know that you are self-motivated and you have passion for this passion for this
field of research you can simply state this statement but that means nothing if you say
I am self-motivated, I have passion for this it means nothing at all so you have to somehow
show that you are passionate about this field so how you can do that you can prove this
by showing two things for example if you have done some volunteer work in that particular
field you can say that i was volunteer for this field so I am passionate about this then
if you have made some survey related to that particular field for example using a survey
monkey website you can make a survey in 10 minutes so if you have made a survey and you
have conducted a survey in some disciplines surveys are an important part of research
you can say that I have conducted these surveys i have some results some data so i am passionate
about this field then it will be ok then another thing which you can do is that if in the past
you have done some unsupervised work where there was little or no supervision then you
can prove that you have done this project unsupervised so you are self-motivated and
there are couple of ways lets say you are writing blog posts about that particular topic
on various blogs online on internet or websites you can say I have been writing on this topic
for lets say two years so this will prove that you are passionate about this topic now
the element number six is that you have to show the methodology what theory or paradigm
you are going to use for this research whether you will be suing quantitative methods, or
qualitative methods if you are an engineering student you will be doing some experiments
if you are a medical student you will be doing some case studies If you are from a marketing
department you might be doing some surveys so these are the things you should be mentioning
in this portion so the next point is about timeline and work plan so its obvious you
have to give a timeline and i would recommend that you make this proposal in Latex and you
can also make a timeline a beautiful timeline in latex as well and i have made a video about
timeline I will put a link here you can watch that video how to make a timeline and the
last point is that how would you demonstrate that you know what you are talking about again
the very important thing all this proposal is based upon some sort of literature review
and this literature review will give you the ability to demonstrate that you know what
you are talking about and when you will put your references into the bibliography and
if those references are of top researchers or good Journal articles so it will demonstrate
that actually you have done a proper research about this and you know what you are talking
about so this slid shows you some of the general tips about writing a research proposal now
this is the last slide and here i have mentioned to you what elements you should put in which
section of the actual document which you will prepare as your research proposal so this
diagram is self -explanatory and there are no hard and fast rules you could add some
more sections in the document for example resources or the equipment you need or some
other sections but generally these sections are enough for your research proposal so I
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that will help me to grow my channel and make such videos thanks for watching and see you
next time.