Show that you understand the current state of research on your topic.
The length of a research proposal can vary quite a bit. A bachelor’s or master’s thesis proposal can be just a few pages, while proposals for PhD dissertations or research funding are usually much longer and more detailed. Your supervisor can help you determine the best length for your work.
One trick to get started is to think of your proposal’s structure as a shorter version of your thesis or dissertation , only without the results , conclusion and discussion sections.
Download our research proposal template
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Writing a research proposal can be quite challenging, but a good starting point could be to look at some examples. We’ve included a few for you below.
Like your dissertation or thesis, the proposal will usually have a title page that includes:
The first part of your proposal is the initial pitch for your project. Make sure it succinctly explains what you want to do and why.
Your introduction should:
To guide your introduction , include information about:
As you get started, it’s important to demonstrate that you’re familiar with the most important research on your topic. A strong literature review shows your reader that your project has a solid foundation in existing knowledge or theory. It also shows that you’re not simply repeating what other people have already done or said, but rather using existing research as a jumping-off point for your own.
In this section, share exactly how your project will contribute to ongoing conversations in the field by:
Following the literature review, restate your main objectives . This brings the focus back to your own project. Next, your research design or methodology section will describe your overall approach, and the practical steps you will take to answer your research questions.
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To finish your proposal on a strong note, explore the potential implications of your research for your field. Emphasize again what you aim to contribute and why it matters.
For example, your results might have implications for:
Last but not least, your research proposal must include correct citations for every source you have used, compiled in a reference list . To create citations quickly and easily, you can use our free APA citation generator .
Some institutions or funders require a detailed timeline of the project, asking you to forecast what you will do at each stage and how long it may take. While not always required, be sure to check the requirements of your project.
Here’s an example schedule to help you get started. You can also download a template at the button below.
Download our research schedule template
Research phase | Objectives | Deadline |
---|---|---|
1. Background research and literature review | 20th January | |
2. Research design planning | and data analysis methods | 13th February |
3. Data collection and preparation | with selected participants and code interviews | 24th March |
4. Data analysis | of interview transcripts | 22nd April |
5. Writing | 17th June | |
6. Revision | final work | 28th July |
If you are applying for research funding, chances are you will have to include a detailed budget. This shows your estimates of how much each part of your project will cost.
Make sure to check what type of costs the funding body will agree to cover. For each item, include:
To determine your budget, think about:
If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.
Methodology
Statistics
Research bias
Once you’ve decided on your research objectives , you need to explain them in your paper, at the end of your problem statement .
Keep your research objectives clear and concise, and use appropriate verbs to accurately convey the work that you will carry out for each one.
I will compare …
A research aim is a broad statement indicating the general purpose of your research project. It should appear in your introduction at the end of your problem statement , before your research objectives.
Research objectives are more specific than your research aim. They indicate the specific ways you’ll address the overarching aim.
A PhD, which is short for philosophiae doctor (doctor of philosophy in Latin), is the highest university degree that can be obtained. In a PhD, students spend 3–5 years writing a dissertation , which aims to make a significant, original contribution to current knowledge.
A PhD is intended to prepare students for a career as a researcher, whether that be in academia, the public sector, or the private sector.
A master’s is a 1- or 2-year graduate degree that can prepare you for a variety of careers.
All master’s involve graduate-level coursework. Some are research-intensive and intend to prepare students for further study in a PhD; these usually require their students to write a master’s thesis . Others focus on professional training for a specific career.
Critical thinking refers to the ability to evaluate information and to be aware of biases or assumptions, including your own.
Like information literacy , it involves evaluating arguments, identifying and solving problems in an objective and systematic way, and clearly communicating your ideas.
The best way to remember the difference between a research plan and a research proposal is that they have fundamentally different audiences. A research plan helps you, the researcher, organize your thoughts. On the other hand, a dissertation proposal or research proposal aims to convince others (e.g., a supervisor, a funding body, or a dissertation committee) that your research topic is relevant and worthy of being conducted.
If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.
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As the competition for PhD places is incredibly fierce, your research proposal can have a strong bearing on the success of your application - so discover how to make the best impression
Research proposals are used to persuade potential supervisors and funders that your work is worthy of their support. These documents set out your proposed research that will result in a Doctoral thesis. They are typically between 1,500 and 3,000 words.
Your PhD research proposal must passionately articulate what you want to research and why, convey your understanding of existing literature, and clearly define at least one research question that could lead to new or original knowledge and how you propose to answer it.
Professor Leigh Wilson, head of the graduate school at the University of Westminster , explains that while the research proposal is about work that hasn't been done yet, what prospective supervisors and funders are focusing on just as strongly is evidence of what you've done.
This includes how well you know existing literature in the area, including very recent publications and debates, and how clearly you've seen what's missing from this and so what your research can do that's new. Giving a strong sense of this background or frame for the proposed work is crucial.
'Although it's tempting to make large claims and propose research that sweeps across time and space, narrower, more focused research is much more convincing,' she adds. 'To be thorough and rigorous in the way that academic work needs to be, even something as long as a PhD thesis can only cover a fairly narrow topic. Depth not breadth is called for.'
The structure of your research proposal is therefore important to achieving this goal, yet it should still retain sufficient flexibility to comfortably accommodate any changes you need to make as your PhD progresses.
Layout and formats vary, so it's advisable to consult your potential PhD supervisor before you begin. Here's what to bear in mind when writing a research proposal.
Your provisional title should be around ten words in length, and clearly and accurately indicate your area of study and/or proposed approach. It should be catchy, informative and interesting.
The title page should also include personal information, such as:
This is a summary of your project. Your aims should be two or three broad statements that emphasise what you want to achieve, complemented by several focused, feasible and measurable objectives - the steps that you'll take to answer each of your research questions.
You'll need to clearly and briefly outline:
This section of your PhD proposal discusses the most important theories, models and texts that surround and influence your research questions, conveying your understanding and awareness of the key issues and debates.
It should focus on the theoretical and practical knowledge gaps that your work aims to address, as this ultimately justifies and provides the motivation for your project.
Here, you're expected to outline how you'll answer each of your research questions. A strong, well-written methodology is crucial, but especially so if your project involves extensive collection and significant analysis of primary data.
In disciplines such as humanities, the research proposal methodology identifies the data collection and analytical techniques available to you, before justifying the ones you'll use in greater detail. You'll also define the population that you're intending to examine.
You should also show that you're aware of the limitations of your research, qualifying the parameters you plan to introduce. Remember, it's more impressive to do a fantastic job of exploring a narrower topic than a decent job of exploring a wider one.
Concluding or following on from your methodology, your timetable should identify how long you'll need to complete each step - perhaps using bi-weekly or monthly timeslots. This helps the reader to evaluate the feasibility of your project and shows that you've considered how you'll go about putting the PhD proposal into practice.
Finally, you'll provide a list of the most significant texts, plus any attachments such as your academic CV .
Demonstrate your skills in critical reflection by selecting only those resources that are most appropriate.
Before submitting this document along with your PhD application, you'll need to ensure that you've adhered to the research proposal format. This means that:
To get a better idea of how your PhD proposal may look, some universities have provided examples of research proposals for specific subjects, including:
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Feb 10, 2019
When I was writing my PhD I hated the literature review. I was scared of it. One day, my supervisor took me to one side and told me that I had no choice: ‘It was going to have to be done before you start fieldwork’. I was terrified.
Sound familiar? According to Google, 5,000 people a month search for advice on how to conduct a literature review. And we know from the one-on-one PhD coaching we offer and from the theses we proofread that many students struggle with this part of their thesis.
If you’re feeling lost, keep reading. In this guide, I’ll walk you through the nine steps involved in conducting and writing a PhD literature review.
You’ll realise what I eventually found out: C onducting a literature review is easy. Okay, perhaps that’s a bit much. Let me rephrase: Conducting a PhD literature review isn’t as hard as you think.
Let us make one thing very clear. A PhD literature review isn’t just a summary of existing literature. That’s an annotated bibliography and that isn’t what a PhD literature review is about. This is the mistake I see most frequently in the PhDs I proofread.
Not only will your examiners send this back for corrections, but it may mean the whole PhD thesis is problematic because it isn’t grounded in a critical review of the literature.
A PhD literature review is a critical assessment of the literature in your field and related to your specific research topic. When discussing each relevant piece of literature, the review must highlight where the gaps are and what the strengths and weaknesses are of particular studies, papers, books, etc. Also, different pieces of literature are compared and contrasted with one another so that themes and relationships are highlighted.
The job of a literature review is to show five things (if you’re using our PhD Writing Template , you may recognise these):
1. What has been written on your topic 2. Who the key authors are and what the key works are 3. The main theories and hypotheses 4. The main themes that exist in the literature 5. Gaps and weaknesses that your study will then help fill
Who cares what other people have written and said, or what they haven’t said? Well, you should and your examiners definitely will. For your own study to make sense, it has to be situated in the literature. That means you must relate it to what others are talking about.
If you wanted to build a new mobile phone, you would have to research how other mobile phones are built, find out where they can be improved and then design one that makes those improvements.
The literature review is the same.
But where do I start? Here, we list nine steps. Follow each and you’ll be on your way to literature review greatness.
We’ve made the infographic below to help you on your way. Click the image to download it.
You will be reviewing literature on a particular topic, so knowing what your topic is beforehand means you can narrow down your search. At this stage your topic is broad. You won’t be able to know the specifics until you do the review itself.
For my PhD, which looked at the contributions that local government made to climate change policy, my literature review started with a broad topic of ‘climate change policy’. I didn’t focus in on local government until I had read the literature on climate change policy and realized there was a gap.
So, having a clearly defined purpose is really important. Otherwise you are searching blind. If you refer to your PhD Writing Template, take a look at the box titled ‘Aims & Objectives’ – you’ll need to make sure you have established your aims, scope and research questions.
If you search for your broad topic in Google Scholar, you’ll be presented with millions of results. With my own PhD, a search for ‘climate change policy’ bought up over 3 million results.
Obviously it’s unfeasible to read through all these.
So where do you start? Easy: choose the biggest names in your field.
There are three ways to find these:
1. Textbooks 2. Review articles 3. Most-cited articles
Read through these seminal texts and you’ll begin to get an idea of the broad topic.
Your job at this stage is to find out the key debates in the field.
Whenever you read anything you should be taking notes. Detailed notes. These need to cover the following points:
The more of these kind of standardised notes you have, the easier it will be when you write your literature review.
As you read the key texts, you will begin to see what the key debates are in your field. There might be a number of ’schools’, for example. When you become aware of them, start to focus your literature review around them.
Don’t just read everything. You need to find a way to filter through the articles or books that are relevant. For example, scan the abstracts, introduction, keywords, titles and references.
Filter the sources you come across into three separate categories:
As you read through these articles, look at their reference list. Collect articles that you think will be relevant and use them in your literature review. This is known as snowball sampling.
You must be reading critically, which means asking what the weaknesses are and where particular articles or book could be improved.
In order to tease out your own specific research topic, you need to think of the questions that haven’t been asked.
Learn what goes where (and why), and how it all fit together with this free, interactive guide to the PhD literature review and theory framework.
The review will broadly follow the key debates you have spotted in step five above. As you write, focus on putting in more detail about particular sources (i.e. flesh out steps six and seven). The focus when writing is to elaborate upon the key patterns and themes that have emerged.
However, you need to include your own synthesis of the material. I said earlier that you shouldn’t just summarize the literature. Instead you should write critically. You should clearly and precisely present your argument. The argument will focus around the questions that haven’t been asked – step nine above – and will ground the literature review. We’ve written a guide to being critical in your literature review . You should read it if you’re unsure what’s required.
So, write early and write that first draft quickly. The earlier you start writing your literature review the better. You must accept that your first draft is going to be just that: a draft. When you write the first draft, focus on the broad structure first. This means focus on the broad themes you want to discuss in the review.
Something you need to consider is how to structure the chapter. The simple answer is that you can either structure it chronologically or thematically.
The long answer is that chronological literature reviews are restrictive and over-simplify the field. They are useful for very early drafts of the review and can help you to arrange the literature and trace threads and connections within it. However, your supervisors and examiners are looking for thematic reviews (unless they have told you otherwise), where you discuss the literature with reference to the themes that have emerged.
Equally important is knowing when to stop reviewing the literature.
The sooner you go out and do your fieldwork, the better. The literature review is a cruel mistress; you’ll struggle to fully nail down its various components and fully understand how everything you have read is related. But don’t despair; aspects of the literature review will become clearer when you enter the field and start to collect data.
Don’t fall into the trap of spending too long in the library and too little time doing fieldwork.
It’s natural to be scared of the literature review. To conduct one, you have to read, process and synthesise hundreds of thousands of words. But it’s not impossible. Keep this guide to hand and refer to it when you feel yourself getting lost. Share it with your colleagues so they too can conquer their fear of the literature review.
Now read our guide to being critical in the literature review and, if you haven’t already, download our PhD writing template .
And if you need a little extra support, check out our one-on-one PhD coaching . It’s like having a personal trainer, but for your PhD.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? Be able to call yourself Doctor sooner with our five-star rated How to Write A PhD email-course. Learn everything your supervisor should have taught you about planning and completing a PhD.
Now half price. Join hundreds of other students and become a better thesis writer, or your money back.
24 comments.
Good. Clear guidance
I have read the guidelines and noted numerous tricks of writing a thesis. My understanding of writing literature review has improved a lot. Thanks a lot
You’re welcome 🙂
Another Great piece.
It’s understandable and clearer now. I do appreciate you. Thanks so much
Many thanks for the kind words.
You are just brilliant. Outstanding piece for the literature review.
You’re too kind. Thanks!
Great insights! Thanks indeed.
Thank you very much for your clear advice. I am beginning to see where my early literature review drafts were lacking and my feelings of panic are reducing!
is the process the same a research paper?
Broadly speaking, yes. It’ll follow the same overall structure, but you won’t be going into as much detail.
This is very helpful. Thank you so much for sharing
Great advice. Thank you!
You’re welcome!
Thank you for this! I’m a first-year Ph.D. candidate, and I’m super nervous about writing my first literature review. I’ll be sure to use this for some more insight!
Thanks for the kind words. You’re welcome to join us on a PhD Masterclass. We’re currently putting together the Spring 24 calendar and we always run literature review sessions. You can bookmark this page to be the first to hear when our new programme is ready for bookings: https://www.thephdproofreaders.com/phd-workshops/
I cannot tell you how much more concise this makes everything for my ADHD brain. Thank you!
I’m so glad. Thanks for the kind words Kimberly.
I’m staring down the barrel of my literature review and this article made it much clearer what I’m trying to accomplish and actually feel more doable. Thank you!
You’re welcome. I’m glad it helped. Best of luck with it. If you need any support you can get me at max[at]thephdproofreaders.com
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Most popular articles from the phd knowlege base.
What is a research proposal.
A research proposal is a document of around 3,000-4,000 words outlining the research you are going to undertake. The majority of universities require PhD applicants to submit a research proposal when applying for a PhD position.
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Apart from being an essential requirement for PhD entry, a research proposal helps your future supervisors to better understand your line of thinking, experience in doing research and how you are planning to go about writing your thesis. In addition to this, a research proposal is a great tool that can help you to structure your thinking and outline the path you would like to follow during your PhD studies.
Before you start writing a research proposal, carefully check the website of the university you are applying for. Many universities provide guidelines on writing research proposals that will help you both to structure your thinking and meet the requirements of a specific university.
Regardless of university specific requirements, most of the research proposals usually include:
An obvious but very important point is the format of your research proposal. Make sure that the formatting of the document is consistent throughout and that the structure is clear. If possible, it can be a good idea to give the document to your academic tutor or colleague for revision.
It is important to remember that a research proposal is a provisional rather than a definitive document. It will most likely change extensively during the first several months of your PhD programme. Nevertheless, at the stage of application it is an essential document that helps evaluators make their decision in relation to your application. Therefore, it is worth investing time and effort in it! Good luck!
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You apply for the PhD in English Literature through the University’s online Degree Finder. Here is our guidance on how to write an effective application.
The two elements of an application that are most useful to us when we consider a candidate for the PhD in English Literature are the sample of written work and the research proposal.
You will probably choose your sample of written work from an already-completed undergraduate or masters-level dissertation or term-paper.
Your research proposal will be something new. It will describe the project that you want to complete for your PhD.
Take your time in composing your research proposal, carefully considering the requirements outlined below. Your proposal should not be more than 2,000 words .
PhD degrees are awarded on the basis of a thesis of up to 100,000 words. The ‘Summary of roles and responsibilities’ in the University’s Code of Practice for Supervisors and Research Students stipulates what a research thesis must do.
Take me to the Code of Practice for Supervisors and Research Students (August 2020)
It is in the nature of research that, when you begin, you don’t know what you’ll find. This means that your project is bound to change over the time that you spend on it.
In submitting your research proposal, you are not committing yourself absolutely to completing exactly the project it describes in the event that you are accepted. Nevertheless, with the above points in mind, your research proposal should include the following elements, though not necessarily in this order:
1. An account of the body of primary texts that your thesis will examine. This may be work by one author, or several, or many, depending on the nature of the project. It is very unlikely to consist of a single text, however, unless that text is unusually compendious (The Canterbury Tales) or unusually demanding (Finnegans Wake). Unless your range of texts consists in the complete oeuvre of a single writer, you should explain why these texts are the ones that need to be examined in order to make your particular argument.
2. An identification of the existing field or fields of criticism and scholarship of which you will need to gain an ‘adequate knowledge’ in order to complete your thesis. This must include work in existing literary criticism, broadly understood. Usually this will consist of criticism or scholarship on the works or author(s) in question. In the case of very recent writing, or writing marginal to the established literary canon, on which there may be little or no existing critical work, it might include literary criticism written on other works or authors in the same period, or related work in the same mode or genre, or some other exercise of literary criticism that can serve as a reference point for your engagement with this new material.
The areas of scholarship on which you draw are also likely to include work in other disciplines, however. Most usually, these will be arguments in philosophy or critical theory that have informed, or could inform, the critical debate around your primary texts, or may have informed the texts themselves; and/or the historiography of the period in which your texts were written or received. But we are ready to consider the possible relevance of any other body of knowledge to literary criticism, as long as it is one with which you are sufficiently familiar, or could become sufficiently familiar within the period of your degree, for it to serve a meaningful role in your argument.
3. The questions or problems that the argument of your thesis will address; the methods you will adopt to answer those questions or explain those problems; and some explanation of why this particular methodology is the appropriate means of doing so. The problem could take many forms: a simple gap in the existing scholarship that you will fill; a misleading approach to the primary material that you will correct; or a difficulty in the relation of the existing scholarship to theoretical/philosophical, historiographical, or other disciplinary contexts, for example. But in any case, your thesis must engage critically with the scholarship of others by mounting an original argument in relation to the existing work in your field or fields. In this way your project must go beyond the summarising of already-existing knowledge.
4. Finally, your proposal should include a provisional timetable , describing the stages through which you hope your research will move over the course of your degree. It is crucial that, on the one hand, your chosen topic should be substantial enough to require around 80,000 words for its full exploration; and, on the other hand, that it has clear limits which would allow it to be completed in three years.
When drawing up this timetable, keep in mind that these word limits, and these time constraints, will require you to complete 25–30,000 words of your thesis in each of the years of your degree. If you intend to undertake your degree on a part-time basis, the amount of time available simply doubles.
In composing your research proposal you are already beginning the work that could lead, if you are accepted, to the award of a PhD degree. Regard it, then, as a chance to refine and focus your ideas, so that you can set immediately to work in an efficient manner on entry to university. But it bears repeating that that your project is bound to evolve beyond the project described in your proposal in ways that you cannot at this stage predict. No-one can know, when they begin any research work, where exactly it will take them. That provides much of the pleasure of research, for the most distinguished professor as much as for the first-year PhD student. If you are accepted as a candidate in this department, you will be joining a community of scholars still motivated by the thrill of finding and saying something new.
If you have read the guidance above and are ready to apply for your PhD in English Literature, you can do so online through the University of Edinburgh's Degree Finder.
Applications to start your PhD in September 2025 open in October 2024.
Take me to the Degree Finder entry for the PhD in English Literature
If you've got any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Dr Aaron Kelly by email in the first instance.
Email Dr Aaron Kelly
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Posted by Rene Tetzner | Oct 11, 2021 | PhD Success | 0 |
3.2 Writing the Literature Review for the Proposal
The literature review you write for your proposal should be a more formal document than the preliminary reviews you may have written as you first read your key sources (see Section 2.1.3), although you can certainly make use of those initial reviews as you draft the formal review. The literature review for your proposal will in most cases also be the first draft of the literature review that will serve as the second chapter of your completed thesis (see Section 1.2.2 and Section 4.3). The review can instead be combined with other parts of the thesis (the introduction, for instance) or be presented more gradually throughout the thesis in association with relevant ideas, methods and results as they arise. In some cases, a student’s engagement with previous research can be established very briefly in a short section of the thesis that provides some background on what has already been done in an area and simply clarifies why the student’s topic and approach are valuable and interesting.
If a separate chapter is required, which will be the case for many theses, the chapter should give readers an accurate and thorough idea of previous scholarship on the topic, problem or phenomenon under investigation; it should summarise and interpret the content of each relevant source; it should evaluate each source critically with regard to the methods used, results achieved and conclusions reached by its author(s); it should reveal what you believe to be the gaps, misconceptions and limitations associated with the existing scholarship as a whole; and it should indicate how your research will provide what is lacking, establish new perspectives and move beyond the traditional limitations. Some of this may have been mentioned briefly in your proposal introduction, but in the literature review you need to discuss these matters in greater detail, make it absolutely clear where your work fits into the larger picture and set the stage for using key sources later in the thesis.
Even a chapter-length literature review for a doctoral thesis often does not need to be completely comprehensive – including, that is, every piece of scholarship ever written on your topic – unless your university, department or thesis committee insists on this or one of the goals of your thesis is specifically to provide a complete review of all scholarship in the area. You should, however, be familiar with all the scholarship dealing with the topic, problem or phenomenon you explore, and if very little has previously been written on it, you should no doubt include all the available scholarship in your review and perhaps even go beyond that to related areas that might enhance your research. Yet it is more likely that you will have to narrow your scope rather than broadening it, since most effective literature reviews are at least somewhat selective.
The criteria for selection vary from thesis to thesis because they are based not only on the specific research topic, but on the aims and objectives of the thesis, as well as on any research questions and hypotheses formulated and used in the thesis. So there will probably be one or more key themes that form the backbone of your discussion, providing both structure and direction, with each of the sources you review considered specifically and often exclusively in terms of those themes and your own thoughts about them. Without key ideas and a focus of this sort to guide your journey through numerous different sources, a literature review can quickly become an excessively long and disorganised trail of summaries and critiques that are more or less relevant to your thesis.
Although approaches to writing a literature review vary enormously depending on the thesis topic and methodology, a practical way to start is with a brief explanation of the topic, problem or phenomenon and a general statement about scholarship in the area (abundant, scarce, outdated, recent, limited in origin and approach, and so on) before moving on to particular sources. The first source you review should be a key one, whether it is the first piece written on the topic or simply the first one relevant to your thesis, and it should establish a position from which you can proceed. Let us say, for instance, that the thesis topic focuses on the ability of marginal commentary in medieval manuscripts to teach the researcher something about the readers of those manuscripts.
The first source reviewed will likely (and ideally should) take a strong position on or establish a tradition of thought about the topic, which in early scholarship on manuscripts would probably be to dismiss the importance of marginal annotations altogether (the Victorians, for instance, simply trimmed them off to ‘clean up’ medieval manuscripts when rebinding them). The sources reviewed after this initial source might trace a chronological path of the development of approaches to marginalia and their usefulness in research on readership and reception until arriving at works published in the twenty-first century that take the comments of medieval readers very seriously indeed and explore via those comments medieval conceptions of education, self-knowledge, heresy, gender and many other fascinating topics.
A chronological approach of the kind I have just described can often be effective in providing an extra layer of organisation or, perhaps more accurately, in tracing a meaningful route through complicated and sometimes slippery territory (the distinction between primary and secondary sources might also prove useful, on which see Section 7.1, as might that between theoretical and experimental studies). In the sciences, recent publications (usually those published within the last decade or two) are often prioritised, and some thesis committees will want the literature review to focus on recent scholarship only. No source is too old to be considered if it is important to your research, however, and if you are tracing the history of an idea or approach (one may, for example, want to go all the way back to medieval texts to see what they had to say about marginalia) or if very early sources are central because they establish a long tradition of thought relevant to your topic, they should definitely be included in your review. You need not treat every source you review in the same detail: some might require thorough summaries and a considerable amount of interpretation and discussion (those that significantly overlap your own research should receive such treatment, for instance), whereas others can simply be mentioned in passing or in groups or by focussing only on a couple of key points. The members of your thesis committee, your supervisor in particular, will almost certainly be able to assist you in deciding which sources should or should not be included and which among them might or might not require detailed treatment, as well as suggesting sources of which you may not be aware.
How you might best deal with each source may also change, however, as the results of your research mount up and you discover that you need to emphasise slightly different ideas and approaches than you originally envisioned. Remember that the literature review for the proposal is a draft that can be revisited and revised as necessary, which is not to say that it should be written or presented in an informal way. Like all parts of the proposal, it should be written in correct scholarly English and make consistent use of the editorial guidelines or style guide your department recommends or you and your supervisor have agreed upon, including complete and accurate references (for more information on formal English, formatting and style, and references, see Chapters 5–7). A literature review often closes with a brief summary, especially if the review is a long one, and a statement (or restatement) regarding how your thesis will contribute to the body of scholarship on the topic, problem or phenomenon. Finally, please note that neither ‘the literatures’ nor ‘the researches’ is an appropriate way of referring to the body of literature or scholarship dedicated to a particular topic, problem or phenomenon; ‘articles,’ ‘studies,’ ‘conferences,’ ‘papers’ and ‘books’ are all acceptable in the plural, but when using ‘the literature’ or ‘the research’ to describe such a body of work, the singular is the correct form.
To Graduate Successfully
This article is part of a book called "PhD Success" which focuses on the writing process of a phd thesis, with its aim being to provide sound practices and principles for reporting and formatting in text the methods, results and discussion of even the most innovative and unique research in ways that are clear, correct, professional and persuasive.
The assumption of the book is that the doctoral candidate reading it is both eager to write and more than capable of doing so, but nonetheless requires information and guidance on exactly what he or she should be writing and how best to approach the task. The basic components of a doctoral thesis are outlined and described, as are the elements of complete and accurate scholarly references, and detailed descriptions of writing practices are clarified through the use of numerous examples.
The basic components of a doctoral thesis are outlined and described, as are the elements of complete and accurate scholarly references, and detailed descriptions of writing practices are clarified through the use of numerous examples. PhD Success provides guidance for students familiar with English and the procedures of English universities, but it also acknowledges that many theses in the English language are now written by candidates whose first language is not English, so it carefully explains the scholarly styles, conventions and standards expected of a successful doctoral thesis in the English language.
Individual chapters of this book address reflective and critical writing early in the thesis process; working successfully with thesis supervisors and benefiting from commentary and criticism; drafting and revising effective thesis chapters and developing an academic or scientific argument; writing and formatting a thesis in clear and correct scholarly English; citing, quoting and documenting sources thoroughly and accurately; and preparing for and excelling in thesis meetings and examinations.
Completing a doctoral thesis successfully requires long and penetrating thought, intellectual rigour and creativity, original research and sound methods (whether established or innovative), precision in recording detail and a wide-ranging thoroughness, as much perseverance and mental toughness as insight and brilliance, and, no matter how many helpful writing guides are consulted, a great deal of hard work over a significant period of time. Writing a thesis can be an enjoyable as well as a challenging experience, however, and even if it is not always so, the personal and professional rewards of achieving such an enormous goal are considerable, as all doctoral candidates no doubt realise, and will last a great deal longer than any problems that may be encountered during the process.
If you are interested in proofreading your PhD thesis or dissertation, please explore our expert dissertation proofreading services.
Rene Tetzner's blog posts dedicated to academic writing. Although the focus is on How To Write a Doctoral Thesis, many other important aspects of research-based writing, editing and publishing are addressed in helpful detail.
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literature review can be an essential component of any research proposal and grant application. Systematic vs Narrative Review At this point it is important to say that there are different kinds of review you may be asked to write. By far the commonest kind of review you will ever read or be asked
When you begin to write your PhD literature review, it's important to have a clear idea of its outline. Roughly speaking, the literature review structure should: Introduce your topic and explain its significance. Evaluate the existing literature with reference to your thesis. Give a conclusion that considers the implications of your research ...
This step will concentrate on developing review of the literature for a research proposal. In a review of the literature for a scientific research proposal you must demonstrate that you: • Understand the context of the research and where it is being undertaken. • Are able to identify what is known/not known about the research subject.
Examples of literature reviews. Step 1 - Search for relevant literature. Step 2 - Evaluate and select sources. Step 3 - Identify themes, debates, and gaps. Step 4 - Outline your literature review's structure. Step 5 - Write your literature review.
Step 1: Find the relevant literature. Naturally, the first step in the literature review journey is to hunt down the existing research that's relevant to your topic. While you probably already have a decent base of this from your research proposal, you need to expand on this substantially in the dissertation or thesis itself.. Essentially, you need to be looking for any existing literature ...
The literature review opening/introduction section; The theoretical framework (or foundation of theory) The empirical research; The research gap; The closing section; We then progress to the sample literature review (from an A-grade Master's-level dissertation) to show how these concepts are applied in the literature review chapter. You can ...
Make sure you can ask the critical what, who, and how questions of your research before you put pen to paper. Your research proposal should include (at least) 5 essential components : Title - provides the first taste of your research, in broad terms. Introduction - explains what you'll be researching in more detail.
Written by Mark Bennett. You'll need to write a research proposal if you're submitting your own project plan as part of a PhD application. A good PhD proposal outlines the scope and significance of your topic and explains how you plan to research it. It's helpful to think about the proposal like this: if the rest of your application explains ...
If you are a PhD candidate, this will be your Confirmation Review. Your research proposal and literature review should be a comprehensive outline of your research topic and show how you will make an original contribution to knowledge in your field. Your Review panel will use your research proposal and literature review to assess the viability ...
Research proposal length. The length of a research proposal can vary quite a bit. A bachelor's or master's thesis proposal can be just a few pages, while proposals for PhD dissertations or research funding are usually much longer and more detailed. Your supervisor can help you determine the best length for your work.
In the proposal, you may simply be required to show proof of awareness of the existing knowledge of. your field; the major authors and researchers and their ideas/findings. However, this knowledge ...
the academic, cultural, political and/or social significance of your research questions. Literature review. This section of your PhD proposal discusses the most important theories, models and texts that surround and influence your research questions, conveying your understanding and awareness of the key issues and debates.
This puzzle leads to your research question and clarifies which literature(s) you should draw on at the beginning of your literature review. Theorize that tokens in the workplace experience isolation and obstacles to advancement. They attribute this to the the tokens low numbers and low status.
Step One: Pick a Broad Topic. You will be reviewing literature on a particular topic, so knowing what your topic is beforehand means you can narrow down your search. At this stage your topic is broad. You won't be able to know the specifics until you do the review itself.
Therefore, in a good research proposal you will need to demonstrate two main things: 1. that you are capable of independent critical thinking and analysis. 2. that you are capable of communicating your ideas clearly. Applying for a PhD is like applying for a job, you are not applying for a taught programme.
References: Do not forget to specify all the references at the end of the proposal. An obvious but very important point is the format of your research proposal. Make sure that the formatting of the document is consistent throughout and that the structure is clear. If possible, it can be a good idea to give the document to your academic tutor or ...
2. MOTIVATE YOUR RESEARCH in addition to providing useful information about your topic, your literature review must tell a story about how your project relates to existing literature. popular literature review narratives include: ¡ plugging a gap / filling a hole within an incomplete literature ¡ building a bridge between two "siloed" literatures, putting literatures "in conversation"
How to Write a PhD Proposal. 1. Introduction. A PhD proposal is a focused document that int roduces your PhD study idea and seeks to. convince the reader that your idea is interesting, original ...
Guidance on Writing a Research Proposal A crucial part of the PhD application is the research proposal. It is one of the key criteria that the University of Salford uses to differentiate between different applicants and to make decisions on whether to make offers of acceptance onto the doctoral programme. This page provides guidance
Take your time in composing your research proposal, carefully considering the requirements outlined below. Your proposal should not be more than 2,000 words. PhD degrees are awarded on the basis of a thesis of up to 100,000 words. The 'Summary of roles and responsibilities' in the University's Code of Practice for Supervisors and Research ...
This video is for Doctoral and Master's thesis writers and covers how to write the literature review section of a research proposal. This is part of our ser...
How to Write Your Literature Review Review of the literature is the life cycle of every proposal writing process. Literature review connotes a systematic account of documented literature by qualified and accredited scholars and researchers. When writing review of the literature you must show to your examiners and readers that what knowledge has ...
3.2 Writing the Literature Review for the Proposal. The literature review you write for your proposal should be a more formal document than the preliminary reviews you may have written as you first read your key sources (see Section 2.1.3), although you can certainly make use of those initial reviews as you draft the formal review. The ...