Useful Pointers For Writing a Research Proposal
(specifically a PhD proposal)

Points that need to be addresses:
(and typical outline of proposal sections)

1. What is the open question and what is your hypothesis.
2. Evidence for it being open.
3. Evidence that suitable tools for your approach exist.
4. What will you do to investigate the question.
5. How will you test your hypothesis/approach.
6. Timetable/practicalities

Hypothesis / Claims

One of the hardest part in any proposal is clearly setting out claims. The claims need to be clearly defined (define what you mean by phrases like "better than" and the domain you are working in) such that it is apparent what the targets are. The targets need to be such that both you and an external observer can know whether the claim has been proved or disproved. i.e. the proposal is about a testable hypothesis about an unsolved problem

Below is an outline of how a claim might be formulated:

A,B,C showed X, but I claim...

1. the result can be generalised to X'
2. their claim was too general but is okay if restricted to X'
3. can also be applied to Y
4. was never applied to real data, which I will do
5. the results would be even better if you did X'
6. or some other variation/alternative

© Paul A. Crook, June 2002