GUIDELINES FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF A QUANTITATIVE ACADEMIC RESEARCH PROPOSAL OR RESEARCH PROJECT

Teaching the art of writing a research proposal or a research project is a difficult activity because students have to do their research according to the scientific method. This presents many challenges. The teacher asks the student to be innovative and explore new methods, or gaps within the literature, or undertake a new application, but by asking them to conform to the requirements of the scientific method puts them in a straightjacket. This process stultifies the researchers creative instincts. The author has written various guidelines for students to write down a research proposal. The process to be followed to gain inspiration for research and at the same time, follow the guidelines, consists of the student researcher doing a great deal of extensive reading followed by intensive reading. The student reads upon various topics in his or her area of interest, in order to narrow down and focus upon a specific issue or research gap, which has not been addressed in the literature. Another reason for extensive reading is to provide the researcher with the historical, geographic or contextual background necessary to gain an understanding of, and be able to give a description of the problem setting. Hence the student researcher starts with a broader focus or canvas regarding his or her research area, which s(he) then narrows down to the specific issue to be dealt with, in the process, justifying the significance and importance of the research topic. The researcher also has to specify the objectives of his or her research project. The literature review is done by focusing upon the central research question which guides the whole research, and presenting the major findings of other researchers in the same area. He or she has to also decide how the puzzle will be solved. Then the researcher has to work out the research strategy and describe how he or she will undertake the research or solve the 'puzzle and describe this in a step by step process. Implementing the research design and in the process doing the actual research is often the largest activity of the research and may involve predetermined or emergent research designs which evolve according to what is needed, during the process of research implementation. In both cases there are a number of research designs to choose from, namely, the case study, the longitudinal study, the comparative study, the longitudinal comparative study, experimental study and causal study. After data collection or desk review, the researcher has to input data, after cleaning it, and then analyze the data in order to present it in the form of findings or results. In the concluding part of the article, the researcher links up what he or she has found with the existing knowledge on that issue. In this way the circle of knowledge on a particular issue is added to, and enhanced.