Now that you have gotten a green light for your research question, it is time to begin the process of writing your proposal for submission.
What is a proposal
In essence, a research proposal is a formal document of support and justification for a research project to be conducted. This is done to evaluate the soundness of a research in terms of its potential impact, usefulness, and feasibility.
In the CIPQ, your research proposal will require you to:
- State the title of your research, i.e. your research question.
- Explain the reasoning behind choosing the topic: Here, candidates are to outline current issues regarding their research topic which they intend to address.
- Outline your research method, and the perspectives from which you wish to analyse your topic: This section requires candidates to state their preferred research method, and lay out the evidence supporting the validity of their perspectives/issues/arguments, based on an initial literature review.
How to write a proposal
A proposal can be thought of as a microcosmic form of a research paper: you are to summarise what you plan to research about and how you intend to go about it. Therefore, you will be dipping your toes into the pool of actual academic research for this stage by undergoing a background literary review on your topic. With that, you start constructing your essay content.
The Beginning: Brainstorming and Research
Once you have ascertained your research topic, you need to start collecting and reading journal articles. You will start to see very distinctive perspectives and points from the articles, which you can use to generate your own perspectives. Generally, the more you read, the better you can frame your essay points. That being said, it is not advised that you read too many (50 is my rule of thumb) articles for this initial background review.
When I was planning for my own research proposal, I first started with the ideas I could think of, then moved on to reading the articles I have collected. It is important to have several broad ideas of your points as you head into your search for journal articles as you can target certain aspects of the topic by including the keywords in your search.
There are many perspectives from which you can analyse your topic. Here are some of the ones that are more commonly used: economy, environment, society, politics, geographical, law, and education. These should be included in the keywords you type into the search bar.
Knowing which perspectives to approach your research topic with ensures the research articles read are relevant to your argument(s). For instance, social, environmental, and economics perspectives were my research focus, and thus I read up on articles which covered my topic from those perspectives. Regardless, it is always wise to keep an open mind and read articles unrelated to your analysis to ensure the robustness of your research.
The Writing of Proposal
As soon as your research question has been green-lit by your coordinator, you will be assigned a supervisor, who is usually a lecturer with specialist knowledge on the topic you are researching on, to oversee the entirety of your research project. Hence, you are advised to set up a meeting with your supervisor to discuss your research perspectives and findings before you start your writing. Once you have gotten advice from your supervisor, you can start to write your research proposal.
Desk research is most commonly done by CIPQ candidates due to limited time and funds, and this is justified by the sufficient library of academic literature available on your research topic. You will then move on to outlining the research perspectives, which are supported by academic publications. I went about this by first stating my research perspective, then citing supporting evidence found in articles. At this stage, your main task is to present the literary evidence in your own words.
The Submission: Vetting and Final Green Light
Once you have finished writing the first draft of your proposal, you are to send it to your supervisor, who will vet the draft and provide suggestions for improvement. WIth a few rewrites, your proposal will be ready to be submitted to your coordinator, who will evaluate your proposal with several assessors.
The Feedback
There are three tiers of proposal evaluation results, which are (1) approved, (2) approved (with proviso), and (3) not approved (resubmission required). Even though getting a full approval is desirable, it is very rare for candidates to obtain complete approval. As most CIPQ candidates are conducting academic research for the first time, there is usually a lot of room for improvement. The most realistic outcome of your proposal is approved (with proviso). Proviso essentially means reservation, i.e. your assessor has certain doubts on your research; these doubts are usually solvable, and will be noted in the assessor’s comments on your proposal.
In the event that you do get a rejection, fret not! You can always resubmit a new proposal, which actually will save you from a messy research outcome in the end. You are to consult your coordinator and supervisor regarding the rejection, and discuss your second proposal plans with them.
My personal journey
My CIPQ paper was based on whether cities should ban cars, as I had long been interested in a policy known as pedestrianisation, which is essentially the conversion of streets from being catered to automobiles to being pedestrian-occupied. Gratefully, this question was easily justifiable, with climate change being such an acute issue in the world. To reiterate, it is extremely crucial to play your cards right when it comes to choosing a research question that not only allows for arguments to be made, but also does not demand highly specialised knowledge.
As I had mentioned above, I analysed this question from three perspectives: environment, economy, and social and safety. While this question seems to have an obvious answer, there is a lot of room for arguments to be made in defence of automobiles, thus it was not a problem for me to equally cover both sides.
That being said, I did not settle on a perfect proposal with just one draft — I had to reframe my entire essay at one point as I had erroneously focussed my essay on analysing the policy of pedestrianisation itself. Needless to say, pedestrianisation was not something arguable — its merits are universally agreed upon. It took me several drafts and multiple meetings with my supervisor to refocus my essay to analysing the pros and cons of automobiles themselves, including the after-effects of banning them.
TL;DR Bites
In distillation, a research proposal is an official document of support and justification for your research project to be conducted. It highlights the soundness, validity, and usefulness of your project. You are to first brainstorm perspectives from which to analyse your topic and read up on relevant journal articles. You start writing by supporting your choice of research method, and the evidence from literature that support your points of view. Once done, it will be submitted for vetting and you either get to proceed with your project, or be required to resubmit a new proposal.
Disclaimer: Any information given is based on the author’s own experience; the author’s views are personal and do not represent the opinions of any other entity. Every effort has been taken to ensure resource links and information provided in this article are up to the date of publishing and comply with fair use standards.
