Ross Woods, rev. 2018, '20-'25
This section informs your readers of your topic and why it is justified. No particular order is compulsory, as long as you put the title at the front and the contents are easy for your readers to follow.
Just state the topic in plain, factual, objective language. The title must be a phrase, not a sentence, and must reflect the topic of the paper. It needs to sound like a research report, and readers need to be able to identify easily the central theme from the title alone. When people read dissertation titles (often in a list of titles) they want to know quickly and easily what it's about.
Length can be difficult. Some institutions impose strict length limits and give students no choice. Otherwise, ten words is a good limit; your title should not be so long that it is unwieldy. If it is longer than about ten words, give a brief main title and put any necessary detail in a subtitle. The title can be more to the point to identify the topic, and the subtitle can include other necessary details.
Do not try anything creative and do not use a question. Resist the temptation to make a big impression with something that sounds glitzy, cute, or eye-catching. (It will just make you look foolish and immature.)
The problem is what is being solved in your research. Give your reason for selecting this particular topic, describing it as a problem that has not yet been solved. This is often a broad problem, that is, a problem that has not been narrowed down to a topic specific enough for a single research paper. Support your statement with references to the current literature showing that the topic is significant. This might not always be possible, but it is very helpful for opening your introduction and for your statement of significance. Some thesis guides also specify a separate section in the introduction of explanation of the problem (permasalahan).
In theoretical research, the problem must relate to academic theory. In professional research, the problem may be applied, but there must still be a theoretical aspect.
As a general rule, do not choose a practical problem that does not involve theory. For example, it usually should not be answered with practical guidelines in the form of implementation steps, or topics that are not relevant in the world of research.
The research problem did not magically appear out of nowhere. Describe the background of the topic, usually as a fairly brief explanation of its historical development or its particular context. Either way, it must make the topic easy to understand for those with no specialist knowledge. If you can tell the story well, your subsequent work becomes more credible.
Many research problems have a history, and it is often good practice to recount any historical developments that resulted in the current state of affairs. For example, researchers might have debated the issue in different ways. Consequently, it is helpful to describe that debate, along with any major documents, researchers, or institutions.
Otherwise, get to the point. According to Μαrtιn J Ριtt, many students go a long way back and give lots of information that is well-known, or could be given in only a sentence or two, or is not directly relevant to the dissertation. Getting to the point might also save lots of work; imagine having to delete 50 pages of information that is not directly useful to the dissertation.
Some students find it difficult to explain research gaps because, by definition, nothing has been written directly on their specific topic. The way to do it is to describe the related research and mention how it leaves a gap, for example:
Research on differentiated instruction has shown a significant relationship with the quality of student learning. However, almost all of these studies were conducted in western countries, with only Bharat (2007), Goh (2011) and Lee (2013) conducted in Asian contexts and none in Indonesia. In Sihombing's survey, he found that Indonesian education faculties rarely teach it and students do not practice it. Consequently, a critical question arises: do Indonesian teachers know how to implement differentiated instruction in the classroom? In other words, do they have sufficient knowledge of the principles of differentiated instruction and the appropriate skills for implementation? Research on differentiated instruction in non-western contexts and, especially, the Indonesian context, is still lacking. Consequently, this gap justifies the need for further study.
You need to answer the questions, So what?
and Who cares?
If it's not important and compelling for any reason, why would you bother writing it and why would anyone bother reading it?
Write a statement defining the significance of your project. In research dissertations, significance must normally be given as theoretical value, such as implications for changes in theory. Many institutions also require a statement of possible practical effects or benefits, especially improvement of professional practice.
Express the topic as one question that has not been answered or an hypothesis to be tested. Again, keep to a limit of about 10-15 words. (Any longer might meant that you haven't focussed it well enough.) It must be direct enough to clearly communicate your intentions to your readers.
You might also list sub-questions or sub-hyptheses if you wish, but they must be aspects of components of your main question or hypothesis.
Include a statement of your research purpose. If your problem is broad, your purpose will state what you will specifically try to achieve in a single work of research. It need not be long but it must be direct enough to clearly communicate your intentions to your readers. As a rule of thumb, try to express the core purpose in about 10-15 words. (Any longer might meant that you haven't focussed it well enough.)
Describe the findings or outcomes that you expect from your project. Don't promise too much or too little. Your report should be suitable for inclusion in your proposal, and, ultimately, in the introductory chapter of your dissertation.
As Βαrbαrα Rοbsοn says, Make it easy for your examiners to work out what your contribution is … do make it very easy to see why you chose the problem, what your hypotheses were, the line of the argument to your conclusion, and what you have done that is new.
(With thanks to Βαrbαrα Rοbsοn and Dανid Tγlεr.)
Although many topics are clearly enough defined using the above descriptors, some topics need a statement of scope. You might need to clarify some borderlines, mentioning specific aspects and giving your reasons why they are included in or excluded from your topic. For example:
Some delimitations might arise only later during the research, in which case they can be inserted in the introduction during the final re-write.
limitations
Why didn’t the author…?
Research normally builds on the research that has gone before it, so researchers need to work within an existing theory or set of assumptions and to extend research within them. Consequently, students must present an explicit theoretical basis for their research.
Specific practices, however, vary between universities, disciplines, and perhaps even between supervisors. Some don't treat it as a separate stage. Some differentiate between theoretical framework
and conceptual framework
in various ways, but they are perhaps as much a matter of style and preference as of substance. It was once usually called “theoretical assumptions.” I prefer this way to look at it as it is less confining and allows some eclecticism.
Whatever the case, you need to define the theoretical basis of your approach to your topic by defining theories, assumptions, concepts, and models relevant to your research topic. Evaluate your assumptions; you might even find situations where it is helpful to challenge some of them. If you are dealing with models, you should compare similar or related models. Depending on the situation, you might need to combine, contrast, or modify them.
Your annotated bibliography must be exhaustive on the elements of your conceptual framework. Here is a simple approach, which differs little from the normal treatment of sources:
You will probably need to define your working assumptions for fieldwork and analysis. You can define some of them at the planning stage, but you might identify more later as you gather and analyze data. Make notes as you go and insert them into the introduction.
It is always good practice to justify one's assumptions. In fact, your work might be very vulnerable if an examiner questions them and they are unjustified. Some sets of assumptions are very fragile. Any undermining of those assumptions would seriously compromise the validity of the research.
When the annotated bibliography is done, present the framework as a concise model.
Based on "Theoretical/conceptual framework: The lens of the DBA doctoral study" by Walden University. Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-01xVTIVC8&t=93s
You should give some specific context if readers cannot be expected to know anything specific about it. If you are studying a particular institution or community, give a description. For example, if it is a school, you would describe its social, cultural and demographic context. In other cases, the research problem might have a particular legal context.
In cases where context is particulary significant, such as ethnography, the introduction in the dissertation might include a relatively brief context statement, and a later chapter can explore it more fully.
Many kinds of research require human subjects, and you need to define them clearly and accurately. The particular group of people whom you will research are known as a population
or sometimes as the target group or target population. (As we already saw, defining the population is a significant way to narrow your topic.) At this stage, you need to define its characteristics so that you know from whom you will gather information and to whom your conclusions will refer.
This involves setting eligibility criteria to fit with your study objectives. Sometimes, they will be defined by ethnic, social, or cultural factors, or by being related to a kind of program or organization. In other kinds of study, they will be defined by academic results, by general health, by age, or gender. For example, you can use demographic descriptors (e.g. children from thirteen to sixteen years of age living in Longbridge County), or professional descriptors (civil engineers who worked on the Flatridge construction project, kindergarten teachers in public kindergartens in Smithville County). However you define them, it needs to fit your research purpose.
Explain why you chose that target population. What characteristics does it have that are suitable for addressing your research problem? Why is is a better choice than other possible alternatives?
The principle is that you need enough to support your conclusions.
In qualitative research, choosing between more or fewer people will depends to some extent on what you want to learn. Fewer people are less representative of the whole population but give more opportunity to explore individual characteristics. More people are more representative of the whole population but give less opportunity to explore individual characteristics in greater detail.
Fortunately, you can have it both ways by getting small amounts of data from many people (e.g. with a written questionnaire), and large amounts of data from relatively few, carefully selected people (e.g. with focussed interviews).
If you use interviews, you can identify saturation as you go based on a set of criteria. Data saturation
is the point when further data-gathering does not uncover any new information, enough data has been collected to draw conclusions and the data adequately represents the population. So far, there is no reliable way of predicting saturation points. The best way so far is three consecutive interviews in which no new themes emerge and you have enough data on every theme that emerged.
At doctoral level, it is sometimes recommended that students compare several populations to create greater generalizability. In other words, your conclusions will be representative of a wider total population. For example:
Consider these other examples:
Comparison is easier in quantitative research, because you are simply comparing statistics using known methods. However, in qualitative resesarch, you will need to explain the comparison in considerable detail and give concrete examples of similarities and differences.
A researcher needs permission from an organization if he/she wants to use it to recruit research participants from their constituents. Consequently you should select populations for which permission is feasible. Some reasons are as follows:
Can I set a particular number of participants?
A student asked: How can I predict how much data I'll need at the planning stage? I'd like to set a particular number of participants. What would be a good justification for using a particular number?
In answer, this is what to do when planning your research:
There are different possible reasons why you might need to define some terms in a thesis or dissertation, for example:
In any of these cases, you need need to give a definition so that your readers know precisely what you mean when you use the term. In a few cases, you might need to argue your case.
On the other side, some students feel that they must give a list of definitions because that what's written in the textbook. Consequently, they unnecessarily define common words that don't need definitions. Omit ordinary, unambiguous words that are used with their normal dictionary meaning.
💡 Hint If a term is used with different meanings in the research literature, you might need to discuss it in the literature review.
This section of a full proposal is really the first version of the final introduction chapter.
Later on, unless you made maor changes to your topic, you will simply edit the proposal and make any necessary changes. The main change is that you might add assumptions, delineations, or definitions that arose during your research.