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Significance of the Study – Examples and Writing Guide

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Significance of the Study

Definition:

Significance of the study in research refers to the potential importance, relevance, or impact of the research findings. It outlines how the research contributes to the existing body of knowledge, what gaps it fills, or what new understanding it brings to a particular field of study.

In general, the significance of a study can be assessed based on several factors, including:

• Originality : The extent to which the study advances existing knowledge or introduces new ideas and perspectives.
• Practical relevance: The potential implications of the study for real-world situations, such as improving policy or practice.
• Theoretical contribution: The extent to which the study provides new insights or perspectives on theoretical concepts or frameworks.
• Methodological rigor : The extent to which the study employs appropriate and robust methods and techniques to generate reliable and valid data.
• Social or cultural impact : The potential impact of the study on society, culture, or public perception of a particular issue.

Types of Significance of the Study

The significance of the Study can be divided into the following types:

Theoretical Significance

Theoretical significance refers to the contribution that a study makes to the existing body of theories in a specific field. This could be by confirming, refuting, or adding nuance to a currently accepted theory, or by proposing an entirely new theory.

Practical Significance

Practical significance refers to the direct applicability and usefulness of the research findings in real-world contexts. Studies with practical significance often address real-life problems and offer potential solutions or strategies. For example, a study in the field of public health might identify a new intervention that significantly reduces the spread of a certain disease.

Significance for Future Research

This pertains to the potential of a study to inspire further research. A study might open up new areas of investigation, provide new research methodologies, or propose new hypotheses that need to be tested.

How to Write Significance of the Study

Here’s a guide to writing an effective “Significance of the Study” section in research paper, thesis, or dissertation:

• Background : Begin by giving some context about your study. This could include a brief introduction to your subject area, the current state of research in the field, and the specific problem or question your study addresses.
• Identify the Gap : Demonstrate that there’s a gap in the existing literature or knowledge that needs to be filled, which is where your study comes in. The gap could be a lack of research on a particular topic, differing results in existing studies, or a new problem that has arisen and hasn’t yet been studied.
• State the Purpose of Your Study : Clearly state the main objective of your research. You may want to state the purpose as a solution to the problem or gap you’ve previously identified.
• Contributes to the existing body of knowledge.
• Addresses a significant research gap.
• Offers a new or better solution to a problem.
• Impacts policy or practice.
• Leads to improvements in a particular field or sector.
• Identify Beneficiaries : Identify who will benefit from your study. This could include other researchers, practitioners in your field, policy-makers, communities, businesses, or others. Explain how your findings could be used and by whom.
• Future Implications : Discuss the implications of your study for future research. This could involve questions that are left open, new questions that have been raised, or potential future methodologies suggested by your study.

Significance of the Study in Research Paper

The Significance of the Study in a research paper refers to the importance or relevance of the research topic being investigated. It answers the question “Why is this research important?” and highlights the potential contributions and impacts of the study.

The significance of the study can be presented in the introduction or background section of a research paper. It typically includes the following components:

• Importance of the research problem: This describes why the research problem is worth investigating and how it relates to existing knowledge and theories.
• Potential benefits and implications: This explains the potential contributions and impacts of the research on theory, practice, policy, or society.
• Originality and novelty: This highlights how the research adds new insights, approaches, or methods to the existing body of knowledge.
• Scope and limitations: This outlines the boundaries and constraints of the research and clarifies what the study will and will not address.

Suppose a researcher is conducting a study on the “Effects of social media use on the mental health of adolescents”.

The significance of the study may be:

“The present study is significant because it addresses a pressing public health issue of the negative impact of social media use on adolescent mental health. Given the widespread use of social media among this age group, understanding the effects of social media on mental health is critical for developing effective prevention and intervention strategies. This study will contribute to the existing literature by examining the moderating factors that may affect the relationship between social media use and mental health outcomes. It will also shed light on the potential benefits and risks of social media use for adolescents and inform the development of evidence-based guidelines for promoting healthy social media use among this population. The limitations of this study include the use of self-reported measures and the cross-sectional design, which precludes causal inference.”

Significance of the Study In Thesis

The significance of the study in a thesis refers to the importance or relevance of the research topic and the potential impact of the study on the field of study or society as a whole. It explains why the research is worth doing and what contribution it will make to existing knowledge.

For example, the significance of a thesis on “Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare” could be:

• With the increasing availability of healthcare data and the development of advanced machine learning algorithms, AI has the potential to revolutionize the healthcare industry by improving diagnosis, treatment, and patient outcomes. Therefore, this thesis can contribute to the understanding of how AI can be applied in healthcare and how it can benefit patients and healthcare providers.
• AI in healthcare also raises ethical and social issues, such as privacy concerns, bias in algorithms, and the impact on healthcare jobs. By exploring these issues in the thesis, it can provide insights into the potential risks and benefits of AI in healthcare and inform policy decisions.
• Finally, the thesis can also advance the field of computer science by developing new AI algorithms or techniques that can be applied to healthcare data, which can have broader applications in other industries or fields of research.

Significance of the Study in Research Proposal

The significance of a study in a research proposal refers to the importance or relevance of the research question, problem, or objective that the study aims to address. It explains why the research is valuable, relevant, and important to the academic or scientific community, policymakers, or society at large. A strong statement of significance can help to persuade the reviewers or funders of the research proposal that the study is worth funding and conducting.

Here is an example of a significance statement in a research proposal:

Title : The Effects of Gamification on Learning Programming: A Comparative Study

Significance Statement:

This proposed study aims to investigate the effects of gamification on learning programming. With the increasing demand for computer science professionals, programming has become a fundamental skill in the computer field. However, learning programming can be challenging, and students may struggle with motivation and engagement. Gamification has emerged as a promising approach to improve students’ engagement and motivation in learning, but its effects on programming education are not yet fully understood. This study is significant because it can provide valuable insights into the potential benefits of gamification in programming education and inform the development of effective teaching strategies to enhance students’ learning outcomes and interest in programming.

Examples of Significance of the Study

Here are some examples of the significance of a study that indicates how you can write this into your research paper according to your research topic:

Research on an Improved Water Filtration System : This study has the potential to impact millions of people living in water-scarce regions or those with limited access to clean water. A more efficient and affordable water filtration system can reduce water-borne diseases and improve the overall health of communities, enabling them to lead healthier, more productive lives.

Study on the Impact of Remote Work on Employee Productivity : Given the shift towards remote work due to recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, this study is of considerable significance. Findings could help organizations better structure their remote work policies and offer insights on how to maximize employee productivity, wellbeing, and job satisfaction.

Investigation into the Use of Solar Power in Developing Countries : With the world increasingly moving towards renewable energy, this study could provide important data on the feasibility and benefits of implementing solar power solutions in developing countries. This could potentially stimulate economic growth, reduce reliance on non-renewable resources, and contribute to global efforts to combat climate change.

Research on New Learning Strategies in Special Education : This study has the potential to greatly impact the field of special education. By understanding the effectiveness of new learning strategies, educators can improve their curriculum to provide better support for students with learning disabilities, fostering their academic growth and social development.

Examination of Mental Health Support in the Workplace : This study could highlight the impact of mental health initiatives on employee wellbeing and productivity. It could influence organizational policies across industries, promoting the implementation of mental health programs in the workplace, ultimately leading to healthier work environments.

Evaluation of a New Cancer Treatment Method : The significance of this study could be lifesaving. The research could lead to the development of more effective cancer treatments, increasing the survival rate and quality of life for patients worldwide.

When to Write Significance of the Study

The Significance of the Study section is an integral part of a research proposal or a thesis. This section is typically written after the introduction and the literature review. In the research process, the structure typically follows this order:

• Title – The name of your research.
• Abstract – A brief summary of the entire research.
• Introduction – A presentation of the problem your research aims to solve.
• Literature Review – A review of existing research on the topic to establish what is already known and where gaps exist.
• Significance of the Study – An explanation of why the research matters and its potential impact.

In the Significance of the Study section, you will discuss why your study is important, who it benefits, and how it adds to existing knowledge or practice in your field. This section is your opportunity to convince readers, and potentially funders or supervisors, that your research is valuable and worth undertaking.

Advantages of Significance of the Study

The Significance of the Study section in a research paper has multiple advantages:

• Establishes Relevance: This section helps to articulate the importance of your research to your field of study, as well as the wider society, by explicitly stating its relevance. This makes it easier for other researchers, funders, and policymakers to understand why your work is necessary and worth supporting.
• Guides the Research: Writing the significance can help you refine your research questions and objectives. This happens as you critically think about why your research is important and how it contributes to your field.
• Attracts Funding: If you are seeking funding or support for your research, having a well-written significance of the study section can be key. It helps to convince potential funders of the value of your work.
• Opens up Further Research: By stating the significance of the study, you’re also indicating what further research could be carried out in the future, based on your work. This helps to pave the way for future studies and demonstrates that your research is a valuable addition to the field.
• Provides Practical Applications: The significance of the study section often outlines how the research can be applied in real-world situations. This can be particularly important in applied sciences, where the practical implications of research are crucial.
• Enhances Understanding: This section can help readers understand how your study fits into the broader context of your field, adding value to the existing literature and contributing new knowledge or insights.

Limitations of Significance of the Study

The Significance of the Study section plays an essential role in any research. However, it is not without potential limitations. Here are some that you should be aware of:

• Subjectivity: The importance and implications of a study can be subjective and may vary from person to person. What one researcher considers significant might be seen as less critical by others. The assessment of significance often depends on personal judgement, biases, and perspectives.
• Predictability of Impact: While you can outline the potential implications of your research in the Significance of the Study section, the actual impact can be unpredictable. Research doesn’t always yield the expected results or have the predicted impact on the field or society.
• Difficulty in Measuring: The significance of a study is often qualitative and can be challenging to measure or quantify. You can explain how you think your research will contribute to your field or society, but measuring these outcomes can be complex.
• Possibility of Overstatement: Researchers may feel pressured to amplify the potential significance of their study to attract funding or interest. This can lead to overstating the potential benefits or implications, which can harm the credibility of the study if these results are not achieved.
• Overshadowing of Limitations: Sometimes, the significance of the study may overshadow the limitations of the research. It is important to balance the potential significance with a thorough discussion of the study’s limitations.
• Dependence on Successful Implementation: The significance of the study relies on the successful implementation of the research. If the research process has flaws or unexpected issues arise, the anticipated significance might not be realized.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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• CREd Library , Planning, Managing, and Publishing Research

Grant Section Analysis: Significance and Innovation

Part 2 in a section-by-section overview with tips, suggestions, and examples for writing a strong research grant application., shelley i. gray.

• April, 2014

DOI: 10.1044/cred-pvd-lfs002

The following is a transcript of the presentation video, edited for clarity.

Significance

In the Significance Section, I’ve highlighted the key words straight from the instructions on what you should include. What we’re recommending is that you take this exact wording right out of the instructions and use it in your application. That makes it easy for the reviewers to find these critical words that are like little guideposts in your grant application.

You can see the words here. I think someone yesterday said that they keep a list of these things right up by their computer, or right on their desktop, as they are writing to make sure they’re being constantly reminded to include them as they write.

Clarity of Purpose

One of the more difficult things to do is to achieve this clarity of purpose. We have broad ideas, we have lots of ideas about what we want to do. For a grant application proposal, you really need to get a laser-focus on what you’re trying to accomplish, and be able to communicate that to the reviewer.

Your wording should convey your purpose clearly, enthusiastically, and concisely. To do that, one of the things I suggest is to use words with positive valence in your application. Words with positive valence evoke happy and positive thoughts as you read them. We’re using priming of positive valence words to help build a positive attitude.

Don’t be tentative. Be proactive and be confident in your grant proposal. We’ll talk about some words that are tentative. And do your best not to be vague.

Words with Positive Valence

Here are some words with positive valence. Improved, original, opportunity, new, productive, innovative, exciting, creative, interesting, constructive, advanced, important, and you can probably think of a lot of other ones.

You can use these adjectives, but if what you’re proposing is not these things, it’s not going to do you any good. It really does have to be these things. But once you have that in your content and your proposal, this will help create a positive attitude.

Tentative Stance

What are some words that convey a tentative stance? If. In science we use “if” statements a lot, but they shouldn’t be the kind of “if” statements that are casting doubt on whether something will turn out the way you think it will. You can use the word if for contingencies and cover both sides of the contingency, that’s important. But what you don’t want to do is raise a problem and not address it.

May — can you think of a replacement word for may?

Hope — we hope this happens. I’ve seen that in a lot of grant applications. Of course we hope it happens, but better not to say it that way.

Might — that’s another one, “it might.” In your grant application you want to plan for every contingency and let your reviewers know that you’ve thought through the different things that can happen and what you’ll do with each one of them. Same with “could.” It could happen, perhaps, possibly.

Do these words evoke a car sales ad to you? Do they make you feel like people can’t really say what this car will do for you, but it might do it, so we’re hedging our bets. You don’t want to hedge your bets in a grant application.

Vague Terminology

The thing and stuff words. Phrases like certain aspects — that’s not too specific. Some properties, a general outcome, the overall conceptualization, improved understanding, observed change, improved outlook. These might be big picture things that can happen, but when you start to use terms that aren’t real specific, it is good for you to think, “Is there something more specific I can say?”

Another recommendation we introduced last year was this book (Booth, Colomb, & Williams, 2008). You can look it up on Amazon if you’d like, but one way to start — or maybe to back up if you’re having trouble with that laser focus — would be to think about something like this. Can I say in a few short sentences what I’m trying to accomplish?

Here’s an example: A real quick description of your topic. Then can you explain what you think the theoretical significance of that would be? What would be the clinical significance? Is there a potential practical application? And why is it innovative?

If you can summarize what you’re trying to do starting with this kind of an organization, chances are you’re going to be able to expand it. As someone was saying yesterday, you really need to be able to present your program of research or grant in a 30-second bite, a 2-minute bite, and so on. This kind of thing will help you do that.

Telling the Story

Integrate Your Story into the Literature Review

Another important thing to do is to think about integrating a story into your grant application. As someone said yesterday, it should read like an action novel.

On one hand, we’re talking about wordsmithing and using good grantsmanship, and you’re getting the wording in there. But on the other hand, you really need a story to unfold. And like any good writer, you’re trying to combine these two things.

What is the story you want to tell about the problem?

What is the problem? Is it an interesting problem? Is it an important problem?

Where does that problem come from? Is it a theoretical problem that we don’t have a theory in a particular area? Or the theory has been stuck at this level of conceptualization for a period of time, and we could move beyond that to suggest new lines of research? Why is it important in your story that you’re telling in the grant?

What are the gaps in knowledge that you’re particularly interested in? You’re the hero of the story, right? Your solution to the problem is the “Aha. Here comes the main character.” You are the main character and you are solving the problem that you’ve had the opportunity to build credibility for in your background section.

Convey Significance with Context

You want to explain the problem, and what is known about the problem right now in this day and age. It’s important that you are backing this up with current research. That the reviewers know that you understand the breadth of research.

Contextualize what work you have done so far that is helping to build the story. It might be published research. It might be pilot data that you have. It might be part of your training even. It you’ve contributed in any way to this work, you certainly want to highlight that.

You want to propose the next step and tell why what you’re proposing is the next logical step. What do you want to do right now that’s important? You really need to situate your problem within a theoretical framework, or at least a model to show how you fit in with history, and how you’re part fits in with the longer-playing story.

Example Sentences: Significance

Here are a couple examples to highlight the gap in knowledge or barrier to progress.

In human subjects it is difficult to determine the links among physiology, vocal function measurement, and perceptual quality because it is not possible to systematically manipulate one and observe the effects on the other.

So can you pick out the gap or barrier to progress in this paragraph? The problem is it’s difficult to determine the links among physiology, vocal function measurement, and perceptual quality — and it says not only that it’s a problem, but explains quickly and concisely why it’s a problem. Then here comes the possible solution to the problem.

Computational and physical modeling are alternative methods for studying the links among physiology, vocal function measures, and perceptual quality.

And it describes it in a very short amount of space.

Here’s a significance statement.

The proposed research is significant because understanding how specific vocal fold asymmetries contribute to voice quality will lead to improved efficiency of evaluation and treatment of voice disorders that involve vibratory asymmetry.

There’s the word “significant” — you might even want to bold it — it explains clearly and concisely why this proposed research is significant. This is the kind of quote a reviewer can lift right out of your grant proposal and put it into the significance section of the review.

Here’s another significance statement from one of our proposals that combines both the theoretical and the clinical significance.

The theoretical and clinical significance accrued across these aims include (1) data-based comparisons of four theoretically-based WM models in children, (2) the development and testing of a new working-memory-based WL model in children, (3) establishing the relationship between WM and WL in monolingual English and bilingual Spanish-English speaking children compared to children with SLI, dyslexia and SLI/dyslexia, (4) a comprehensive description of between- and within-group WL differences in large, carefully selected typical and clinical groups and (5) the refinement of a working-memory-based WL battery for future theoretical and clinical research.

In this proposal, we listed four areas that we felt were contributing both theoretically and clinically to the research base. Then, we also highlighted the population we were going to include, because we thought that was innovative as well.

These studies address important problems in the fields of psychology, language sciences and education, including the need for comprehensive working memory and word learning batteries for children to support valid and reliable assessment and the need to understand deficits underlying poor word learning so that effective treatments can be developed. By completing this research we will advance scientific knowledge in working memory and word learning for monolingual and bilingual children with typical development and children with language impairment and significantly improve the methods for assessing working memory and word learning in school age children.

These studies address important problems — so you’re going to spell out for reviewers exactly what the important problems are and what fields they are likely to impact. That comes right out of the instructions about saying how you’re going to be addressing important problems. Also, we have these keywords, “will advance scientific knowledge” in these ways, and it will “significantly improve the methods” in these ways. If you can’t figure out how it will do it, the reviewers can’t figure out how it will do it. You need to figure it out yourself, ahead of time, and put it in your application.

Yesterday we discussed that innovation can be its own section. And some people do make it its own section with a header. But it’s also important to weave innovation and words around innovation throughout your whole application to create an overall positive representation of your work.

You want to use these key words in your application. Seeking to shift current paradigms or clinical practice. Great to put that word in your application. “The proposed work will shift current clinical practice of X by doing Y.” It takes one sentence.

What’s novel about your proposal? There are many different things that could be novel, and you should highlight each of them. The theoretical concept, your approach, your methodologies, the instrumentation or intervention you propose to use. It’s great if you can explain why what you’re proposing has an advantage over what’s currently being done. Sometimes just a refinement in a methodology is an important step forward. Sometimes there is something that has been very successful and well-tested, but you are proposing a very novel application — like the example Holly gave yesterday with a book reading intervention tried with typically developing children, but it’s never been tried with children with language impairment.

As you’re telling your story, weave in about innovation.

Things That Are Innovative

Here are some things that are innovative. A new theory or model. Different application of an existing theory. Bringing in a theory or model from another field that has particular application. Applying a normal theory to a disordered population. New and better experimental methods, better instrumentation, or new approaches to analysis.

Things That Are Not Innovative

Here are some things that are not innovative and all of us have to fight against them.

Using the technique of the day, and thinking everyone will be interested in it because it is the new hot thing to do. Collecting more data because it would be interesting to know about it. You have to be careful about that word “interesting.” That in and of itself is not innovative.

And the bane of our existence, conducting more research because “very little is known” about this thing. There might be a very good reason very little is known. Maybe nobody cares one bit about it, except for you. Remember you’re going to get a lot of money for this study, so it needs to be something that people care about.

Example Sentences: Innovation

Here are some lines out of different people’s grants with innovation statements. It seeks to “shift current working memory paradigms in children by testing …”, “shift current word learning paradigms by…”, “the proposed methodology goes beyond typical measures of word learning…”, “a novel word learning battery…”, “shift current research and clinical paradigms by studying large, diverse participant groups…”, it’s innovative because “our collaboration itself is innovative.”

What I’d like you to take a minute to do here is see if you can say, “my study is significant because…” and follow that with “my study is innovative because…”

I think a really hard part about this is being concise, and capturing the essence of what you’re doing. If you can’t capture the essence, often you haven’t got the essence yet. This is a good exercise for you — it’s a good exercise for me too.

More on Grantsmanship

A little more on grantsmanship. As I already said, use and highlight the words from the grant package and the scoring guide. You should have the scoring guide that the reviewers are using right there beside you when you write. Tape it up on the wall, put on your computer screen.

Don’t go down side roads. On many of the applications that I read when I review, you see that people have a love of many areas, but often the love of that area doesn’t feed directly into the purpose of the grant. It’s important — don’t let your train go down the dirt road. Stay on the track.

Have a careful, accurate review of the research, with an appropriate scope of research and citations. The reviewers know the literature quite well. If you haven’t done a good job with your literature search, and if you don’t have a command of the literature in the area, it will show.

And use positive valence words.

We talked about figures. Defining your terminology is really important. Don’t use acronyms. But when you’re using a term, make sure you’re defining how you’re using it, because different fields use the same term differently.

We talked about including white space.

The editing. I don’t know about you, but I really need to see it on paper to edit. How many of you that review print out grants? See — there are still four or five people who still print them out. Probably half the people in the room. You need to make sure that, if you’re a better editor on paper, go ahead and print it out and edit.

You should not have any typos or grammatical errors. Zero.

Questions and Discussion

I think we have a couple minutes if you have questions.

Question: How can we avoid “if” statements when we are not certain of the outcomes of our experiments?

I think there is a difference between your hypothesis testing — where you say that if it turns out this way, this is what it will add to our field, and if it turns out this way, it will do this — as opposed to building your story on a series of “ifs,” each one contingent on the other.

One of the things reviewers will always be concerned about is, for example, if the results of specific aim two are contingent on a certain outcome from specific aim one. Because if it doesn’t work, you’ve wasted money. If you write with a lot of if statements, it sets up that expectation. That’s different from hypothesis testing.

Question: My study is not an intervention study, it’s a basic science study. For the significance part, can I imply it is clinically important when it is not directly so for my study? If this is for the future, for long-term clinical importance can I mention this? Or, if it’s not specific, is it better to just not mention it?

My thought is that they are funding the work you are proposing now. That work needs to have impact. If it has impact ten years down the road, I don’t want to pay for that now. That’s my feeling.

Audience Discussion:

• I think what it doesn’t do, is it doesn’t use that space to really boost the feeling about your current work. If it has obvious clinical implications down the road, they’ll be fairly obvious. In my opinion, you would be better off to be really specific about the positive theoretical or scientific benefits of your proposed work right now. Often we can see clinical benefits down the road, but there are so many steps to get there that what we can’t see is the next critical, short-term step. Especially for an R03.
• I’m Dan Sklare from the NIDCD, I would add to what’s been said that you have the advantage, in a fellowship application, or a career award application, of demonstrating your vision five and ten years down the road. I think that showing the impact of a more fundamental study down the road to the field is going to be easier. Because you’re doing that within the context of tracking the vision of your own evolving research career. I think you’ve got a leg up in showing significance and impact.
• Also, don’t walk away with the impression that fundamental or basic science is in itself not innovative. It can be extremely innovative. Of course, its translatability and impact to the field is another issue. I would integrate the two, and I agree with the comments previously made about the importance of showing innovation even in a fellowship proposal.

Shelley I. Gray Arizona State University

Developed by Shelley Gray, Karen Kirk, and Bonnie Martin-Harris, with past input from Melanie Schuele, Kris Tjaden, Paul Abbas, Steven Barlow, Brenda Ryals, and Jack Jiang.

Presented at Lessons for Success (April 2014). Hosted by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Research Mentoring Network.

Lessons for Success is supported by Cooperative Agreement Conference Grant Award U13 DC007835 from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is co-sponsored by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation (ASHFoundation).

Copyrighted Material. Reproduced by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in the Clinical Research Education Library with permission from the author or presenter.

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Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Assignments

• Annotated Bibliography
• Analyzing a Scholarly Journal Article
• Group Presentations
• Dealing with Nervousness
• Using Visual Aids
• Grading Someone Else's Paper
• Types of Structured Group Activities
• Group Project Survival Skills
• Leading a Class Discussion
• Multiple Book Review Essay
• Reviewing Collected Works
• Writing a Case Analysis Paper
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• About Informed Consent
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• Writing a Reflective Paper
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Generative AI and Writing
• Acknowledgments

The goal of a research proposal is twofold: to present and justify the need to study a research problem and to present the practical ways in which the proposed study should be conducted. The design elements and procedures for conducting research are governed by standards of the predominant discipline in which the problem resides, therefore, the guidelines for research proposals are more exacting and less formal than a general project proposal. Research proposals contain extensive literature reviews. They must provide persuasive evidence that a need exists for the proposed study. In addition to providing a rationale, a proposal describes detailed methodology for conducting the research consistent with requirements of the professional or academic field and a statement on anticipated outcomes and benefits derived from the study's completion.

Krathwohl, David R. How to Prepare a Dissertation Proposal: Suggestions for Students in Education and the Social and Behavioral Sciences . Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005.

How to Approach Writing a Research Proposal

Your professor may assign the task of writing a research proposal for the following reasons:

• Develop your skills in thinking about and designing a comprehensive research study;
• Learn how to conduct a comprehensive review of the literature to determine that the research problem has not been adequately addressed or has been answered ineffectively and, in so doing, become better at locating pertinent scholarship related to your topic;
• Improve your general research and writing skills;
• Practice identifying the logical steps that must be taken to accomplish one's research goals;
• Critically review, examine, and consider the use of different methods for gathering and analyzing data related to the research problem; and,
• Nurture a sense of inquisitiveness within yourself and to help see yourself as an active participant in the process of conducting scholarly research.

A proposal should contain all the key elements involved in designing a completed research study, with sufficient information that allows readers to assess the validity and usefulness of your proposed study. The only elements missing from a research proposal are the findings of the study and your analysis of those findings. Finally, an effective proposal is judged on the quality of your writing and, therefore, it is important that your proposal is coherent, clear, and compelling.

Regardless of the research problem you are investigating and the methodology you choose, all research proposals must address the following questions:

• What do you plan to accomplish? Be clear and succinct in defining the research problem and what it is you are proposing to investigate.
• Why do you want to do the research? In addition to detailing your research design, you also must conduct a thorough review of the literature and provide convincing evidence that it is a topic worthy of in-depth study. A successful research proposal must answer the "So What?" question.
• How are you going to conduct the research? Be sure that what you propose is doable. If you're having difficulty formulating a research problem to propose investigating, go here for strategies in developing a problem to study.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Failure to be concise . A research proposal must be focused and not be "all over the map" or diverge into unrelated tangents without a clear sense of purpose.
• Failure to cite landmark works in your literature review . Proposals should be grounded in foundational research that lays a foundation for understanding the development and scope of the the topic and its relevance.
• Failure to delimit the contextual scope of your research [e.g., time, place, people, etc.]. As with any research paper, your proposed study must inform the reader how and in what ways the study will frame the problem.
• Failure to develop a coherent and persuasive argument for the proposed research . This is critical. In many workplace settings, the research proposal is a formal document intended to argue for why a study should be funded.
• Sloppy or imprecise writing, or poor grammar . Although a research proposal does not represent a completed research study, there is still an expectation that it is well-written and follows the style and rules of good academic writing.
• Too much detail on minor issues, but not enough detail on major issues . Your proposal should focus on only a few key research questions in order to support the argument that the research needs to be conducted. Minor issues, even if valid, can be mentioned but they should not dominate the overall narrative.

Procter, Margaret. The Academic Proposal.  The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Sanford, Keith. Information for Students: Writing a Research Proposal. Baylor University; Wong, Paul T. P. How to Write a Research Proposal. International Network on Personal Meaning. Trinity Western University; Writing Academic Proposals: Conferences, Articles, and Books. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Writing a Research Proposal. University Library. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Structure and Writing Style

Beginning the Proposal Process

As with writing most college-level academic papers, research proposals are generally organized the same way throughout most social science disciplines. The text of proposals generally vary in length between ten and thirty-five pages, followed by the list of references. However, before you begin, read the assignment carefully and, if anything seems unclear, ask your professor whether there are any specific requirements for organizing and writing the proposal.

A good place to begin is to ask yourself a series of questions:

• What do I want to study?
• Why is the topic important?
• How is it significant within the subject areas covered in my class?
• What problems will it help solve?
• How does it build upon [and hopefully go beyond] research already conducted on the topic?
• What exactly should I plan to do, and can I get it done in the time available?

In general, a compelling research proposal should document your knowledge of the topic and demonstrate your enthusiasm for conducting the study. Approach it with the intention of leaving your readers feeling like, "Wow, that's an exciting idea and I can’t wait to see how it turns out!"

Most proposals should include the following sections:

I.  Introduction

In the real world of higher education, a research proposal is most often written by scholars seeking grant funding for a research project or it's the first step in getting approval to write a doctoral dissertation. Even if this is just a course assignment, treat your introduction as the initial pitch of an idea based on a thorough examination of the significance of a research problem. After reading the introduction, your readers should not only have an understanding of what you want to do, but they should also be able to gain a sense of your passion for the topic and to be excited about the study's possible outcomes. Note that most proposals do not include an abstract [summary] before the introduction.

Think about your introduction as a narrative written in two to four paragraphs that succinctly answers the following four questions :

• What is the central research problem?
• What is the topic of study related to that research problem?
• What methods should be used to analyze the research problem?
• Answer the "So What?" question by explaining why this is important research, what is its significance, and why should someone reading the proposal care about the outcomes of the proposed study?

II.  Background and Significance

This is where you explain the scope and context of your proposal and describe in detail why it's important. It can be melded into your introduction or you can create a separate section to help with the organization and narrative flow of your proposal. Approach writing this section with the thought that you can’t assume your readers will know as much about the research problem as you do. Note that this section is not an essay going over everything you have learned about the topic; instead, you must choose what is most relevant in explaining the aims of your research.

To that end, while there are no prescribed rules for establishing the significance of your proposed study, you should attempt to address some or all of the following:

• State the research problem and give a more detailed explanation about the purpose of the study than what you stated in the introduction. This is particularly important if the problem is complex or multifaceted .
• Present the rationale of your proposed study and clearly indicate why it is worth doing; be sure to answer the "So What? question [i.e., why should anyone care?].
• Describe the major issues or problems examined by your research. This can be in the form of questions to be addressed. Be sure to note how your proposed study builds on previous assumptions about the research problem.
• Explain the methods you plan to use for conducting your research. Clearly identify the key sources you intend to use and explain how they will contribute to your analysis of the topic.
• Describe the boundaries of your proposed research in order to provide a clear focus. Where appropriate, state not only what you plan to study, but what aspects of the research problem will be excluded from the study.
• If necessary, provide definitions of key concepts, theories, or terms.

III.  Literature Review

Connected to the background and significance of your study is a section of your proposal devoted to a more deliberate review and synthesis of prior studies related to the research problem under investigation . The purpose here is to place your project within the larger whole of what is currently being explored, while at the same time, demonstrating to your readers that your work is original and innovative. Think about what questions other researchers have asked, what methodological approaches they have used, and what is your understanding of their findings and, when stated, their recommendations. Also pay attention to any suggestions for further research.

Since a literature review is information dense, it is crucial that this section is intelligently structured to enable a reader to grasp the key arguments underpinning your proposed study in relation to the arguments put forth by other researchers. A good strategy is to break the literature into "conceptual categories" [themes] rather than systematically or chronologically describing groups of materials one at a time. Note that conceptual categories generally reveal themselves after you have read most of the pertinent literature on your topic so adding new categories is an on-going process of discovery as you review more studies. How do you know you've covered the key conceptual categories underlying the research literature? Generally, you can have confidence that all of the significant conceptual categories have been identified if you start to see repetition in the conclusions or recommendations that are being made.

NOTE: Do not shy away from challenging the conclusions made in prior research as a basis for supporting the need for your proposal. Assess what you believe is missing and state how previous research has failed to adequately examine the issue that your study addresses. Highlighting the problematic conclusions strengthens your proposal. For more information on writing literature reviews, GO HERE .

To help frame your proposal's review of prior research, consider the "five C’s" of writing a literature review:

• Cite , so as to keep the primary focus on the literature pertinent to your research problem.
• Compare the various arguments, theories, methodologies, and findings expressed in the literature: what do the authors agree on? Who applies similar approaches to analyzing the research problem?
• Contrast the various arguments, themes, methodologies, approaches, and controversies expressed in the literature: describe what are the major areas of disagreement, controversy, or debate among scholars?
• Critique the literature: Which arguments are more persuasive, and why? Which approaches, findings, and methodologies seem most reliable, valid, or appropriate, and why? Pay attention to the verbs you use to describe what an author says/does [e.g., asserts, demonstrates, argues, etc.].
• Connect the literature to your own area of research and investigation: how does your own work draw upon, depart from, synthesize, or add a new perspective to what has been said in the literature?

IV.  Research Design and Methods

This section must be well-written and logically organized because you are not actually doing the research, yet, your reader must have confidence that you have a plan worth pursuing . The reader will never have a study outcome from which to evaluate whether your methodological choices were the correct ones. Thus, the objective here is to convince the reader that your overall research design and proposed methods of analysis will correctly address the problem and that the methods will provide the means to effectively interpret the potential results. Your design and methods should be unmistakably tied to the specific aims of your study.

Describe the overall research design by building upon and drawing examples from your review of the literature. Consider not only methods that other researchers have used, but methods of data gathering that have not been used but perhaps could be. Be specific about the methodological approaches you plan to undertake to obtain information, the techniques you would use to analyze the data, and the tests of external validity to which you commit yourself [i.e., the trustworthiness by which you can generalize from your study to other people, places, events, and/or periods of time].

When describing the methods you will use, be sure to cover the following:

• Specify the research process you will undertake and the way you will interpret the results obtained in relation to the research problem. Don't just describe what you intend to achieve from applying the methods you choose, but state how you will spend your time while applying these methods [e.g., coding text from interviews to find statements about the need to change school curriculum; running a regression to determine if there is a relationship between campaign advertising on social media sites and election outcomes in Europe ].
• Keep in mind that the methodology is not just a list of tasks; it is a deliberate argument as to why techniques for gathering information add up to the best way to investigate the research problem. This is an important point because the mere listing of tasks to be performed does not demonstrate that, collectively, they effectively address the research problem. Be sure you clearly explain this.
• Anticipate and acknowledge any potential barriers and pitfalls in carrying out your research design and explain how you plan to address them. No method applied to research in the social and behavioral sciences is perfect, so you need to describe where you believe challenges may exist in obtaining data or accessing information. It's always better to acknowledge this than to have it brought up by your professor!

V.  Preliminary Suppositions and Implications

Just because you don't have to actually conduct the study and analyze the results, doesn't mean you can skip talking about the analytical process and potential implications . The purpose of this section is to argue how and in what ways you believe your research will refine, revise, or extend existing knowledge in the subject area under investigation. Depending on the aims and objectives of your study, describe how the anticipated results will impact future scholarly research, theory, practice, forms of interventions, or policy making. Note that such discussions may have either substantive [a potential new policy], theoretical [a potential new understanding], or methodological [a potential new way of analyzing] significance.   When thinking about the potential implications of your study, ask the following questions:

• What might the results mean in regards to challenging the theoretical framework and underlying assumptions that support the study?
• What suggestions for subsequent research could arise from the potential outcomes of the study?
• What will the results mean to practitioners in the natural settings of their workplace, organization, or community?
• Will the results influence programs, methods, and/or forms of intervention?
• How might the results contribute to the solution of social, economic, or other types of problems?
• Will the results influence policy decisions?
• In what way do individuals or groups benefit should your study be pursued?
• What will be improved or changed as a result of the proposed research?
• How will the results of the study be implemented and what innovations or transformative insights could emerge from the process of implementation?

NOTE:   This section should not delve into idle speculation, opinion, or be formulated on the basis of unclear evidence . The purpose is to reflect upon gaps or understudied areas of the current literature and describe how your proposed research contributes to a new understanding of the research problem should the study be implemented as designed.

ANOTHER NOTE : This section is also where you describe any potential limitations to your proposed study. While it is impossible to highlight all potential limitations because the study has yet to be conducted, you still must tell the reader where and in what form impediments may arise and how you plan to address them.

VI.  Conclusion

The conclusion reiterates the importance or significance of your proposal and provides a brief summary of the entire study . This section should be only one or two paragraphs long, emphasizing why the research problem is worth investigating, why your research study is unique, and how it should advance existing knowledge.

Someone reading this section should come away with an understanding of:

• Why the study should be done;
• The specific purpose of the study and the research questions it attempts to answer;
• The decision for why the research design and methods used where chosen over other options;
• The potential implications emerging from your proposed study of the research problem; and
• A sense of how your study fits within the broader scholarship about the research problem.

VII.  Citations

As with any scholarly research paper, you must cite the sources you used . In a standard research proposal, this section can take two forms, so consult with your professor about which one is preferred.

• References -- a list of only the sources you actually used in creating your proposal.
• Bibliography -- a list of everything you used in creating your proposal, along with additional citations to any key sources relevant to understanding the research problem.

In either case, this section should testify to the fact that you did enough preparatory work to ensure the project will complement and not just duplicate the efforts of other researchers. It demonstrates to the reader that you have a thorough understanding of prior research on the topic.

Most proposal formats have you start a new page and use the heading "References" or "Bibliography" centered at the top of the page. Cited works should always use a standard format that follows the writing style advised by the discipline of your course [e.g., education=APA; history=Chicago] or that is preferred by your professor. This section normally does not count towards the total page length of your research proposal.

Develop a Research Proposal: Writing the Proposal. Office of Library Information Services. Baltimore County Public Schools; Heath, M. Teresa Pereira and Caroline Tynan. “Crafting a Research Proposal.” The Marketing Review 10 (Summer 2010): 147-168; Jones, Mark. “Writing a Research Proposal.” In MasterClass in Geography Education: Transforming Teaching and Learning . Graham Butt, editor. (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), pp. 113-127; Juni, Muhamad Hanafiah. “Writing a Research Proposal.” International Journal of Public Health and Clinical Sciences 1 (September/October 2014): 229-240; Krathwohl, David R. How to Prepare a Dissertation Proposal: Suggestions for Students in Education and the Social and Behavioral Sciences . Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005; Procter, Margaret. The Academic Proposal. The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Punch, Keith and Wayne McGowan. "Developing and Writing a Research Proposal." In From Postgraduate to Social Scientist: A Guide to Key Skills . Nigel Gilbert, ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006), 59-81; Wong, Paul T. P. How to Write a Research Proposal. International Network on Personal Meaning. Trinity Western University; Writing Academic Proposals: Conferences , Articles, and Books. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Writing a Research Proposal. University Library. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Demystifying the Significance Section in Research Proposals

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Introduction

Research proposals serve as the blueprint for groundbreaking studies, outlining the what, why, and how of a research endeavor. Among its various sections, the Significance Section emerges as a linchpin, compelling researchers to delve into the profound impact their work can have on the scientific community and beyond.

Understanding the Purpose

At its core, the Significance Section articulates the broader relevance and importance of the proposed research. It goes beyond the immediate problem at hand, highlighting why the research matters in the grander scheme of things.

Components of the Significance Section

Statement of the problem.

A well-defined problem statement lays the foundation for a compelling Significance Section. It serves as the starting point, setting the stage for the significance to unfold.

Literature Review

Intertwined with the problem statement is the literature review, providing a comprehensive backdrop to the research. It establishes the context, showcasing the existing body of knowledge and paving the way for the identification of a research gap.

Research Gap Identification

Identifying a gap in existing research is a pivotal aspect of the Significance Section. It emphasizes the unique contribution the proposed study aims to make.

Crafting a Compelling Section

Clarity and Specificity

A clear and specific Significance Section is paramount. Ambiguity can dilute the impact, making it crucial to articulate the significance with precision.

Demonstrating Relevance

Connecting the dots between the research and its relevance to the broader community adds weight to the Section. It answers the question: Why should anyone care?

Highlighting Innovation

Innovation is the heartbeat of impactful research. The Section should underscore how the proposed study breaks new ground and contributes to the advancement of knowledge.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Lack of clarity.

One pitfall to sidestep is a lack of clarity. Ambiguous or convoluted language can obfuscate the true significance of the research.

Overemphasis or Underemphasis

Finding the delicate balance is key. Overemphasizing or underemphasizing the significance can skew the perception of the proposal.

Importance for Funding Agencies

For funding agencies, the Section holds immense sway in decision-making. It serves as a litmus test, helping them discern which projects have the potential for substantial impact.

Real-Life Examples

Examining successful proposals can provide valuable insights. Let’s delve into real-life examples where a robust Section played a pivotal role in securing funding and recognition.

Impact on the Overall Proposal Evaluation

Reviewers often prioritize the Section in their evaluation. Understanding how this section influences their perception is crucial for researchers.

Tips for Improving the Significance Section

Thorough research and understanding.

In-depth research forms the bedrock of a compelling Section. A nuanced understanding of the problem and its context is indispensable.

Collaboration and Feedback

Seeking input from peers and mentors can offer fresh perspectives. Collaborative efforts often refine the Section, enhancing its impact.

Revision and Refinement

A Section is seldom perfect in the first draft. Iterative refinement is key to polishing this section to its full potential.

Significance Section Across Different Disciplines

Tailoring the Section for different research areas is an art. Understanding the nuances of each discipline ensures the section resonates effectively.

Trends in Significance Section Writing

As expectations and standards evolve, staying abreast of trends is essential. Adapting to these changes ensures proposals remain relevant and impactful.

Addressing Perplexity in Significance

Balancing complexity and clarity is an art. The Section should engage without overwhelming, navigating the fine line between perplexity and accessibility.

Burstiness in Significance

Captivating the reader’s attention requires a burst of dynamism. A Section should exude energy, sparking interest from the very first sentence.

The Role of Analogies and Metaphors

Incorporating analogies and metaphors bridges the gap between complex research and reader comprehension. Making the abstract tangible fosters a deeper connection.

In the realm of research proposals, the Significance Section reigns supreme. Demystifying its intricacies reveals its true importance—a linchpin that can elevate a proposal from ordinary to extraordinary. Let  Blainy  be your trusted research assistant, guiding you to get quality research paper with latest trends and updates also to discover a wealth of resources, expert insights, and personalized assistance tailored to your research needs

• The Significance Section showcases the broader impact of the research, influencing funding decisions and reviewer perceptions.
• Thorough research, collaboration, and iterative refinement are key to achieving clarity in the Significance Section.
• Analogies and metaphors make complex concepts relatable, enhancing reader engagement and understanding.
• Yes, avoiding ambiguity, overemphasis, and underemphasis are crucial for crafting an effective Significance Section.
• Tailoring the Significance Section to the nuances of each discipline ensures relevance and resonance.

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How To Write a Significance Statement for Your Research

A significance statement is an essential part of a research paper. It explains the importance and relevance of the study to the academic community and the world at large. To write a compelling significance statement, identify the research problem, explain why it is significant, provide evidence of its importance, and highlight its potential impact on future research, policy, or practice. A well-crafted significance statement should effectively communicate the value of the research to readers and help them understand why it matters.

Updated on May 4, 2023

A significance statement is a clearly stated, non-technical paragraph that explains why your research matters. It’s central in making the public aware of and gaining support for your research.

Write it in jargon-free language that a reader from any field can understand. Well-crafted, easily readable significance statements can improve your chances for citation and impact and make it easier for readers outside your field to find and understand your work.

Read on for more details on what a significance statement is, how it can enhance the impact of your research, and, of course, how to write one.

What is a significance statement in research?

A significance statement answers the question: How will your research advance scientific knowledge and impact society at large (as well as specific populations)? 

You might also see it called a “Significance of the study” statement. Some professional organizations in the STEM sciences and social sciences now recommended that journals in their disciplines make such statements a standard feature of each published article. Funding agencies also consider “significance” a key criterion for their awards.

Read some examples of significance statements from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) here .

Depending upon the specific journal or funding agency’s requirements, your statement may be around 100 words and answer these questions:

1. What’s the purpose of this research?

2. What are its key findings?

3. Why do they matter?

4. Who benefits from the research results?

Readers will want to know: “What is interesting or important about this research?” Keep asking yourself that question.

Where to place the significance statement in your manuscript

Most journals ask you to place the significance statement before or after the abstract, so check with each journal’s guide. 

This article is focused on the formal significance statement, even though you’ll naturally highlight your project’s significance elsewhere in your manuscript. (In the introduction, you’ll set out your research aims, and in the conclusion, you’ll explain the potential applications of your research and recommend areas for future research. You’re building an overall case for the value of your work.)

Developing the significance statement

The main steps in planning and developing your statement are to assess the gaps to which your study contributes, and then define your work’s implications and impact.

Identify what gaps your study fills and what it contributes

Your literature review was a big part of how you planned your study. To develop your research aims and objectives, you identified gaps or unanswered questions in the preceding research and designed your study to address them.

Go back to that lit review and look at those gaps again. Review your research proposal to refresh your memory. Ask:

• How have my research findings advanced knowledge or provided notable new insights?
• How has my research helped to prove (or disprove) a hypothesis or answer a research question?
• Why are those results important?

Consider your study’s potential impact at two levels: 

• What contribution does my research make to my field?
• How does it specifically contribute to knowledge; that is, who will benefit the most from it?

Define the implications and potential impact

As you make notes, keep the reasons in mind for why you are writing this statement. Whom will it impact, and why?

The first audience for your significance statement will be journal reviewers when you submit your article for publishing. Many journals require one for manuscript submissions. Study the author’s guide of your desired journal to see its criteria ( here’s an example ). Peer reviewers who can clearly understand the value of your research will be more likely to recommend publication. 

Second, when you apply for funding, your significance statement will help justify why your research deserves a grant from a funding agency . The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), for example, wants to see that a project will “exert a sustained, powerful influence on the research field(s) involved.” Clear, simple language is always valuable because not all reviewers will be specialists in your field.

Third, this concise statement about your study’s importance can affect how potential readers engage with your work. Science journalists and interested readers can promote and spread your work, enhancing your reputation and influence. Help them understand your work.

You’re now ready to express the importance of your research clearly and concisely. Time to start writing.

How to write a significance statement: Key elements 

When drafting your statement, focus on both the content and writing style.

• In terms of content, emphasize the importance, timeliness, and relevance of your research results. 
• Write the statement in plain, clear language rather than scientific or technical jargon. Your audience will include not just your fellow scientists but also non-specialists like journalists, funding reviewers, and members of the public. 

Follow the process we outline below to build a solid, well-crafted, and informative statement. 

Get started

Some suggested opening lines to help you get started might be:

• The implications of this study are… 
• Building upon previous contributions, our study moves the field forward because…
• Our study furthers previous understanding about…

Alternatively, you may start with a statement about the phenomenon you’re studying, leading to the problem statement.

Include these components

Next, draft some sentences that include the following elements. A good example, which we’ll use here, is a significance statement by Rogers et al. (2022) published in the Journal of Climate .

1. Briefly situate your research study in its larger context . Start by introducing the topic, leading to a problem statement. Here’s an example:

‘Heatwaves pose a major threat to human health, ecosystems, and human systems.”

2. State the research problem.

“Simultaneous heatwaves affecting multiple regions can exacerbate such threats. For example, multiple food-producing regions simultaneously undergoing heat-related crop damage could drive global food shortages.”

3. Tell what your study does to address it.

“We assess recent changes in the occurrence of simultaneous large heatwaves.”

4. Provide brief but powerful evidence to support the claims your statement is making , Use quantifiable terms rather than vague ones (e.g., instead of “This phenomenon is happening now more than ever,” see below how Rogers et al. (2022) explained it). This evidence intensifies and illustrates the problem more vividly:

“Such simultaneous heatwaves are 7 times more likely now than 40 years ago. They are also hotter and affect a larger area. Their increasing occurrence is mainly driven by warming baseline temperatures due to global heating, but changes in weather patterns contribute to disproportionate increases over parts of Europe, the eastern United States, and Asia.

5. Relate your study’s impact to the broader context , starting with its general significance to society—then, when possible, move to the particular as you name specific applications of your research findings. (Our example lacks this second level of application.) 

“Better understanding the drivers of weather pattern changes is therefore important for understanding future concurrent heatwave characteristics and their impacts.”

Refine your English

Don’t understate or overstate your findings – just make clear what your study contributes. When you have all the elements in place, review your draft to simplify and polish your language. Even better, get an expert AJE edit . Be sure to use “plain” language rather than academic jargon.

• Avoid acronyms, scientific jargon, and technical terms 
• Use active verbs in your sentence structure rather than passive voice (e.g., instead of “It was found that...”, use “We found...”)
• Make sentence structures short, easy to understand – readable
• Try to address only one idea in each sentence and keep sentences within 25 words (15 words is even better)
• Eliminate nonessential words and phrases (“fluff” and wordiness)

Enhance your significance statement’s impact

Always take time to review your draft multiple times. Make sure that you:

• Keep your language focused
• Provide evidence to support your claims
• Relate the significance to the broader research context in your field

After revising your significance statement, request feedback from a reading mentor about how to make it even clearer. If you’re not a native English speaker, seek help from a native-English-speaking colleague or use an editing service like AJE to make sure your work is at a native level.

Understanding the significance of your study

Your readers may have much less interest than you do in the specific details of your research methods and measures. Many readers will scan your article to learn how your findings might apply to them and their own research. 

Different types of significance

Your findings may have different types of significance, relevant to different populations or fields of study for different reasons. You can emphasize your work’s statistical, clinical, or practical significance. Editors or reviewers in the social sciences might also evaluate your work’s social or political significance.

Statistical significance means that the results are unlikely to have occurred randomly. Instead, it implies a true cause-and-effect relationship.

Clinical significance means that your findings are applicable for treating patients and improving quality of life.

Practical significance is when your research outcomes are meaningful to society at large, in the “real world.” Practical significance is usually measured by the study’s  effect size . Similarly, evaluators may attribute social or political significance to research that addresses “real and immediate” social problems.

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Writing a Research Proposal

• First Online: 10 April 2022

Cite this chapter

• Fahimeh Tabatabaei 3 &
• Lobat Tayebi 3  

822 Accesses

A research proposal is a roadmap that brings the researcher closer to the objectives, takes the research topic from a purely subjective mind, and manifests an objective plan. It shows us what steps we need to take to reach the objective, what questions we should answer, and how much time we need. It is a framework based on which you can perform your research in a well-organized and timely manner. In other words, by writing a research proposal, you get a map that shows the direction to the destination (answering the research question). If the proposal is poorly prepared, after spending a lot of energy and money, you may realize that the result of the research has nothing to do with the initial objective, and the study may end up nowhere. Therefore, writing the proposal shows that the researcher is aware of the proper research and can justify the significance of his/her idea.

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Additional Resources

https://grants.nih.gov

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/oer.htm

https://www.ninr.nih.gov

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Tabatabaei, F., Tayebi, L. (2022). Writing a Research Proposal. In: Research Methods in Dentistry. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98028-3_4

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Writing a Grant Part 2: Significance and Innovation

The significance and innovation section is a recent (within the last 10 years) addition to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and most other foundation grant applications. It is a place for you to showcase why the work should be done — why there is a significant need for your study, and how the work is different from everyone else’s approach.

When writing this section, ask yourself: What makes my work groundbreaking, original research that will advance our scientific knowledge?

Writing the Significance Section

Let’s start with significance. Depending upon the government agency and/or institution to which you are applying, you will need to tailor this section to highlight an unmet need specific to the goals of the organization or funding opportunity to which you are applying. Whether you’ve identified a novel target for the treatment of a rare disease or you’ve designed technology with applications pertinent to national defense systems, you’ll need to be specific about what the problem is, the extent of the burden, and the paucity of adequate solutions to address it.

As an example, let’s assume that you’ve uncovered the previously-unknown role of a kinase in neuronal death and loss of motor control. A well-structured significance section may have the following subheadings and content:

• What is the underlying cause of the disease?
• How many patients are affected in the US and worldwide?
• What is the total economic impact?
• What is the clinical presentation of the disease?
• How is it treated, and what gaps in the standard of care have been revealed?
• Are there mutations in the kinase that directly correlate with disease?
• Has overexpression been shown to increase neuronal death in culture? Conversely, has knockdown been shown to be protective?
• What is the phenotype of the knockout mouse? Do these animals present with improved mobility? Do they have increased survival?
• Is the target druggable? If so, are there tool compounds available that could be assessed pre-clinically?

Writing the Innovation Section

With this foundation firmly established, you can now build the framework for how your proposal approaches the problem in a way that nobody else has tried. How will your approach change the way that people think about the problem? For some, composing this section of the grant may be foreign territory and lead to countless blank stares at the laptop screen.

When you get lost, remember that there are several types of innovation. In his first book, Mapping Innovation: A Playbook for Navigating a Disruptive Age (McGraw Hill Education, 2017), Greg Satell outlines four categories in what he terms the “innovation matrix”:

Adapted from: Mapping Innovation: A Playbook for Navigating a Disruptive Age

The problem, as addressed in the significance section, is the need being satisfied by your research. The domain is the set of skills required to solve the problem.

Let’s look at our kinase example to highlight the utility of this matrix. As part of your pre-clinical animal studies, you’ve determined the efficacy of a tool compound known to inhibit the kinase. The molecule dose-dependently reduces neuronal death and motor dysfunction, but it’s also poorly absorbed and leads to weight loss in rodents. The only means of improving the drug-like properties is to develop a novel chemical synthesis pathway. In this case, the problem is clear, but the set of skills required is not. Thus, you’re on the verge of a breakthrough innovation.   

Obviously, this matrix is generic, but it can help to put your research into context. Keep in mind that the more specific you are in defining the problem, the more distinctly you can describe your innovative solution. Furthermore, no solution is complete without a few descriptive figures and a schematic of goals and objectives. Not only do you want to show that you’ve solved a certain need, but you also want to demonstrate feasibility, intermediate milestones, and future efforts.

Lastly — and this point can’t be overstated — be sure to circulate your significance and innovation sections to as many of your mentors and peers as possible. If it’s not clear to them, it certainly won’t be to your reviewers!

Read the Complete Grant Writing Series:

• Part One: First Things First
• Part Two: Significance and Innovation
• Part Three: The Experimental Approach
• Part Four: Additional Details
• Part Five: Smaller Application Components
• Part Six: Budget Justification, Letters of Support, and More
• Part Seven: How to Interpret Summary Statement and Reviewer’s Critiques
• Part Eight: What Are My Chances?

Additional Grant-Writing Resources

Check out the Cell Mentor portal for more career advice or scientific tricks and tips.

Note: The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases provides sample applications along with corresponding summary statements. This is a good resource to see what gets people funded!

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Writing a Research Strategy

This page is focused on providing practical tips and suggestions for preparing The Research Strategy, the primary component of an application's Research Plan along with the Specific Aims. The guidance on this page is primarily geared towards an R01-style application, however, much of it is useful for other grant types as well.

Developing the Research Strategy

The primary audience for your application is your peer review group. When writing your Research Strategy, your goal is to present a well-organized, visually appealing, and readable description of your proposed project and the rationale for pursuing it. Your writing should be streamlined and organized so your reviewers can readily grasp the information. If it's a key point, repeat it, then repeat it again. Add more emphasis by putting the text in bold , or bold italics . If writing is not your forte, get help.  For more information, please visit  W riting For Reviewers .

How to Organize the Research Strategy Section

How to organize a Research Strategy is largely up to the applicant. Start by following the NIH application instructions and guidelines for formatting attachments such as the research plan section.

It is generally structured as follows:

Significance

For  Preliminary Studies (for new applications) or a Progress Report (for renewal and revision applications).

• You can either include preliminary studies or progress report information as a subsection of Approach or integrate it into any or all of the three main sections.
• If you do the latter, be sure to mark the information clearly, for example, with a bold subhead.

 Helpful tips to consider when formatting:

• Organize using bold headers or an outline or numbering system—or both—that are used consistently throughout.
• Start each section with the appropriate header: Significance, Innovation, or Approach.
• Organize the Approach section around the Specific Aims.

For most applications, you need to address Rigor ous Study Design  by describing the experimental design and methods you propose and how they will achieve robust and unbiased results. See the NIH guidance for elaboration on the 4 major areas of rigor and transparency emphasized in grant review.  These requirements apply to research grant, career development, fellowship, and training applications.

Tips for Drafting Sections of the Research Strategy

Although you will emphasize your project's significance throughout the application, the Significance section should give the most details. The farther removed your reviewers are from your field, the more information you'll need to provide on basic biology, importance of the area, research opportunities, and new findings. Reviewing the potentially relevant study section rosters may give you some ideas as to general reviewer expertise. You will also need to describe the prior and preliminary studies that provide a strong scientific rationale for pursuing the proposed studies, emphasizing the strengths and weaknesses in the rigor and transparency of these key studies.

This section gives you the chance to explain how your application is conceptually and/or technically innovative. Some examples as to how you might do this could include but not limited to:

• Demonstrate the proposed research is new and unique, e.g., explores new scientific avenues, has a novel hypothesis, will create new knowledge.
• Explain how the proposed work can refine, improve, or propose a new application of an existing concept or method.

If your proposal is paradigm-shifting or challenges commonly held beliefs, be sure that you include sufficient evidence in your preliminary data to convince reviewers, including strong rationale, data supporting the approach, and clear feasibility. Your job is to make the reviewers feel confident that the risk is worth taking.

For projects predominantly focused on innovation and outside-the-box research, investigators may wish to consider mechanisms other than R01s for example (e.g., exploratory/developmental research (R21) grants, NIH Director's Pioneer Award Program (DP1), and NIH Director's New Innovator Award Program (DP2).

The Approach section is where the experimental design is described. Expect your assigned reviewers to scrutinize your approach: they will want to know what you plan to do, how you plan to do it, and whether you can do it. NIH data show that of the peer review criteria, approach has the highest correlation with the overall impact score. Importantly, elements of rigorous study design should be addressed in this section, such as plans for minimization of bias (e.g. methods for blinding and treatment randomization) and consideration of relevant biological variables. Likewise, be sure to lay out a plan for alternative experiments and approaches in case you get uninterpretable or surprising results, and also consider limitations of the study and alternative interpretations. Point out any procedures, situations, or materials that may be hazardous to personnel and precautions to be exercised. A full discussion on the use of select agents should appear in the Select Agent Research attachment.  Consider including a timeline demonstrating anticipated completion of the Aims. 

Here are some pointers to consider when organizing your Approach section:

• Enter a bold header for each Specific Aim.
• Under each aim, describe the experiments.
• If you get result X, you will follow pathway X; if you get result Y, you will follow pathway Y.
• Consider illustrating this with a flowchart.

Preliminary Studies

If submitting a new application to a NOFO that allows preliminary data, it is strongly encouraged to include preliminary studies.  Preliminary studies demonstrate competency in the methods and interpretation. Well-designed and robust preliminary studies also serve to provide a strong scientific rationale for the proposed follow-up experiments. Reviewers also use preliminary studies together with the biosketches to assess the investigator review criterion, which reflects the competence of the research team. Provide alternative interpretations to your data to show reviewers you've thought through problems in-depth and are prepared to meet future challenges. As noted above, preliminary data can be put anywhere in the Research Strategy, but just make sure reviewers will be able to distinguish it from the proposed studies. Alternatively, it can be a separate section with its own header.

Progress Reports

If applying for a renewal or a revision (a competing supplement to an existing grant), include a progress report for reviewers.

Create a header so reviewers can easily find it and include the following information:

• Project period beginning and end dates.
• Summary of the importance and robustness of the completed findings in relation to the Specific Aims.
• Account of published and unpublished results, highlighting progress toward achieving your Specific Aims.  

Other Helpful Tips

Referencing publications.

References show breadth of knowledge of the field and provide a scientific foundation for your application. If a critical work is omitted, reviewers may assume the applicant is not aware of it or deliberately ignoring it.

Throughout the application, reference all relevant publications for the concepts underlying your research and your methods. Remember the strengths and weaknesses in the rigor of the key studies you cite for justifying your proposal will need to be discussed in the Significance and/or Approach sections.

Read more about Bibliography and References Cited at Additional Application Elements .

Graphics can illustrate complex information in a small space and add visual interest to your application. Including schematics, tables, illustrations, graphs, and other types of graphics can enhance applications. Consider adding a timetable or flowchart to illustrate your experimental plan, including decision trees with alternative experimental pathways to help your reviewers understand your plans.

Video may enhance your application beyond what graphics alone can achieve. If you plan to send one or more videos, you'll need to meet certain requirements and include key information in your Research Strategy. State in your cover letter that a video will be included in your application (don't attach your files to the application). After you apply and get assignment information from the Commons, ask your assigned Scientific Review Officer (SRO) how your business official should send the files. Your video files are due at least one month before the peer review meeting.

However, you can't count on all reviewers being able to see or hear video, so you'll want to be strategic in how you incorporate it into your application by taking the following steps:

• Caption any narration in the video.
• Include key images from the video
• Write a description of the video, so the text would make sense even without the video.

Tracking for Your Budget

As you design your experiments, keep a running tab of the following essential data:

• Who. A list of people who will help (for the Key Personnel section later).
• What. A list of equipment and supplies for the experiments
• Time. Notes on how long each step takes. Timing directly affects the budget as well as how many Specific Aims can realistically be achieved.

Jotting this information down will help when Creating a Budget  and complete other sections later.

Review and Finalize Your Research Plan

Critically review the research plan through the lens of a reviewer to identify potential questions or weak spots.

Enlist others to review your application with a fresh eye. Include people who aren't familiar with the research to make sure the proposed work is clear to someone outside the field.

When finalizing the details of the Research Strategy, revisit and revise the Specific Aims as needed. Please see Writing Specific Aims . 

comments Want to contact NINDS staff? Please visit our Find Your NINDS Program Officer page to learn more about contacting Program Officer, Grants Management Specialists, Scientific Review Officers, and Health Program Specialists.

The NIH Significance and Innovation Sections: demystified

One question from a client was this:

“I am a bit confused about what goes in the Significance and the Innovation sections of my proposal, and how those are different from the Approach.”

In my grant writing programs like the Grant Foundry , I teach the concept of posing “problem-solution” pairs. These pairs always come together, and I often see failures in grants because people present solutions without problems, or problems without solutions.

All great grant proposals are framed around a series of problems, from the big to the more specific, along with a series of potential solutions, as yet unrealized… until you get the grant money to make those solutions move forward.

It sounds simple, and in theory, it is. Yet it’s hard to do in practice – at least judging by the people I work with at top universities.

To answer this question, I’ll assume that you “get it” and are going to implement the problem-solution framework in your grant.

Once we have that framework, the answer to this question is simple:

• why are they important?
• whom do they impact?
• why is a solution currently missing?
• what have people tried? (be brief with this, don’t do a literature review)
• why is a solution needed now ?
• what has happened that makes you think you and your team have a solution? (in broad terms – leave the specifics for later)
• in which aim will you solve which problem?
• why is your team qualified to solve the problem(s)?
• what advance has happened to make your solution potentially likely to work?
• what new enabling ideas or technologies does it use?
• what new approaches do you use?
• how are you combining existing approaches in a new way?
• what unique resources have you developed or have access to?

In the Innovation section, we’re not trying to cover the entire solution. We are only discussing what’s new and useful about the solution(s) that are going to be offered in the Approach section. A mistake is to provide reams of detail here – save that for the Approach.

As always, you should use great sub-headers to break up the text, and compelling figures for both your Significance and Innovation sections to illustrate the problem(s) and the new solution(s).

Once you’ve got that covered, that leaves us with the Approach section. The Approach is more about your solution . In the Approach section you simply detail the “recipe” you’ll use to make the solution happen – along with evidence that shows you are competent to do it, and that it will likely work (i.e. preliminary data). I cover more on that elsewhere in the blog.

So, remember:

• Significance = problem and
• Innovation = what’s new about the solution

It can be complicated to master these concepts at first. I understand it as I walked the same path of discovery and struggle when it came to grant proposals. That is why I want to bring you a fast, simple and very focused on-demand training that will help you discover the 3 Deadly Myths of Scientific Grant Writing (and how to avoid them by understanding them). The best part?  it is totally free , dive in here

3 replies to "The NIH Significance and Innovation Sections: demystified"

Great blog post Morgan. This is transferable one for one to the business world. We all do not want to be told what we already know. We want to understand first the significance of the issue at hand and define it this for me or not and than we want to understand the new, different, innovative way of going about solving the issue before we spent time to dive deeper into the actual approach, e.g. the solution.

Hey Tom- Thanks for the comment! And, yes, this is definitely a transferable skill. Grants are very much like “direct marketing” in the business world. You’re using words to “sell” a project… just like a business person must use words ultimately to sell a product. While there are some specifics of grant proposals that make it a bit different, the same skills apply. So, yes, very good to first build the “significance” then the “innovation” then finally the “approach” in your sales processes! Cheers!

funding acceptances/levels are so low. But we must all persevere. The system is awful, the grant game is a nonstop bureacracy , crazy making, computer system fails/overloads, forms, docs, letters, bios, body, addenda, but we must all persevere. However, given all of this crazy making, it may be better to seek other opportunities because life is too short.

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• Research Process

Writing a Scientific Research Project Proposal

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Table of Contents

The importance of a well-written research proposal cannot be underestimated. Your research really is only as good as your proposal. A poorly written, or poorly conceived research proposal will doom even an otherwise worthy project. On the other hand, a well-written, high-quality proposal will increase your chances for success.

In this article, we’ll outline the basics of writing an effective scientific research proposal, including the differences between research proposals, grants and cover letters. We’ll also touch on common mistakes made when submitting research proposals, as well as a simple example or template that you can follow.

What is a scientific research proposal?

The main purpose of a scientific research proposal is to convince your audience that your project is worthwhile, and that you have the expertise and wherewithal to complete it. The elements of an effective research proposal mirror those of the research process itself, which we’ll outline below. Essentially, the research proposal should include enough information for the reader to determine if your proposed study is worth pursuing.

It is not an uncommon misunderstanding to think that a research proposal and a cover letter are the same things. However, they are different. The main difference between a research proposal vs cover letter content is distinct. Whereas the research proposal summarizes the proposal for future research, the cover letter connects you to the research, and how you are the right person to complete the proposed research.

There is also sometimes confusion around a research proposal vs grant application. Whereas a research proposal is a statement of intent, related to answering a research question, a grant application is a specific request for funding to complete the research proposed. Of course, there are elements of overlap between the two documents; it’s the purpose of the document that defines one or the other.

Scientific Research Proposal Format

Although there is no one way to write a scientific research proposal, there are specific guidelines. A lot depends on which journal you’re submitting your research proposal to, so you may need to follow their scientific research proposal template.

In general, however, there are fairly universal sections to every scientific research proposal. These include:

• Title: Make sure the title of your proposal is descriptive and concise. Make it catch and informative at the same time, avoiding dry phrases like, “An investigation…” Your title should pique the interest of the reader.
• Abstract: This is a brief (300-500 words) summary that includes the research question, your rationale for the study, and any applicable hypothesis. You should also include a brief description of your methodology, including procedures, samples, instruments, etc.
• Introduction: The opening paragraph of your research proposal is, perhaps, the most important. Here you want to introduce the research problem in a creative way, and demonstrate your understanding of the need for the research. You want the reader to think that your proposed research is current, important and relevant.
• Background: Include a brief history of the topic and link it to a contemporary context to show its relevance for today. Identify key researchers and institutions also looking at the problem
• Literature Review: This is the section that may take the longest amount of time to assemble. Here you want to synthesize prior research, and place your proposed research into the larger picture of what’s been studied in the past. You want to show your reader that your work is original, and adds to the current knowledge.
• Research Design and Methodology: This section should be very clearly and logically written and organized. You are letting your reader know that you know what you are going to do, and how. The reader should feel confident that you have the skills and knowledge needed to get the project done.
• Preliminary Implications: Here you’ll be outlining how you anticipate your research will extend current knowledge in your field. You might also want to discuss how your findings will impact future research needs.
• Conclusion: This section reinforces the significance and importance of your proposed research, and summarizes the entire proposal.
• References/Citations: Of course, you need to include a full and accurate list of any and all sources you used to write your research proposal.

Common Mistakes in Writing a Scientific Research Project Proposal

Remember, the best research proposal can be rejected if it’s not well written or is ill-conceived. The most common mistakes made include:

• Not providing the proper context for your research question or the problem
• Failing to reference landmark/key studies
• Losing focus of the research question or problem
• Not accurately presenting contributions by other researchers and institutions
• Incompletely developing a persuasive argument for the research that is being proposed
• Misplaced attention on minor points and/or not enough detail on major issues
• Sloppy, low-quality writing without effective logic and flow
• Incorrect or lapses in references and citations, and/or references not in proper format
• The proposal is too long – or too short

Scientific Research Proposal Example

There are countless examples that you can find for successful research proposals. In addition, you can also find examples of unsuccessful research proposals. Search for successful research proposals in your field, and even for your target journal, to get a good idea on what specifically your audience may be looking for.

While there’s no one example that will show you everything you need to know, looking at a few will give you a good idea of what you need to include in your own research proposal. Talk, also, to colleagues in your field, especially if you are a student or a new researcher. We can often learn from the mistakes of others. The more prepared and knowledgeable you are prior to writing your research proposal, the more likely you are to succeed.

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One of the top reasons scientific research proposals are rejected is due to poor logic and flow. Check out our Language Editing Services to ensure a great proposal , that’s clear and concise, and properly referenced. Check our video for more information, and get started today.

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Introduction to the Specific Aims Page of a Grant Proposal

Andrew a. monte.

1 University of Colorado School of Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine, Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO

Anne M. Libby

Grant writing starts with crafting an effective Specific Aims page. This page should be a succinct combination of sales pitch and science. The Specific Aims page demonstrates a problem, a gap in current knowledge, and suggests a solution. It proposes aims that work toward a defended solution and reveal the impact of the proposal on the problem, the field, and future research. The language must be efficient and persuasive; the presentation must drive a reviewer to support the proposal. Here we present a refined recipe for an effective Specific Aims page.

Grant writing starts with the iterative development of a Specific Aims page. The Aims page serves as a concept sheet with project milestones, hypotheses, and the most important elements of the approach.[ 1 ] This page also serves as a master plan for the research proposal and ideally engages the reader as an advocate during review. The readers are review panel members that will advocate for or against your project during review. Grant reviewers often have significantly different research experience and training than the grant writer. Thus, this page must give the educated non-expert a basic understanding of the problem while giving just enough detail to indicate mastery, should the reviewer be an expert on the topic. An effective Aims page makes the case that the research is important, the methods are likely to be successful, and the applicant is the right person and team to do the project. While these goals seem simple, conveying these elements efficiently and coherently is challenging. If the Specific Aims page is confusing, boring, or overly controversial then reviewers may be lost as advocates. In contrast, effective Aims page predisposes the reader to stay engaged and eager for subsequent details. Although a grant cannot be won with the Specific Aims page, a proposal can be lost on there by confusing or alienating reviewers.

Some grant writers chafe at the notion that they need to “sell” their ideas because the proposed science should stand alone as compelling and valuable. We posit that a grant proposal is both sales and science in different parts. We define the goal of grant writing as gaining financial sponsorship for planned work; like sales, a proposal requires marketing, tailoring, and a value proposition. In contrast, science requires content and intent, a hypothesis and approach, thus science is the research that will be conducted with sponsorship. The Aims page is the point of sale for planned science and written with the goal of research sponsorship. The target audience is the review panel, and the goal is to enlist reviewers as partners and advocates of the proposal. Table 1 describes similarities between elements of effective sales and grant proposals.

Similarities: Sales and Grantsmanship

First, the Aims page should be written to an educated non-expert audience, saving the field-specific details for content experts in later sections. Also, the Specific Aims page should make the overall plan as simple as possible, but not simpler, including only “need to know” information. Demonstrating the depth of expertise and fine details of pilot data are best deployed in later sections of the grant; instead, identify the problem to study, educate the reader with background knowledge, and describe why the proposed study will successfully solve the problem. Generally, citations are minimized on the Aims page because they can distract the reader and will be included in the background section of the grant. Obey the “cultural norms” that vary by discipline or review group; for example, whether hypotheses or short descriptive approach statements are listed by aim or as a preamble. Consider adding a figure on the Specific Aims page. Simple figures, such as conceptual models or relationships among key variables, are encouraged to save words and provide visual reinforcement. While format may vary, all Aims pages should educate the non-expert reader on existing literature, identify a knowledge gap, propose a solution grounded in the aims themselves, and demonstrate the impact of the work.

Based upon our collective experience as grant writers, grant reviewers, and mentors to numerous externally-funded investigators, we have characterized effective Specific Aims pages with a “recipe.” Because there exists a recipe for success, and because of this page’s critical importance in review, this manuscript explains the four key components of an effective Specific Aims page ( Table 2 ). This recipe for the Specific Aims page is an essential first step to successful grant writing; we conclude with overviews of formatting and writing style.

Four Components for Effective Specific Aims Page

1. Introductory Paragraph

Paragraph 1 begins with a first sentence that is compelling, catchy, includes all pertinent key words, and conveys importance and impact. The typical broad first sentence that “bad things happen to many people” is insufficient as it does not telegraph appropriate expectations of what comes next; in fact, the rest of the paragraph should be predictable if the first sentence effectively frames the problem. A solid opening sentence tells the reader what condition the researcher will study, why it is important, and engages the reviewer to read on for the proposed solution. For example, in a proposal on thrombolysis in stroke, instead of a first sentence on all neurologic diseases, it could state the health impact of thrombolysis in stroke patients as a critical problem to solve. A too-broad sentence might be “Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the US.” A reader could imagine any number of topics for the proposed study. A better opener could be “After cardiac arrest, therapeutic cooling after return of spontaneous circulation improves neurologic outcomes.”

At the end of the introductory paragraph, the reader has been introduced to the project and its relation to the agency’s mission, educated with a brief summary of important existing knowledge, and notified to the gap or critical need to be filled. One or two high level sentences on current knowledge is sufficient in order to balance goals of providing enough detail to ground the proposal in the literature yet not become esoteric, jargony, or lengthy. The Specific Aims page should briefly acknowledge major controversies that may subvert the importance of the proposal; further explanations must arrive in later sections, but this page must allay concerns even briefly in order to keep the reader moving forward. This should flow directly into the knowledge gap the researcher hopes to fill. Statements that clearly identify the problem should be used such as “these studies were limited by…,” “no one knows why…” or “a gap remains…” Ideally, the aims will directly address the identified gaps. For instance, a proposal for an intervention might have aims on prevalence, effectiveness, and safety; these concepts would have been highlighted as gaps. When addressing alignment with a funding agency, consider using terminology and language from the funding announcement. In summary, the first paragraph introduces the problem to be solved, educates the reviewer on what is known, identifies the knowledge gap that the planned study will fill, and relates the project to the funding agency mission.

2. Rationale Paragraph

Paragraph 2 describes the rationale for the proposed study. It is here that the researcher reveals the proposed solution to bridge the (previously identified) knowledge gap: a high-level proposal to fill the knowledge gap, why it is the right solution, and why this team is the right one to do it. Briefly describe and justify why this is the proposed approach to the problem, and why this team would be the group to achieve the aims. Assuming the reader is compelled by the significant problem and knowledge gap, why would this be the expected or desired study, and what about this researcher’s expertise, experience, or environment ensure success? The rationale for filling this knowledge gap and for the approach chosen to fill it is critical. Linked to this rationale, the researcher makes a case for him or herself as the person/team to achieve the proposed plan. This can be achieved simply with a brief statement outlining pertinent qualifications, an advantageous opportunity such as “…through the development of a novel…, we now have the unique ability to…,” or “based on our compelling pilot data.”

The rationale paragraph is an ideal location for an overall study objective. This may specifically identify the long-term goal of the research agenda and the specific goals of what the proposed project will accomplish. The objective statement, much like in a manuscript, succinctly outlines what the researcher will successfully accomplish with the proposed study. This objective must be realistic and achievable. A researcher should not propose to “cure cancer,” for example, but perhaps “improve the staging and treatment of resectable lung cancer.” The objective is then linked to a critical need or central hypothesis whose testing will achieve the global objective of the application. Take care that the objective is not to test a hypothesis. Be sure to have a thorough plan for negative and null findings that will be explained in later sections. An ideal hypothesis is one in which any result actually advances the field of inquiry and can be explained in such a way (rather than we learned something, or we were wrong). In terms of critical need, it is especially desirable to have a “burning platform” for the proposed study. It may be urgent because it is timely such as when major health policy adoption hinges on a study result, when a gap is on the critical path to allow an entire field of study to progress, or if there is an advantage for safety and efficacy pending the outcome of the proposed study. Closing this section with a global objective or central hypothesis distills the justification made above to set up the subsequent specific aims. In summary, the rationale conveys why the research is proposed at this time and by the researcher specifically, and what will be possible after the study.

3. Specific Aims

Specific aims are treated as a paragraph although they are generally a list with some type of outline numbering. Taken as a whole, specific aims outline the key steps to fulfill objectives that address a critical need. Aims are clear, achievable, and directly related to the content provided in the preceding paragraphs, with no new terms or “first mentions” in the aims. Specific aims are specific with clarity and have a goal to achieve something. Within each aim, avoid redundant phrases, e.g. “in older male patients with prostate cancer.” Depending on the audience and reader expectations, aims may be written as incomplete sentences starting with action words, e.g. investigate, measure, estimate, implement. For instance, use “measure” rather than “determine whether,” and avoid heavily descriptive verbs such as “correlate, describe, explore, or investigate.” For some agencies it is expected that each aim has an accompanying hypothesis and experiment, or perhaps a short description of an approach with data source and analytic methods. Other agencies expect to see anticipated challenges and proposed solutions. These expectations can be garnered from mentors that have been successful with the funding agency or review panel members. It is common to think of each aim as generating a result that can be written as a manuscript.

Depending on the duration of the planned study, two to four aims are acceptable with three generally being “just right.” Two aims can be considered for grants of short duration or small dollars while four aims may be appropriate for large program grants that must fulfill more objectives. The aims directly reflect the scope of work and can help define whether the study is judged as too ambitious; pilot studies may have fewer aims. Some investigators will call out an aim as “exploratory” and expect a lower standard for feasibility, although we avoid these and recommend only proposing work that can be executed successfully and thus defended. As a matter of grantsmanship, a researcher may or may not conduct exploratory work, but it is risky to propose work that may appear weak in comparison to other aims. Sub-aims (e.g. 1a, 1b, 1c) may organize basic science experiments beneath an aim, which may benefit such a proposal. Sub-aims increase the complexity of the aims page, however, increasing possible confusion and decreasing clarity. Sub-aims may provide a reviewer with additional opportunity to criticize the approach, so they should be considered very carefully.

Avoid “aim dependency” whereby one aim cannot be completed if a prior aim fails. Strategies to avoid interdependence include utilization of separate populations or different approaches. For instance, if one aim is to develop a new assay and a subsequent aim uses the assay for a hypothesis test, then if assay development fails the subsequent study is doomed. An alternative proposal may seek to measure the utilization of the currently used assay, test three alternative methods to detect the condition in question, and pilot the test with the highest sensitivity assay for the condition. In this way, the study will generate knowledge regardless of the success with the new assay. Similarly, one might aim to measure a problem across multiple institutions, determine the best environment for an intervention, and pilot test the intervention in the most controllable of these sites. Table 3 highlights additional “do’s and don’ts” for effective specific aims.

Specific Aims Do’s and Don’ts

In summary, specific aims should be correlated with the central project goal and hypothesis. They should be conceptual rather than descriptive, flow in a logical sequence, have a clear purpose with a working hypothesis or statement of need, and each aim’s success should be independent of the success of prior aims.

4. Overall Impact Paragraph

It is a common mistake to overfill the background before the aims, leaving little page space after the aims for anything more than a generic statement of innovation and importance for human health and future studies. This closing Aims page paragraph outlines the expected outcome and highlights the health and scientific impact identified in the first sentence of the page. It is essential to describe in specific ways the proposed project will be of value to the funding agency, to the field of inquiry, and to society. If the proposal includes career development plans then outlining who the researcher will become as a result of the funding is part of the value. This paragraph also closes the loop back to the opening sentence, the impact from filling a gap, and addressing a critical problem. The closing paragraph may only be two or three sentences, but can address innovation and impact. This is also the place to suggest what a specific next study would be that builds on the proposed study. In summary, the last payoff paragraph reorients reviewers to the background and knowledge gap, identifies the innovation, delineates expected project outcomes, summarizes the project’s significance, and allows the reviewer a peek at the importance of a larger research agenda.

5. Formatting and Writing Style

Formatting elements, such as bolding, underling, fonts and margins are generally dictated by the funding agency. It is essential to keep the reader in mind by making it as easy on the eyes and as user-friendly as possible. In formatting terms this means that there should be as much white (non-text) space as possible; we recommend writing a complete Aims Page using 12 point font and one-inch margins before reformatting to narrower margins per agency allowances. Writers should be judicious and consistent in using emphasis with bold, underline, and italics. Experienced grant writers advise saving one style of emphasis, e.g. either italics or underline, for resubmissions in order to differentiate new material and telegraph responsiveness to prior critiques. When adding a figure to the Aims page, consider wrapping the text and placing figures on the left so that the font to has a left-justified straight edge. Because some writers prefer straight edges generally they use full justification, but proportional spacing is harder to read on the eyes so we recommend using left justification as another step to keep the reader in mind. Font choice may be dictated by the granting agency, but it is generally accepted that sans serif fonts like Arial are easier to read electronically or on screens, and serif fonts like Times new Roman are easier to read in print. This is generally a preference as electronic submissions and PDF editing means that many reviewers never print paper copies but rather review proposals in electronic formats. We utilize Arial 11 point font with half inch margins for federal proposals.

Effective writing style and story-telling is the next step in developing a persuasive grant application. Writing style is a large topic beyond the scope of this guide, though we will provide a few recommendations that relate to the Aims page. Clarity and concision are key (e.g. use short words when there is an option such as “and” instead of “as well as” or delete unnecessary phrases such as “indeed”).[ 2 ] Write to reader expectations in terms of sentence structure and paragraph linkage. [ 3 ] Use active verbs when possible, use first person (“I will” or “we will” instead of “this study will”) and passive voice (“data were collected”) judiciously and when appropriate (e.g. when you as the researcher are needed in the action such as making choices to defend). Writers should use a topic sentence and then supporting material in a more journalistic style rather than the logical approach of starting broad and ending with the point. Storytelling approaches are highly effective features of persuasive Specific Aims pages. For clinical research proposals, a composite case can bring the human element of the scientific rationale to light in a highly memorable way; clinical translational proposals can also benefit from a human health implication of the science. The hallmarks of excellent scientific writing deserve their own full manuscript discussion, but these basic elements can help the grant writer develop an effective Specific Aims page.

6. Additional Resources

Successful Aims pages can help early stage investigators model their own proposals.[ 1 ] The more you read and review, the better your own Aims pages will become and you will find an approach that works for you; no matter your style, Aims pages will include the recommended background, knowledge gap, proposed solution, and impact elements. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has their own grant writing workshop available through the Grant Writers’ Seminar and Workshops site ( http://www.grantcentral.com ).[ 4 ] The NIH provides writing tips,[ 5 ] others have “demystified” the grant NIH grant application process[ 6 , 7 ] and the Center for Scientific Review has outlined the necessary components of NIH grants.[ 8 ] For grant writers interested in the historical elements behind developing a Specific Aims page and more depth from reviewers’ perspective [ 9 ] The Society of Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) has built an illustrative website with full grant examples ( http://www.saem.org/research )[ 10 ] and webinars ( http://www.saem.org/saem-foundation/events/educational/webinars )[ 11 ] and many additional related resources, include our webinar discussing this topic in detail, where we recommend researchers evaluate Aims pages with a checklist of effective elements ( Table 4 ). In workshops on this subject, participants would use this list to assess their own Aims pages as well as another participant’s page.

Formative Assessment of an Effective Specific Aims Page

The Advanced Research Methodology Evaluation and Design (ARMED, http://www.saem.org/education/live-learning/advanced-research-methodology-evaluation-and-design-(armed) [ 12 ] is a year-long program that leverages in-person workshops and webinars to train junior investigators to in research topics. The SAEM Grant Writing Workshop ( http://www.saem.org/annual-meeting/education/workshops/grant-writing-workshop )[ 13 ] occurs at the Annual Meeting; it is a working session that allows investigators to further develop individual Aims pages. Both of these programs have nominal costs and most department Chairs are eager to support junior researchers with these opportunities.

This manuscript provides a recipe for writing an effective Specific Aims page using a simple four paragraph structure, and gave formatting and style recommendations. It is ideal to optimize Aims pages with readers who are educated non-experts who are not unfamiliar with your study as they most closely resemble review panelists.

Dr. Anne Libby, PhD, is Professor Emergency Medicine and Vice Chair for Academic Affairs at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine. Dr. Libby’s research expertise is patient-oriented outcomes research, specifically, the financing and organization of health care systems with a focus on behavioral health. She served 4 years on study section for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Her research and mentored training programs have been funded by federal sources (NIH, AHRQ) and national foundations (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation). She co-founded the Education, Training, and Career Development Core of the Colorado Clinical Translational Sciences Institute, and founded mentoring and mentored research development programs in clinical and outcomes research.

Conflict of Interest: AAM and AML have no conflicts of interest relating to this work.

Funding Disclosure: The contents of this work are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represents the views of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Monte received support from NIH 1 K23 GM110516. Dr. Monte and Dr. Libby are supported by NIH/NCATS Colorado CTSA Grant Number ULI TR001082. Contents are the authors’ sole responsibility and do not necessarily represent official NIH views.

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Chapter 14: The Research Proposal

14.3 Components of a Research Proposal

Krathwohl (2005) suggests and describes a variety of components to include in a research proposal. The following sections – Introductions, Background and significance, Literature Review; Research design and methods, Preliminary suppositions and implications; and Conclusion present these components in a suggested template for you to follow in the preparation of your research proposal.

Introduction

The introduction sets the tone for what follows in your research proposal – treat it as the initial pitch of your idea. After reading the introduction your reader should:

• understand what it is you want to do;
• have a sense of your passion for the topic; and
• be excited about the study’s possible outcomes.

As you begin writing your research proposal, it is helpful to think of the introduction as a narrative of what it is you want to do, written in one to three paragraphs. Within those one to three paragraphs, it is important to briefly answer the following questions:

• What is the central research problem?
• How is the topic of your research proposal related to the problem?
• What methods will you utilize to analyze the research problem?
• Why is it important to undertake this research? What is the significance of your proposed research? Why are the outcomes of your proposed research important? Whom are they important?

Note : You may be asked by your instructor to include an abstract with your research proposal. In such cases, an abstract should provide an overview of what it is you plan to study, your main research question, a brief explanation of your methods to answer the research question, and your expected findings. All of this information must be carefully crafted in 150 to 250 words. A word of advice is to save the writing of your abstract until the very end of your research proposal preparation. If you are asked to provide an abstract, you should include 5 to 7 key words that are of most relevance to your study. List these in order of relevance.

Background and significance

The purpose of this section is to explain the context of your proposal and to describe, in detail, why it is important to undertake this research. Assume that the person or people who will read your research proposal know nothing or very little about the research problem. While you do not need to include all knowledge you have learned about your topic in this section, it is important to ensure that you include the most relevant material that will help to explain the goals of your research.

While there are no hard and fast rules, you should attempt to address some or all of the following key points:

• State the research problem and provide a more thorough explanation about the purpose of the study than what you stated in the introduction.
• Present the rationale for the proposed research study. Clearly indicate why this research is worth doing. Answer the “so what?” question.
• Describe the major issues or problems to be addressed by your research. Do not forget to explain how and in what ways your proposed research builds upon previous related research.
• Explain how you plan to go about conducting your research.
• Clearly identify the key or most relevant sources of research you intend to use and explain how they will contribute to your analysis of the topic.
• Set the boundaries of your proposed research, in order to provide a clear focus. Where appropriate, state not only what you will study, but what will be excluded from your study.
• Provide clear definitions of key concepts and terms. Since key concepts and terms often have numerous definitions, make sure you state which definition you will be utilizing in your research.

Literature review

This key component of the research proposal is the most time-consuming aspect in the preparation of your research proposal. As described in Chapter 5 , the literature review provides the background to your study and demonstrates the significance of the proposed research. Specifically, it is a review and synthesis of prior research that is related to the problem you are setting forth to investigate. Essentially, your goal in the literature review is to place your research study within the larger whole of what has been studied in the past, while demonstrating to your reader that your work is original, innovative, and adds to the larger whole.

As the literature review is information dense, it is essential that this section be intelligently structured to enable your reader to grasp the key arguments underpinning your study. However, this can be easier to state and harder to do, simply due to the fact there is usually a plethora of related research to sift through. Consequently, a good strategy for writing the literature review is to break the literature into conceptual categories or themes, rather than attempting to describe various groups of literature you reviewed. Chapter 5   describes a variety of methods to help you organize the themes.

Here are some suggestions on how to approach the writing of your literature review:

• Think about what questions other researchers have asked, what methods they used, what they found, and what they recommended based upon their findings.
• Do not be afraid to challenge previous related research findings and/or conclusions.
• Assess what you believe to be missing from previous research and explain how your research fills in this gap and/or extends previous research.

It is important to note that a significant challenge related to undertaking a literature review is knowing when to stop. As such, it is important to know when you have uncovered the key conceptual categories underlying your research topic. Generally, when you start to see repetition in the conclusions or recommendations, you can have confidence that you have covered all of the significant conceptual categories in your literature review. However, it is also important to acknowledge that researchers often find themselves returning to the literature as they collect and analyze their data. For example, an unexpected finding may develop as you collect and/or analyze the data; in this case, it is important to take the time to step back and review the literature again, to ensure that no other researchers have found a similar finding. This may include looking to research outside your field.

This situation occurred with one of this textbook’s authors’ research related to community resilience. During the interviews, the researchers heard many participants discuss individual resilience factors and how they believed these individual factors helped make the community more resilient, overall. Sheppard and Williams (2016) had not discovered these individual factors in their original literature review on community and environmental resilience. However, when they returned to the literature to search for individual resilience factors, they discovered a small body of literature in the child and youth psychology field. Consequently, Sheppard and Williams had to go back and add a new section to their literature review on individual resilience factors. Interestingly, their research appeared to be the first research to link individual resilience factors with community resilience factors.

Research design and methods

The objective of this section of the research proposal is to convince the reader that your overall research design and methods of analysis will enable you to solve the research problem you have identified and also enable you to accurately and effectively interpret the results of your research. Consequently, it is critical that the research design and methods section is well-written, clear, and logically organized. This demonstrates to your reader that you know what you are going to do and how you are going to do it. Overall, you want to leave your reader feeling confident that you have what it takes to get this research study completed in a timely fashion.

Essentially, this section of the research proposal should be clearly tied to the specific objectives of your study; however, it is also important to draw upon and include examples from the literature review that relate to your design and intended methods. In other words, you must clearly demonstrate how your study utilizes and builds upon past studies, as it relates to the research design and intended methods. For example, what methods have been used by other researchers in similar studies?

While it is important to consider the methods that other researchers have employed, it is equally, if not more, important to consider what methods have not been but could be employed. Remember, the methods section is not simply a list of tasks to be undertaken. It is also an argument as to why and how the tasks you have outlined will help you investigate the research problem and answer your research question(s).

Tips for writing the research design and methods section:

Specify the methodological approaches you intend to employ to obtain information and the techniques you will use to analyze the data.

Specify the research operations you will undertake and the way you will interpret the results of those operations in relation to the research problem.

Go beyond stating what you hope to achieve through the methods you have chosen. State how you will actually implement the methods (i.e., coding interview text, running regression analysis, etc.).

Anticipate and acknowledge any potential barriers you may encounter when undertaking your research, and describe how you will address these barriers.

Explain where you believe you will find challenges related to data collection, including access to participants and information.

Preliminary suppositions and implications

The purpose of this section is to argue how you anticipate that your research will refine, revise, or extend existing knowledge in the area of your study. Depending upon the aims and objectives of your study, you should also discuss how your anticipated findings may impact future research. For example, is it possible that your research may lead to a new policy, theoretical understanding, or method for analyzing data? How might your study influence future studies? What might your study mean for future practitioners working in the field? Who or what might benefit from your study? How might your study contribute to social, economic or environmental issues? While it is important to think about and discuss possibilities such as these, it is equally important to be realistic in stating your anticipated findings. In other words, you do not want to delve into idle speculation. Rather, the purpose here is to reflect upon gaps in the current body of literature and to describe how you anticipate your research will begin to fill in some or all of those gaps.

The conclusion reiterates the importance and significance of your research proposal, and provides a brief summary of the entire proposed study. Essentially, this section should only be one or two paragraphs in length. Here is a potential outline for your conclusion:

Discuss why the study should be done. Specifically discuss how you expect your study will advance existing knowledge and how your study is unique.

Explain the specific purpose of the study and the research questions that the study will answer.

Explain why the research design and methods chosen for this study are appropriate, and why other designs and methods were not chosen.

State the potential implications you expect to emerge from your proposed study,

Provide a sense of how your study fits within the broader scholarship currently in existence, related to the research problem.

Citations and references

As with any scholarly research paper, you must cite the sources you used in composing your research proposal. In a research proposal, this can take two forms: a reference list or a bibliography. A reference list lists the literature you referenced in the body of your research proposal. All references in the reference list must appear in the body of the research proposal. Remember, it is not acceptable to say “as cited in …” As a researcher you must always go to the original source and check it for yourself. Many errors are made in referencing, even by top researchers, and so it is important not to perpetuate an error made by someone else. While this can be time consuming, it is the proper way to undertake a literature review.

In contrast, a bibliography , is a list of everything you used or cited in your research proposal, with additional citations to any key sources relevant to understanding the research problem. In other words, sources cited in your bibliography may not necessarily appear in the body of your research proposal. Make sure you check with your instructor to see which of the two you are expected to produce.

Overall, your list of citations should be a testament to the fact that you have done a sufficient level of preliminary research to ensure that your project will complement, but not duplicate, previous research efforts. For social sciences, the reference list or bibliography should be prepared in American Psychological Association (APA) referencing format. Usually, the reference list (or bibliography) is not included in the word count of the research proposal. Again, make sure you check with your instructor to confirm.

Research Methods for the Social Sciences: An Introduction Copyright © 2020 by Valerie Sheppard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Organizing Academic Research Papers: Writing a Research Proposal

• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• Executive Summary
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tertiary Sources
• What Is Scholarly vs. Popular?
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Annotated Bibliography
• Dealing with Nervousness
• Using Visual Aids
• Grading Someone Else's Paper
• How to Manage Group Projects
• Multiple Book Review Essay
• Reviewing Collected Essays
• About Informed Consent
• Writing Field Notes
• Writing a Policy Memo
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Acknowledgements

The goal of a research proposal is to present and justify a research idea you have and to present the practical ways in which you think this research should be conducted. The forms and procedures for such research are defined by the field of study, so guidelines for research proposals are generally more exacting and less formal than a project proposal. Research proposals contain extensive literature reviews and must provide persuasive evidence that there is a need for the research study being proposed. In addition to providing rationale for the proposed research, a proposal describes detailed methodology for conducting the research consistent with requirements of the professional or academic field and a statement on anticipated outcomes and/or benefits derived from the study.

Krathwohl, David R. How to Prepare a Dissertation Proposal: Suggestions for Students in Education and the Social and Behavioral Sciences . Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005.

How to Approach Writing a Research Proposal

Your professor may assign the task of writing a research proposal for the following reasons:

• Develop your skills in thinking about and designing a comprehensive research study.
• Help learn how to conduct a comprehensive review of the literature to ensure a research problem has not already been answered [or you may determine the problem has been answered ineffectively] and, in so doing, become familiar with scholarship related to your topic.
• Improve your general research and writing skills.
• Practice identifying what logical steps must be taken to accomplish one's research goals.
• Nurture a sense of inquisitiveness within yourself and to help see yourself as an active participant in the process of doing scholarly research.

A proposal should contain all the key elements involved in designing a complete research study, with sufficient information that allows readers to assess the validity and usefulness of your proposed study. The only elements missing from a research proposal are the results of the study and your analysis of those results. Finally, an effective proposal is judged on the quality of your writing. It is, therefore, important that your writing is coherent, clear, and compelling.

Regardless of the research problem you are investigating and the methodology you choose, all research proposals must address the following questions:

• What do you plan to accomplish? Be clear and succient in defining the research problem and what it is you are proposing to research.
• Why do you want to do it? In addition to detailing your research design, you also must conduct a thorough review of the literature and provide convincing evidence that it is a topic worthy of study. Be sure to answer the "So what? question.
• How are you going to do it? Be sure that what you propose is doable.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Failure to be concise; being "all over the map" without a clear sense of purpose.
• Failure to cite landmark works in your literature review.
• Failure to delimit the contextual boundaries of your research [e.g., time, place, people, etc.].
• Failure to develop a coherent and persuasive argument for the proposed research.
• Failure to stay focused on the research question; going off on unrelated tangents.
• Sloppy or imprecise writing. Poor grammar.
• Too much detail on minor issues, but not enough detail on major issues.

Procter, Margaret. The Academic Proposal .  The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Sanford, Keith. Information for Students: Writing a Research Proposal . Baylor University; Wong, Paul T. P. How to Write a Research Proposal . International Network on Personal Meaning. Trinity Western University; Writing Academic Proposals: Conferences, Articles, and Books . The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Writing a Research Proposal. University Library. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Structure and Writing Style

Beginning the Proposal Process

As with writing a traditional research paper, research proposals are generally organized the same way throughout the social sciences. Most proposals are between ten and fifteen pages in length. However, before you begin, read the assignment carefully and, if anything seems unclear, ask your professor whether there are any specific requirements for organizing and writing the proposal.

A good place to begin is to ask yourself a series of questions:

• What do I want to study, and why?
• How is it significant within the subject areas covered in my class?
• What problems will it help solve?
• How does it build upon [and hopefully go beyond] research already conducted on my topic?
• What exactly should I plan to do, and can I get it done in the time available?

In the end, your research proposal should document your knowledge of the topic and highlight enthusiasm for conducting the study. Approach it with the intention of leaving your readers feeling like--"Wow, that's an exciting idea and I can’t wait to see how it turns out!"

In general your proposal should include the following sections:

I.  Introduction

In the real world of higher education, a research proposal is most often written by scholars seeking grant funding for a research project or it's the first step in getting approval to write your doctoral dissertation. Even if this is just a course assignment, treat your introduction as the initial pitch of an idea. After reading the introduction, your readers should not only have an understanding of what you want to do, but they should also be able to sense your passion for the topic and be excited about its possible outcomes.

Think about your introduction as a narrative written in one to three paragraphs that succinctly answers the following four questions :

• What is the central research problem?
• What is the topic of study related to that problem?
• What methods should be used to analyze the research problem?
• Why is this important research, and why should someone reading the proposal care about the outcomes from the study?

II.  Background and Significance

This section can be melded into your introduction or you can create a separate section to help with the organization and flow of your proposal. This is where you explain the context of your project and outline why it's important. Approach writing this section with the thought that you can’t assume your readers will know as much about the research problem as you do. Note that this section is not an essay going over everything you have learned about the research problem; instead, you must choose what is relevant to help explain your goals for the study.

To that end, while there are no hard and fast rules, you should attempt to deal with some or all of the following:

• State the research problem and give a more detailed explanation about the purpose of the study than what you stated in the introduction.
• Present the rationale of your proposed study and clearly indicate why it is worth doing. Answer the "So what? question [i.e., why should anyone care].
• Describe the major issues or problems to be addressed by your research.
• Explain how you plan to go about conducting your research. Clearly identify the key sources you intend to use and explain how they will contribute to the analysis of your topic.
• Set the boundaries of your proposed research in order to provide a clear focus.
• Provide definitions of key concepts or terms, if necessary.

III.  Literature Review

Connected to the background and significance of your study is a more deliberate review and synthesis of prior studies related to the research problem under investigation . The purpose here is to place your project within the larger whole of what is currently being explored, while demonstrating to your readers that your work is original and innovative. Think about what questions other researchers have asked, what methods they've used, and what is your understanding of their findings. Assess what you believe is still missing, and state how previous research has failed to examine the issue that your study addresses.

Since a literature review is information dense, it is crucial that this section is intelligently structured to enable a reader to grasp the key arguments underpinning your study in relation to that of other researchers. A good strategy is to break the literature into "conceptual categories" [themes] rather than systematically describing materials one at a time.

To help frame your proposal's literature review, here are the "five C’s" of writing a literature review:

• Cite : keep the primary focus on the literature pertinent to your research problem.
• Compare the various arguments, theories, methodologies, and findings expressed in the literature: what do the authors agree on? Who applies similar approaches to analyzing the research problem?
• Contrast the various arguments, themes, methodologies, approaches and controversies expressed in the literature: what are the major areas of disagreement, controversy, or debate?
• Critique the literature: Which arguments are more persuasive, and why? Which approaches, findings, methodologies seem most reliable, valid, or appropriate, and why? Pay attention to the verbs you use to describe what an author says/does [e.g., asserts, demonstrates, etc.] .
• Connect the literature to your own area of research and investigation: how does your own work draw upon, depart from, or synthesize what has been said in the literature?

IV.  Research Design and Methods

This section must be well-written and logically organized because you are not actually doing the research . As a consequence, the reader will never have a study outcome from which to evaluate whether your methodological choices were the correct ones. The objective here is to ensure that the reader is convinced that your overall research design and methods of analysis will correctly address the research problem. Your design and methods should be absolutely and unmistakably tied to the specific aims of your study.

Describe the overall research design by building upon and drawing examples from your review of the literature. Be specific about the methodological approaches you plan to undertake to collect information, about the techniques you will use to analyze it, and about tests of external validity to which you commit yourself [i.e., the trustworthiness by which you can generalize from your study to other people, places or times].

When describing the methods you will use, be sure to cover these issues:

• Specify the research operations you will undertake and the way you will interpret the results of these operations in relation to your research problem. Don't just describe what you intend to achieve from applying the methods you choose, but state how you will spend your time while doing it.
• Keep in mind that a methodology is not just a list of research tasks; it is an argument as to why these tasks add up to the best way to investigate the research problem. This is an important point because the mere listing of tasks to perform does not demonstrate that they add up to the best feasible approach.
• Be sure to anticipate and acknowledge any potential barriers and pitfalls in carrying out your research design and explain how you plan to get around them.

V.  Preliminary Suppositions and Implications

Just because you don't have to actually conduct the study and analyze the results, it doesn't mean that you can skip talking about the process and potential implications . The purpose of this section is to argue how and in what ways you believe your research will refine, revise, or extend existing knowledge in the subject area under investigation. Depending on the aims and objectives of your study, describe how the anticipated results of your study will impact future scholarly research, theory, practice, forms of interventions, or policy. Note that such discussions may have either substantive [a potential new policy], theoretical [a potential new understanding], or methodological [a potential new way of analyzing] significance.   When thinking about the potential implications of your study, ask the following questions:

• What might the results mean in regards to the theoretical framework that frames the study?
• What suggestions for subsequent research could arise from the potential outcomes of the study?
• What will the results mean to practitioners in the "real world"?
• Will the results influence programs, methods, and/or forms of intervention?
• How might the results contribute to the solution of social, economic, or other types of problems?
• Will the results influence policy decisions?
• What will be improved or changed as a result of the proposed research?
• How will the results of the study be implemented, and what innovations will come about?

VI.  Conclusion

The conclusion reiterates the importance or significance of your proposal and provides a brief recap of the entire study . This section should be only one or two paragraphs long, emphasizing why your research study is unique, why it advances knowledge, and why the research problem is worth investigating.

Someone reading this section should come away with an understanding of:

• Why the study was done,
• The specific purpose of the study and the research questions it attempted to answer,
• The research design and methods used,
• The potential implications emerging from your proposed study of the research problem, and
• A sense of how your study fits within the broader scholarship about the research problem.

VII.  Citations

As with any scholarly research paper, you must cite the sources you used in composing your proposal. In a standard research proposal, this section can take two forms, so speak with your professor about which one is preferred.

• References -- lists only the literature that you actually used or cited in your proposal.
• Bibliography -- lists everything you used or cited in your proposal with additional citations of any key sources relevant to understanding the research problem.

In either case, this section should testify to the fact that you did enough preparatory work to make sure the project will complement and not duplicate the efforts of other researchers. Start a new page and use the heading "References" or "Bibliography" at the top of the page. Cited works should always use a standard format that follows the writing style advised by the discipline of your course [i.e., education=APA; history=Chicago, etc]. This section normally does not count towards the total length of your proposal.

Develop a Research Proposal: Writing the Proposal . Office of Library Information Services. Baltimore County Public Schools; Krathwohl, David R. How to Prepare a Dissertation Proposal: Suggestions for Students in Education and the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005; Procter, Margaret. The Academic Proposal . The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Punch, Keith and Wayne McGowan. Developing and Writing a Research Proposal. In From Postgraduate to Social Scientist: A Guide to Key Skills. Nigel Gilbert, ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006), 59-81; Sanford, Keith. Information for Students: Writing a Research Proposal . Baylor University; Wong, Paul T. P. How to Write a Research Proposal . International Network on Personal Meaning. Trinity Western University; Writing Academic Proposals: Conferences, Articles, and Books . The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Writing a Research Proposal . University Library. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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What are the Sections of a Research Proposal?

Research proposals that are written by graduate students or academic researchers typically follow a similar format consisting of headings and sections that explain the purpose of the research, specify the scope and scale of the study, and argue for its importance in contributing to the scientific literature. Knowing how to write a research proposal checklist  is crucial to getting your dissertation or thesis project accepted.

Although the research proposal sections may vary depending on whether it is a grant,  doctoral dissertation , conference paper, or professional project, there are certainly some sections in common. This article will cover sections you will often see in research proposals, explain their purpose, and provide a sample research proposal template.

What are the sections of a research proposal?

Let’s take a look at each section of a research proposal:

• Overall purpose
• Background literature
• Research question
• Definitions of terms and nomenclature
• Research methodology
• Problems and limitations
• Required resources and budget
• Ethical considerations
• Proposed timetable

What is the purpose of each research proposal section?

The research proposal sections and headings above resemble a fully edited and published academic journal article, which you probably can recognize if you are a new PhD or master’s graduate student who is just starting out reading peer-reviewed academic journal articles. 

However, the purpose of each heading in a research proposal is quite different from that of a final article. 

Purpose : To explain briefly, in a few words, what the research will be about.

What you should do:  Give your research proposal a concise and accurate title. Include the name of your faculty mentor (and his/her academic department).

Note : Title pages for research proposals are generally standardized or specified and provide or summarize basic administrative information‌, such as the university or research institution. Titles should be concise and brief enough to inform the reader of the purpose and nature of the research.

Related Article:  How to choose the best title for your research manuscript

Purpose:  To provide an overview of the study, which you will expand on in detail in later sections of the research proposal.

What you should do:  Provide a brief overview of your project. Include the goals of your research proposal and clearly specify the research questions you want to address. Explain the hypotheses you want to test.

Note : A good summary should emphasize the problems the applicant intends to solve, identify the solution to the problems, and specify the objectives and design‌ ‌of‌ ‌the‌ ‌research. It should also describe the applicant’s qualifications and budget requirements.

Check out a webinar on how to write an effective research introduction

Overall purpose.

Purpose:  To state the overall goal of the work in a clear, concise manner.

What you should do : Summarize your problem for someone who is scientifically knowledgeable but potentially uninformed regarding your specific research topic.

Note : The aim or purpose of a research proposal should be results-oriented as opposed to process-oriented. For example, the result of a research study may be “To determine the enzyme involved in X” while the process is “to perform a protein electrophoresis study on mice expressing Y gene.” There should be at least three objectives per proposal. 

Background Literature Review

Purpose : To demonstrate the relationship between the goals of the proposed study and what has already been established in the relevant field of study.

What you should do : Selectively and critically analyze the literature. Explain other researchers’ work so that your professor or project manager has a clear understanding of how you will address past research and progress the literature.

Note : One of the most effective ways to support your research’s purpose and importance is to address gaps in the literature, controversies in your research field, and current trends in research. This will put into context how your dissertation or study will contribute to general scientific knowledge. Learn  how to write a literature review  before writing this section.

Research Question or Hypothesis

Purpose : To state precisely what the study will investigate or falsify.

What you should do : Clearly distinguish the dependent and independent variables and be certain the reader understands them. Make sure you use your terms consistently. Whenever possible, use the same nomenclature.

Note : A research question presents the relationship between two or more variables in the form of a question, whereas a hypothesis is a declarative statement of the relationship between two or more variables. Knowing  where to put the research question in a science paper  is also crucial to writing a strong Introduction section.

Definition of Terms

Purpose : To define the meanings of the key terms used in the research.

What you should do:  Align your term and nomenclature usage throughout your entire research proposal. Clearly define abbreviations and make sure they are understandable to scientists from other disciplines.

Note : Different scientific fields of study often use different terms for the same thing. Further, there are language consistency issues that should be considered. In organic chemistry, there are international standards for naming compounds, but common names are still regularly used, e.g., acetic acid versus ethanoic acid.

Research Methodology

Purpose:  To break down the steps of your research proposal.

What you should do:   Explain how you will achieve‌ ‌your research goals ‌specified‌ ‌earlier using terms that a general reader can understand. Explain your approach, design, and methods.

Note : Your research proposal should explain the broad scope of your research to other researchers‌ ‌in‌ ‌your‌ ‌field. This section represents the most important part of a research proposal and is therefore ‌the‌ ‌primary‌ ‌concern‌ ‌of‌ ‌reviewers. Knowing  how to explain research methodology for reproducibility  is important to explaining your methodology to dissertation or thesis advisors and committees. 

Problems and Limitations

Purpose:  To demonstrate awareness of any study limitations, potential problems, and barriers to answering the research question, and how to deal with them

What you should do:  Thoroughly head off any criticisms before they can torpedo your research proposal. Explain that any limitations or potential conflicts will only delay your research or alter/narrow its scope; they will not fundamentally degrade the importance of your research.

Note : Any research proposal or scientific study will have limitations in its scope and execution. Sometimes it may be a key procedure that is problematic or a material you cannot readily obtain. Discussing limitations is key to demonstrating you are an adept and experienced researcher worth approving.

Related Article:  How to present study limitations and alternatives

Required resources and budget.

Purpose:  To list what resources your research may require and what costs and timelines may affect your completion.

What you should do:  Think as a businessperson. Breakdown what resources are available at your institution or university as well as the required resources you still need. These can be materials, machinery, lab equipment, and computers. Resources can also be human: expertise to perform a procedure and other kinds of collaboration. 

Note : This section underscores why your funding institution or academic committee should fund your university, laboratory team, or yourself for this particular research. 

Ethical Considerations

Purpose:  To state how participants will be advised of

the overall nature and purpose of the study and how informed consent will

be obtained.

What you should do:  Consult with your academic institution, PhD advisor, and laboratory colleagues. Do not gloss over this part since it has legal consequences.

Note : Often, these types of legal disclaimers are well established and readily available in template format from your research institution or university. Just obtain the proper clearance and permission and have the legal authority at your institution check it over.

Read about how  conflicts of interest  should be disclosed in research proposals

Proposed timeline.

Purpose:  To give a projected timeline for planning, completing, verifying, and reporting your research.

What you should do:  Approach this part with a project management style. In an organized fashion, set out a specific timeline for how long each part of your research will take. Identify bottlenecks and specify them.

Note:  Savvy time management is something that comes with lots of research experience. Ask your professor or colleagues if you have questions about how long certain procedures will take.

Purpose:  To provide detailed bibliographic and reference citations.

What you should do:  Use an online citation machine ( APA citation machine , MLA citation machine , Chicago citation machine , Vancouver citation machine ) that can instantly organize your references in any format. Make sure you do this as you go, not saving it for the last when you have lost track.

Note:  The bibliographic format used varies according to the research discipline. Consistency is the main consideration; whichever style is chosen should be followed carefully throughout the entire paper. 

Related Article:  How many references to include in a research proposal?

Purpose : To include any extra materials or information.

What you should do:  Add letters of endorsement or collaboration and reprints of relevant articles if they are not available electronically. In addition to the above, you may want to include data tables, surveys, questionnaires, data collection procedures, clinical protocols, and informed consent documents.

Notes : Many writers tend to attach supporting documents to support their research proposal. But remember, more is not always better. Be sure to only include information that strengthens your case, not simply make it longer.

Note : Savvy time management is something that comes with lots of research experience. Ask your professor or colleagues if you have questions about how long certain procedures will take.

The Bottom Line

Whether your research is academic (PhD or master’s graduate student) or professional (competing for government or private funding), how you organize your research proposal sections is one of the first things evaluators will notice. Many academic reviewers will simply scan and check for key section headings. If any headings are missing or strangely written, they may instantly give the reviewer a bad impression of your proposal. 

One tip before submitting or even writing your research proposal is to search for the best journal to publish your research in and follow the guidelines in the Guide for Authors section, as well as read as many articles from that journal as possible to gain an understanding of the appropriate style and formatting.

Preparing Your Research Proposal for Publication

So make sure to use some of our resources, such as our  FREE APA citation generator  and  research proposal checklist , or contact us to ask about  professional proofreading services , including academic editing and manuscript editing for academic documents.

And check our guide on the  editing process  to learn more about how language editing for manuscripts can enhance your writing and increase your chances of publication.