Professional Documents
Culture Documents
10 Writing and
Ethics in
Research
LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
1. Define what is a research proposal;
2. Describe the eight items in a research proposal;
3. Identify the guidelines for writing a research proposal;
4. Describe the three common weaknesses in a research proposal; and
5. Describe the ethics in research.
X INTRODUCTION
Before embarking on a research project, students must have an overall research
plan that indicates the research problem to be studied, research objectives,
significance of the research, strategies to obtain answers to the research problems
and the research project implementation schedule. This overall research plan is
called a research proposal. It is very important that students write a good
research proposal because without a good research proposal the student may not
get a research supervisor or even an approval to carry out the research. The
student must also know about ethics in research because that governs the
researchers behaviour in terms of what should do and should not be done in the
research project.
TOPIC 10 PROPOSAL WRITING AND ETHICS IN RESEARCH W 167
(a) Introduction
(i) In this section, you should provide an overview of the issues that you
intend to study. The content of introduction should be brief, precise
and straight to the point. After giving an overview on the scope of the
research, you will need to narrow it down to the specific area of your
concern.
(iii) Define the problem statement in your proposal. This will give a clear
perception to the reader on the issue you are going to solve. However,
the problem statement you write in the proposal may only be
tentative at the point of proposal preparation because the research has
not been carried out yet.
(iv) Use simple sentences and make sure you narrow down the research
issue to focus on a very specific field.
(i) List out your research objectives and it should indicate the central
theme of your research that you intend to study.
(ii) When writing the objective statement, use action-oriented verbs such
as to find out, to determine and to ascertain, which must be listed
numerically.
(i) Briefly mention why you need to do the research and provide
justification for it.
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(ii) You may elaborate on the significance of the research based on certain
criteria, for instance, a problem that demands attention because the
findings can solve or influence practice.
(iii) You can also provide justification if the methodology you are going to
use has some degree of novelty and your research would contribute
to new knowledge.
(iv) Some other criteria you can mention are the variables that you are
going to use and the expected outcomes of your research and its
influence on the model or design.
(i) In this section, do some summary about the related work of your
research and what others had done to date in your field of interest.
(ii) Try to read a thesis in similar area that you are investigating to get the
feel of it.
(f) Methodology
(ii) You may explain some reasons why you are using certain theory
or models, whether your research approach will be qualitative or
quantitative, or a combination of both.
170 X TOPIC 10 PROPOSAL WRITING AND ETHICS IN RESEARCH
(iv) Explain the type of data involved and what type of analysis and
testing will be performed.
(h) References
SELF-CHECK 10.1
(a) Familiarise yourself with word processor software (i.e. Microsoft Word,
Open Office) and take time to learn the features of the software, for instance
inserting tables, graphs, footnotes and other specially formatted features.
This will help you towards preparing a research report at the end of the
process.
(c) While writing the first proposal, present your ideas by narrowing it down
sequentially and focus more on presenting the information in an interesting
manner. You must remember that your proposal should be expressed
clearly and states the overview of your research intention.
172 X TOPIC 10 PROPOSAL WRITING AND ETHICS IN RESEARCH
(d) Write and explain about your research problem at the beginning of the
proposal content (i.e. Introduction section). This is important as to give
readers attention since the entire research process is driven by the research
problem.
(e) Briefly and precisely write about the methodology you are going to
implement. It is a good practice to outline methods and source of data in
the proposal stage itself. This will put your proposal in a better position in
order to determine its worth and potential contribution.
SELF-CHECK 10.2
SELF-CHECK 10.3
Privacy is accepted as the key to ethical issues that the researcher has to confront
in carrying out any research project. Almost all aspects of ethics, for example,
TOPIC 10 PROPOSAL WRITING AND ETHICS IN RESEARCH W 175
consent, confidentiality, participant reactions, and the effects of the way the
researcher uses, analyses and reports research findings have the capacity to
affect, or are related to, the privacy of participants.
ACTIVITY 10.1
EXERCISE 10.1
x The process of formulating and clarifying the research topic is the most
crucial part of the research process.
x Writing a research proposal helps the researcher in organising ideas and can
also be thought as a contract between the researcher and the client.
x The content of the research proposal should tell the reader what the
researcher wants to do, why he wants to do it, what he wants to achieve and
how he wants to achieve it.
x Research ethics should be recognised and considered from the outset of the
research project and be used as one of the criteria in judging the proposal.
Ethical concerns are likely to occur at all stages of the research project, when
seeking access to data, during data collection, while analysing data and in
reporting the results.