Discovering Your PhD Potential: Writing a Research Proposal

Learn how to construct an excellent research proposal

A carefully prepared and thorough research proposal is crucial for advanced or doctoral applications and can provide the launchpad for the first stages of that postgraduate study.

This five-week course from the University of Leicester will give you the skills and tools to write a well thought-out and achievable research proposal, helping you improve the quality of your applications. It will also give you a taste of the self-study needed in postgraduate doctoral research.

Discover the best approaches for problem definition

As this will be a long-term project, it is critical that you choose a topic that is of personal interest, is feasible to conduct, and can deliver strong outcomes.

You’ll look at how to define the problem area and begin to shape your research question, starting with your own interests relating to your previous academic experiences. You’ll learn the different research approaches you can take and the ways that you can formulate and write research questions.

Explore research design concepts and various research methodologies

On this course, you’ll assess research philosophy, specifically ontology and epistemology, and how it plays into your research proposal.

You’ll then examine quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis to build the framework for your research before exploring the different research methods you can use and which ones are right for your research question.

Pull your skills together to build your PhD proposal

The final week of this course will guide you through how to sell your research topic step-by-step, from choosing the right title to detailing your research question, methods, and provisional timetable.

Once you have completed this course, you’ll be ready to write the first draft of your doctoral research proposal.

This course is designed for postgraduate research applicants looking to improve their research proposals. It may also be of interest to anyone wanting to learn more about developing well-founded and challenging research bids.

This course is designed for postgraduate research applicants looking to improve their research proposals. It may also be of interest to anyone wanting to learn more about developing well-founded and challenging research bids.

• Identify why you want to do a PhD and whether your expectations are realistic
• Explore the main requirements, structures and problems with aiming to undertake a PhD
• Demonstrate how to set a realistic, manageable and impactful research question
• Compare deductive and inductive research questions
• Describe and be able to implement the steps required to writing a literature review, including: doing a literature search, planning, organising and writing the literature review
• Discuss what kind of theoretical approach would be useful for your research proposal
• Compare the differences between ontology, epistemology, different research designs and methodology.
• Summarise what you have learned from this course into a first draft of a research proposal