Structure of a Research Proposal or Report

1
Structure of a Research Proposal or Report

• INFO4990 Information Technology Research Methods
• DECO3008 Design Computing Prep Honours
• Mary Lou Maher
• March 2005

2
Contents

• Report
• Introduction to topic
• Literature Review
• Research Methodology
• Research Results
• Contributions
• References

• Proposal
• Introduction to topic
• Literature Review
• Research Methodology
• Proposed Approach
• Research Schedule
• References

3
Introduction to topic

• Start with a summary and significance of your
  title
• Motivation what will we have when the research
  is done
• Significance where are the holes in what has
  been done already
• Aims, Objectives, Claim, Hypothesis, Research
  Questions

4
Literature Review

• Critically review the research literature in the
  field that you intend to make your contribution
• Summarise the contributions of relevant
  literature
• Identify relevant claims, methods, validation
• State the relevance to your research

5
Research Methodology

• Relate your claim to the method and to the
  validation around one or more research
  methodologies
• Prototyping
• Experimental
• Surveys
• Simulation
• Case Study
• Action Research

6
Proposed Approach

• How will you collect your evidence?
• Have you started the research?
• What is your big idea?
• Are there any preliminary results?

7
Research Results

• How did you collect your evidence?
• What are your results?
• Did you idea work as intended?

8
Research Schedule

• Identify the major tasks to complete the research
• Tasks should be derived from the methodology
• Identify the length of time to complete the tasks
  and the order in which they will be done
• Notice any tasks that will be done at the same
  time
• Draw a gantt chart