Writing the research proposal

When to start

As soon as the Topic Approval Request Form is approved, you may start. It is adviced to maintain a four months gap between the starting of this step and your targeted date of handing in the thesis (e.g. If you intend to hand in the thesis at the end of July, you may start this step around the end of March.)

What to prepare

A thesis proposal that meets the general requirement (see Thesis Manual) and my specific standards.

Guidance for preparation

Besides the general requirements, I have some specific standards on a research proposal. The purpose of having a higher standard is to guarantee that the thesis writing procedure can flow smoothly.

The research proposal consists of the following five parts, with a total length limited to 15 pages (excluding references.)

The introduction starts with motivating the research question (0.5-1 page). The motivation is preferred to be driven by a real life problem. It is also possible to briefly use one or two existing articles to describe to what extent the problem has been solved in literature. Right after the motivation, the research question must be stated clearly, and briefly (at maximum two lines).

If the research question is indeed complex, and requires multiple steps, it is possible to decompose the research question into two or three sub-questions. They can be discussed after stating the research question. In particular, the discussion should show why the sub-questions are relevant.

After the motivation, the introduction should be continued with a general description on how you would solve the (sub-)question, and the intuition why your proposed method would work (0.5-1 page). This part can be viewed as a summary of the methodology section, but should contain no formula. Please note that the intuition is ex ante, i.e. even before going through the analysis, the reader can be convinced by your intuition that your proposed method would work.

After the general description, the Introduction should contain a literature review (maximum 3 pages) on relevant studies. Please do not review a paper because you have to review some papers. For each paper you reviewed, you have to discuss what the relevance to the underlying research is. In particular, what is the difference between your proposed research and the reviewed paper?

It is not necessary to completely plan your methodology because you may modify them during your research. Nevertheless, here are three points that you should cover.

Firstly, clearly introduce your notations such as variable definitions, etc. Secondly, write the building blocks of your methodology as subsections. Indicate them by subsection titles. Lastly and most importantly, for the most essential building block (usually the novel contribution of your thesis), write down the details of the methodology. For example, for a maximum likelihood approach, write down the likelihood equation; for an estimation procedures, write down the estimator.

The Data section documents how data is retrieved. This is not only a proposal, you should have actually retrieved data. In addition, the descriptive statistics of the data should be presented by a table or a figure at the end of this section.

In this section, please answer the following two questions. What is the most risky part of your proposal, or in other words, which part you may encounter difficulty? This can be either a potential difficulty in programming a certain methodology, or the fact that the proposed hypothesis is not supported by the results. In addition, what is your plan B, if this risk materializes?

Besides answering the questions, please provide a time frame of your working plan. Please also indicate how much time (as a fraction of full time working) you can dedicate to the thesis in each time period, taking into account your upcoming holidays and other activities such as internships, resits, etc.

Make sure that all references cited in the proposal are given in the reference list and vice versa. Also make sure that the citation style is in line with typical scientific journals.

Language requirement

The editorial requirement for the thesis proposal is at the highest level. I would suggest you start with reading the tips on CANVAS, the module "Academic writing". Many of my requirements/tips below are in line with his suggestions.

Do’s:

Write from the perspective of the reader: make the structure of the text understandable for an average reader without specific knowledge in the filed you are working on. In particular, think carefully about the order or your building blocks in the texts.

It is OK to write "We" (as if the reader is also on board) or "I" (as if you are telling the story) as the subject in a sentence. Try to use active form as much as possible, in particular, when it is "you" who decided to do something. For example, "we use the maximum likelihood estimator to estimate a" rather than "a is estimated by the maximum likelihood estimator". Limit your use of passive form. Use that only if you are making an objective statement.

Please write in academic language, i.e. precise and effective. Each sentence must be justified or justifiable.

Check whether your arguments flow with the right logic.

Check whether any two conjunction sentences possess a proper logic or linkage between them.

Make sure that your proposal is free of spelling mistakes or grammar error.

Don’ts:

Do not make bold statement without justification. Examples of bold statements are "... has been extensively studied in the literature." "Banks are concerned about risks." (If you say so, please provide evidence such as references)

Do not use emotional words such as “very important”, “very interesting” unless you can justify them (which I think you cannot! What you find interesting might not be interesting to a reader!)

Do not use very long sentence. (A sentence occupying five lines should be split.) If you can write in two sentences, do not write in one.

Do not write oral language such as “if you look at A, you would believe that B is correct.”

Suggested style

You are very much encouraged to write your thesis in LaTeX. Please use a Times New Roman font with font size 12, 1.5 line spacing, at least 1inch spacing in all four margins.

Supervision process

After our first meeting (at the end of last Step), you start working on the first draft of the proposal. Once you get a reasonable first draft ready (meeting most of the requirements above), you can send me an email (via Sin-online) with your first draft attached. I will arrange a 45mins meeting with you as soon as possible (usually within one week). During the meeting, I will give you detailed feedback on the first draft.

After the meeting, you will edit the proposal and send the final draft of the proposal (meeting all requirements above) to me. There are three possibilities afterwards.

Time line regarding this Step

This step takes roughly a month. Running a bit longer such as six weeks is also fine (counting on the two weeks for reparation). After the proposal is ready, typically we need one month full time work to finish the first draft of the thesis. For example, if you intend to hand in the thesis at the end of July, the proposal should be finished before the mid of May.

In some exceptional case, the proposal stage can run much longer than scheduled. For example, if we mutually agree that we would like to write down the entire methodology part prefectly in the proposal. In such a case, the proposal can run even up to two months and finishes a few weeks before the first draft. Please do not feel discouraged if the process is getting longer: you just have to start the analysis part in parallel!

Please note that from this step, the time line is largely depending on your progress: the second meeting (after our kick-off meeting) is on your call. If you do not contact me, I will not contact you.

 

 

 

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