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"Elements of a research proposal and report

2005 © David S. Walonick, Ph.D.

All research reports use roughly the same format. It doesn't matter whether you've done a customer satisfaction survey, an employee opinion survey, a health care survey, or a marketing research survey. All have the same basic structure and format. The rationale is that readers of research reports (i.e., decision makers, funders, etc.) will know exactly where to find the information they are looking for, regardless of the individual report.

Once you've learned the basic rules for research proposal and report writing, you can apply them to any research discipline. The same rules apply to writing a proposal, a thesis, a dissertation, or any business research report.

The Research Proposal and Report

TITLE PAGE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I - Introduction
     Introductory paragraphs
     Statement of the problem
     Purpose
     Significance of the study
     Research questions and/or hypotheses
CHAPTER II - Background
     Literature review
     Definition of terms
CHAPTER III - Methodology
     Restate purpose and research questions or null hypotheses
     Population and sampling
     Instrumentation (include copy in appendix)
     Procedure and time frame
     Analysis plan (state critical alpha level and type of statistical tests)
     Validity and reliability
     Assumptions
     Scope and limitations
CHAPTER IV - Results
CHAPTER V - Conclusions and recommendations
     Summary (of what you did and found)
     Discussion (explanation of findings - why do you think you found what you did?)
     Recommendations (based on your findings)
REFERENCES
APPENDIX"

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