Masters Research Proposal Guide

Abstract

(The abstract is a brief summary of the research proposal, and should contain at most 200 words. It
starts by describing shortly the knowledge domain where the research takes place and the key issues
that uncover opportunities for the scientific or technological innovations that one intends to explore.
Taking those key issues as a background, one then presents briefly the research statement, the
proposed research approach, the expected results to be achieved, and the anticipated implications of
such results on the advancement of the knowledge domain. The abstract should be concise and
objective; it is intended to give a quick motivating understanding of the work)

Keywords

(An alphabetically ordered list of at most 12 relevant words or expressions, separated by commas,
that would be used in a search engine to find related research work)

Introduction

(The aim of the introduction is to give an overview of the research project which one proposes to be
carried out. It explains the background of the project, focusing briefly on the major issues of its
knowledge domain and clarifying why these issues are worthy of attention. It then proceeds with a
concise presentation of the research statement, which can be a research question, a project statement,
a goal statement or a hypothesis. The research statement should capture both the essence of the
project and its delimiting boundaries. It should be followed by a clarification of the extent to which one
expects its outcomes to represent an advance in the aforementioned knowledge domain.

The introduction should catch a reader’s interest and should be written in a style understandable by
any reader with a general background of the field. It should cite all relevant references relating to the
major issues described.)

Research Objectives and Approach

(This section should clarify the research objectives of the project, by describing the methodological
approaches that will be used to face the key research challenges of the project. The objectives should
build solidly on the referenced related work done by others, whilst clarifying how the current work
develops from their work and the extent to which it diverges from their work to open up new and
unexplored possibilities.

This section explains in detail the plan to tackle the research problem, a justification of the merits of
the approach, and the exact tasks that need to be performed. The tasks or “how-to” component of the
proposal is called the Research Methods or Methodology component. It should be detailed enough to
enable a reader to decide whether the intended methods are adequate for the research at hand. It
should go beyond a mere listing of the research tasks, by including a discussion of possible alternatives
and an explanation of why the chosen approach is the most favorable.)

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