Research Proposals may be as brief as a page or two or as long as a hundred pages. For instance, if you are pitching an entrepreneurial idea to Y Combinator, they will give you a couple of pages and require a video where you pitch your idea. In contrast, if you are pitching an entrepreneurial idea to NSF SBIR or IES SBIR, your proposal may run 15 pages single spaced and then have another hundred pages of attachments, letters of support, budget projects, and resumes.
Regardless of length, though, research proposals share some common characteristics: First, proposals are arguments, persuasive documents.
Note: The Research Proposal, at a minimum, should have the following sections: Purpose; Summary; Introduction; Visual Representation of the Problem/Stakeholders/Potential Solutions; Proposed Plan of Work (with Gantt Chart); Qualifications, Budget, Bibliography. Other common parts of Research Proposals are not required but welcome:
| Section | Question it answers | Notes |
| Purpose | What is the purpose of the proposed research? | Typically proposal writers define the question they seek to answer, its significance, and past scholarly conversations on the matter. Hoping to be persuasive, writers make appeals to kairos, logos, ethos, and pathos. |
| Summary | What content is included in the document? | This functions as a short-form version of the proposal. Briefly cover the major elements of the document for readers who might not read anything but the summary |
| Introduction | What problem(s) does the proposed research project address? | Problem statement: Clear, concise statement of problem; 1-3 sentences (move other detail to Background) Objectives: Concise statement of the problem definition and needed textual and empirical research Background: Explain how, why, and for whom the problem exists. What circumstances led to its discovery, relationships or events that affect the problem/solutions, etc. Literature review/sources of information: Draw on your preliminary research to describe relevant literature/research related to this problem/research initiative. Benefits: Describe potential benefits expected from the research in concrete, specific language. Scope: Describe what you are going to research and what you are not going to research Organization: Describe the organizational pattern the proposal uses Key terms: Define any specialized terms you will use in the report |
| Visual Representation of Rhetorical Situation | Provide a Visual Representation of Problem, Solutions, Stakeholders | |
| Proposed Plan of Work: | What work will be done? How will it be done? | Organize by tasks to show your boss what research you will doing. Be specific and detailed. (i.e. if you’re doing interviews, say specifically who you’ll be interviewing, why you are interviewing them, and what you want to find out.) Convince the reader that you know what you’re doing by presenting clear, specific plans with a rationale for each. |
| Qualifications | How are you qualified to lead this project? | Provide biographical profiles of the members of your team who will be doing the work. |
| Budget | How much will it cost to do this research and deliver our final product? | This is the budget for doing this research project (not a budget for implementing the solution.) For this project, provide one clear sentence describing your budget requirements. In the real world, this section can be very lengthy and detailed, but for our purposes, the budget should be very close to zero. |
| Schedule | How long is this going to take? | Include a short summary/overview of the task schedule here. Make note of deadlines for major milestones. Provide a Gantt Chart for proposed Textual and Empirical Research |
| Bibliography | What sources did we cite in the literature review? | Include a bibliography of the sources you addressed in the literature review formatted in a style appropriate for your field: APA, Chicago, MLA, IEEE |
