This module aims to enable students to design, plan, undertake and present research in a relevant study area, demonstrating a systematic understanding and critical awareness of their discipline and area of professional practice.

On successful completion of this module, you should be able to:

Develop and complete an independent research inquiry in an area related to your degree subject.

Critically evaluate a range of research and evaluation methods and apply an appropriate method to the chosen topic.

Collect and appropriately analyse relevant data, information and evidence relating to the identified study topic.

Formulate appropriate conclusions and make recommendations based upon the research undertaken.

Present the research in an appropriate format demonstrating that the aim(s)/ hypothesis of the research have been investigated.

Types of research project

To reflect the breadth within the particular field of your master’s degree, the project can be based on one of the following:

Research (the traditional route):

Empirical project: This is a traditional research project, involving collection and analysis of either newly collected or secondary quantitative or qualitative data. This will result in the submission of a traditional dissertation

Scoping review: A systematic review of the literature, with some critical analysis. No primary data is collected; instead, published journal articles and grey literature are systematically collected using a pre-determined search strategy and reviewed and critically analysed. This will result in the submission of a traditional dissertation.

Enterprise:

Consultancy: This will result in a tender document report that provides expert advice to a stated issue within a particular field of your master’s degree, including data analysis of the market research.

Enterprise: This will result in the submission of a professional business case and a final report that will detail the business solution to a defined issue within a particular field of your master’s degree, including data analysis of the market research.

Community: This will result in the submission of a project brief and a final report that details how to improve the development of local communities to improve the quality of life for all in relation to a defined issue within a particular field of your master’s degree, including data analysis of stakeholder engagement.

Product: As with the other project types this will be targeted at a specific issue within a particular field of your master’s degree and will result in the submission of a project brief, a product (web page, training materials etc.) and an evaluation report, including data analysis of the market research.

Please note: If you are wanting to complete an Enterprise project for your dissertation, please get in touch with the module leader (Kate Isherwood, Email: [email protected]) to discuss this before you start your project proposal.

All project types mentioned above are founded upon the same principles of evidence-based practice. This means that the same academic and research skills are needed to identify an issue, research potential solutions and present your findings in an appropriate format. This is reflected in the key skills and learning outcomes for this module.

Purpose of the proposal

To communicate the rational for your chosen topic, to determine what you plan to do and to justify your approach to data gathering and analysis. Your project should be based on careful, systematic, and pre-planned observations of a specified set of phenomena or activities.

To serve as a plan of action for the implementation of your project. An effective proposal therefore sets out the plan in step-by-step detail, incorporating anticipated problems and contingency plans.

Depending on your circumstances, the proposal may also perform a similar function to obtain consent to implement the project within your own organisation, or to access resources.

Writing your project proposal

General guidance

Your project proposal should be 2000 words (+/- 10%). It is worth 15% of your final grade for this module, with your thesis making up the other 85% of your final grade. The pass threshold is 50% or higher, as with all other assignments you have completed through your master’s degree.

Your project proposal should be written in such a way that your future supervisor understands fully what you are planning to do for your research project, why you have chosen to conduct this research and why it is important.

This is an academic report and therefore all sources should be cited and referenced in accordance with the Harvard referencing system (guidance found here).

Below guidance is provided for each section to assist you in writing your project proposal. However, dependant on which type of project you have chosen (e.g., empirical, scoping review or an enterprise project), not all elements will be relevant. You should review the guidance and consider which elements are applicable to your research question, study design and chosen method. If you need help with this, please consult either one of the supervisory team or the module leader (Kate Isherwood, Email: [email protected]).

Structuring your project proposal

A brief structure is described below for both an empirical project and a scoping review. If you are planning on conducting an enterprise project, then please speak to the module leader (Kate Isherwood, Email: [email protected]) before you commence with this.

For an experimental study			For a scoping review
1	Title		1	Title
3	Introduction to the topic – including preliminary literature review, which describes the research ‘gap’ you have identified		3	Introduction to the topic – including preliminary literature review, which describes the research ‘gap’ you have identified
4	Research question		4	Research question
5	Methods		5	Methods
	A	Data and Sample Selection		A	Search Strategy
	B	Data Collection Methods and Ethical Considerations		B	Inclusion/ Exclusion Criteria
	C	Approach to data analysis
6	Potential Risks		6	Potential Risks
7	Research Project Implementation Plan		7	Research Project Implementation Plan
8	References		8	References
9	Appendix 1: Literature Search Strategy
10	Appendix 2: Interview schedule or questionnaire		9	Appendix 1: Search strategy for Scoping Review

A more detailed explanation of what is expected to be explained in each section is below:

Introduction (500-750 words)

This section should provide an introductory overview of what is already known about your topic under investigation. It should have sufficient detail to establish the relevance of the issue to your degree subject and why it is important to research this topic. You should also identify a ‘research gap’ that your research project will aim to fill.

This section should draw upon all sources of literature relevant to your topic, with all sources appropriately referenced.

Research question or aim (150-200 words)

State a general research question or aim. This research question should be:

Clear – easily understood, unambiguous

Specific – concepts in the question are specific enough to link to particular data indicators (i.e. what will be measured/ assessed).

Of appropriate scope – not too broad or too narrow, as you will struggle to develop a strong argument.

Relevant to your degree subject – if you are unsure about the relevance of your chosen topic and question, discuss with your project supervisor

Researchable – you must have access to a suitable amount of quality research material, such as academic books and journal articles.

Analytical rather than descriptive – it should analyse an issue or problem, not describe. Typically, we are looking for how and why questions, rather than what or describe (you may also want to use critique, argue, examine or evaluate).

To support your main question, you should be able to identify approximately 3 sub-questions that also meet the above criteria.

Methods (500-750 words)

Empirical or scoping review? Will your study collect primary data? And if so, will that data be quantitative, qualitative or a combination of the two? Or will you be conducting a scoping review? You need to justify why you have chosen this research method and why it is most appropriate to answer your research question.

Your methods should be supported by subject specific

For an empirical project, your methods section comprises of 3 sections:

Design and Sample Selection

This section should clearly describe how you will conduct research to answer your research question. This section should not merely describe the method used but apply it to your research project and explain how it answers the aims you are proposing. Include consideration of the following areas:

If you are conducting an empirical project, explain how you will sample the population you are interested in. Quantitative studies should indicate the sampling method you are going to use (e.g. opportunistic, random, stratified). Clearly explain who this population is and a rough number you aim to sample. Where possible, students are encouraged to conduct a power analysis (guidance found here). Students conducting a qualitative study should indicate how many participants they are going to sample. If a case study approach is proposed, the basis for selecting the case(s) to be explored in detail should be made clear.

Sufficient detail should be provided to enable a judgement to be made about the appropriateness of the study design in answering the research question. It is expected that this and the following sections will be supported by references from credible research methodological sources.

Data collection methods

This section should clearly describe how you intend to gather data or otherwise conduct your study. Many different methods exist, including interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, monitoring/sampling, observation, and others. The study methods you choose should be appropriate for the research question and study design.

You should clearly explain the proposed research tool you are planning to use, for example questionnaire/survey, interview schedule etc. and what the aim of using this tool is.

If a new data collection tool is being devised, the approach for developing and piloting the instrument should be outlined.

If an existing data collection tool is being used, their background should be explained and evaluated, particularly in relation to reliability and validity.

The explanation of data collection methods should highlight the relevant ethical issues and the steps being taken to ensure ethical research practice. Students are directed to the guidance on ethical approval applications available on the University website (link here).

Please note: You will need ethical approval for ALL types of projects. You cannot commence data collection (for any type of project) until you have been allocated a supervisor and you have received ethical approval from the university. Your research project will not be marked if it has not been granted ethical approval.

(b.i.). Ethical Research Practice

This section should describe the potential hazards, risks and adverse effects for participants in the research. If possible, you should also specify the probability and seriousness in each case. For research which involves interviews, focus groups or questionnaires as the data collection tool, any risk of psychological or social ill effects should be considered. You should explain how you will mitigate the risks that you have identified.

You may find Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Approval Guidance (found here) to help you with this section.

Approach to data analysis

This section should clearly describe the approach to data analyses that you propose to take. It shows how you will use the data from the proposed research tool to answer your research question/ aim. This approach should be appropriate to your method which you stated above.

Sufficient detail should be provided to show that it is possible to answer your research question/ aim from the data you propose to collect.

For quantitative studies, consider the type of comparison you are trying to make (e.g. difference over time, correlation between two variables or a difference between two groups) and the type of inferential statistics you are proposing to establish whether any differences or association is observed.

For qualitative studies, describe your intended data analysis procedure (e.g. the process for coding your data and the approach you will take to ensure consistency) and how you will develop themes from these codes.

For a scoping review, your methods section comprises of 3 sections:

Search strategy

Describe all the information sources in the search and the search terms you are planning to use. For a scoping review, a detailed search criteria should be proposed. You should use the PRISMA Scoping Review Extension as guidance here (link here). The Siddaway paper (found here) also provides a good explanation of the step-by-step process.

To choose search terms you may want to find alternative keywords or phrases for your concepts. Before you finalise your search strategy, you should search for your concepts in a search engine like Google Scholar, scanning the results for alternative words and phrases. You can also examine relevant abstracts or articles for alternative words, phrases and subject headings.

When you have done this, you should have lists of words and phrases for each concept, which you can present in the PICO model (example here), PEO model (example here) or SPIDER (example here). You should use MESH search terms and also include examples of where you have truncation (i.e. therap*) or wildcards (behavi?r) to find variations in your search terms. If you have used Boolean Operators (i.e. AND, OR, NOT) you should include these and mention how you have used these (i.e. physical therap* AND behavio?r change).

Inclusion/ exclusion criteria

You should specify the characteristics of the sources you will use as an eligibility criteria. The main ones are: 1) years of publication considered (e.g., 2012 to 2022) and your rationale for choosing this period; 2) language (i.e., English only or others; if you will use other languages, you should also specify how you will deal with the translation of these); and 3) publication status (i.e. peer-reviewed, pre-print or grey literature) and provide a rationale for this.

Critical Appraisal Tool

Provide a description of the Critical Appraisal tools you will use. This is commonly either Joanna Briggs (found here) or the CASP checklist (found here). There are also an existing set of critical appraisal tools available on the SHS7000 Applied Research Methods and Design module. module. When using these it is better to stick to one checklist for all studies, rather than switching between the two throughout your work. It is also important that you choose the tool that is most appropriate to the type of paper you are reviewing (i.e., using the RCT tool to appraise an RCT study).

*SECTIONS 4, 5 & 6 APPLY TO ALL PROJECTS*

Project Implementation Plan (250-300 words).

This section should include a timescale for each step of your project from submitting this research proposal through to final submission. You should show approximate dates for each step to successful completion of the project. A table or GANTT chart is often an appropriate way to present this.

List the resources required for the project, including equipment, software, rooms, finances.

Data handling and project management risks (200-300 words).

For all projects explain how you will mitigate against any risk of data loss or data privacy issues (i.e. all data should be saved on a student’s One Drive, not their personal hard drive). When conducting interviews, focus groups or questionnaires you should also consider how you are ensuring participant anonymity (i.e. saving consent forms in a different place to their response).

You may find Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Approval Guidance (found here) to help you with this section.

This section should also detail any project management risks you forsee which will impact on your completing your project on time. (i.e. participants not responding to your questionnaire or your chosen company not distributing your questionnaire) and how you will mitigate these risks.

References

List all references you have cited in alphabetical order at the end of your assignment, using the Harvard referencing system.

Appendices

For an experimental project, we would expect to see the questionnaire or interview or focus group schedule that you are planning to use in your project.

For a Scoping Review, we would expect you to include the search strategy that you are planning to use for your project.

This will enable you to have conversations with your supervisor about your proposed methodology, make changes and submit to ethics in quick succession.

Academic style

Ensure that you write in a formal writing style throughout. Write in the 3^rd person throughout (e.g., it is proposed).

The preferred font is Arial 12pt. and the line spacing is 1.5. Page numbers should be included in the footer.

The word count includes all headings, tables, and in-text citations. It excludes the reference list and any appendices.

Indicative marking criteria and check list

For an experimental study (Qualitative or Quantitative)			Tick if completed
Title		A working title should have been provided which clearly describes the study
Introduction		Indicates that the student is familiar with their chosen field of study
		Provides an introductory overview of what is already known about the topic, with appropriately referenced sources
		Clearly identifies a research gap that the proposed study will address
Research Question		Clear, easily understood, and unambiguous
		Specific enough to link to a relevant dataset or literature theme
		Achievable, including objectives which indicate towards how the question will be answered and/or aim will be addressed.
Methods	Approach, design, and sample selection	Clearly explains the type of project you are proposing to undertake (either quantitative or qualitative) and the justification for that approach
	Approach, design, and sample selection	A clear explanation of how the research question will be studied, including the types of data (primary or secondary) and how this data will be collected. Quantitative studies should indicate the sampling method (e.g. opportunistic, random, stratified), sampling frame and estimated sample size. Qualitative studies should indicate the extent of the proposed sample and how the participants will be chosen. If you are conducting a case study, then the basis for selecting the case(s) needs to be justified.
	Data collection methods and ethical research practice	A clear description of how you intend to gather data or conduct your study
		If you are using an existing data collection tool, the background should be explained, including the reliability and validity of the tool.
		Any ethical issues that need to be considered and how you will address these.
	Approach to data analysis	A clearly explained and suitable rational for the proposed analysis type.
Project Implementation Plan		Schedule for each step of the project, from submitting the research proposal through to final submission. Approximate dates should be shown for each step (e.g. gaining ethics approval and beginning data collection).
References		List of all the references you have cited in alphabetical order at the end of your assignment. These should be written in the Harvard Style.
Academic writing		The proposal should be clearly presented, written concisely in an appropriate academic style and include appropriate referencing and citations (using the Harvard system).

For a scoping review				Tick if completed
Title		A working title should have been provided which clearly describes the study.
Introduction		Indicates that the student is familiar with their chosen field of study
		Provides an introductory overview of what is already known about the topic, with appropriately referenced sources
		Clearly identifies a research gap that the proposed study will address
		Describe the rationale for your review in the context of what is already known on the topic. Explain why your review questions lend themselves to a scoping review.
Research Question		Clear, easily understood, and unambiguous
		Provide an explicit statement of the questions and objectives being addressed with reference to their key elements (e.g., population) or other key elements used to conceptualise the review questions and/or objectives.
		Achievable, including objectives which indicate towards how the question will be answered and/or aim will be addressed.
Methods	Search strategy		A comprehensive list of all sources of evidence in the search is provided
			Describe if you are using Boolean Operators (i.e. AND OR) and explain how these will be used.
			Write and define your search terms. Identify key terms and describe whether these will be truncated (i.e. therap*) or using index terms, such as MeSH.
			Clear description of the eligibility criteria – specify the characteristics of the sources of evidence used as an eligibility criterion (i.e. years considered, language and publication status) and provide a rationale
			Clear description of how you will screen your studies
			Description of how you will manage your papers (i.e. using a reference manager)
			Description of the critical appraisal tool you are going to use, with rationale using appropriately referenced sources.
Project Implementation Plan		Schedule for each step of the project, from submitting the research proposal through to final submission. Approximate dates should be shown for each step (e.g. gaining ethics approval and beginning data collection).
References		List of all the references you have cited in alphabetical order at the end of your assignment. These should be written in the Harvard Style.
Academic writing		The proposal should be clearly presented, written concisely in an appropriate academic style and include appropriate referencing and citations (using the Harvard system).

Helpful resources

There are several books available in the library which provide advice and guidance on developing research proposals these include:

Cottrell, S. (2014) Dissertations and Project Reports. London: Macmillan Education UK. Available at: https://metsearch.cardiffmet.ac.uk/permalink/f/1543tpk/44CMU_ALM A5143477920002425

Offredy, M. and Vickers, P. (2010) Developing a Healthcare Research Proposal. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Available at: https://metsearch.cardiffmet.ac.uk/permalink/f/1543tpk/44CMU_ALM A5119221810002425

However, if you are planning on doing one of the more innovative projects (i.e., an enterprise project) then you will need to adjust this advice and guidance to your project type. Once a supervisor has been allocated, you will also be able to obtain advice from your supervisor on developing your proposal.

Detecting plagiarism

As with all your previous submissions of written course work, an originality report will be created on submission for each element of both your project proposal and final dissertation to Turnitin.

Turnitin makes no decisions as to whether a piece of work has been plagiarised, it simply highlights sections of text that has been found in other online sources. The decision for unfair practice lies with the Programme Director for your respective programme and the Module Leader. If Turnitin does detect a high degree of similarity between your submitted text and other online sources, this will be reported to the University’s Unfair Practice Panel, who will impose significant penalties if plagiarism is confirmed.

Supervisor allocation

You will be allocated a supervisor before you have submitted your proposal.

To understand the role of your future supervisor, please refer to the relevant guidance for either writing a Scoping Review or completing a Quantitative or Qualitative project.

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