Thematic
Research - Proposal Writing: What You Need to Know
Writing the Proposal:
In the previous section we saw what the proposal should
cover, but you do not have to follow this particular
format. Feel free to come up with your own format as
long as you make sure you present all the essential
information in an order that makes sense.
Title Page
This will list the title, date, your name(s) and contact
details (postal address, e-mail address, phone). Try
to choose a short, catchy, informative title. Proposals
sometimes have very long titles, which leave the reader
dizzy without indicating clearly what the proposal is
about. "The Determinants of Child Schooling in
Nigeria" is a fine title.
It is also a good idea to include an Abstract in which
you give a very short summary of the proposal, say in
about 100 to 115 words. At present few proposals include
an Abstract, but I strongly recommend it because the
reader will immediately know what your proposal is about.
Introduction
This section includes a non-technical problem statement
and a clear motivation for investigating the particular
problem and indicating why it is important. The material
would include what is listed in in the previous section
under "Background" that is the policy context
of the proposed research.
You would, for example, state the problem as "the
low investment rates of private sector manufacturing
firms in country X". You would then present some
evidence (e.g., results from firm surveys) to indicate
that there is indeed a problem. Next you would link
this to the policy context, pointing out that private
investment has important implications for employment
growth and poverty reduction, but there is controversy
on why investment rates are so low and on what would
be appropriate policies to raise them.
The controversy would for example be about whether
the main reason for low investment is an imperfection
in credit markets (e.g., banks discriminating against
small firms) or the volatility of macroeconomic policies
as perceived by entrepreneurs (e.g., frequent reversals
in trade policy). Obviously, these two different diagnoses
of the problem of low investment have very different
policy implications. This is the point you would want
to stress in the introduction since it provides a convincing
justification for the research you propose to do.
You want to make sure that at the end of the section
readers know that you are going to investigate determinants
of private investment and that they understand why resolving
this research issue is important for policy. Typically
the length of this section is one or two pages.
Research Issue
In this section you set out the research question(s)
in detail, sketch how you intend to address them and,
most importantly, position yourself in the literature.
This section would include what in many proposals is
covered in separate sections under the headings of "Literature
Review" and "Justification of the Study".
It is a good idea to formulate the research questions
as testable hypotheses, something like "The main
determinant of a firm's private investment is access
to formal bank credit".
Writing a literature review that encompasses a long
list of who did what is neither necessary nor sufficient.
Rather than just listing authors and their findings
you should impose an analytical structure; some questions
to ask yourself would include: Are there different approaches
in the literature? How do they differ? How do you evaluate
these differences? Is the methodology of one group of
authors better than that of others? Why?
To return to the example of investment behaviour, a
useful catalogue in your review would be one that indicates
whether authors used time series (macro) or cross-section
(micro) evidence or not. Obviously, you cannot say that
one methodology is better than the other one, but if
country X had recently adopted policy reforms and these
radically changed investment incentives, then a time
series analysis could be misleading.
If you are interested in current investment incentives,
an estimation largely based on pre-reform information
is not very informative. In this case there would be
a good reason to use cross-section data, assuming that
a post-reform survey is available. This is the sort
of point that the literature review should highlight.
You will be able to write such an analytical literature
review only if you have thought carefully about the
differences and similarities of the different papers.
If you just string summaries together, your literature
review will be useless and you would then show that
you are aware of the literature, but not that you understand
which parts of the literature you can build on.
You should also indicate clearly what you think your
own contribution is going to be. If there are already
ten studies on the determinants of private investment
in country X then why do we need your study? Do not
be intimidated by this question.
There are many possible answers. For example, previous
studies may have been methodologically flawed, or you
have a newer or better data source, or the policy environment
has changed since the earlier studies. But the burden
of proof is on you and you must therefore convince the
reader that what you propose is not "more of the
same" but something that differs from the literature
in interesting and important ways.
On this score many proposals fail, thus researchers
who are new to the AERC network often appear rather
surprised when fellow researchers or resource persons
raise critical questions about the value added of their
proposal. Sometimes authors are not even aware that
something very similar has already been done, often
with AERC support! At a minimum you should look at completed
research reports and at ongoing work to ensure that
you know exactly what AERC has done in your area of
study
Beyond that you should make sure that the proposed
work indeed offers value added and that you explain
this in a convincing way. This is one of the most difficult
tasks when writing a research proposal and you should
take it very seriously. A good way to proceed is to
imagine yourself in the position of the reader, that
is to say if you were to read this proposal, would you
then find this a convincing account of value added?
If not, then you should go back to the drawing board.
This section might take 4-6 pages.
Objectives
This is a very short section - usually only a single
paragraph in which you summarize the preceding two sections,
indicating what questions will be answered and how policies
might change as a result of these answers. Check whether
the text is self-contained and ask yourself if it would
make sense to a reader who just flips thorough your
proposal and who has not read the introduction and research
issue sections.
Methodology
In this section you describe your proposal in detail.
Unfortunately, in many proposals this section is normally
too brief. A vague methodology section is the prime
reason why proposals get rejected. When drafting this
section you should keep in mind that this is the most
important part of your proposal because you will be
judged to a large extent on the basis of what you write
here.
From this section the readers should learn exactly
what you intend to do and they should be able to see
whether the proposed work will indeed answer the research
questions. It is important to keep this point in mind
as more often than not a proposal raises quite grandiose
research questions whereas the proposed methodology
could be suitable only for a much narrower set of questions.
So check for consistency and if you have done all the
work you describe in this section, you will then have
attained the objectives set out in the previous section.
If not, you should ensure consistency, by amending the
objectives or adjusting the methodology, or both.
Often the proposed work will involve econometrics.
In this case you should begin by presenting your model,
indicating its position in the literature, discussing
the various assumptions and showing how the estimating
equation is derived from the model. (Make sure at this
stage that you define all the symbols.) This means that
you need to think carefully about specification issues
and you have to be quite precise at this stage.
Hand waving (statements like "the investment decision
will be related in a profit to firm characteristics
such as firm size..") are not acceptable, thus
you have to show the specification, discuss the variables
to be included and spell out in detail how you plan
to proceed.
You should then discuss your estimation strategy, indicating
how you intend to deal with various econometric concerns
such as endogeneity or measurement error and justifying
your chosen method (e.g., why do you want to use a profit?).
Finally, you should indicate how you will test your
hypotheses ("under this hypothesis the sum of these
three coefficients has to be positive").
For non-econometric work basically the same guidelines
apply. Indicate clearly what you are going to do, how
it is linked to theory and how your methodology will
lead to answers to the research questions. If the last
step is omitted, it would be known what you intend to
do, but how you would use the results to answer the
original questions would not be apparent. The methodology
section will cover at least five pages.
Data Sources
Data source is not listed separately on the AERC website,
but it is a good idea to discuss your data separately.
If you are going to do a survey, you should include
a draft questionnaire. This is an important requirement.
Survey-based research obviously depends very much on
the quality of the survey instrument and your proposal
will be judged in part by people asking whether the
survey will generate data suitable for testing your
hypotheses.
It is, therefore, not sufficient to include some vague
sentence like "the survey will collect information
on household composition, the crops grown and the mechanisms
used by households to cope with risk". There really
is no substitute for a draft questionnaire. You will
find that drafting it is a very useful experience as
it forces you to think very carefully about what information
you need.
A good test is to ask yourself questions like, suppose
I have collected all these data, then how will I use
them? You may find that some questions are superfluous
and, conversely, that you need additional questions
to be able to construct the variables you intend to
use in the analysis.
In addition you should discuss the sample (sample size,
sample frame, stratification, etc.) and the organization
of the survey (enumerators, data entry, logistics).
If you use existing data then you should discuss their
availability carefully. For example, time series econometrics
may quickly run into degrees of freedom constraints.
You, therefore, need to establish that data series of
sufficient length exist. You should be very specific
here. Proposals with vague statements to the effect
that (unspecified) secondary data will be used and that
these are available at the Bureau of Statistics or at
a World Bank website are not acceptable. You should
be precise in your description of the data and establish
whether they are indeed available. You should also reflect
on their quality by, for example, posing questions like,
are these data to be trusted?
Results and Dissemination
This could be a single section. Here you should indicate
how you want to disseminate the results, for example,
are you planning to write a journal article? Will you
present the results to policy makers? If yes, in what
form? The section should also indicate what impact you
expect the research results to have. Avoid grandiose
claims ("the study .. will be of immense benefit
to the .. authorities as well as their staff")
and try to be specific.
References
These should include all the publications you refer
to in the text and only those. If there was no need
to discuss a paper then there is clearly no need to
list it in the bibliography. Remember that the reviewers
are not normally impressed by long bibliographies. Do
spend some time reviewing the references to ensure that
they are complete and accurate - names of all the authors,
correct date, full and accurate title, complete publishing
information (city of publication, publishing company
for books, full journal title, volume and number and
pages for journal articles).
Budget
This should list the amounts required for major line
items, such as travel, research assistance, photocopying
or the honorarium of the principal researcher. There
is no need to make this very detailed and usually around
ten line items will suffice.
You should include explanatory notes justifying major
items. For example, if you have included a large amount
for travel you should explain how it was calculated
and why the travel is necessary. Do not forget that
the cost of literature acquisition such as a subscription
to the Journal of African Economies is a legitimate
budget item.
Work Program
Here you should indicate when the various components
of the project (e.g., literature review, training of
enumerators, pilot survey, survey, data cleaning and
preliminary analysis, and econometric analysis) would
be completed. This should make clear how far you expect
to be after six months (i.e., at the work in progress
stage if your proposal is approved) and when the project
will be completed.
|
