Guide to Prepare a Research Proposal for MS Thesis
This website is more organized, there is a parallel website for student guide. I have also provided course outlines and lectures for more than ten courses of mine here: Ten Courses
For a complete course on Research Methods, designed to teach students how to choose a topic, do research for it, prepare and writeup a proposal, see: Research Methods 2013 -- Older Version of same course is Research Methods 2010 Sign up for AZ-Research-Group to gain access to restricted websites and textbooks.
Writing a Research Proposal is a tough job but here we have tried to make it easy for students by providing them complete step by step guideline. May Allah help us in achieving this objective.
FIRST STEP:
Clarity of Purpose ==> Making the right intentions
Clarity of Action ==> Translating intentions into practice
SECOND STEP:
Background Research for choosing a topic
Prepare an Annotated Bibligraphy relevant to chosen topic
Identify Gaps in the Literature.
THIRD STEP: Read Thesis Guide
FOURTH STEP: Literature Review
Mostly students used Annotated Bibliography as Literature Review, which is wrong. Read Literature Review to see the difference between both and how we can organize the literature review.
when you have done an extensive review of literature, finalize your objectives methodology, estimation technique, next step is to write a proposal.
FIFTH STEP: The parts of a research proposal
CHAPTER 1:Introduction
CHAPTER 2: Literature Review
CHAPTER 3: Methodology and Data Sources
CHAPTER 4: References
SIXTH STEP: Make a powerpoint presentation (slides) to attractively present your proposal.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Many students commit plagiarism in the preparation of their thesis proposals as well as theses. Even one sentence copied from another source without acknowledgement constitutes plagiarism. It is permissible to copy sentences, but only when it is put in quotation marks and referenced to an appropriate source. For some reason, despite repeated explanations, students do not seem to understand this, and cut and paste material from different sources without acknowledgment. Any proposal that contains plagiarism will be REJECTED without evaluation. It is SIMPLE to avoid plagiarism: JUST CITE THE SOURCE from which you have taken the material.
The website linked above is IIIE Submissions. It contains more than thirty actual proposals submitted by IIIE students which were evaluated carefully, and given a detailed critique, point by point. Read the proposals and the critique to understand what are the common defects in proposals written by students, and how to avoid them. The site also contains revised proposals prepared by students after the critique, to show how one can fix the problems that are found. :
Guide for making good presentation is available at this link