Book Description: Carrying out educational and social research requires not only patience, persistence, pursuance and passion but also specific knowledge, skills and experience. It is not enough to have gone through lessons of research methods to be able to sustain a research process! This proposal writing guide is a product of a decade of dedicated…
Category: Research Proposal Guide
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Before embarking on a study journey, there is need to succinctly identify an area of study you wish to investigate. Identifying a research problem is the first and foremost step that every researcher has to undertake. At times, it becomes rather difficult for an inexperienced student of research to conceptualize a research problem if it…
1.1 Background to the Study
By Anthony M. Wanjohi The background to the study can be referred to as a “rough road” towards the statement of the problem. It provides the description of the research problem from an international, national to local context. It puts the problem in the correct perspective in order to provide the root or the genesis…
1.2 Statement of Research Problem
In research, stating the problem may take only a few sentences or it may take hundreds of words. A detailed definition may result in a better understanding of the problem. There are three criteria of a good problem and problem statement. The problem should be concerned with a relation between two or more variables. However…
1.3 Research Objectives and Research Questions
By Anthony M. Wanjohi A good research problem is that which generates a number of other research questions or objectives. After stating the research problem, you should go ahead to generated research questions or objectives. You may choose to use either research questions or objectives especially if they are referring to one and the same…
1.4 Research Hypothesis
King’oriah (2004, p. 176) defines hypothesis as “ a theoretical proposition, which has some remote possibility of being tested statistically or indirectly.” He further explains it as some statement of some future event which could either be unknown or known vaguely at the time of prediction; but set in such a way that it can…
1.5 Significance of the Study
There are a number of questions you should ask yourself when you are planning to undertake a research study. These include but not limited to the following: What contributions and benefits to (education, community) are expected to come from the study? What will the result mean to the practicing educator or social scientist? Will the…
1.6 Scope and Delimitation of the Study
More often than not, students of research and even researchers are confused over the difference between scope and delimitation. In this guide, the terms are used to mean one and the same thing. By definition, delimitation is any factor within the researcher’s control that may affect external validity. External validity is the extent to which…
1.7 Limitations of the Study
The term limitation is different from delimitation. A limitation would be anything beyond the ability of the researcher to control that may affect the internal validity of the study. The internal validity of an experiment is the extent to which the researcher has controlled extraneous variables, so that any observed effect can be attributed solely…
1.8 Conceptual Framework
Conceptual framework is a set of interrelated concepts, explicit or implicit, underlying a particular study. Conceptual framework forms the essence of the study. In drawing up your conceptual framework, you must have internalized, and conceptualized your study; you must have dug deep into literature. The principal concepts (dependent and independent) variables guiding your study…