Show that you understand the current state of research on your topic.
The length of a research proposal can vary quite a bit. A bachelor’s or master’s thesis proposal can be just a few pages, while proposals for PhD dissertations or research funding are usually much longer and more detailed. Your supervisor can help you determine the best length for your work.
One trick to get started is to think of your proposal’s structure as a shorter version of your thesis or dissertation , only without the results , conclusion and discussion sections.
Download our research proposal template
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Writing a research proposal can be quite challenging, but a good starting point could be to look at some examples. We’ve included a few for you below.
Like your dissertation or thesis, the proposal will usually have a title page that includes:
The first part of your proposal is the initial pitch for your project. Make sure it succinctly explains what you want to do and why.
Your introduction should:
To guide your introduction , include information about:
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As you get started, it’s important to demonstrate that you’re familiar with the most important research on your topic. A strong literature review shows your reader that your project has a solid foundation in existing knowledge or theory. It also shows that you’re not simply repeating what other people have already done or said, but rather using existing research as a jumping-off point for your own.
In this section, share exactly how your project will contribute to ongoing conversations in the field by:
Following the literature review, restate your main objectives . This brings the focus back to your own project. Next, your research design or methodology section will describe your overall approach, and the practical steps you will take to answer your research questions.
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To finish your proposal on a strong note, explore the potential implications of your research for your field. Emphasize again what you aim to contribute and why it matters.
For example, your results might have implications for:
Last but not least, your research proposal must include correct citations for every source you have used, compiled in a reference list . To create citations quickly and easily, you can use our free APA citation generator .
Some institutions or funders require a detailed timeline of the project, asking you to forecast what you will do at each stage and how long it may take. While not always required, be sure to check the requirements of your project.
Here’s an example schedule to help you get started. You can also download a template at the button below.
Download our research schedule template
Research phase | Objectives | Deadline |
---|---|---|
1. Background research and literature review | 20th January | |
2. Research design planning | and data analysis methods | 13th February |
3. Data collection and preparation | with selected participants and code interviews | 24th March |
4. Data analysis | of interview transcripts | 22nd April |
5. Writing | 17th June | |
6. Revision | final work | 28th July |
If you are applying for research funding, chances are you will have to include a detailed budget. This shows your estimates of how much each part of your project will cost.
Make sure to check what type of costs the funding body will agree to cover. For each item, include:
To determine your budget, think about:
If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.
Methodology
Statistics
Research bias
Once you’ve decided on your research objectives , you need to explain them in your paper, at the end of your problem statement .
Keep your research objectives clear and concise, and use appropriate verbs to accurately convey the work that you will carry out for each one.
I will compare …
A research aim is a broad statement indicating the general purpose of your research project. It should appear in your introduction at the end of your problem statement , before your research objectives.
Research objectives are more specific than your research aim. They indicate the specific ways you’ll address the overarching aim.
A PhD, which is short for philosophiae doctor (doctor of philosophy in Latin), is the highest university degree that can be obtained. In a PhD, students spend 3–5 years writing a dissertation , which aims to make a significant, original contribution to current knowledge.
A PhD is intended to prepare students for a career as a researcher, whether that be in academia, the public sector, or the private sector.
A master’s is a 1- or 2-year graduate degree that can prepare you for a variety of careers.
All master’s involve graduate-level coursework. Some are research-intensive and intend to prepare students for further study in a PhD; these usually require their students to write a master’s thesis . Others focus on professional training for a specific career.
Critical thinking refers to the ability to evaluate information and to be aware of biases or assumptions, including your own.
Like information literacy , it involves evaluating arguments, identifying and solving problems in an objective and systematic way, and clearly communicating your ideas.
The best way to remember the difference between a research plan and a research proposal is that they have fundamentally different audiences. A research plan helps you, the researcher, organize your thoughts. On the other hand, a dissertation proposal or research proposal aims to convince others (e.g., a supervisor, a funding body, or a dissertation committee) that your research topic is relevant and worthy of being conducted.
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Want to make sure your research degree starts smoothly? We spoke with 2 PhD candidates about overcoming this initial hurdle. Here’s their advice for how to write a good PhD proposal.
Writing your research proposal is an integral part of commencing a PhD with many schools and institutes, so it can feel rather intimidating. After all, how you come up with your PhD proposal could be the difference between your supervisor getting on board or giving your project a miss.
Let’s explore how to make a PhD research proposal with UQ candidates Chelsea Janke and Sarah Kendall.
Look at other PhD proposals that have been successful. Ask current students if you can look at theirs.
Nobody’s asking you to reinvent the wheel when it comes to writing your PhD proposal – leave that for your actual thesis. For now, while you’re just working out how to write a PhD proposal, examples are a great starting point.
Chelsea knows this step is easier if you’ve got a friend who is already doing a PhD, but there are other ways to find a good example or template.
“Look at other PhD proposals that have been successful,” she says.
“Ask current students if you can look at theirs.”
“If you don’t know anyone doing their PhD, look online to get an idea of how they should be structured.”
What makes this tricky is that proposals can vary greatly by field and disciplinary norms, so you should check with your proposed supervisor to see if they have a specific format or list of criteria to follow. Part of writing a good PhD proposal is submitting it in a style that's familiar to the people who will read and (hopefully) become excited by it and want to bring you into their research area.
Here are some of the key factors to consider when structuring your proposal:
Please note this isn't a universal list of things you need in your PhD research proposal. Depending on your supervisor's requirements, some of these items may be unnecessary or there may be other inclusions not listed here.
Alright, here’s the thing. If sending your research proposal is your first point of contact with your prospective supervisor, you’ve jumped the gun a little.
You should have at least one researcher partially on board with your project before delving too deep into your proposal. This ensures you’re not potentially spending time and effort on an idea that no one has any appetite for. Plus, it unlocks a helpful guide who can assist with your proposal.
PhD research isn’t like Shark Tank – you’re allowed to confer with academics and secure their support before you pitch your thesis to them. Discover how to choose the right PhD supervisor for you.
For a time-efficient strategy, Chelsea recommends you approach your potential supervisor(s) and find out if:
“The best way to approach would be to send an email briefly outlining who you are, your background, and what your research interests are,” says Chelsea.
“Once you’ve spoken to a potential supervisor, then you can start drafting a proposal and you can even ask for their input.”
Chelsea's approach here works well with some academics, but keep in mind that other supervisors will want to see a research proposal straight away. If you're not sure of your proposed supervisor's preferences, you may like to cover both bases with an introductory email that has a draft of your research proposal attached.
Sarah agrees that your prospective supervisor is your most valuable resource for understanding how to write a research proposal for a PhD application.
“My biggest tip for writing a research proposal is to ask your proposed supervisor for help,” says Sarah.
“Or if this isn’t possible, ask another academic who has had experience writing research proposals.”
“They’ll be able to tell you what to include or what you need to improve on.”
One of the key aspects of your research proposal is emphasising why your project is important and should be funded.
Your PhD proposal should include your major question, your planned methods, the sources you’ll cite, and plenty of other nitty gritty details. But perhaps the most important element of your proposal is its purpose – the reason you want to do this research and why the results will be meaningful.
In Sarah’s opinion, highlighting the 'why' of your project is vital for your research proposal.
“From my perspective, one of the key aspects of your research proposal is emphasising why your project is important and should be funded,” she says.
“Not only does this impact whether your application is likely to be successful, but it could also impact your likelihood of getting a scholarship .”
Imagine you only had 60 seconds to explain your planned research to someone. Would you prefer they remember how your project could change the world, or the statistical models you’ll be using to do it? (Of course, you’ve got 2,000 words rather than 60 seconds, so do make sure to include those little details as well – just put the why stuff first.)
As a PhD candidate, your attention to detail is going to be integral to your success. Start practising it now by making sure your research proposal is perfect.
Chelsea and Sarah both acknowledge that clarity and writing quality should never be overlooked in a PhD proposal. This starts with double-checking that the questions of your thesis are obvious and unambiguous, followed by revising the rest of your proposal.
“Make sure your research questions are really clear,” says Sarah.
“Ensure all the writing is clear and grammatically correct,” adds Chelsea.
“A supervisor is not going to be overly keen on a prospective student if their writing is poor.”
It might sound harsh, but it’s fair. So, proofread your proposal multiple times – including after you get it back from your supervisor with any feedback and notes. When you think you’ve got the final, FINAL draft saved, sleep on it and read it one more time the next morning.
Still feeling a little overwhelmed by your research proposal? Stay motivated with these reasons why a PhD is worth the effort .
Want to learn more from Chelsea and Sarah? Easy:
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A research proposal is a supporting document that may be required when applying to a research degree. It summarises your intended research by outlining what your research questions are, why they’re important to your field and what knowledge gaps surround your topic. It also outlines your research in terms of your aims, methods and proposed timetable .
A research proposal will be used to:
Some universities will specify a word count all students will need to adhere to. You will typically find these in the description of the PhD listing. If they haven’t stated a word count limit, you should contact the potential supervisor to clarify whether there are any requirements. If not, aim for 1500 to 3500 words (3 to 7 pages).
Your title should indicate clearly what your research question is. It needs to be simple and to the point; if the reader needs to read further into your proposal to understand your question, your working title isn’t clear enough.
Directly below your title, state the topic your research question relates to. Whether you include this information at the top of your proposal or insert a dedicated title page is your choice and will come down to personal preference.
If your research proposal is over 2000 words, consider providing an abstract. Your abstract should summarise your question, why it’s important to your field and how you intend to answer it; in other words, explain your research context.
Only include crucial information in this section – 250 words should be sufficient to get across your main points.
First, specify which subject area your research problem falls in. This will help set the context of your study and will help the reader anticipate the direction of your proposed research.
Following this, include a literature review . A literature review summarises the existing knowledge which surrounds your research topic. This should include a discussion of the theories, models and bodies of text which directly relate to your research problem. As well as discussing the information available, discuss those which aren’t. In other words, identify what the current gaps in knowledge are and discuss how this will influence your research. Your aim here is to convince the potential supervisor and funding providers of why your intended research is worth investing time and money into.
Last, discuss the key debates and developments currently at the centre of your research area.
Identify the aims and objectives of your research. The aims are the problems your project intends to solve; the objectives are the measurable steps and outcomes required to achieve the aim.
In outlining your aims and objectives, you will need to explain why your proposed research is worth exploring. Consider these aspects:
If you fail to address the above questions, it’s unlikely they will accept your proposal – all PhD research projects must show originality and value to be considered.
The following structure is recommended when discussing your research design:
We’ve outlined the various stages of a PhD and the approximate duration of a PhD programme which you can refer to when designing your own research study.
Plagiarism is taken seriously across all academic levels, but even more so for doctorates. Therefore, ensure you reference the existing literature you have used in writing your PhD proposal. Besides this, try to adopt the same referencing style as the University you’re applying to uses. You can easily find this information in the PhD Thesis formatting guidelines published on the University’s website.
Finding a PhD has never been this easy – search for a PhD by keyword, location or academic area of interest.
Here are answers to some of the most common questions we’re asked about the Research Proposal:
Yes, your PhD research proposal outlines the start of your project only. It’s well accepted that the direction of your research will develop with time, therefore, you can revise it at later dates.
Whether the potential supervisor will review your draft will depend on the individual. However, it is highly advisable that you at least attempt to discuss your draft with them. Even if they can’t review it, they may provide you with useful information regarding their department’s expertise which could help shape your PhD proposal. For example, you may amend your methodology should you come to learn that their laboratory is better equipped for an alternative method.
Ensure you follow the same order as the headings given above. This is the most logical structure and will be the order your proposed supervisor will expect.
Most universities don’t provide formatting requirements for research proposals on the basis that they are a supporting document only, however, we recommend that you follow the same format they require for their PhD thesis submissions. This will give your reader familiarity and their guidelines should be readily available on their website.
Last, try to have someone within the same academic field or discipline area to review your proposal. The key is to confirm that they understand the importance of your work and how you intend to execute it. If they don’t, it’s likely a sign you need to rewrite some of your sections to be more coherent.
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How to write a phd research proposal.
In order to help you with your application, the information below aims to give some guidance on how a typical research proposal might look.
Your research proposal is a concise statement (up to 3,000 words) of the rationale for your research proposal, the research questions to be answered and how you propose to address them. We know that during the early stages of your PhD you are likely to refine your thinking and methodology in discussion with your supervisors.
However, we want to see that you can construct a fairly rigorous, high quality research proposal.
We use your research proposal to help us decide whether you would be a suitable candidate to study at PhD level. We therefore assess your proposal on its quality, originality, and coherence. It also helps us to decide if your research interests match those of academics in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS) and whether they would be able to provide suitably qualified supervision for your proposed research.
Your proposal should include the following:
Title. A short, indicative title is best.
Abstract. This is a succinct summary of your research proposal (approximately 200-300 words) that will present a condensed outline, enabling the reader to get a very quick overview of your proposed project, lines of inquiry and possible outcomes. An abstract is often written last, after you have written the proposal and are able to summarise it effectively.
Rationale for the research project. This might include a description of the question/debate/phenomenon of interest; an explanation of why the topic is of interest to you; and an outline of the reasons why the topic should be of interest to research and/ or practice (the 'so what?' question).
Aims and initial research question. What are the aims and objectives of the research? State clearly the puzzle you are addressing, and the research question that you intend to pursue. It is acceptable to have multiple research questions, but it is a good idea to clarify which is the main research question. If you have hypotheses, discuss them here. A research proposal can and should make a positive and persuasive first impression and demonstrate your potential to become a good researcher. In particular, you need to demonstrate that you can think critically and analytically as well as communicate your ideas clearly.
Research context for your proposed project. Provide a short introduction to your area of interest with a succinct, selective and critical review of the relevant literature. Demonstrate that you understand the theoretical underpinnings and main debates and issues in your research area and how your proposed research will make an original and necessary contribution to this. You need to demonstrate how your proposed research will fill a gap in existing knowledge.
Intended methodology. Outline how you plan to conduct the research and the data sources that you will use. We do not expect you to have planned a very detailed methodology at this stage, but you need to provide an overview of how you will conduct your research (qualitative and/or quantitative methods) and why this methodology is suited for your proposed study. You need to be convincing about the appropriateness and feasibility of the approaches you are suggesting, and reflective about problems you might encounter (including ethical and data protection issues) in collecting and analysing your data.
Expected outcomes and impact. How do you think the research might add to existing knowledge; what might it enable organisations or interested parties to do differently? Increasingly in academia (and this is particularly so for ESRC-funded studentships), PhD students are being asked to consider how their research might contribute to both academic impact and/or economic and societal impact. (This is well explained on the ESRC website if you would like to find out more.) Please consider broader collaborations and partnerships (academic and non-academic) that will support your research. Collaborative activity can lead to a better understanding of the ways in which academic research can translate into practice and it can help to inform and improve the quality of your research and its impact.
Timetable. What is your initial estimation of the timetable of the dissertation? When will each of the key stages start and finish (refining proposal; literature review; developing research methods; fieldwork; analysis; writing the draft; final submission). There are likely to overlaps between the stages.
Why Bristol? Why – specifically – do you want to study for your PhD at Bristol ? How would you fit into the School's research themes and research culture . You do not need to identify supervisors at the application stage although it can be helpful if you do.
Bibliography. Do make sure that you cite what you see as the key readings in the field. This does not have to be comprehensive but you are illustrating the range of sources you might use in your research.
We expect your research proposal to be clear, concise and grammatically correct. Prior to submitting your research proposal, please make sure that you have addressed the following issues:
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As a very new researcher who is exploring the best way to generate ideas, some guidance on this question would be very helpful. I have found that this is NOT easy. Ideas seem to pop out of my Professor every day and I wonder how he does it. This question is broad;
How do you tend to come up with initial/seed ideas? What is your search method (if you have one)?
What proportion of your ideas for past papers come from; (i) colleagues, (ii) intentionally browsing the literature for ideas, (iii) on the spot inspiration, (iv) conferences, (v) other?
How do you prioritize research ideas?
Is there any special, generalizable method that you've discovered to sift out those ideas that are likely to be unrealistic early on in the process of idea generation?
Based on small amounts of anecdotal evidence I have reason to believe that there is vast heterogeneity among professors regarding the above questions. For example, economist Steven Levitt says he works on 22 papers at once. A professor I know will have maybe 25% of this at any one time.
Related but not duplicate: Is there any software or tools for managing developing research ideas?
Okay, as you say, this is very broad, and possibly argumentative. So, I'll try to section off my answer for your various sub-questions, and talk not so much about how I do come up (and organize) research ideas, but how I see it done by everyone (including me).
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” but rather, “hmm... that's funny...” — Isaac Asimov
It's probably very akin to asking a large number of artists “how do you come up with inspiration?” , i.e. you can probably get one thousand different answers, and yet not useful answer at the same time. However, there are some elements that I think are common to all. You can't “trigger” new ideas to come into your mind, but you can put your mind into the right disposition to host these new ideas: recognize them and welcome them. Below is a list, certainly partial and limited, trying to detail my perspective in this matter:
Be challenged! Nothing sparks ideas more than being confronted with contradiction, healthy criticism, a spirited debate, maybe a bit of competition. Some people manage to do that by themselves, arguing against their ideas and improving them. I myself (and most of the colleagues and students I have seen) need an echo chamber, someone to discuss things with. If they're not exactly from your field, all the better, as they may have unusual/naïve/silly questions or expectations.
To give an example, some of the most “successful” ideas I have had came while answering questions, for example from a PhD student or colleague, and replying by “no, it doesn't work like that… in fact, it's probably always guaranteed to be false, because… see, it's linked to X… or maybe it's not? hum…”
Be curious! Ideas come from problems. Identifying worthy problems in your field of research, and dissecting larger issues into of specific problems of manageable scope, is at least as hard as coming up with new ideas. In the end my feeling is that, especially for a researcher, all ideas are the result of one’s curiosity.
Manage to get some free time for thinking (and not: teaching, supervising, tutoring, reviewing, writing, sleeping, …). Body and mind. Sure, an idea can pop into your head any time, but it's probably less likely to happen when you teach basic calculus all day that when you get some time to really think .
Know your field, know where a new development need to occur, what is currently missing. Read review papers, search for such ideas through people's articles or blog posts , discuss with senior colleagues who have a comprehensive view of the field, …
One of the ways you can come with ideas is by analyzing how different groups work in your fields, seeing what has been addressed and avoided, what big questions are still open, and how you can link between different works to build a coherent global picture… This is not always successful, but it usually generates some good ideas along the way!
Explore more or less closely related fields, and see if there is something from your background that you could apply to their problems, or ways you could build something together. Such ideas tend to be very strong, because you can oftentimes apply an entire branch of knowledge (ideas, methods, algorithms, etc.) to a very different problem. In that case, the added value comes from your different perspective, as you might try things that others would not think of.
Ways have been devised to come up with new ideas on a given topic, either alone or in group sessions. Brainstorming is probably the best know such method (and might be the most popular, in one form or another), but a really large number of creativity techniques have been developed. They can be applied both to enhance creativity or to boost problem solving efficiency.
A quote often attributed to Kant: “someone’s intelligence can be measured by the quantity of uncertainties that he can bear” . If that true, that has serious consequences for research. Accepting that your mind can only efficiently support a finite number of ongoing research ideas, you have to come up with ways to write them down, organize them, prioritize them, come back to them later, etc. Just as you cannot juggle with as many balls as you'd like, such “external” tools will help your brain focus on the ones that you assign high priority (or the ones to which it gives high priority; the brain works in funny ways).
Most people use very low-tech tools for that:
Notebooks , either sorted chronologically or thematically; in the later case, open a series of blanks pages for each new project/idea, and flip through the book whenever you want to check on them. I use a Moleskine ( WP ) for that purpose; having a nice, leather-bound notebook somehow helps me “value” it more and treat it with care (always have it with me, actually use it).
Post-it’s scattered through one’s (real or virtual) desktop. Downsides are obvious.
More people than I thought actually don't use any tools, and just keep all in their mind. Apparently it can be done, but I don't advise it.
But more complicated methodologies have been devised, that are supposed to help you with it:
Finally, don't underestimate the possibilities opened by delegating: people in charge of a specific project or sub-project (PhD students or post-docs) can be tasked with maintaining a list of ideas by all contributors of the project, to come to later on.
Answers to your miscellaneous smaller questions:
Most ideas are hardly “traceable” to one source or another. A given idea might have formed in my head during a conference, seeing how people were failing to address a certain issue, then crystallized during a discussion with colleagues, but would never have occurred to me if not for a literature review I had performed a few months before.
I'll come back a bit later and continue working on this answer :)
I'll address two points in your question (the overall question is quite broad):
Ideas seem to pop out of my Professor every day : If you've worked on enough problems, you amass a collection of tools and mental shorthands that you can apply to a new problem. It's a matter of experience. You also might see someone else's paper and realize that they are doing something in a clumsy way and you have learnt a better way to do it, and so on.
I wouldn't worry too much about this: it's a matter of time and experience, and will happen on its own. You're not evaluated on the number of ideas you have in any case. You might want to check how many of these ideas are actually good ones :).
How do you tend to come up with initial/seed ideas? : When you're first staring at a problem, it can be intimidating and difficult. While there's no single strategy for getting a "leg up", some useful techniques (and these might be very math/CS specific) are:
I'm sure others will have useful ideas as well. Ultimately, you'll find that getting ideas isn't the problem: it's getting GOOD ideas that is hard.
Here is some things I found useful:
Attending public seminars at the department could spark nice ideas (even if it seems not related to your research).
Chatting with other graduate students.
Do you, when presented with anything related to your research, routinely ask, "Why is that? How can I tell if that is the case?"
If not, try doing so.
If so, you probably won't be short on ideas. Your problem will be sorting the good ones from the bad ones.
Then start asking "Is this important? How can I explain why it is important?"
Be open/curious to what related disciplines are doing. In some you'll see that the way they solve their problems could also applied to your field but hasn't been tried yet.
I am also a green researcher, and similarly to you, I find coming up with ideas a daunting task. I have tried to approach this task in a bit more systematic way, than to just be waiting for Godot. Feel free to draw inspiration!
I keep a list of interesting problems. This could be something a hear about at a seminar, read about in an article, or just something I think about. I write it down - usually half a page, only few references - and forget about it. I can then pull out my list, and find something. Some of the problems quickly turn out to be too small to be interesting, others not.
When one of my problems are deemed interesting enough, I turn to lit. study. This goes on until I find someone with an interesting treatise. Then I read it, and try to reproduce the result as they do it. (I should here mention that my field is theoretical)
I can use quite some time reproducing previous authors' work. But it is very fruitful, and you tend to learn something. I try to give a local seminar about the work at this point, the junior people in my department does bi-weekly blackboard seminars, where presentations like this are encouraged for exactly this reason.
At this point it is hopefully possible where I can go in and improve state of matter. So I start. This can sometimes require correspondence with the author of aforementioned work.
For me, discussing my work with peers is essential. At this point I would try to sneak in two slides about 'ongoing work' in a conference presentation in order to get feedback from peers and seniors from the field.
From this point on it is not so much getting the idea anymore, as following through on it. I will leave that to another day.
The most practical way is to go to the Library and look through journals for articles that interest you.
When you have found a selection, then sort them by a) Is this a current concern in your field? b) Is the prevailing methodology/technique practical - have you the resources? c) Will your supervisor(s) find this project interesting?
When you can answer all three questions as Yes, then do a deeper literature research and assess again whether the project is doable in the time available and publishable (sound and interesting to people in your field).
Maybe you could try approaching the problem from another direction,
"What is it that you would like to achieve? what is the purpose of your research?"
There are millions of problems in life at the moment, and finding things to research is not the problem at all, even though it may seem that way. Inspiration is not purely found in a textbook, but are a function of the mind and soul and body.
Experience is what probably allows your professor to come up with constant questions. He probably practices free thinking, whereby he doesn't feel constrained in any way by other people and current belief systems. Maybe a lot of the problems that actually need to be understood, such as mental health and problems that people and our planet, experience everyday, just aren't being taken into your current world-view.
Science in itself is not an end. Science is a state of being, including understanding; and is a way that you as an intelligent, caring and investigative person (I presume) approach problems. A classic example of a problem is, that we don't understand. However, simply not understanding something is not a problem. A problem is something that has effects in the real world, such as, how can we help infertile couples reproduce and have children? Although it appears that now that we have resolved this in some detail, that it was the problem of not understanding DNA and the details of reproduction that probably is what resulted, with in vitro fertilisation, and even in vivo transplants etc. If one were to take the time to step out of this 'curiosity breeds progress' mindset, it would appear that these problems weren't purely driven by a quest for knowledge, but from real world problems, that have fortunately been solved.
I'd be interested in further discussion, as I have only this evening come up with an idea myself!
There's always a thirst for improvement, and this won't cease until people realize that happiness doesn't come from materials. Happiness is within all of us, all we have to do is tap into it. Being only 24 I have seen some truly eye-opening things and I am very humble to each of our personal strengths, but I do feel its a shame that research has become so fascinated with one-upmanship, and away from the real potential and benefit of being so intelligent.
I would recommend Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware by Andy Hunt. This book has some very good tips for coming up with ideas, research or otherwise.
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As the competition for PhD places is incredibly fierce, your research proposal can have a strong bearing on the success of your application - so discover how to make the best impression
Research proposals are used to persuade potential supervisors and funders that your work is worthy of their support. These documents set out your proposed research that will result in a Doctoral thesis. They are typically between 1,500 and 3,000 words.
Your PhD research proposal must passionately articulate what you want to research and why, convey your understanding of existing literature, and clearly define at least one research question that could lead to new or original knowledge and how you propose to answer it.
Professor Leigh Wilson, head of the graduate school at the University of Westminster , explains that while the research proposal is about work that hasn't been done yet, what prospective supervisors and funders are focusing on just as strongly is evidence of what you've done.
This includes how well you know existing literature in the area, including very recent publications and debates, and how clearly you've seen what's missing from this and so what your research can do that's new. Giving a strong sense of this background or frame for the proposed work is crucial.
'Although it's tempting to make large claims and propose research that sweeps across time and space, narrower, more focused research is much more convincing,' she adds. 'To be thorough and rigorous in the way that academic work needs to be, even something as long as a PhD thesis can only cover a fairly narrow topic. Depth not breadth is called for.'
The structure of your research proposal is therefore important to achieving this goal, yet it should still retain sufficient flexibility to comfortably accommodate any changes you need to make as your PhD progresses.
Layout and formats vary, so it's advisable to consult your potential PhD supervisor before you begin. Here's what to bear in mind when writing a research proposal.
Your provisional title should be around ten words in length, and clearly and accurately indicate your area of study and/or proposed approach. It should be catchy, informative and interesting.
The title page should also include personal information, such as:
This is a summary of your project. Your aims should be two or three broad statements that emphasise what you want to achieve, complemented by several focused, feasible and measurable objectives - the steps that you'll take to answer each of your research questions.
You'll need to clearly and briefly outline:
This section of your PhD proposal discusses the most important theories, models and texts that surround and influence your research questions, conveying your understanding and awareness of the key issues and debates.
It should focus on the theoretical and practical knowledge gaps that your work aims to address, as this ultimately justifies and provides the motivation for your project.
Here, you're expected to outline how you'll answer each of your research questions. A strong, well-written methodology is crucial, but especially so if your project involves extensive collection and significant analysis of primary data.
In disciplines such as humanities, the research proposal methodology identifies the data collection and analytical techniques available to you, before justifying the ones you'll use in greater detail. You'll also define the population that you're intending to examine.
You should also show that you're aware of the limitations of your research, qualifying the parameters you plan to introduce. Remember, it's more impressive to do a fantastic job of exploring a narrower topic than a decent job of exploring a wider one.
Concluding or following on from your methodology, your timetable should identify how long you'll need to complete each step - perhaps using bi-weekly or monthly timeslots. This helps the reader to evaluate the feasibility of your project and shows that you've considered how you'll go about putting the PhD proposal into practice.
Finally, you'll provide a list of the most significant texts, plus any attachments such as your academic CV .
Demonstrate your skills in critical reflection by selecting only those resources that are most appropriate.
Before submitting this document along with your PhD application, you'll need to ensure that you've adhered to the research proposal format. This means that:
To get a better idea of how your PhD proposal may look, some universities have provided examples of research proposals for specific subjects, including:
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Feb 27, 2019
Here, we show you how to write a PhD proposal that will stand out from the hundreds of others that are submitted each day.
Before we do though, know one thing :
The research you describe when you write your PhD proposal won’t look anything like the research you finally write up in your PhD thesis.
Wait, what ?
That’s not a typo. Everyone’s research changes over time. If you knew everything when you were writing up your proposal there wouldn’t be any point doing the PhD at all.
So, what’s the point of the proposal?
Your proposal is a guide, not a contract . It is a plan for your research that is necessarily flexible. That’s why it changes over time.
This means that the proposal is less about the robustness of your proposed research design and more about showing that you have
1. Critical thinking skills
2. An adequate grasp of the existing literature and know how your research will contribute to it
3. Clear direction and objectives. You get this by formulating clear research questions
4. Appropriate methods. This shows that you can link your understanding of the literature, research design and theory
5. An understanding of what’s required in a PhD
6. Designed a project that is feasible
Use our free PhD structure template to quickly visualise every element of your thesis.
Your PhD proposal is submitted as part of your application to a PhD program. It is a standard means of assessing your potential as a doctoral researcher.
When stripped down to its basic components, it does two things:
Explains the ‘what’- t hese are the questions you will address and the outcomes you expect
Explains the ‘why’- t his is the case for your research, with a focus on why the research is significant and what the contributions will be.
It is used by potential supervisors and department admission tutors to assess the quality and originality of your research ideas, how good you are at critical thinking and how feasible your proposed study is.
This means that it needs to showcase your expertise and your knowledge of the existing field and how your research contributes to it. You use it to make a persuasive case that your research is interesting and significant enough to warrant the university’s investment.
Above all though, it is about showcasing your passion for your discipline . A PhD is a hard, long journey. The admissions tutor want to know that you have both the skills and the resilience required.
Exactly what needs to be included when you write your PhD proposal will vary from university to university. How long your proposal needs to be may also be specified by your university, but if it isn’t, aim for three thousand words.
Check the requirements for each university you are applying for carefully.
Having said that, almost all proposals will need to have four distinct sections.
2. the research context.
3. The approach you take
4. Conclusion
In the first few paragraphs of your proposal, you need to clearly and concisely state your research questions, the gap in the literature your study will address, the significance of your research and the contribution that the study makes.
Be as clear and concise as you can be. Make the reader’s job as easy as possible by clearly stating what the proposed research will investigate, what the contribution is and why the study is worthwhile.
This isn’t the place for lots of explanatory detail. You don’t need to justify particular design decisions in the introduction, just state what they are. The justification comes later.
In this section, you discuss the existing literature and the gaps that exist within it.
The goal here is to show that you understand the existing literature in your field, what the gaps are and how your proposed study will address them. We’ve written a guide that will help you to conduct and write a literature review .
Chances are, you won’t have conducted a complete literature review, so the emphasis here should be on the more important and well-known research in your field. Don’t worry that you haven’t read everything. Your admissions officer won’t have expected you to. Instead, they want to see that you know the following:
1. What are the most important authors, findings, concepts, schools, debates and hypotheses?
2. What gaps exist in the literature?
3. How does your thesis fill these gaps?
Once you have laid out the context, you will be in a position to make your thesis statement . A thesis statement is a sentence that summarises your argument to the reader. It is the ‘point’ you will want to make with your proposed research.
Remember, the emphasis in the PhD proposal is on what you intend to do, not on results. You won’t have results until you finish your study. That means that your thesis statement will be speculative, rather than a statement of fact.
For more on how to construct thesis statements, read this excellent guide from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who, incidentally, run a great academic writing blog you should definitely visit.
This is the section in which you discuss the overall research design and is the most important component of the proposal. The emphasis here is on five things.
1. The overall approach taken (is it purely theoretical, or does it involve primary or empirical research? Maybe it’s both theoretical and empirical?)
2. The theoretical perspective you will use when you design and conduct your research
3. Why you have chosen this approach over others and what implications this choice has for your methods and the robustness of the study
4. Your specific aims and objectives
5. Your research methodology
In the previous section you outlined the context. In this section you explain the specific detail of what your research will look like.
You take the brief research design statements you made in the introduction and go into much more detail. You need to be relating your design decisions back to the literature and context discussion in the previous section.
The emphasis here is on showing that there is a logical flow. There’s no point highlighting a gap in the literature and then designing a study that doesn’t fill it.
Some of the detail here will only become clear once you have started the actual research. That’s fine. The emphasis in your proposal should be on showing that you understand what goes into a PhD.
So, keep it general.
For example, when talking about your methodology, keep things deliberately broad and focus on the overarching strategy. For example, if you are using interviews, you don’t need to list every single proposed interview question. Instead, you can talk about the rough themes you will discuss (which will relate to your literature review and thesis/project statement). Similarly, unless your research is specifically focusing on particular individuals, you don’t need to list exactly who you will interview. Instead, just state the types of people you will interview (for example: local politicians, or athletes, or academics in the UK, and so on).
There are a number of key elements to a proposal that you will need to put in the final paragraphs.
These include:
1. A discussion on the limitations of the study
2. A reiteration of your contribution
3. A proposed chapter structure (this can be an appendix)
4. Proposed month-by-month timetable (this can also be an appendix). The purpose of this timetable is to show that you understand every stage required and how long each stage takes relative to others.
1. be critical.
When you are making your design decisions in section three, you need to do so critically. Critical thinking is a key requirement of entry onto a PhD programme. In brief, it means not taking things at face value and questioning what you read or do. You can read our guide to being critical for help (it focuses on the literature review, but the take home points are the same).
This is something that many people get wrong. You need to ease the reader in gradually . Present a brief, clear statement in the introduction and then gradually introduce more information as the pages roll on.
You will see that the outline we have suggested above follows an inverted pyramid shape.
1. In section one, you present the headlines in the introductory paragraphs. These are the research questions, aims, objectives, contribution and problem statement. State these without context or explanation.
2. When discussing the research context in section two, you provide a little more background. The goal here is to introduce the reader to the literature and highlight the gaps.
3. When describing the approach you will take, you present more detailed information. The goal here is to talk in very precise terms about how your research will address these gaps, the implications of these choices and your expected findings.
Don’t pretend you know more than you do and don’t try to reinvent your discipline .
A good proposal is one that is very focused and that describes research that is very feasible. If you try to design a study to revolutionise your field, you will not be accepted because doing so shows that you don’t understand what is feasible in the context of a PhD and you haven’t understood the literature.
Describe your research as clearly as possible in the opening couple of paragraphs. Then write in short, clear sentences. Avoid using complex sentences where possible. If you need to introduce technical terminology, clearly define things.
In other words, make the reader’s job as easy as possible.
We’ve written a post on why you need a proofreader .
Simple: you are the worst person to proofread your own work.
A lot of students fail to do this. Your supervisor isn’t your enemy. You can work with them to refine your proposal. Don’t be afraid to reach out for comments and suggestions. Be careful though. Don’t expect them to come up with topics or questions for you. Their input should be focused on refining your ideas, not helping you come up with them.
Admissions tutors can spot when you have submitted a one-size-fits-all proposal. Try and tailor it to the individual department. You can do this by talking about how you will contribute to the department and why you have chosen to apply there.
Follow this guide and you’ll be on a PhD programme in no time at all.
If you’re struggling for inspiration on topics or research design, try writing a rough draft of your proposal. Often the act of writing is enough for us to brainstorm new ideas and relate existing ideas to one another.
If you’re still struggling, send your idea to us in an email to us and we’ll give you our feedback.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? Be able to call yourself Doctor sooner with our five-star rated How to Write A PhD email-course. Learn everything your supervisor should have taught you about planning and completing a PhD.
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13 comments.
A wonderful guide. I must say not only well written but very well thought out and very efficient.
Great. I’m glad you think so.
Thanks for sharing. Makes navigating through the proposal lot easier
Great. Glad you think so!
An excellent guide, I learned a lot thank you
Great job and guide for a PhD proposal. Thank you!
You’re welcome!
I am going to start writing my Ph.D. proposal. This has been so helpful in instructing me on what to do. Thanks
Thanks! Glad you thought so.
A very reassuring guide to the process. Thank you, Max
I appreciate the practical advice and actionable steps you provide in your posts.
Glad to hear it. Many thanks.
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You will need to submit a research proposal with your PhD application. This is crucial in the assessment of your application and it warrants plenty of time and energy.
Your proposal should outline your project and be around 1,500 words.
Your research proposal should include a working title for your project.
In this section, you should provide a short overview of your research. You should also state how your research fits into the research priorities of your particular subject area.
Here you can refer to the research areas and priorities of a particular research grouping or supervisor.
You must also state precisely why you have chosen to apply to the discipline area and how your research links into our overall profile.
This should reference the most important texts related to the research, demonstrate your understanding of the research issues, and identify existing gaps (both theoretical and practical) that the research is intended to address.
This section should identify the information that is necessary to carry out the analysis and the possible research techniques that could deliver the information.
Your research proposal will be used to assess the quality and originality of your ideas, whether you are able to think critically and whether you have a grasp of the relevant literature. It also gives us important information about the perspectives you intend to take on your research area, and how you fit into the department's research profile overall. This is helpful when assigning a supervisor.
You will not be forced to follow the proposal exactly once you have started to study. It is normal for students to refine their original proposal, in light of detailed literature review, further consideration of research approaches and comments received from your supervisors (and other academic staff).
We sometimes have to reject students who meet the academic requirements but have not produced a satisfactory research proposal, therefore:
The University uses electronic systems to detect plagiarism and other forms of academic malpractice and for assessment. All Humanities PhD programmes require the submission of a research proposal as part of the application process. The Doctoral Academy upholds the principle that where a candidate approaches the University with a project of study, this should be original. While it is understandable that research may arise out of previous studies, it is vital that your research proposal is not the subject of plagiarism.
Exploring our research specialisms will help you to match your proposal idea to a suitable supervisor.
Get inspiration from some of our current students about the type of research topics you can pursue.
You apply for the PhD in English Literature through the University’s online Degree Finder. Here is our guidance on how to write an effective application.
The two elements of an application that are most useful to us when we consider a candidate for the PhD in English Literature are the sample of written work and the research proposal.
You will probably choose your sample of written work from an already-completed undergraduate or masters-level dissertation or term-paper.
Your research proposal will be something new. It will describe the project that you want to complete for your PhD.
Take your time in composing your research proposal, carefully considering the requirements outlined below. Your proposal should not be more than 2,000 words .
PhD degrees are awarded on the basis of a thesis of up to 100,000 words. The ‘Summary of roles and responsibilities’ in the University’s Code of Practice for Supervisors and Research Students stipulates what a research thesis must do.
Take me to the Code of Practice for Supervisors and Research Students (August 2020)
It is in the nature of research that, when you begin, you don’t know what you’ll find. This means that your project is bound to change over the time that you spend on it.
In submitting your research proposal, you are not committing yourself absolutely to completing exactly the project it describes in the event that you are accepted. Nevertheless, with the above points in mind, your research proposal should include the following elements, though not necessarily in this order:
1. An account of the body of primary texts that your thesis will examine. This may be work by one author, or several, or many, depending on the nature of the project. It is very unlikely to consist of a single text, however, unless that text is unusually compendious (The Canterbury Tales) or unusually demanding (Finnegans Wake). Unless your range of texts consists in the complete oeuvre of a single writer, you should explain why these texts are the ones that need to be examined in order to make your particular argument.
2. An identification of the existing field or fields of criticism and scholarship of which you will need to gain an ‘adequate knowledge’ in order to complete your thesis. This must include work in existing literary criticism, broadly understood. Usually this will consist of criticism or scholarship on the works or author(s) in question. In the case of very recent writing, or writing marginal to the established literary canon, on which there may be little or no existing critical work, it might include literary criticism written on other works or authors in the same period, or related work in the same mode or genre, or some other exercise of literary criticism that can serve as a reference point for your engagement with this new material.
The areas of scholarship on which you draw are also likely to include work in other disciplines, however. Most usually, these will be arguments in philosophy or critical theory that have informed, or could inform, the critical debate around your primary texts, or may have informed the texts themselves; and/or the historiography of the period in which your texts were written or received. But we are ready to consider the possible relevance of any other body of knowledge to literary criticism, as long as it is one with which you are sufficiently familiar, or could become sufficiently familiar within the period of your degree, for it to serve a meaningful role in your argument.
3. The questions or problems that the argument of your thesis will address; the methods you will adopt to answer those questions or explain those problems; and some explanation of why this particular methodology is the appropriate means of doing so. The problem could take many forms: a simple gap in the existing scholarship that you will fill; a misleading approach to the primary material that you will correct; or a difficulty in the relation of the existing scholarship to theoretical/philosophical, historiographical, or other disciplinary contexts, for example. But in any case, your thesis must engage critically with the scholarship of others by mounting an original argument in relation to the existing work in your field or fields. In this way your project must go beyond the summarising of already-existing knowledge.
4. Finally, your proposal should include a provisional timetable , describing the stages through which you hope your research will move over the course of your degree. It is crucial that, on the one hand, your chosen topic should be substantial enough to require around 80,000 words for its full exploration; and, on the other hand, that it has clear limits which would allow it to be completed in three years.
When drawing up this timetable, keep in mind that these word limits, and these time constraints, will require you to complete 25–30,000 words of your thesis in each of the years of your degree. If you intend to undertake your degree on a part-time basis, the amount of time available simply doubles.
In composing your research proposal you are already beginning the work that could lead, if you are accepted, to the award of a PhD degree. Regard it, then, as a chance to refine and focus your ideas, so that you can set immediately to work in an efficient manner on entry to university. But it bears repeating that that your project is bound to evolve beyond the project described in your proposal in ways that you cannot at this stage predict. No-one can know, when they begin any research work, where exactly it will take them. That provides much of the pleasure of research, for the most distinguished professor as much as for the first-year PhD student. If you are accepted as a candidate in this department, you will be joining a community of scholars still motivated by the thrill of finding and saying something new.
If you have read the guidance above and are ready to apply for your PhD in English Literature, you can do so online through the University of Edinburgh's Degree Finder.
Applications to start your PhD in September 2025 open in October 2024.
Take me to the Degree Finder entry for the PhD in English Literature
If you've got any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Dr Aaron Kelly by email in the first instance.
Email Dr Aaron Kelly
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Speaker 1: Hey everyone, welcome back to my channel. If you are new here, my name is Aminah and today we are talking research proposals. Probably one of the most asked questions that I get, how do you write a strong research proposal? Now, a proposal is probably one of the most important documents that you will write before actually starting your PhD or your research program. It defines a question and describes the approach that you are going to take to answer that question. It also places your work within the realm of the research that's currently out there and shows sort of what your kind of approach is for. I know what works and what doesn't work. I have edited hundreds of research proposals that have been sent to me via the page doctor.com, which is my academic consultancy. And I've marked proposals that have passed and gone through to top universities all around the world and those that haven't. And I can clearly tell you what needs to be included, what should definitely not be included and sort of what the structure of a research proposal should be. Without a proposal, there is no plan. And without a plan, there is no project. That is the key thing to take away. You need a proposal. If you're watching this video, you're probably stuck. You're probably thinking, well, okay, I have to write a proposal. I don't know where to begin. I don't know how to do this. By the end of today's video, you will walk away with a draft outline or a rough outline of a proposal. And you'll be able to work on that and then possibly submit that to us at the page doctor to then be able to clean up and to tailor that proposal to make sure that you get accepted into the program that you desire. I post every Wednesday and every Sunday. So don't forget to press the subscribe button right now while you're waiting to see more from me and content just like this. The structure of a research proposal includes eight different sections and is approximately 2000 to about 2500 words maximum. Remember that number. It should never be too short, but also shouldn't be too long. So it includes the following sections, a title, an abstract research background, research questions, the research methods. I guess that's your approach. The significance, a timeline of your proposed project. And lastly, a bibliography or a reference list. I'm going to be showing and breaking down each of those sections for you and telling you what should be included in each of those parts. So starting off with your title. Now, when thinking about your title, think about what keywords define your project. If someone were to search for your work, what keywords would they have to look for in order to identify your particular project? How would you describe your research? What are the terms that you need to include to be able to say, right, this is the work that I'm doing. Remember that this is the one section I would say that will definitely change. The title that you propose in the beginning will be revised, kind of changed as you go along, depending on direction that your project takes in the end. So if you don't feel like it's the title that you're going to graduate with, because it definitely isn't. Don't feel pressurized to develop the best title ever, because like I said, it's definitely going to change. The second section is your abstract. Now, your abstract, I've talked about quite a bit before. The abstract is traditionally used to summarize your research, talk about the intent, the research question, and the method that you took, and then the results and talk about the discussion. But obviously in this case, you're discussing a proposed research, so you haven't actually done it yet. So in this case, the abstract is very short, around a hundred words, and it's a statement that highlights the issue that you are concerned with and that you are going to be discussing in this proposal. So the third section is your research background. Now, this is a bit like a literature review, but a bit more concise than a traditional literature review. This sets the context for the research proposal. What literature are you basing this research on? You should have done a lot of reading to understand where your work is going to fit into the field, and that is where you're going to describe what that field is. What information does the reader need to know to understand your field? What information does the reader need to know to know, I guess, what gap there is in the literature? The most important consideration here is trying to think about the current debates that are in the literature. What is the current state of knowledge? What do people say about your topic? Is there sort of one side that says this is happening and the other side saying that's happening? What is the stance that you are taking concerning the current debate in literature? That is essentially what you are trying to summarize within the research background. This should be a really concise section where you're highlighting the top papers that are relevant for your topic. Don't underestimate the importance of this section. You know, you're submitting this to another expert in the field, so they'll know what papers and what literature is the most important, and they'll know whether you've done the most exhaustive reading or not. The fourth section is your research questions. Now, this is essentially defining what it is that you are seeking out with this research. What are the central aims that run through your study? Like I said, you need to really think about where your research fits into the field, whether your questions are feasible. Have they been answered before? If yes, that's not an original study. It needs to provide new information to the field, a new sort of insight, a new direction, a new consideration. You should really have one or two main questions, and then sort of a couple of sub-questions that feed into answering that main overarching question. The next section, and probably the most bulkiest and most important section, is the research method or the methodology section. And here you're actually defining your approach. Now you've said what the issue is, you've said with the gap of knowledge, you've said what you want to, like how you're going to do it. Now you need to define the methods. How exactly are you planning on determining the answer to the question of your research? You need to justify everything in this section. Why have you chosen quantitative over qualitative? Or why have you chosen a mixed method? Why have you chosen this cell type? Why have you chosen any method that you discuss? You need to say why you've chosen it and really justify the choices that you make. Like I said, I think this is probably the most weighty section and the section you should consider the most, as it can determine the success of your project. It's all well and good to say we don't understand how this thing happens. If you don't have a method to back that up or a method that, you know, would actually work and is feasible, then your project can't run. So it's important to have considered the methods very, very well. You also want to consider any limitations. And I think people tend to miss this bit out. They don't say what the issues and challenges are that they could be faced. And I think people miss this out because they think they don't want to say there could be an issue here. But actually, if you're trying to acquire data from a cell type that's quite rare or quite hard, or if you're trying to get some interviews from people who have in a rural area, for example, you're going to be faced with challenges and it's naive to assume that you won't. So it's important that you say, right, these are the challenges that I could be faced with and this is how I'm planning to overcome them. This shows that you've got the correct sort of research mindset where you're considering challenges, you're considering outcomes, you're considering alternative options, because let me tell you, in research, nothing goes to plan. Nothing. So it's important that you've got that mindset where you're thinking about the plan B. Lastly, in this part, you also want to think about analysis. So you're doing a questionnaire, a qualitative analysis. How are you going to be analysing that? Are you analysing that through a thematic topic? Are you analysing that through t-tests? Are you analysing that? How are you planning to analyse your data? This is important because it means that you've considered the next step. It's all well and good to have a thousand questionnaires filled out, but how are you then planning to collate that data? How are you then planning to analyse that data and have those final results and final comments? Ultimately, remember that the research proposal is purely just a proposal. You are not meant to be an expert. You are not meant to know all the answers, but you are meant to have considered and looked at the research out there and thought about what ways have people done this before? How could I approach this situation? You will then have the option, you know, if you get accepted, to discuss this in further detail and, you know, kind of build on that initial plan. But it is important that you brought that independent thought to the table to show that you are a suitable and strong candidate. The sixth is significance. Why is this work significant? Why is this work a project that the supervisor should take on? How is your work original? How does your work stand out from all the works out there before? What new thing are you bringing to the table? And also, how does the work build on what we already know? So, to be able to say that this work is significant, you need to say, right, we know this thing, and I'm going to be building on this thing, and then that's going to be able to support future work. So, why is your work what work that you think people are going to be interested in, and is work that is significant in the general field that you're interested in? Last, well, almost last, penultimate, but definitely not least, is a timeline. Again, I find this gets forgotten about quite a bit. But, you know, your project is a PhD project in the UK. Anyway, it's three to four years. So, what is that timeline that you are planning to hopefully uphold? The first year could be maybe doing some preliminary studies. It could be recruiting the participants. It could be writing up a questionnaire, doing some reading. The second year could be actually, you know, running those interviews. Third year could be the analysis, or reading interviews, or whatever it is that you choose to do. So, that's what you want. You want to think about what that timeline could be. Now, again, this is going to be, it's going to change 110%. I can guarantee you that right now. But, again, it shows that you've thought about kind of timelines. Things might not go to plan. If they don't, I'll do this instead. This could happen. If not, this is going to happen. This is going to happen first, then that's going to happen. You want a timeline. It shows you've considered your methods, considered your approach, and considered how long of time it might actually take you. Last, but definitely not least, is a bibliography. Here, you want to detail the key pieces of work, and the key literature that your work is based on. So, I would probably limit this to five to 10, 10 maximum. What are the literature that you, for example, read, and then based your questions on? Where was a gap in what you read, and then thought, ah, I need to answer that? What was that paper? What papers, let's say I had to read your review, and I knew nothing about your topic. What five to 10 papers would I have to read to understand the field, then understand how your work is going to add to that field, and build on that field, and give that substance? That is what you need to think. Again, remember that the lecturer, or the professor, the supervisor that you're applying to will be an expert in that field, and so do consider the amount of reading that you've done, and make sure that you've done enough to be able to have picked out what those papers are. So, I really hope that you guys found this useful. This is such a frequently asked question. How do you write a proposal? But it really is, I would say this is not a difficult thing to write at all, especially if you know your literature, and you know the question that you're thinking about writing. It's a very, very simple, structured, consistently structured piece of document. So, if you do want me to edit it, and you do want someone to take a look at it professionally to make sure that you are on track, and you've answered all of those questions correctly, then do send it forward to thepagedoctor.com for an edit, and like I said, don't forget to subscribe to see more from me. I post every Wednesday and Sunday, and I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye.
Come up with compelling research proposal ideas psychology.
Before embarking on a psychology proposal, it is important to understand its main components. Only this way you can properly lay the groundwork for future study. The first and arguably the most crucial step when you write research proposal psychology is selecting a topic that genuinely interests you.
It’s also worth noting that winning PhD projects often involve an interdisciplinary approach. Therefore, you can try to develop sociology research topics or ones in related areas to make your psychology proposal more convincing and applicable.
After selecting a topic, you should formulate a clear and compelling question to focus the PhD study efforts efficiently.
Now that we understand how to choose a topic and formulate a question, let’s review the main components of a research proposal in psychology.
The abstract, typically 250 to 350 words in length, provides a concise summary of your entire PhD proposal psychology. It’s the brief with research keywords everyone can review to familiarize themselves with your main paper without reading it. Thus, the abstract only repeats the statements from a research proposal. You should prepare it after writing a whole paper.
This states the main PhD psychology research problem you set, describes the context, and formulates the research questions. To make your work easier, consider questions such as:
Who would be interested in your topic? What about existing research in the field? Are there any missing aspects or knowledge gaps? How will your project contribute to the field? How is your study important & applicable? Why?
An in-depth literature review is the foundation of any PhD project. This is true whether you’re developing practical solutions as a part of a Ph.D. in clinical psychology project or working on theoretical concepts. You should demonstrate familiarity with the most prominent theories and publications on your topic. Include past studies that provide data related to your research proposal topics in psychology. Describe how these studies are related to your project.
Identify gaps in the current literature. Outline what previous researchers have suggested and how your PhD project will address neglected or under-researched areas. State how your work will contribute to the field knowledge or disprove existing psychology theories.
Explain your approach and methodology comprehensively. Specify whether you are using qualitative or quantitative methods, your sampling method, sample size, data collection instruments, and why you believe this methodology is the most suitable.
We also invite you to explore this psychology research proposal example and seek other topic-relevant samples to visualize expert recommendations and tips on structure.
The proposed PhD research must be realistic and feasible to achieve the expected results within a typical degree program. A PhD in research psychology usually takes three years full-time (or two years for an MPhil).
Strong psychological research proposals can and should create a positive first impression and showcase your potential to be a good researcher. They should also confirm that your ideas are focused, innovative, and have academic value.
Although you should prepare your PhD proposal yourself, you can always ask for help. You can discuss its contents with your intended supervisor and seek their recommendations. Feel free to ask someone else to review and comment on the proposal to ensure it is sufficiently clear. These could be a PhD researcher from your current or previous institution, your peers, or even an expert from a writing service. Such professional PhD assistance is often more valuable. It’s because the experts from whom you buy research proposal always have enough time and resources to help you comprehensively.
Avoid using long sentences and technical jargon to make your proposal clear and understandable to all the readers. Even if the committee is made up entirely of PhDs in psychology, it will be excellent practice for you to create papers that can be distributed to other specialists.
Your psychology research proposal should be well-structured, aesthetically designed, and professional-looking. It is vital to carefully check it for typos and spelling errors, consistent style, and accurate referencing. There should be no font inconsistencies or issues with headings or citations. If you include figures, they should be accompanied by captions underneath.
There are some thematic psychology research proposal ideas that you can consider. This list is not exhaustive, but we’ve prepared one to demonstrate the diversity of available study areas. Psychology is a reputable and popular science, comprising many directions, including ones related to other subjects.
1. Clinical Psychology:
2. Social Psychology:
3. Cognitive Psychology:
4. Developmental Psychology:
6. Forensic Psychology:
There are many ways to find a topic for writing a psychology research paper . Start with something that interests you, and then narrow this area down. If the subject of your interest is already researched enough, you can try to approach it from another angle. For example, you may consider some cognitive psychology aspects within physical psychology models. Another great option is to apply some effective psycho practices in other fields like business, sociology, education, etc.
Writing an original proposal is not easy. It must reveal your research proposal ideas psychology and demonstrate your professional readiness to work on the project. The paper involves detailed planning, a solid understanding of the study area, and a systematic approach to developing each component. Moreover, it should engage and lead to approval of your future research. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it? Especially if you choose an in-demand PhD program with many competitors for one spot. In such a case, getting expert help is not cheating but an effective tool to get this opportunity.
We have the leading field experts who are well-versed in academic writing and the intricacies of PhD proposals that win. We’ll assign you a subject-relevant PhD specialist with the best knowledge of your research area. This way, you will get a high-quality and 100% original PhD paper that will impress your committee and be quickly approved.
( Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images )
Vice President Kamala Harris has announced a sweeping set of proposals on housing policy, giving voters their first look at what the housing market might look like under a Harris administration.
Harris unveiled the proposals as part of a populist economic plan that marked her first major policy announcement since replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket in the 2024 presidential race against Republican Donald Trump .
Her signature housing policy calls for up to $25,000 in federal down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers who have paid their rent on time for at least two years. That dramatically expands on Biden’s prior proposal for a $10,000 tax credit for first-time buyers, which had limited additional down-payment assistance to first-generation homebuyers.
The Harris campaign says in a statement that the program would provide down payment assistance to up to 4 million first-time buyers over four years.
Other elements of the plan called for a new tax credit for builders incentivizing the construction of starter homes, curbs on investor purchases of single-family homes, and a ban on shared software platforms used by landlords to set rent, which critics say is a form of price fixing.
Altogether, Harris says she would push for construction of 3 million new housing units over a four-year term. It’s an attainable goal, with U.S. Census Bureau data showing that 1.5 million new privately constructed housing units were completed in 2023 alone.
Her key proposals, including down payment assistance, would require congressional approval. The nonprofit policy group Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the new housing policies Harris proposes would cost $200 billion over four years, and more if they were made permanent.
Harris’ campaign vows follow a massive surge in home values that has left existing homeowners sitting on a mountain of equity, while freezing many prospective first-time buyers out of the market. In May, national home prices were up 48% from four years earlier, according to Case-Schiller.
“As the price of housing has gone up, the size of down payments have gone up as well. Even if aspiring homeowners save for years, it often still is not enough,” Harris said in a speech on Friday in the swing state of North Carolina.
Harris’ down payment proposal was light on specific details—who exactly would qualify for down payment assistance, and how would the funds be distributed? But the plan quickly sparked heated debate, with some housing policy experts praising the proposal and others warning it could fuel runaway increases in home prices.
The Trump campaign also quickly slammed the proposal, with Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance claiming “Kamala Harris wants to give $25,000 to illegal aliens to buy American homes.”
It is unclear whether the Harris plan would have a citizenship requirement, but immigrants present in the country unlawfully are not eligible to apply for traditional, or “conforming,” mortgages. Depending on how the program was administered, that could also make them ineligible for federal assistance with a down payment.
Several economists who spoke to Realtor.com cautioned that Harris’ plan could backfire by stoking demand in an already hot housing market, driving home prices even higher.
Ken Johnson , a professor of finance and the Walker Chair of Real Estate at the University of Mississippi, warns that offering widespread down payment assistance would be like “throwing gasoline on an already on-fire housing market.”
“The real symptom of what’s going on is that we’re short in supply. We’re dangerously short in supply. We just cannot build homes fast enough,” says Johnson. “You can’t make it easier for people to buy homes, and offer easier credit to buy homes, when you have the housing market so overpriced.”
Johnson argues that to bring home prices back into reach, the government should do more to help small and independent homebuilders secure financing.
One way, he explains, would be to launch a government-sponsored enterprise dedicated to purchasing construction loans, the way Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchase mortgages.
Tai Christensen , president of private-sector down payment assistance provider Arrive Home, acknowledges that a federal subsidy for first-time buyers might stoke housing inflation if it were not balanced with an increase in supply.
(Mario Tama/Getty Images)
However, she argues that Harris’ proposed tax credits for homebuilders could offset the inflation risk by stimulating new construction, and that down payment assistance would be an important step to level the playing field and boost opportunities for homeownership.
“Anything that increases homeownership, specifically in marginalized, low- to moderate-income communities, we are in complete support of,” says Christensen. “Homeownership is the No. 1 vehicle for wealth creation for the majority of Americans, and to have opportunities to expand that benefit to more Americans, we’re completely in support of whatever that looks like.”
The National Association of Home Builders praised Harris for making housing and homeownership a centerpiece of her economic agenda.
“We are pleased that the foundation of her plan calls for the construction of 3 million new housing units because the primary way to tackle the nation’s housing affordability crisis is to increase the nation’s housing supply,” said NAHB Chair Carl Harris in a statement.
He said that new tax credits for builders would help boost construction, but warned that “any tax incentive to support the production of starter homes must be targeted to local market conditions and be widely available.”
Carl Harris, no relation to the vice president, also reiterated his group’s longstanding call to cut federal regulations and codes that he says are burdensome and costly to homebuilders.
If Kamala Harris does receive congressional approval for a down payment assistance program, it wouldn’t be the first time the federal government has subsidized homebuyers.
In 2009, during the depths of the global financial crisis, Congress passed a similar $8,000 credit for first-time homebuyers. But 2009 was a very different situation, when home prices were plunging due to a huge pullback in demand and an influx of buyers was needed to stabilize the market.
Now, many economists believe we are in the opposite sort of crisis: The supply of homes is inadequate to meet demand, pushing home prices out of reach for many families.
“The housing market is still way out of whack compared to where it should be,” says professor Johnson. Following the Great Recession, “We in the U.S. and around the world did not build housing product for a decade, virtually none. So we fell way behind.”
From 1996 to 2006, the U.S. completed an average of 1.6 million new housing units every year. Construction plunged over the following five years, bottoming out at just over a half-million units in 2011. Since then, construction has slowly climbed each year, but it has yet to return to the levels seen prior to the 2007 housing market crash.
As builders constructed fewer homes after the crash, they also began focusing on larger, more expensive homes, which have higher profit margins. In 2015, the median square footage of new single-family homes peaked at 2,473, up from the 2,088 average in the decade through 2006.
New home sizes have slowly tapered since then, but remained well above the pre-financial crisis average last year, at 2,238 square feet.
Harris may hope that, by providing builder tax credits and buyer subsidies specifically in the first-time buyer category, it will stimulate the market for starter homes and encourage more builders to pivot toward more affordable homes suited for first-time homebuyers.
Arrive Home's Christensen notes that today, the starter home category may often include units in multifamily properties such as duplexes and quads, which are cheaper to build than free-standing homes, but still allow lower-income buyers to start building equity.
“When people think of starter homes, sometimes they have this kind of vision in their head of a white picket fence and a three-bedroom, two-bath rambler with a yard,” she says. “But planned urban developments are typically cheaper than your average suburban neighborhood, and specifically for first-time homebuyers, that's critical, because they just need to get their foot on the property ladder.”
Matthew S. Roland , assistant dean for the Real Estate Development program and clinical assistant professor at the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, notes that for an FHA mortgage with 3.5% down, a $25,000 down payment credit could cover the down payment for a home of up to $715,000.
However, at 20% down, the credit would cover the down payment for a home only up to $125,000, a price range that is virtually nonexistent aside from some condo units.
Roland says key questions about the program remained to be answered, including how homebuyers would qualify, whether they'd have to put some of their own money down as well, and whether the funds would be distributed as a tax credit or direct payment to the lender.
“Overall, I think it’s a program that has the potential to help,” says Roland. “That said, the devil is in the details.”
Keith Griffith is a journalist at Realtor.com. He covers the housing market and real estate trends.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis’ environmental agency is considering plans to turn some of Florida’s vaunted park space into areas that feature more recreational amenities — including more lodges, golfing, pickleball courts and disc golf courses, according to a news release sent by the state this week.
But details were scarce late Tuesday. What is known is that the plans involve at least nine parks, including two in the Tampa Bay area: Honeymoon Island and Hillsborough River state parks.
On Monday, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection said the initiative is meant to support Florida’s “outdoor recreation economy” and add new lodging options. But without further elaboration, some environmental groups say they fear sensitive habitats on state park land could be threatened by creating more recreational areas.
While state officials acknowledged they received questions from the Tampa Bay Times about what changes are being considered, they didn’t answer calls, texts and emails seeking more detail by Tuesday afternoon. The state’s parks division, however, did announce it would host eight public meetings Aug. 27 for nine parks where the state is proposing changes.
Staff members of the Division of Recreation and Parks are apparently set to scatter across the state — from Miami to the Panhandle — for meetings scheduled from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. that Tuesday. Meetings for six parks in Eastern Standard Time will occur simultaneously. Meetings at two Panhandle-area parks, in a different time zone, will start an hour later. There appears to be no virtual option for any of the meetings listed on the state’s public notice.
The Times obtained copies of leaked documents from an unknown source detailing the park plans. Those same documents were circulated more broadly and became the source of commentary and debate on social media, including among environmentalists who worried about the way the proposals could upend pristine open space. The Times has been unable to confirm the authenticity of the plans but they were printed on state stationery that appeared authentic.
One document shows plans to replace scrub habitat at Jonathan Dickinson State Park with two 18-hole golf courses, a 9-hole golf course and a clubhouse. The state has not answered questions about the document.
Tampa Bay residents who want to learn about the proposed changes at Honeymoon Island and Hillsborough River would be unable to attend both meetings in their entirety, with one meeting slated for Tampa and the other in Clearwater.
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“By scheduling these hearings with very little notice, it makes it appear that the department is not that interested in what the public has to say,” said Eric Draper, who served as the director of the Florida state parks between 2017 and 2021.
“The intent of the law and even the Florida parks service’s own operations is to engage the public in the actual decision-making process,” Draper told the Times. “This gives the appearance of a decision that’s already been made, and they’re just going through the formalities.”
Draper said his favorite beach is at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park on Santa Rosa Beach. If he wanted to attend the meeting to hear about the state’s proposed changes, he would have to drive more than two hours.
Agendas for the eight meetings, obtained by the Tampa Bay Times directly from the parks office in Tallahassee, are also scarce in their details. Each one follows the same format: The date, time and location of the meeting, followed by three bullet points: “Brief presentation, public comment, adjournment.”
If somebody wants to make a comment about the changes coming to a state park and they can make the meeting, they’ll have three minutes.
Below are the locations for each state park proposal meeting scheduled for Aug. 27:
Times staff writer Romy Ellenbogen contributed to this report.
Max Chesnes is an environment and climate reporter, covering water quality, environmental justice and wildlife. Reach him at [email protected].
The Tampa Bay Times e-Newspaper is a digital replica of the printed paper seven days a week that is available to read on desktop, mobile, and our app for subscribers only. To enjoy the e-Newspaper every day, please subscribe.
Samantha Putterman, PolitiFact Samantha Putterman, PolitiFact
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This fact check originally appeared on PolitiFact .
Project 2025 has a starring role in this week’s Democratic National Convention.
And it was front and center on Night 1.
WATCH: Hauling large copy of Project 2025, Michigan state Sen. McMorrow speaks at 2024 DNC
“This is Project 2025,” Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, D-Royal Oak, said as she laid a hardbound copy of the 900-page document on the lectern. “Over the next four nights, you are going to hear a lot about what is in this 900-page document. Why? Because this is the Republican blueprint for a second Trump term.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has warned Americans about “Trump’s Project 2025” agenda — even though former President Donald Trump doesn’t claim the conservative presidential transition document.
“Donald Trump wants to take our country backward,” Harris said July 23 in Milwaukee. “He and his extreme Project 2025 agenda will weaken the middle class. Like, we know we got to take this seriously, and can you believe they put that thing in writing?”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, has joined in on the talking point.
“Don’t believe (Trump) when he’s playing dumb about this Project 2025. He knows exactly what it’ll do,” Walz said Aug. 9 in Glendale, Arizona.
Trump’s campaign has worked to build distance from the project, which the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, led with contributions from dozens of conservative groups.
Much of the plan calls for extensive executive-branch overhauls and draws on both long-standing conservative principles, such as tax cuts, and more recent culture war issues. It lays out recommendations for disbanding the Commerce and Education departments, eliminating certain climate protections and consolidating more power to the president.
Project 2025 offers a sweeping vision for a Republican-led executive branch, and some of its policies mirror Trump’s 2024 agenda, But Harris and her presidential campaign have at times gone too far in describing what the project calls for and how closely the plans overlap with Trump’s campaign.
PolitiFact researched Harris’ warnings about how the plan would affect reproductive rights, federal entitlement programs and education, just as we did for President Joe Biden’s Project 2025 rhetoric. Here’s what the project does and doesn’t call for, and how it squares with Trump’s positions.
To distance himself from Project 2025 amid the Democratic attacks, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he “knows nothing” about it and has “no idea” who is in charge of it. (CNN identified at least 140 former advisers from the Trump administration who have been involved.)
The Heritage Foundation sought contributions from more than 100 conservative organizations for its policy vision for the next Republican presidency, which was published in 2023.
Project 2025 is now winding down some of its policy operations, and director Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official, is stepping down, The Washington Post reported July 30. Trump campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita denounced the document.
WATCH: A look at the Project 2025 plan to reshape government and Trump’s links to its authors
However, Project 2025 contributors include a number of high-ranking officials from Trump’s first administration, including former White House adviser Peter Navarro and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.
A recently released recording of Russell Vought, a Project 2025 author and the former director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, showed Vought saying Trump’s “very supportive of what we do.” He said Trump was only distancing himself because Democrats were making a bogeyman out of the document.
The Harris campaign shared a graphic on X that claimed “Trump’s Project 2025 plan for workers” would “go after birth control and ban abortion nationwide.”
The plan doesn’t call to ban abortion nationwide, though its recommendations could curtail some contraceptives and limit abortion access.
What’s known about Trump’s abortion agenda neither lines up with Harris’ description nor Project 2025’s wish list.
Project 2025 says the Department of Health and Human Services Department should “return to being known as the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care.”
It recommends that the Food and Drug Administration reverse its 2000 approval of mifepristone, the first pill taken in a two-drug regimen for a medication abortion. Medication is the most common form of abortion in the U.S. — accounting for around 63 percent in 2023.
If mifepristone were to remain approved, Project 2025 recommends new rules, such as cutting its use from 10 weeks into pregnancy to seven. It would have to be provided to patients in person — part of the group’s efforts to limit access to the drug by mail. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge to mifepristone’s FDA approval over procedural grounds.
WATCH: Trump’s plans for health care and reproductive rights if he returns to White House The manual also calls for the Justice Department to enforce the 1873 Comstock Act on mifepristone, which bans the mailing of “obscene” materials. Abortion access supporters fear that a strict interpretation of the law could go further to ban mailing the materials used in procedural abortions, such as surgical instruments and equipment.
The plan proposes withholding federal money from states that don’t report to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention how many abortions take place within their borders. The plan also would prohibit abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, from receiving Medicaid funds. It also calls for the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that the training of medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, omits abortion training.
The document says some forms of emergency contraception — particularly Ella, a pill that can be taken within five days of unprotected sex to prevent pregnancy — should be excluded from no-cost coverage. The Affordable Care Act requires most private health insurers to cover recommended preventive services, which involves a range of birth control methods, including emergency contraception.
Trump has recently said states should decide abortion regulations and that he wouldn’t block access to contraceptives. Trump said during his June 27 debate with Biden that he wouldn’t ban mifepristone after the Supreme Court “approved” it. But the court rejected the lawsuit based on standing, not the case’s merits. He has not weighed in on the Comstock Act or said whether he supports it being used to block abortion medication, or other kinds of abortions.
“When you read (Project 2025),” Harris told a crowd July 23 in Wisconsin, “you will see, Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare.”
The Project 2025 document does not call for Social Security cuts. None of its 10 references to Social Security addresses plans for cutting the program.
Harris also misleads about Trump’s Social Security views.
In his earlier campaigns and before he was a politician, Trump said about a half-dozen times that he’s open to major overhauls of Social Security, including cuts and privatization. More recently, in a March 2024 CNBC interview, Trump said of entitlement programs such as Social Security, “There’s a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting.” However, he quickly walked that statement back, and his CNBC comment stands at odds with essentially everything else Trump has said during the 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump’s campaign website says that not “a single penny” should be cut from Social Security. We rated Harris’ claim that Trump intends to cut Social Security Mostly False.
Project 2025 does propose changes to Medicare, including making Medicare Advantage, the private insurance offering in Medicare, the “default” enrollment option. Unlike Original Medicare, Medicare Advantage plans have provider networks and can also require prior authorization, meaning that the plan can approve or deny certain services. Original Medicare plans don’t have prior authorization requirements.
The manual also calls for repealing health policies enacted under Biden, such as the Inflation Reduction Act. The law enabled Medicare to negotiate with drugmakers for the first time in history, and recently resulted in an agreement with drug companies to lower the prices of 10 expensive prescriptions for Medicare enrollees.
Trump, however, has said repeatedly during the 2024 presidential campaign that he will not cut Medicare.
The Harris campaign said Project 2025 would “eliminate the U.S. Department of Education” — and that’s accurate. Project 2025 says federal education policy “should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.” The plan scales back the federal government’s role in education policy and devolves the functions that remain to other agencies.
Aside from eliminating the department, the project also proposes scrapping the Biden administration’s Title IX revision, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also would let states opt out of federal education programs and calls for passing a federal parents’ bill of rights similar to ones passed in some Republican-led state legislatures.
Republicans, including Trump, have pledged to close the department, which gained its status in 1979 within Democratic President Jimmy Carter’s presidential Cabinet.
In one of his Agenda 47 policy videos, Trump promised to close the department and “to send all education work and needs back to the states.” Eliminating the department would have to go through Congress.
In the graphic, the Harris campaign says Project 2025 allows “employers to stop paying workers for overtime work.”
The plan doesn’t call for banning overtime wages. It recommends changes to some Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, regulations and to overtime rules. Some changes, if enacted, could result in some people losing overtime protections, experts told us.
The document proposes that the Labor Department maintain an overtime threshold “that does not punish businesses in lower-cost regions (e.g., the southeast United States).” This threshold is the amount of money executive, administrative or professional employees need to make for an employer to exempt them from overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
In 2019, the Trump’s administration finalized a rule that expanded overtime pay eligibility to most salaried workers earning less than about $35,568, which it said made about 1.3 million more workers eligible for overtime pay. The Trump-era threshold is high enough to cover most line workers in lower-cost regions, Project 2025 said.
The Biden administration raised that threshold to $43,888 beginning July 1, and that will rise to $58,656 on Jan. 1, 2025. That would grant overtime eligibility to about 4 million workers, the Labor Department said.
It’s unclear how many workers Project 2025’s proposal to return to the Trump-era overtime threshold in some parts of the country would affect, but experts said some would presumably lose the right to overtime wages.
Other overtime proposals in Project 2025’s plan include allowing some workers to choose to accumulate paid time off instead of overtime pay, or to work more hours in one week and fewer in the next, rather than receive overtime.
Trump’s past with overtime pay is complicated. In 2016, the Obama administration said it would raise the overtime to salaried workers earning less than $47,476 a year, about double the exemption level set in 2004 of $23,660 a year.
But when a judge blocked the Obama rule, the Trump administration didn’t challenge the court ruling. Instead it set its own overtime threshold, which raised the amount, but by less than Obama.
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The Peruvian government finalized its 2025 budget proposal at $67.12 billion, its finance ministry said on Thursday, up 4.5% from the previous year's budget and paving the way for a vote in the Andean nation's congress in the coming days.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that Israel has accepted a proposal to bridge differences holding up a cease-fire and hostage release in Gaza, and he called on Hamas to do the same, without saying whether concerns cited by the militant group had been addressed.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Monday with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, as he pushes for a halt to the fighting in Gaza. He called it a “decisive moment” and possibly the last chance to get a ceasefire and bring the hostages home.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks to media at the David Kempinski Hotel in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (Kevin Mohatt/Pool Photo via AP)
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, meets with Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (Kevin Mohatt/Pool Photo via AP)
Relatives of hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip and their supporters protest near the hotel where U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is staying during his visit in Tel Aviv, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Supporters of hostages who were kidnapped during the deadly October 7 attack attend a protest near the hotel where U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is staying during his visit in Tel Aviv, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (Kevin Mohatt/Pool Photo via AP)
Relatives of hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip and their supporters protest near the hotel where U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is staying during his visit with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and leadership about a deal to halt the war in Gaza and free the hostages, in Tel Aviv, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Israelis protest near the hotel where U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is staying during his visit with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and leadership about a deal to halt the war in Gaza and free hostages captured by Hamas on Oct. 7 attack, in Tel Aviv, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that Israel has accepted a proposal to bridge differences holding up a cease-fire and hostage release in Gaza, and he called on Hamas to do the same, without saying whether concerns cited by the militant group had been addressed.
The high-stakes negotiations have gained urgency in recent days as diplomats hope an agreement will deter Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah from avenging the targeted killings of two top militants that were blamed on Israel. The escalating tensions have raised fears of an even more destructive regional war .
Blinken spoke after holding a 2 1/2 hour meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in the day, and will travel to Egypt and Qatar for further negotiations. The three mediators have spent months trying to end the war in Gaza , with the talks repeatedly stalling.
“In a very constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu today, he confirmed to me that Israel supports the bridging proposal,” Blinken told reporters, without saying what the proposal entails. “The next important step is for Hamas to say ‘yes.’”
He added, however, that even if Hamas accepts the proposal, negotiators will spend the coming days working on “clear understandings on implementing the agreement.” He said there are still “complex issues” requiring “hard decisions by the leaders,” without offering specifics.
Hamas has said it is losing faith in the U.S. as a mediator, accusing American negotiators of siding with Israel as it makes new demands that the militant group rejects. Blinken did not say whether the proposal addressed Israel’s demand for control over two strategic corridors inside Gaza — which Hamas has said is a nonstarter — or other issues that have long bedeviled the negotiations .
Netanyahu said that he had a “good and important meeting” with Blinken and appreciated the “understanding that the United States has shown to our vital security interests, along with our shared efforts to release our hostages.” He added that efforts are being made to release the maximum number of hostages in the first stage of a the cease-fire deal.
Blinken’s ninth mission to the Middle East since the conflict began came days after mediators, including the United States, expressed renewed optimism that a deal was near. But Hamas has expressed deep dissatisfaction with the latest proposal, and Israel has said there were points on which it was unwilling to compromise.
Earlier on Monday, Blinken said it was a “decisive moment,” and “maybe the last” opportunity to free the hostages and secure a cease-fire.
“It’s also time to make sure that no one takes any steps that could derail this process,” he said in a veiled reference to Iran. “And so we’re working to make sure that there is no escalation, that there are no provocations, that there are no actions that in any way move us away from getting this deal over the line, or for that matter, escalating the conflict to other places and to greater intensity.”
Mediators will meet again this week to try to cement a cease-fire. Blinken will travel Tuesday to Egypt and Qatar, where Hamas maintains a political office.
The war began on Oct. 7 when thousands of Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others. Of those, about 110 are still believed to be in Gaza , though Israeli authorities say around a third are dead. More than 100 hostages were released in November during a weeklong cease-fire.
Dozens of Israelis demonstrated outside of the Tel Aviv hotel where Blinken was staying, holding photos of the hostages and demanding an immediate cease-fire.
“We know that only with vast help of the American administration a deal will come,” said Yehuda Cohen, whose 20-year-old son, Nimrod, is being held hostage in Gaza. “We are here to say it out loud: Blinken, Antony Blinken, please push Netanyahu for a deal at any price because I want my son to be free.”
Israel’s counterattack in Gaza has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, and devastated much of the territory. The war has plunged the territory of 2.3 million people into a humanitarian catastrophe, with aid groups now fearing an outbreak of polio .
Blinken said the United States shares those concerns and is working on a plan with Israel to ensure vaccines are made available “in the coming weeks,” saying “it is urgent, it is vital.”
Late last week, the three countries mediating the proposed cease-fire — Egypt, Qatar and the U.S. —reported progress on a deal under which Israel would halt most military operations in Gaza and release a number of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of hostages.
The evolving proposal calls for a three-phase process in which Hamas would release all hostages abducted during its Oct. 7 attack. In exchange, Israel would withdraw its forces from Gaza and release Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas accuses Israel of adding new demands that it maintain a military presence along the Gaza-Egypt border to prevent arms smuggling and along a line bisecting the territory so it can search Palestinians returning to their homes in the north to prevent militants from slipping in. Israel said those weren’t new demands, but clarifications of a previous proposal.
Late Sunday, Hamas said in a statement that Netanyahu has continued to set obstacles to a deal by demanding new conditions, accusing him of wanting to prolong the war. It said the mediators’ latest offer was a capitulation to Israel.
“The new proposal responds to Netanyahu’s conditions,” Hamas said.
Samy Magdy contributed to this report from Cairo.
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
COMMENTS
When writing your PhD proposal you need to show that your PhD is worth it, achievable, and that you have the ability to do it at your chosen university. With all of that in mind, let's take a closer look at each section of a standard PhD research proposal and the overall structure. 1. Front matter.
Reading is everything. From "I have a vague idea.." you should read everything you possibly can related to the vague idea. This exposes the missing links and fills in the gaps in your understanding. After 100 papers or a dozen monographs the idea will no longer be vague, and you'll have a concrete proposal. 53.
Written by Mark Bennett. You'll need to write a research proposal if you're submitting your own project plan as part of a PhD application. A good PhD proposal outlines the scope and significance of your topic and explains how you plan to research it. It's helpful to think about the proposal like this: if the rest of your application explains ...
The most important part of PhD is to learn how to find the right question. First focus on what particular topic you are interested. Start literature survey. From classic papers to new paper. When you will start literature survey you will understand what are the basic science behind the topic, or the methods.
Make sure you can ask the critical what, who, and how questions of your research before you put pen to paper. Your research proposal should include (at least) 5 essential components : Title - provides the first taste of your research, in broad terms. Introduction - explains what you'll be researching in more detail.
Research proposal examples. Writing a research proposal can be quite challenging, but a good starting point could be to look at some examples. We've included a few for you below. Example research proposal #1: "A Conceptual Framework for Scheduling Constraint Management".
Writing a Research Proposal. As part of the PhD application process, you may be asked to summarise your proposed research topic in a research proposal. This is a document which summarises your intended research and will include the title of your proposed project, an Abstract, Background and Rationale, Research Aims and Objectives, Research ...
This starts with double-checking that the questions of your thesis are obvious and unambiguous, followed by revising the rest of your proposal. "Make sure your research questions are really clear," says Sarah. "Ensure all the writing is clear and grammatically correct," adds Chelsea. "A supervisor is not going to be overly keen on a ...
1. Title. Your title should indicate clearly what your research question is. It needs to be simple and to the point; if the reader needs to read further into your proposal to understand your question, your working title isn't clear enough. Directly below your title, state the topic your research question relates to.
Therefore, in a good research proposal you will need to demonstrate two main things: 1. that you are capable of independent critical thinking and analysis. 2. that you are capable of communicating your ideas clearly. Applying for a PhD is like applying for a job, you are not applying for a taught programme.
Your research proposal is a concise statement (up to 3,000 words) of the rationale for your research proposal, the research questions to be answered and how you propose to address them. We know that during the early stages of your PhD you are likely to refine your thinking and methodology in discussion with your supervisors.
Identifying worthy problems in your field of research, and dissecting larger issues into of specific problems of manageable scope, is at least as hard as coming up with new ideas. In the end my feeling is that, especially for a researcher, all ideas are the result of one's curiosity. Manage to get some free time for thinking (and not ...
References: Do not forget to specify all the references at the end of the proposal. An obvious but very important point is the format of your research proposal. Make sure that the formatting of the document is consistent throughout and that the structure is clear. If possible, it can be a good idea to give the document to your academic tutor or ...
Here are a few aspects to include and remember when writing your PhD proposal: 1. Include a title page. The working title is usually around ten words long and indicates what you plan to study. Try to choose an interesting and thought-provoking title that attracts the reader's attention.
Including a timeline in your proposal can illustrate your time management capabilities to the Ph.D. program faculty. 9. Include a bibliography. At the end of your proposal, include a bibliography that lists all the sources you've used while creating the document. Include links to the sources if they're available.
Research proposals are used to persuade potential supervisors and funders that your work is worthy of their support. These documents set out your proposed research that will result in a Doctoral thesis. They are typically between 1,500 and 3,000 words. Your PhD research proposal must passionately articulate what you want to research and why ...
Learn how to write a rock-solid dissertation proposal, thesis proposal, or research proposal in this step by step tutorial, including practical examples. We...
This means that the proposal is less about the robustness of your proposed research design and more about showing that you have. 1. Critical thinking skills. 2. An adequate grasp of the existing literature and know how your research will contribute to it. 3. Clear direction and objectives.
Make sure that your research idea, question or problem is very clearly stated and well-grounded in academic research. Make sure that your proposal is well focused and conforms exactly to the submission requirements described here. Poorly specified, jargon-filled or rambling proposals will not convince us that you have a clear idea of what you ...
Take your time in composing your research proposal, carefully considering the requirements outlined below. Your proposal should not be more than 2,000 words. PhD degrees are awarded on the basis of a thesis of up to 100,000 words. The 'Summary of roles and responsibilities' in the University's Code of Practice for Supervisors and Research ...
That is the key thing to take away. You need a proposal. If you're watching this video, you're probably stuck. You're probably thinking, well, okay, I have to write a proposal. I don't know where to begin. I don't know how to do this. By the end of today's video, you will walk away with a draft outline or a rough outline of a proposal.
Come Up With Compelling Research Proposal Ideas Psychology. Before embarking on a psychology proposal, it is important to understand its main components. Only this way you can properly lay the groundwork for future study. ... The abstract, typically 250 to 350 words in length, provides a concise summary of your entire PhD proposal psychology ...
The Trump campaign also quickly slammed the proposal, with Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance claiming "Kamala Harris wants to give $25,000 to illegal aliens to buy American homes."
If somebody wants to make a comment about the changes coming to a state park and they can make the meeting, they'll have three minutes. Below are the locations for each state park proposal ...
It's unclear how many workers Project 2025's proposal to return to the Trump-era overtime threshold in some parts of the country would affect, but experts said some would presumably lose the ...
Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden has a similarly flawed unrealized gains tax proposal with a threshold ten times lower than Harris's ($10 million in assets or $1 million in income).
The superyacht can accommodate up to 12 guests in six suites, and is listed for rent for up to €195,000 (£166,000) a week. ... which Mr Lynch's PhD thesis and the software that made his fortune ...
The Peruvian government finalized its 2025 budget proposal at $67.12 billion, its finance ministry said on Thursday, up 4.5% from the previous year's budget and paving the way for a vote in the Andean nation's congress in the coming days.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that Israel has accepted a proposal to bridge differences holding up a cease-fire and hostage release in Gaza, and he called on Hamas to do the same, without saying whether concerns cited by the militant group had been addressed.. The high-stakes negotiations have gained urgency in recent days as diplomats hope an ...