Your brief Research Proposal documents your understanding of the essential concepts acquired in weeks 1-7. You are asked to write a short research proposal to answer both a qualita

Research Philosophy and Practice– C11BU

Coursework One: Qualitative and Quantitative Research Proposal

Your first assignment for this course is to write a brief Research Proposal. Your assignment should be submitted through Canvas only, in Week 8 on Thursday 7th March 2024. Submission times (which are synchronized across the campuses) are as follows:

• Edinburgh registered students should submit by 4pm UK time.

• Dubai registered students should submit by 8pm UAE time.

• Malaysia registered students should submit by 11:59pm Malaysian time.

Your assignment should be 1,400 words ±10%. The word count excludes the list of references at the end of the document. In-text citations, however, are included in the word count.

Your task For this assessment, you are expected to write a brief research proposal that documents your understanding of the essential concepts acquired in weeks 1-7. You are asked to write a very short research proposal to answer both a qualitative and a quantitative research question about a suitable topic. Please refer to the Coursework One rubric on Canvas for the weighting of each component (a word length is suggested in parentheses, but you are free to allocate word lengths across sections, as long as all sections and elements are addressed effectively).

1 – Title and Background (circa 400 Words)

This component of your submission comprises two elements, which will be evaluated

together:

1. A title that clearly and accurately capture what specifically your project aims to contribute.

2. A brief introduction and background review of the literature, which illustrates the overarching problem the study will contribute to and the specific gaps in knowledge that the research questions will directly address.

2 – Research aims and Research Questions (circa 200 Words)

State, if/as appropriate, the broad aim of your research, and articulate two specific research questions. Each research question should be clear, specific and answerable using the approach described later.

• One research question should be best suited to be answered using quantitative methods.

• One research question should be best suited to be answered using qualitative methods.

Present them in the order you prefer, and number them so that you can refer to them later.

3 – Approach to answering the questions (circa 400 Words: i.e. circa 200 words for

each question)

For each of the research questions, briefly describe the data collection approach (quantitative in one case, qualitative in the other) that you would use to answer them. Key elements to consider include:

• What: data collected to answer the question.

• Who/What: participants (or documents, etc.) it would be collected from.

• Where: the context (location, source, etc.) of data collection.

• How: the general strategy for sampling, recruitment, and data collection methodology.

4 – Philosophical positioning, strengths and limitations (circa 400 Words)

This section should critically discuss the study proposed. Questions to be explored in this section include: • What philosophical position would you adopt to answer your research questions?

What implications would this have for your methodology? • What are the main strengths of the approach proposed, in relation to the research

questions? And what are the main limitations? May any research design strategies be considered to mitigate some of the limitations?

Referencing Each section of this submission should refer to academic literature to help inform the reflection. In doing so, students are expected to use Harvard Style referencing accuracy. This relates to both the in-text citations and the reference page. Information on Harvard Style referencing can be found on Canvas.

Submitting your assignment Your assignment should be submitted through Canvas only. Details of how to do so are provided on the ‘Assessment on this Course’ module on Canvas. Please do not email your submissions to your course leader; submissions are strictly through Canvas. Submissions not uploaded via Canvas will not be marked. Documents must be submitted in Word (.doc/.docx) format.

Concluding Notes Students are not expected to show a deep and/or technical understanding of the topic, literature or methods proposed. At this stage of the course, students are expected to show familiarity with the general approaches used in research and to be able to apply them creatively in new research ideas of interest to them.

Students, in other words, are expected to show that they have acquired a general, but correct and coherent understanding of what research looks like, what it aims to do, and how it goes about answering questions using qualitative and quantitative methods.