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How to get instant approval for PhD Proposal

Preparing a proposal that will get approved without many objections is a challenge for most research candidates. Get complete information on the guidelines that your college follows regarding length and writing style for a proposal. While some candidates write the proposal before they actually start working on the project, it is wise to do some groundwork prior to penning down the proposal. This will help you face the committee’s questions satisfactorily.

Keeping in mind the following tips will enable you to get the proposal approved without hassles:

Follow the Format

Every college has a definite format for the proposal, which is similar to that prescribed for PhD dissertation. The most usual format is:

 Title page
 Abstract
 Introduction/ Problem statement
 Literature review
 Research methodology and design
 Conclusion

The chapters have to be in the specific sequence and within the required word limit. The presentation aspects like font size and style, headers and pagination also need to be perfect.

Select Relevant Resources

Be very careful while choosing the resources that you will use for research. The literature review chapter is crucial in a proposal as it builds the base of research. The committee must be sure that your references are reliable, relevant, recent and free from plagiarism. You may need to get a minimum number of references, as required by the college. Apart from online resources and library, you can access unpublished as well as published articles of prior researchers.

Provide Citations

Apart from choosing references, citing them as per the proper style is also important. Most colleges use APA style; however, you may be asked to follow any other style like MLA, AMA, AP, ACS, Harvard, etc. Make sure that you follow the same for literature review as well as bibliography.

Prepare Strong Research Design

The research design and methodology that you present in the proposal will reveal to the committee the strength of the study that you are about to undertake. It must be detailed and rationale for choosing a methodology over others must be stated.

The data collection and analysis methods, as well as dependent and independent variables, must also be identified here. The assumptions used for study must be free from validity issues.

Write with precision, using scholarly language and highlight the reasons for your study in the abstract. Lastly, edit and revise the proposal before presenting it.

Effective Writing Style of a Journal Paper

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Publication in any reputed academic or practitioner’ journal is a much coveted dream of any researcher, and in order to achieve that dream, researchers across several academic domains across the world strive to come up with superior quality research papers. However, in most of the cases, this dream does not get fulfilled, as most of those research papers get rejected by the reputed journals. Researchers think that perhaps the research works being carried out by them are not of that superior quality to get published in those journals, but in actuality the reason a little bit different. Devoid of carrying out the study in most effective manner, the details of that study may not be presented that effectively, and owing to that reason, the deserved depth of the study is not reflected in terms of the written form. Therefore, writing the journal papers in an effective manner is a very important task, which every researcher has to focus on.

In order to adapt an effective writing style for journal papers, there are a number of rules, which have to be followed strictly. Following are glimpses of those rules:

Before stating the details of the study, it is required to develop a background of the study, which will incorporate the details of other studies being carried out in different contexts across the world. This will nevertheless provide enough reason behind conducting that study, and will also state significance of the study in the given context.
While carrying out review of literature, most of the papers have to be cited from the target journal, or from journals in the same category.
It is needed to avoid the terms like “I”, “we” etc. and the paper has to maintain a consistency of grammar throughout.

To know more about various aspects of the effective writing style for a journal paper, kindly browse through the pages of www.phdwritingcoach.com

Why Three Essay Format is Better

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While carrying out a research based study and inscribing a dissertation report based on the same, majorly two types of format are generally used across several academic and research institutions across the world. For just a moment, leaving apart the aspects of the formatting part, if quality articles cannot be produced from a research based dissertation, then in that case the relevance of the dissertation is reduced to a great extent. Therefore, it is always the responsibility of a researcher to bring out quality journal articles from a dissertation. Effectiveness and efficiency of bringing out quality articles from a dissertation depends on how a researcher has formatted the entire dissertation work. For that reason, the formatting part of a dissertation plays a very crucial role in the future publication process.

There are mainly two types of dissertation formats being followed in academic institutions across the world. First one is the chapter-wise format, and the second one is the three essay format. Now breaking, joining, and reformatting the chapters into the form a journal article may turn out to be a tedious task, and in times, it may not be prove out to be a useful one. Compared to this, three-essay format is a pretty straightforward method. Under preview of this format, researchers have to inscribe three extensive research papers, based on three particular research questions. Now, when the question comes to publication, researchers do not need to write papers separately for journals, as they have readymade dissertation chapters, in the form of papers. In this way, the researchers can focus on their research questions in a more distinctive manner, as one chapter will consist of one paper, and that paper will focus on one research question only. Therefore, chances of overlapping or replicating the results turn out to be lower that the former format.

For more information about various aspects of the three essay format, kindly browse through the pages of www.phdwritingcoach.com.

Presenting Literature Review Precisely

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When we talk about literature reviews, we must remember that they can be a part of a comprehensive research report, as well as a standalone review report. In case you are writing a literature review as a separate document, then you will need to include an introduction, details about the topic you are covering, and a conclusion mentioning the scope of further research on the topic.

A literature review chapter, which is a part of a wider research report will comprise of a critical analysis of the sources which are used in the study, along with a brief introduction, stating the hypothesis of the study. Writing the hypothesis is important because you will be studying and grouping the references according to the relation that they hold with the theory proposed. The references will not just be listed, but will be analyzed to point out their salient features. You will need to critically study the ideas presented in the references to judge how they have been structured, whether they are valid and have any practical implications, whether the analysis done is accurate and clear, and what methods were used to justify these theories. Some ways in which the references can be organized in the review are:

Chronological: this is a common method, wherein the references you are using are arranged on the basis of the date when they were published. In case you have selected some sources which are unpublished (like a thesis or conference report) then you will consider the date when they were drafted. This method shows the evolution of an idea over time.
Alphabetical: if you follow this method, the sources will be organized according to the names of the authors. This style is also used when you are drafting the bibliography.
Theoretical Relation: studying the relation that the sources have with the present research work is the motive of the literature review. So arranging them according to the relation that the bear with the hypothesis is a logical method. Here, sources which support the idea you present are presented first, followed by those which oppose it.
Methodological: many colleges ask scholars to arrange the sources as per the method that they follow for research. So, they are grouped on the basis of qualitative, quantitative, experimental and other forms of methodologies.

Whatever method you follow for arrangement, make sure that it is uniform throughout the chapter. Citations are crucial part of presentation of a literature review. It is said that it’s better to over cite than under cite. Follow the precise citation style that is prescribed by your college and give all details required (name of author, publisher name, publication year, page numbers, etc.) in proper order. In the end of the chapter, you have to give a summary, comparing all the sources. Such comparison will be on the basis of methods of study, sample considered and key findings.

Carrying Out Qualitative Analysis

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The methodology that you use for a research work is essentially the approach adopted for collecting and assessing the information that will lead you to the required results. Qualitative methodology is followed mostly for social science studies, which involve subjective information, not numeric data. Examples of such projects are case studies, ethnographic research and grounded theory studies. An important aspect of such research is that it focuses on knowing about the behavioral pattern of the target group, interaction between participants, events and their causes. So, it is also concerned with ‘how’ and ‘why’ things happen, instead of just ‘what’ and ‘when’.

Since the information collected is mostly in non-numeric form, it has to be made measurable before it can be analyzed. This is done by assigning codes to the data. Coding is the process of giving weight or values to the information according to a pre defined scale. For most data sets, the information is segmented in related groups, and some tags or values are assigned to each group. The analysis is done on the basis of how these values are spread and the correlation between them. When the information is structured, then coding may be done without segmenting it further. While coding qualitative data, researchers must remember to keep the variety, tone and intrinsic meaning of the information intact.

Another method of analyzing such information without coding is abstraction. It is a process in which the matter is successively summarized, till a point where a very crisp and meaningful summary is attained for the entire study and this serves as the conclusion. However, the problem here is that some fine points which impact the study may be left out while summarizing, leading to a false outcome.

Content analysis is another popular way of analyzing qualitative data. Here, the information is broken down in small, related parts. Then the researcher tries to find similar words or phrases in the text. These can be thought of as keywords. The analysis is conducted on the basis of frequency of such words and their meaning. Content analysis can be of two types: conceptual analysis and relational analysis. While the first one only looks for concepts and provides an outcome on basis of the presence of such concept, the latter goes a step further to investigate the relation between the words and phrases that support a certain concept.

Qualitative analysis has become easier with the advent of computerized techniques for analysis of such information. Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software is a collective term used for such programs. Further, there are specialized tools like NVivo and ATLAS.ti which enable analysis and interpretation of qualitative data. Using them, one can go arrange and assess conversations, video clips, website sources and other forms of data. Learning the use of these tools and applying them accurately will help research scholars working with large sets of qualitative data.

Importance of Research Design

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One of the important aspects that will lay the foundation for your dissertation is the research design. Every project needs to have a layout before it is brought into action. Just like you cannot build a house or a ship without a design, you need to have a framework for research work as well. This is the plan which needs to be implemented to bring about the desired results.

Research design can be fixed or flexible. The type of design you adopt depends upon the nature of research. Experimental projects will have a fixed design, as you know the exact steps which you will follow. On the other hand, case studies and ethnographic studies, which are based largely on observation, have a flexible design because the process depends on the initial findings.

The components of a research design are well defined, and you have to lay equal emphasis on all of them. Identifying these elements needs in depth understanding of the research goals and resources. There may be viability factors, like limitation of time and money, according to which you will specify the design elements. The components are as follows:

Methodology of research: This is the most important aspect, as it will decide the direction which your study takes. Broadly, the methodology can be qualitative or quantitative.
You can also qualify the method as descriptive, correlational, experimental, non-experimental, or meta-analytical.
Information required: What information you need for completing the study will also be defined here. The scope of information will depend on the objectives of the study.
Sample size and target group: Having the accurate sample size is essential for getting the results right. A very small sample will not represent the population properly, while a massive one will only cause duplication of task. You also need to define the target group which you will be covering for the study. It may be a class of students, an ethnic group, a professional group, etc.
Mode of data collection: There are many media of gathering information. So you need to choose the best one and mention the same while making research design. You can opt for a survey, online poll, interview, recordings, etc.
Data analysis tools: Identifying the tests that you will use for data analysis is important. The choice will depend on the nature of research and methodology followed. There are a number of programs and identifying the right one when preparing the design will save you trouble later.

The research design will be checked for completeness, coherence and validity in all aspects. It must be feasible to implement and ensure correct results. While there must be certainty in the design, it is necessary that you keep it somewhat pliable, so that it can be altered according to change in research situations.

Preparing For a Research Study

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When you are pursuing a course which entails research study as a compulsory component for completion of the course, then you will have to brace yourself for it. This preparation will have to be mental, economical, physical and academic. Let us see how:

You will need to take many crucial decisions, which will impact your study
Many studies require team work for which you will have to collaborate with peers and work in tandem
Taking approval from the concerned organizations is another hassle that you need to face
Long hours of study are essential. Spending time in the field for survey or observation, in libraries for finding references, and in laboratories for experiments will need ample energy.
There might be some cost involved in the research work for gathering sources and conducting tests. Your institute may or may not bear these costs.
Though your research will be based on the subject in which you are specializing, there will be many facets with which you are not familiar. You need to understand them as well.
Technical aspects like citation guides, analysis tools and presentation styles will demand academic preparation
Documentation in itself is a major challenge. Writing a bulky document (a few hundred pages) will not be easy and needs perseverance, skill and concentration.

If you make prior preparations, then getting your research work started will be comparatively easy. While handling the economic and physiological aspects is in your control, to get the academic and mental factors on track, you will need the help of research guides who have experience in the field. So another important preparation that you must do is to find a mentor who will offer you reliable and timely advice, help you at all stages of research and lead you to success.

Your university’s research committee will assign a supervisor or guide, who will be responsible for answering your queries and ensuring that the study progresses smoothly. To avail maximum guidance, you will have to make your work schedule and share it with the guide. You must also be aware of the schedule which she follows and plan your meetings in advance. Regular communication with the guide is necessary. This can be done through email or face to face meetings.

However, many a times the assigned mentor is not available for help. In such circumstances, finding external help will also be a part of your preparations for research. Search for reliable mentors who will guide you with dedication and you will save a lot of hassles.