Before you start writing your research proposal or abstract..

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‘Research is a process, with a mixed of yourself and lots of others’
Photography by Nurul Rahman June 2011

Before you start writing your research proposal or abstract, this might be useful to you.

Research needs to start with problem, here problem can means issues, some gaps that you think need to be filled or some theory that need to be clarify. Although there are some research mostly in science is more on the adding the methodologies and not so much on the problems. But best is to find problems that should be driven your research. If no problem not issues, so why do you want to waste time to do this research, and that means there is no contribution of knowledge.

This is a methodologies to start writing research proposal or abstract. it is known as QAME (introduced to me by Elizabeth Dori Tunstall, a design anthropologist, is an anthropologist method adopting Alan Barnard’s framework (2000) in ‘History and Theory in Anthropology’ of the theory as questions, assumptions, methods, and evidence.

Q: Question
Once the problems have been identified, sets or a research question is necessary, to guide you to start the research exploration.

A:Assumption
Any research need to start with assumption. So you have to have some assumption, with some research that you have done for this proposal.

M: Methodology
It is important to think and include in the research proposal sets of methodologies. Remember this is only a proposal so some of the methodology can be drop once the research started if its not suitable.

E: Evidence
This is early literature review where you demonstrate that you have done research on the key authors in this areas, also some theories that can be useful to use or explore. Also remember to provide credits to everything. This will demonstrate how you are sensible and rigorous in conducting this research.

Also this book written by David Evans and Paul Gubra How to write a better thesis’ (2002) published by Melbourne University Press is a great book, easy reading and have some sense of humor just perfect to start with if you think this is the career path that you want to take or spend in few years.

Well, hope this will help your research proposal writing. All the best and good luck.

NR