The Research Proposal

Once you have your senior thesis topic, conducted your preliminary research, and decided your general approach, it's time to put it in writing. In its most generic form, the proposal consists of three basic elements: the proposal itself, the literature review, and a bibliography. Your department or advisor might have more specific guidelines for this process.

The Proposal

The research proposal is a description of your intentions. You will already have chosen a topic and conducted preliminary research. At this point you need to state the central problem clearly as well as your methods of resolving this problem. Here are some examples of those methods:

Textual analysis of primary and secondary sources;
A statement of a particular approach, such as a feminist, Marxist, or Freudian reading of your sources (this is pretty advanced stuff);
Use of human subjects; this issue can be delicate, and you will need to follow strict guidelines according to your field. You may also need to request permission from your department. See Other Ethics Issues for more information;
Any statistical analysis or other scientific research method;
If you are writing a creative thesis (short stories, for example), you will need to explain your approach.

Once again, your advisor or department will have specific instructions for your proposal.

The Literature Review

The next step is to conduct the literature review. The lit review is a survey of what others have written on your topic. It proves to your advisor (and to yourself) that no one has already written your paper for you. But it also shows your familiarity with the issues involved with the topic. You won't discuss every source you find, of course, just the most relevant. Your lit review will eventually end up in the thesis itself.

The Literature Review (University of Toronto): Tips and hints on how to write the review.
The Literature Review Process: A Tutorial (Oregon State University): Complete with a flowchart!

The Working Bibliography

The bibliography is a reference list of the sources you've found on your topic. You will include those listed in the review as well as others that will be useful. You need not have read them all, but you should be able to defend your choices. Once again, the bibliography shows that you are ready to proceed to the next step.

These sources do not have to be articles or books. Depending on your topic, they might be Internet resources, personal interviews, or audio/visual recordings. Be sure to consult your preferred style manual for citing these formats.

Also, when putting together long bibliographies, you might want to invest in bibliographic management software, such as Reference Manager, EndNote, or ProCite. These tools do a lot of the formatting and busy work for you, but don't depend entirely on them, because they sometimes make mistakes.

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This page created by Christopher Ryland 25 August 2000. Last updated 25 August 2000.