Introducing Research Questions & Hypotheses in a Proposal or Thesis

Introducing Research Questions & Hypotheses in a Proposal or Thesis

Oct 01, 2024Rene Tetzner

Introducing Research Questions & Hypotheses in a Proposal or Thesis

Not all proposals (or theses) introduce explicit research questions and hypotheses, but most doctoral research is based on questions and hypotheses whether they are openly stated or not. Research questions are the questions you ask about the topic, problem or phenomenon you are exploring in order to guide and shape your research, while hypotheses are the tentative working answers you develop based on previous scholarship, predominant theories, natural laws and tendencies, and your own assumptions and expectations. Determining exactly what your research questions and hypotheses are can help you define and understand your research more clearly, and including them in your introduction not only allows you to focus on the exact wording and content of those questions and hypotheses, but also opens the door to commentary and assistance from your supervisor and other members of your thesis committee. Your research questions and hypotheses will undoubtedly be closely related to the aims and objectives of your research, and, like those aims and objectives, they can be effectively included in your introduction by displaying them in a list and/or numbering them in order of importance or in relation to your methodology.

Finally, outlining the contents of the proposal (or thesis) as a whole is traditional in an introduction, so a brief summary of the chapters and other sections that follow the introduction usually closes an introduction. In a proposal introduction, this may cover only what you include in the proposal itself or it may also include chapters and sections that have not yet been written, but will ultimately appear in the final thesis. Your supervisor will be able to tell you which approach is most appropriate for the proposal stage of a thesis in your discipline and department. In the introduction for the thesis itself, however, the contents of the entire thesis should, of course, be considered in the summary.

Not all of the elements I have mentioned in this and previous postings on the proposal process will necessarily be required in any given proposal (or thesis) introduction, and in some introductions, further elements may be needed. University or department guidelines or the advice you receive from your thesis committee may necessitate presenting the elements of your introduction in separate sections, which are always a good idea because they make your text more accessible and digestible for readers. You may also need to present these sections in a specific order, or you may be able to arrange them in whatever order seems most appropriate for providing the introductory material your proposal (and thesis) requires. If you are in doubt about how to organise your introduction (which can be a notoriously difficult chapter to organise in an effective manner), remember that your supervisor and the other members of your thesis committee may be able to offer practical advice regarding what might be effectively rearranged, added, deleted, shortened, clarified or expanded, so do address the problem with them as you work on your chapter and again in the proposal meeting if necessary.

Why Our Editing and Proofreading Services?
At Proof-Reading-Service.com we offer the highest quality journal article editing, dissertation proofreading and online proofreading services via our large and extremely dedicated team of academic and scientific professionals. All of our proofreaders are native speakers of English who have earned their own postgraduate degrees, and their areas of specialisation cover such a wide range of disciplines that we are able to help our international clientele with research editing to improve and perfect all kinds of academic manuscripts for successful publication. Many of the carefully trained members of our manuscript editing and proofreading team work predominantly on articles intended for publication in scholarly journals, applying painstaking journal editing standards to ensure that the references and formatting used in each paper are in conformity with the journal’s instructions for authors and to correct any grammar, spelling, punctuation or simple typing errors. In this way, we enable our clients to report their research in the clear and accurate ways required to impress acquisitions proofreaders and achieve publication.

Our scientific proofreading services for the authors of a wide variety of scientific journal papers are especially popular, but we also offer manuscript proofreading services and have the experience and expertise to proofread and edit manuscripts in all scholarly disciplines, as well as beyond them. We have team members who specialise in medical proofreading services, and some of our experts dedicate their time exclusively to dissertation proofreading and manuscript proofreading, offering academics the opportunity to improve their use of formatting and language through the most exacting PhD thesis editing and journal article proofreading practices. Whether you are preparing a conference paper for presentation, polishing a progress report to share with colleagues, or facing the daunting task of editing and perfecting any kind of scholarly document for publication, a qualified member of our professional team can provide invaluable assistance and give you greater confidence in your written work.

If you are in the process of preparing an article for an academic or scientific journal, or planning one for the near future, you may well be interested in a new book, Guide to Journal Publication, which is available on our Tips and Advice on Publishing Research in Journals website.



更多文章