A formal proposal has the same parts as an informal proposal, but usually has a higher stake outcome involved. Formal proposals are requested prior to undertaking thesis or dissertation research; in some departments, they are a requirement while in others, they are a planning tool. Formal proposals are part of the grant process, too, though granting agencies lay out more stringently how they want the researcher to write the proposal.
Proposal: Product or Planning Tool?
A proposal forces you to examine the questions you are interested in, find out what is already known, narrow to a set of questions you can answer given your time frame and resources, and devise a plan for getting done. In other words, a proposal is a critically important planning tool. It may also be a required document for completing a degree or competing for funding.
At this level, a more formal proposal tends to separate the components we’ve already covered into their own sections. Again, the task of doing so will help you think about your project and increase the likelihood that you will not wander aimlessly for months just “thinking” about stuff. This proposal will be longer and more detailed (ex: expect 2-5 pages for the literature review). Typical subheadings include: Objective, Significance, Literature Review/Background, Plan/Method, Tentative Bibliography, References. The first two may be switched in order, but they are still separate concepts: what you will find out is different from what impact that activity will have. To demonstrate this difference, let’s look at the published abstract of an NSF-funded dissertation award here at UF: Doctoral Dissertation Research: Communities and Sociopolitical Integration in Pre-Columbian Dominica, West Indies
Under the direction of Dr. Michael Heckenberger, Isaac Shearn will conduct a one-year archaeological study of Dominica, a volcanic island in the southern Lesser Antilles noted for its intense topographic variability, rugged coastline, high rainfall, dense tropical forests, and fertile volcanic soils. The main objective of the project is to characterize settlement patterns and artifact variability within and between micro-regions in order to determine the degree of integration between communities on Dominica during the Late Ceramic Age (ca. A.D. 1000-1500). The project provides the basis for Mr. Shearn’s doctoral dissertation research.
Note that “objective” here means the final outcome the research activity is to achieve; it is work and goal-oriented. There is no mention of why this work is of value nor of what ideas drive this objective.
Relatively little archaeological work has been done on the pre-Columbian period in Dominica in comparison to most other islands in the region. The proposed research represents the first major syntheses of long-term archaeological investigations on this island. The proposed research will help resolve important problems in contemporary Caribbean archaeology, as well as test new geospatial methods for identifying communities in the archaeological record of the islands. By applying contemporary theory on the archaeology of communities to region-specific problems, this research will advance both the understanding of regional community organization, and broader theoretical and methodological issues surrounding the concept of community in Anthropology. In particular, this project will help identify the nature of socio-political integration in smaller, rich islands of the Lesser Antilles, and whether they represent small scale complex societies, which has broad relevance to understanding similar settings in other world areas.
The first sentence highlighted in orange provides the “gap” motivating the project. The second sentence in light purple provides the significance of filling this gap for the field. The rest of the paragraph lays out the specific contributions this “major synthesis” will provide. Notice that certain key ideas are repeated: “contemporary Caribbean archaeology” and “communities”. This provides unity to the rather impressive list of contributions, both theoretical and practical, this project promises to provide.
The next section of the abstract clearly enumerates the research questions and briefly lists the steps to investigating the questions.
Three primary research questions guide the study:
1) Were multiple sites within micro-regions integrated communities or do sites represent basically autonomous local communities?; 2) Were communities within micro-regions autonomous or were they integrated with other such communities in other micro-regions into higher-order regional communities?; and 3) If integrated, how were higher-order communities organized with respect to sociopolitical hierarchy and/or heterarchy within and between micro-regions? To address these questions, specific objectives of the proposed research include: identification of sites; characterization of variability in terms of site size and structure; characterization of relations between sites within the micro-region based on distance, intervisibility, and geographic setting; and collection of artifacts to provide evidence of interaction, including intra- and inter-island exchange. Excavations and systematic surface collections will be conducted within three micro-regions of Dominica to provide comparable datasets from each micro-region, and from multiple sites within each micro-region. The analysis will indicate whether communities included hierarchical characteristics, such as centers for specialized socio-political, ritual or economic activities or were more heterarchical, involving structurally similar and/or autonomous local groups.
The example above is an abstract, not the proposal itself, but it provides a good model of how proposal thinking is shaped and how proposals are expressed. For example, there is some jargon, but not an overwhelming amount. A non-expert reader can follow this and even if s/he doesn’t particularly care for archaeology, the import of the research for the field is clear and credibly stated.
To begin working your research ideas into a formal proposal, reverse engineer the subheadings. Turn them into questions and answer the questions. Then, turn the answers into cohesive text.
- What is the Objective of your research? What final work will the activity produce?
- What is the significance of your research? How will the results change the field? How will activities change/impact the field? Will you impact theory, practice, or both? How so? Be specific and think big: impact can range from smaller ones (such as filling in missing information) to large ones (changing the theory of your field) to really big ones (implying changed practiced outside your field).
- What are your research questions? If “one” complex question, try breaking it into parts that logically connect.
- What activities will you do to answer the question? Write them out in excruciating detail. If equipment, materials, or instruments are involved, name them and state where you will access them. If participants are involved, state how you will get recruit them. If you need money/funding, what is your plan for getting it? (ex: Search NIH/NSF/NEH for UF Grants, put University of Florida in the “organization” search box to generate a list of UF researchers with current grants: use this info to guide your choices, and even to pay yourself!)
- What published authors/researchers are the key players in your area of research? (remember, you don’t have to agree with them for the researcher to be a key player) What names come up most often in literature searches covering only the last 5-10 years?
- What are the key publications in your area of research? (these can be important because of content, method, or theory). Create a list of key ideas from each publication. Create a second list where key ideas are categorized, e.g. according to content areas, method, theory, etc.
- What are the gaps/conflicts that motivate your research? Locate them in the literature (meaning, use the literature to show that we know X, and Y, but not Z, therefore Z is a worthwhile goal).
(from http://users.clas.ufl.edu/msscha/uwp/humfellow/color.html)
Having created the basic argument, the body of the proposal lays out the details to fully support what you’ve claimed for all the parts: the argument, the research question/goals, the impact, and the plan. This is not merely “background” information (the word, background, is hideously inadequate for capturing the needs of scholarly audiences). The body of the proposal — the research narrative — is where non-expert readers expect to be informed and expert readers expect to be convinced. This is also where excitement happens! A scintillating narrative draws the reader in, ensnares them in your project, and creates a champion for your cause.
As you might guess, this is easier said than done. Crafting a compelling research narrative is more than producing florid pronouncements promising importance. At this point, you might be muttering “but didn’t I just do this???” Umm, yes, you did — sort of. The work on the “core” produced the synopsis of the proposal (eventually, this will become the proposal abstract). But for the proposal to succeed, the readers need more: the narrative portion must demonstrate rather than announce; specifically, it will provide the details showing the “truth” of the project core you outlined on the first page and tie those details to explicit statements regarding why the project is important, how the project will be accomplished, and how the field is impacted by the new knowledge.
Writing Tip: A note on explicit statements — one of the weirdest feelings when writing proposals is how often you seem to say the same kinds of things and how very like announcements these sentences feel. This is one way in which proposal writing is very different from the complex, nuanced prose you’ll write for the published paper itself. The proposal is a goal-driven document read by someone making a yes/no funding decision based on the clear merit of the project. Logically, the reader is looking to create a statement like “This person is investigating how A is impacted by B when interpreted according to C so that we better understand D” (e.g. “how events as realized in sentence grammar are bounded by space and time so that we better understand the underlying similarity among human languages, regardless of how different they appear on the surface.”). The reader understands that the project is prospective, a promise of work to come that will have some outcome. The reader is also tired, has read a bunch of proposals — many of which were confusing/exhausting/puzzling/bad — and welcomes the writer who is not afraid of using clear, unambiguous prose!
For the purpose of drafting, use subheadings to formalize and organize your writing. You may not need subheadings for the final draft, but employing them now accomplishes two critical writing tasks: 1) keeps information organized according to ideas/moves of the proposal; 2) keeps you focused on only providing the information needed for the proposal.
The Research Narrative
Three basic components make up the research narrative:
- Rich discussion of the motivation and research question (lit review with a purpose);
- Explicit, well-argued explanation of the impact the outcomes will have on the field (how does it change? what do we now know? why does this matter?);
- Thoughtful, detailed plan of activities, materials to accomplish project that also demonstrates that method and objectives match (what is the plan and can the plan accomplish what the proposer claims?).
The literature review re-constructs the context, motivation, and research question in richer detail, demonstrating the claims made in the initial “significance” statement. Note this is not an exhaustive survey of the literature such as you’ll write for the first chapter of a dissertation. This is a purpose-driven, persuasive text much more akin to the “Introduction” of a research paper.
Rich Discussion
Process: take what you created in the last section and explode (in the librarian’s sense of the term) the major concepts that merit greater detail — these are the ideas that the discipline expert already knows, but the outside reader may not know or may have a different understanding of. This critical but non-expert reader is asking: “so what?” and is the main audience to address.
Then, explain the conflict in more detail — the reader situation is reversed here — the non-expert is already swayed by the way you laid out the problem but the discipline expert needs to be convinced that the conflict you see is legitimate. The goal is for the non-expert to react with “wow, pretty cool stuff” while the expert should be feeling “wow, I never saw it that way before”.
Step One: Establish Identities — take the nouns and explain who/what they are — this should include both straightforward identification (X is a type of Y that Z) and historical information (meant in the broadest way, from histories of meaning, use, geography to controversies and development).
Step Two: Explicate Relationships — take the claimed relationships, verbs, processes, events, activities and explain all the dots from A to B (if you claim that X was never liberal, then the reader will want to know how the quality was ascribed to X in the first place)
Examples from Gender, Conversion and Boundaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean —http://www.neh.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/199/grants/european_history_sample_fellowships_application_i.pdf
Why it Matters — outcome and impact
Interestingly, both expert and non-expert reader look for impact to be convinced of your proposal. It is not enough to have the good idea, identify the problem, even show an entirely credible plan — you also need to show that you know what your work will mean when its done. Think of drawing this as a sound wave: your outcome is the source and each successive wave is the next domain out in the world: personal scholarship, immediate disciplinary context, specific discipline, larger field/academic stakeholders, non-academic stakeholders, specific public sectors/groups, public, society, culture. Your project may not have consequences that reach all levels, but you should MINIMALLY be able to identify potential influence at least through academic stakeholders.
Convincing and Credible Plan — what are you going to do? How will you do it? Can you perform it?
First, readers must know how you will achieve your goals, both in terms of specific steps (research archives of X place) and interpretative frame (perspective driving analysis and synthesis). Second, readers must be convinced that the steps and frame will actually result in achieving goals. “…an argument as to why these tasks add up to the best attack of the problem” (The Art of Writing Proposals). Finally, readers must know that you can in real life actually access the materials laid out in the plan.
