Let’s assume that most of the writing you’ve done about your research idea (whether for a specific class or a larger project) has mostly been for an audience of one or two: you, perhaps an instructor or mentor, perhaps lab mates as well. In other words, the words generated about the research have mostly been for your benefit, a means of transforming knowledge for your own use. You need to detach that writing and configure it for someone else’s benefit. Below are some ways to do that.
To start, sketch out your idea — just the general idea of what you want to do and why. Write that down. Use the questions below to begin unpacking the different materials buried in your idea. Prepare to be irritated! You’ll use this info later, but right now, much of it may seem nitpicky or even pointless. That’s okay! We happen to know that the most frequent reasons proposals get rejected is failure to identify the correct audiences and failure to explain how the field changes because of the work. Whether you’re ready with the answers right now or not, you need to have these notions percolating in the back of your brain.
- Use the wh-questions to manufacture different POVs on your research — who, what, why, where, how, how much/often/many. You’ll need these to write and also to talk about your work.
- Stakeholders: who does this research impact, who is involved, who is part of the literature, who would the outcomes matter to — think in “ripples” from those like you to the public:
- Research Topic: what is this research about, what is its main idea, what can be done with the outcome, what will we know that we don’t know now, what motivates the work
- why does this research matter, when will it matter
- where does this idea come from, where would outcomes be meaningful
- how does answering this question impact the field, how many ways can it be tested
- how often does this situation occur, how many times in history
- Define and/or operationalize terms
- Provide definitions for all the major lexical items in your research question — nouns, verbs, modifiers (adjectives, adverbs)
- Operationalize modifiers and degree terms (make them measurable)
Here’s a word doc to download to help you begin filling in these questions.