Research Project Proposal

This assessment is designed to improve your skills in designing and planning a research project.

You are required to prepare a proposal for a 6weekresearch project. The research should be hypothesis driven and you should justify the project area on scientific grounds. Your tutor will help you to establish aims and objectives by providing you with some literature and discussing a possible project with you. Ethical and safety considerations are vital aspects of a research project and the proposal will require you to consider this too. The aim of this coursework is to get you to think about research project planning and learn how to approach experimental design. Ideally, this coursework will assist you at the time when you do start your research project laboratory work.

Think about various aspects of experimental design that were covered in the lectures when thinking about your own experiments. Investigate the literature to see how other researchers have tested their hypothesis and consider some of the experiments that they have carried out to help consider how you would analyse and interpret data.

Format for the Research Project Proposal
Examples of each section can be found on the MRC, BBSRC and EPSRC website. The support resources section of the Blackboard site will hold direct links to these areas.

Title (12 words)

Objectives(500 words)
List the main objectives of the research in order of priority. Include sufficient background for the reader to understand the 'gap in knowledge' that this project will address. Include an explanation of the aims (no more than 2 sentences) and objectives (no more than 4) of the project and make clear how these lead to the research hypothesis.

Lay description (500 words)
Describe the research in simple terms in a way that could be publicised to a general audience. Lay summaries are short accounts of research that are targeted at a general audience. They play a significant role in most research grant applications and can also be useful in supporting public engagement with research. Lay summaries are particularly important for research in medicine and health and usually are a prerequisite for grant applications made to the UK research councils and to medical charities.

Technical Summary (Experimental Plan) (700 words)
Describe the research in a manner suitable for a specialist reader. Give details of the general experimental approaches, study designs, and techniques that will be used. Describe the experiments that you will do during the project to help you meet your objectives. Include a Gantt Chart on a separate sheet to indicate the timing of the different experiments. (not included in word count)

Data Handling (200 words)
Describe the data you expect to generate and give details of how the data will be handled, how the results will be presented and what statistical tests will be used to assess any significant findings.

[Cite references where appropriate(the reference list is not included in word count, but the in text citations are).