I’m going to start a series of posts on writing your dissertation — my thoughts on each component of the process. They will be short and sweet to save your reading time, to express my thinking about each section, and to give you a chance to ask questions or give comments so I can clarify or expand in the most useful way.

And since research projects generally start with a proposal…let’s go there first.

The proposal fundamentally needs to be a “recipe” for your research – one detailed enough that the project could be executed by someone else if you weren’t the one to implement it.

But it has several other functions as well. These include to:

(1) force you to think through the rationales and details of what you want to accomplish – the why, what , who, and how – by writing the proposal itself. Just like in other learning, you only really grapple with and master the details once you have to write them down in your own words

(2) allow an advisor/ supervisor (or committee member or funding agency) to confirm that the written plan makes sense, is a good use of your own and others’ resources, is ethical, and to help you identify or iron out any kinks in your processes

(3) be a kind of contract between the proposer and the review source (e.g., academic, funding) that if executed as planned, the project will be acceptable for the purpose as described.

(4) provide you with your own recipe to follow once you actually start the research. Otherwise, you may find yourself doing something different than you proposed (breaking the “contract”) or getting lost in all the potential decisions.

There is a kind of 5th function when a proposal is written as part of coursework, of course. The communication of the thinking you did in (1) lets your supervisor establish whether you sufficiently understand both your own research question and the research process itself — which is the whole point of a dissertation as a learning exercise, right?

Without the specifics, these functions can’t be accomplished.

In my experience, students often lack adequate detail in their proposals for the reader to confirm that the student really understands the rationales and decisions of their study and has fully thought through the project. That is, they aren’t demonstrating their learning to a level that the adviser can be confident the student is in command of their own project.

That’s why I recommend students treat the proposal like a recipe, where they have to identify the ingredients, where and how to shop for those ingredients, cooking supplies required, steps to take to prepare the ingredients and cook them, how to know when it’s “ready”, and how its deliciousness (or lack thereof) will be evaluated. The more detail, the better. Even if you have page limitations, it’s still best to “write long”, then be able to edit down but know which essential elements need to stay.