NRS303 Research Proposal Assignment Brief | UoS

Assessment Details

This is your final piece of work and is predominantly self-directed.  This assessment brief will help you to structure your research proposal. 

Your submission requires a front sheet, which is provided for you in the template document for the structure of your research proposal (see Units>Academic Writing – General Support>Template Document for NRS303).

Your research proposal should have 5 key areas:

• Introduction/Background to topic area
• Literature Search (to include a rationale, structured search strategy) 
• Critical Analysis (of the literature found via the search strategy)
• Methodology
• Appendix (to include materials that would be submitted as part of an ethical review, e.g., participant information sheets, consent forms, etc.)

Your work should be formatted as follows:

• Suitable sans serif font (e.g., Arial, Verdana, Tahoma). 
• Font size of 11 or 12 points. 
• Left-aligned paragraphs.
• Paragraph line spacing should be a minimum of 1.5 and a maximum of 2. 

The work should also have an abstract (no more than 250 words), and this should come before the contents page. The abstract is NOT included within the overall word count.

Please note that any tables, figures, etc., do not contribute to the word count, BUT they should be used appropriately (e.g., tables should not include excessive amounts of text).

Tables should have a title that is above the table.  Graphs and figures (for example, your PRISMA chart) should have a title that is below the figure. 

Important – Please ensure that you read and understand the following:

• DO NOT collect any data.  This is a proposal, not a complete piece of research.  Therefore, no data should be collected.  If you do collect data, this is an issue of academic integrity (academic misconduct).
• DO NOT propose that you undertake a systematic review or collect secondary data.  You may not be able to meet all of the learning outcomes for this module if you do this.  

Outline of Research Proposal

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Your introduction should highlight some of the background to your topic area.  For example, if you are focusing on clinical education of nurses in intensive care, then you will need to introduce these areas, provide key definitions, appropriate statistics, etc., within these areas (for example, what is clinical education, what is intensive care, what is the nurse’s role in intensive care, etc.).  

You should end your overview with a broad research question (this can be refined when discussing your aims and objectives following the literature review).  The literature review will be used to focus this question and develop your aims and objectives. 

Chapter 2 – Search Strategy

Think of this as a methods section that demonstrates how you found the papers that you included in your critical analysis.  You need to fully outline why you have chosen to search where you have, how you searched the databases, and why you have chosen to do it in the way that you have.  Below are some bullet points of the information to include (and of course, you will need to provide references to support/justify the decisions made):

• Question/Search framework that you have used (PICO, PEO, PCC, SPIDER, etc.).
• Databases that you have chosen to search in.
• Search terms that you have used (and all synonyms that you have used).
• How have you combined these search terms? 
• Inclusion and exclusion criteria were used to filter through the papers. 
• Keep a record of the articles that have been actively excluded (i.e., that met the exclusion criteria).
• PRISMA flowchart of the process.
• How you are going to critically analyse the literature (e.g., what frameworks or tools will you use to do this).

Important Note

You will need to include screenshots of the searches that you have undertaken in the appendix as proof that you undertook the search.  Failure to do so may lead to academic misconduct (as you may have potentially falsified results). 

Chapter 3 - Critical analysis of the literature 

Initially, you will need to provide an overview of the literature that you have found.  The best way of doing this is by giving the reader a study characteristics table.  This table will vary depending on the nature of your question and the papers you have included in your analysis.  It should give the reader an overview of each paper. 

You can structure your critical analysis in one of two ways.  You can approach this from a paper-by-paper perspective.  This may lead to a larger section here, thus increasing the words used in this section. 

The alternative approach is to discuss the papers more in terms of analysing them across themes that appear within the research.  This should include both a methodological perspective and a findings perspective.

Your literature review chapter should finish with (or your methodology can include) an aim and a set of objectives. 

3.x (or 4.1) - Aim and Objectives

The aim should be a development from your research question (given your findings in the literature review).  The aim can be broad and more of a statement, whereas the objectives should use verbs that are clear and active (for example, identify, assess, compare, analyse, etc.)  and that break down the aim into smaller and more manageable chunks.  

You can also use the SMART test (see teaching session) to ensure that your objectives are suitable. 

An example aim may be ‘to analyse the implementation of a coaching model for the preceptorship period of intensive care nurses’.  This could then be broken down into smaller objectives, such as ‘compare the job satisfaction of preceptee nurses pre- and post-implementation of the coaching model’. 

Chapter 4 - Methods

Your methods section should begin with a breakdown of the different approaches available for your research (e.g., qualitative and quantitative).  The chapter should then move to justify your chosen methodological approach.  You can then begin to unpick the different options that are available to you from within those approaches (e.g., in qualitative, you may choose Grounded Theory or Ethnography).  Your choice should, of course, be justified through references to the extant literature.  You should indicate how these approaches would help you gather the appropriate data to meet your aims and objectives. You can then include your aims and objectives here if you wish to and have not included them at the end of the previous chapter (there is no need to include them twice).  

Following on from this, you will then need to describe what you are doing and describe it in such a way that someone would be able to replicate your study.  This may draw on your previous critical analysis and further research methods literature for justification.  Depending on your research design, you will need to give the reader information about:

• Study site/location
• Access to your participants
• Sample characteristics for your participants (e.g., inclusion/exclusion criteria)
• Participant sample size
• Research Protocol
• Data Collection Tool (questionnaire, interview schedule)
• Data Management (what are you going to do with your data)
• Data Handling/Security
• Data analysis
• Pertinent ethical issues/considerations

***Please note that this list is not exhaustive, and you may need to include more or less, depending on your chosen research design***

References

References should be included before the appendix.  These should be in the Harvard style.  Please use ‘Cite Them Right’ (available via the library webpage) to ensure that you have formatted your reference list correctly.  Your reference list should be single-spaced. 

A rough guide for the number of references is 10 per 1000 words.  Therefore, one would expect approximately 60 references for this piece of work.

Appendix

Please note that whilst the appendix is not included in the word count, this appendix does contribute to the overall mark. 

If you were submitting your research to an ethics committee, then you would need to include the majority of the documentation that is listed below (again, this will change depending on the type of study that you are undertaking).  Therefore, the list below is a guide to what to include, and again, it is not exhaustive. 

• Screenshots of literature searching (not normally included in the ethics application, but must be included here)
• Participant Information Sheet.
• Recruitment documents (e.g., poster, emails, etc.).
• Questionnaire/Interview schedule.
• Initial contact email/letter to the Gatekeeper (for access to participants).
• Participant consent forms. 
• Research Protocol.
• GANTT chart (or similar).

NRS303 Learning Outcomes Assessed

This assessment assesses the following module learning outcomes:

1. Critically assess an area of nursing practice and create a research project to answer a specific question. 

2. Create suitable systematic search strategies for literature and choose suitable literature pertinent to the research project.

3. Critically appraise research literature and synthesise findings in a structured manner. 

4. Synthesise practical research methodologies that are appropriate to answering research questions, that are grounded in a critical review of the literature. 

5. Describe, critically analyse, and rectify the pertinent ethical issues arising in research. 

6. Create participant-facing materials that are required for a research project.