Comprehensive guide for nursing research proposal for students

Writing a nursing research proposal can be a challenging task. This is due to trends in research designs and the requirement to incorporate medical advances in the methodology. This article provides a guide for writing a nursing research proposal for students.

You can be asked to a write research proposal as a separate paper or combine it with the research paper. This does not mean that the content of the proposal paper should change, it remains the same. Before getting deep into what a nursing research proposal entails, it is essential to know the definition and what goes into the proposal.

What is a nursing research proposal?

A nursing research proposal is a paper designed to explain what you intend to research, the worth, and your plans for investigations (your practical approach to the research). It demonstrates how your research paper will be.

A research proposal convinces your supervisor, university, or committee that your work is suitable for your program requirements and is manageable with the resources and time available. Your research proposal should sell your idea to the person approving it. If they are not convinced, you should revise and then submit.

What goes into our nursing research proposal?

A good nursing research proposal should cover your project’s why, how, and what. Let us look at this in detail.

1. WHAT- your research topic

Your nursing research proposal should articulate your topic of discussion. You need to be unambiguous and specific. Your nursing research topic should demonstrate what you plan to research and the context you will use. For example: “Research of the factors that affect the generation of female Y consumers to use a certain brand of makeup with peers: an American context.” This topic is prominentWHAT in the investigation is factors making women use a particular brand of Fmakeup. WHO involves the Y female consumers, and the context is in the United States.

Ensure that your nursing proposal gives a detailed explanation of the research topic. The meaning should go without being said. Do not start writing your nursing proposal if you do not have a precise topic. You will end up having a lot of confusion.

2. WHY- this includes your justification

After proposing your research topic, justify why it is unique. What makes your topic original? Does it fill any gap in the current literature? If your topic is a repeat of existing research, it will not be approved. Originality is, however, not enough. You should also justify why your topic is essential and the value it will add to the current research.

3. HOW-your methodology

It is crucial to have an original and unique nursing research proposal topic. However, your professor will not approve it if you have not discussed the practicalities. This includes

• How you will undertake your research
• Whether your design fits your proposal topic
• Whether your plan is manageable with the available resources and time

Your professor does not expect you to have a perfect research strategy. However, you will need to have a quality key design decisions and research methodology. Ask yourself the following questions that you will address in your nursing research proposal:

• Will you take a quantitative or qualitative approach?
• Will you have a longitudinal or cross-sectional design?
• What method will you use to collect data?
• How will you analyze data for your research?

How long is a nursing research proposal?

The length of your proposal varies depending on your institution and the level of degree you are studying for. As a result, it is always good to check what your university requires before planning for your proposal.

Generally, a nursing research proposal for master’s students ranges between 2500 words to 3500 words. A PhD-level nursing proposal goes between 5000 to 8000 words. Some universities request a detailed proposal, while others ask for fewer words. Check what your institution asks for before writing.

Components of a nursing research proposal

1. Title page

Depending on the rules of your institution, your nursing research proposal should have a title page. The title page should include:

• The proposed project title
• The name of the researcher
• Your supervisor’s name
• Your departments and institution of study

2. Problem statement

A problem statement is a clear description of a problem that will be solved. It shows the gap between the current situation and the future goal to improve the situation. Many students ask themselves how to write a problem statement for a research paper and how to write a problem statement nursing. The answer is simple.

When writing a problem statement,

• Describe how things will work out
• Explain your problem and why it matters
• Explain the budget
• Back up your claim
• Explain the importance of your solutions
• Conclude by giving a summary of the issue and the solution

3. Introduction

A nursing proposal introduction sets the tone of the entire paper as it provides the idea for your research. After going through your introduction, ensure the reader;

• Understands your intention
• Get a sense of your passion for the topic
• Be excited about the possible outcomes of your research

It’s good to consider the introduction as just a one-to-three-paragraph narrative of what you’re doing as you start writing your nursing research proposal. It’s critical to address the following questions briefly within that one to three paragraphs:

• What is the leading research issue?
• What is the relationship between your research proposal’s topic and the problem?
• What methods will you use to investigate the research question?
• Why is it necessary to conduct this research?
• What is the significance of the study you propose?
• Why are the findings of your proposed research significant? Who do they matter to?

4. Abstract

Your instructor may request that you submit an abstract with your research proposal. In such instances, an abstract should include a summary of what you intend to study, your research question, a brief clarification of your methodologies for answering research questions, and your anticipated outcome.

In 150 to 250 words, all of this information should be carefully crafted. A word of advice: save your abstract writing until your nursing research proposal preparation is finished. If an abstract is required, you must include 5 to 7 most relevant keywords to your research. Put the keywords in order of importance.

5. Significance and background

This part aims to clarify the context of your nursing proposal and explain why conducting this research is necessary. Assume that the individual or people who will be reading your research proposal are unfamiliar with the research challenge.

While you do not have to incorporate all of your knowledge about your issue in this area, you must present the most pertinent information that will help you describe the study goals. There are no strict guidelines, and you should make an effort to address all or some of the main themes below:

• State the research challenge and give a more detailed explanation of the study’s objective than you did in the introduction
• Explain why the suggested research project is necessary, clearly state why this study is worthwhile, and provide an answer to the “so what?” query.
• Describe the primary difficulties or problems that your research will address
• Don’t forget to explain where and how your research proposal builds on past work in the field
• Describe how you intend to carry out your research
• Identify the most significant or relevant data sources you intend to use and describe how they will add to your topic analysis
• Set the parameters for your research proposal so that it has a clear focus
• Declare what you’ll study and what you’ll leave out of your research.
• Explicit descriptions of essential ideas and phrases are provided
• Because crucial concepts and terminology typically have multiple definitions, be sure you specify which one you’ll use in your research

6. Literature review

A literature review is the most time-consuming portion of the research proposal preparation. As detailed in Chapter 5, the literature review offers context for your study and highlights the value of the planned research. It is, in particular, a review and synthesis of earlier research that is relevant to the subject you are investigating. Essentially, the goal of the literature review is to situate your research project within the greater context of previous research while illustrating to the reader that your study is unique, inventive, and contributes to the bigger whole.

Because the literature review contains a lot of material, this section must be well-structured so that your reader can understand the main points of your research. However, because there is always a plethora of related information to sort through, it can be simpler to declare and tough to accomplish. As a result, rather than trying to summarize numerous groups of literature you studied, a valuable method for preparing the report is to split it down into basic categories or themes. In Chapter 5, you’ll learn about various techniques for organizing your themes.

Here are some pointers on how to go about creating your literature review:

• Consider what questions previous researchers have posed, the methods they employed, the results they obtained, and their recommendations based on the data collected.
• Do not be hesitant to question past findings and conclusions from similar studies
• Examine what you think is missing from previous research and explain how your study fills in the gaps and/or adds to the body of knowledge
• Examine what you think is missing from previous research and explain how your study fills in the gaps and/or adds to the body of knowledge

It’s worth noting that one of the most challenging aspects of conducting a literature study is determining when to quit. As a result, it’s critical to recognize when you’ve found the essential conceptual categories that underpin your research question. You may be confident that you have covered all of the main theoretical groups in your literature study when you observe repetition in the conclusions or suggestions.

It is equally vital to recognize that investigators frequently return to the literature as they collect and analyze data. For example, while managing and/or analyzing data, an unexpected result may emerge; in this situation, it is critical to step back and study the literature again to ensure no other researchers have discovered a similar finding. This could entail looking into studies in fields other than your own.

This happened due to one of the textbook’s writers’ studies on community resilience. According to the researchers, many participants discussed individual resilience elements and how they believed these particular factors helped make the group more robust overall during the interviews. In their original literature analysis on community and environmental resilience, Sheppard and Williams had not uncovered these individual characteristics.

When they went back to the literature to look for individual resilience variables, they found a tiny body of work in child and youth psychology. As a result, Sheppard and Williams had to revisit their literature analysis and include a new section on individual resilience factors. Surprisingly, their study appeared to be the first to relate individual and community resilience variables.

7. Research methods and design

The goal of this portion of the research proposal will be to convince the reader that your overall study analysis and design methodologies will allow you to address the research problem you’ve identified and clearly and efficiently interpret the findings of your research. As a result, the study design and methodology section must be well-written, clear, and well-organized. This shows your reader that you’ve thought through what you’re going to accomplish and how you will execute it. Ultimately, you want to give your reader the impression that you have what it takes to complete this research project on time.

This component of the nursing research proposal must essentially be related to the precise aims of your research; however, it also is vital to draw on and include instances from the review of the literature that connects to your strategy and proposed methodology. You must show how your research incorporates and expands on previous research in terms of the research design and techniques. What techniques, for instance, have other investigators employed in similar studies?

While it’s vital to evaluate what approaches other researchers have used, it’s just as critical, if not more so, to consider what methods haven’t been used but could be. Remember that the methods section isn’t just a list of things to do. It’s also a case for why and how the tasks you’ve listed will assist you in investigating the research problem and answering your research question (s).

Tips for writing this section

• Describe the methods you’ll use to gather information and the techniques you’ll use to analyze it
• Describe the research procedures you’ll use and how you’ll interpret the results of those procedures in connection to the study problem
• Go beyond simply articulating your goals for using the tools you’ve chosen
• Describe how you’ll put the methods into practice (i.e., coding interview text, running regression analysis, etc.)
• Anticipate and identify any potential roadblocks you may face while conducting your study, and indicate how you plan to overcome them
• Explain where you believe data collection issues, such as access to people and information, may arise

8. Preliminary implications and suppositions

This part aims to explain how you expect your research to improve, modify, or extend previous knowledge in the field of study. It would help if you also highlighted how your projected findings might affect future studies, depending on the objectives and goals of your research. Is it possible, for instance, that your research will lead to a new strategy, conceptual knowledge, or data-analysis method?

 What impact might your research have on future research? What does your research suggest for prospective professionals in the field? What or who might gain from your research? What impact could your research have on environmental, social, or economic issues?

While it is necessary to consider and debate such alternatives, it is also critical to be reasonable in articulating your expected outcomes. To put it another way, you don’t want to get caught up in idle conjecture. Instead, the goal is for you all to reflect on gaps in the present body of knowledge and outline how you expect your study to start to replace some or all of those gaps.

9. Conclusion

The conclusion reaffirms the significance and necessity of your nursing research proposal while also providing a concise overview of the entire study. This part should be no more than one or two paragraphs long. Here’s an example of a conclusion outline:

Discuss why the research is needed. Please describe how you anticipate your study to contribute to existing information and how it is distinctive. Explain the study’s explicit objective and the research issues it will address.

Describe why the study design and procedures used in this research are suitable and why other strategies and techniques were not used. Indicate what you anticipate your research proposal to have due to its findings. Give an impression of how your research integrates into the larger body of knowledge about the research issue that is currently available.

10. References and citations

You must cite all the sources you used in writing your nursing research proposal, just as you would in any academic research paper. This might come in two forms in a research proposal: a reference list or a bibliography. The material you cited in the text of your research proposal is listed in a reference list.

The body of the proposal must include all references from the reference section. Remember that “as cited in…” is not allowed. As a researcher, you should always go back to its original form and double-check it. Even the best researchers make mistakes in referencing. Thus it’s crucial to avoid repeating someone else’s mistakes. Although time-consuming and tiresome, this is the correct technique for doing a literature review.

On the other hand, a bibliography lists all you utilized or cited in your proposed study, together with citations to any essential sources important to comprehending the study challenge. In other words, sources included in your bibliography might not exist in your research proposal body. Verify with your professor which one of two referencing methods you are expected to use.

Generally, your citation list should demonstrate that you conducted adequate background research to ensure that your research would complement, rather than duplicate, past research efforts. A reference list or bibliography for social scientists should follow the(APA) American Psychologicalreferencing standard. The reference list (or bibliography) is usually not counted as part of the research proposal’s word count. Again, double-check with your professor to make sure you are on the right.

Nursing research proposal topics

Here are some nursing research proposal ideas you can consider for your paper:

1. ADHD symptoms and how to treat it
2. What has changed in newborn care in the previous 50 years?
3. Stem cell therapies for children’s disorders
4. What advances have been made in the treatment of childhood cancer?
5. Obesity in children has several causes
6. How children’s health can influence their health later in life
7. The leading causes of child death
8. Obesity prevention measures for children
9. Early-life effects of second-hand smoke inhalation
10. Environmental contaminants have a negative impact on the fetus
11. How to Prevent Infant Injuries During Labour and Delivery
12. How may child care in inpatient hospitals be improved?
13. Diabetes in children has genetic influences
14. How can malnutrition in children be avoided?
15. How to deal with psychological concerns in children who are suffering from physical ailments
16. Antibiotic resistance in children
17. Pediatric care ethics
18. Effects of environmental contaminants on children’s health
19. How effective are therapies for malnutrition in children?
20. Is newborn care better now than it was 50 years ago?
21. Antibiotics affect children’s immunity
22. How to recognize and treat children’s respiratory ailments

These are just a few nursing research proposal topic examples for your paper. There are others like public health research proposal topics and physical health topics among others.

Nursing research proposal example online

A nursing proposal example should include all relevant data and be comprehensive to the area of interest. It should describe all the methods that have worked for the research and draw from various sources. There should be a balance of facts and theories, excluding judgments and personal opinions.

Your institution should research all nursing research paper samples being used by the department. This is to ensure that all information included in the documents are facts. The papers should demonstrate that the content is thoroughly researched.

To sum up

Writing a nursing research proposal is not as easy as it may sound. This article provides a complete guide on writing a nursing research proposal. If you have read to this point, we believe it will be easy for you.

A research proposal demonstrates what you will investigate in your research paper, the importance of your research and how you will conduct the research. The length of a nursing research proposal depends on the instructions provided by your professor. The paper has different sections that make it complete. While writing, ensure that you do not miss any of the sections.

If you still need help selecting a good topic or writing a nursing research proposal, worry not. Contact us now. We provide nursing research proposal writing services to students at affordable rates.