Here are the steps for preparing and defending an MS Research Proposal. This is an outline, and details are provided later on in this document. Step 1: Preparation of Research Proposal: Student should select a general area of interest, and ask to be assigned a supervisor. It is the responsibility of IIIE to find a supervisor for every student who asks for one. Once a supervisor is assigned, a research topic within the area of interest can be chosen by discussions between the student and the supervisor. Once a topic is chosen, then a nearly complete bibliography of recent related literature should be prepared. A methodology which matches or improves methodology currently in use in literature should be selected. Some analysis of availability of data sources required for implementation of methodology should be made. Experts in the relevant field should be consulted for comments and ideas regarding the proposal. Step 2: Presentation of the Research Proposal at Faculty Seminar: After the supervisor approves the proposal, it may be presented at the faculty seminar. Written comments should be obtained from those present at the seminar. Faculty in related or nearby fields who were unable to attend should be sent copies of the proposal for written comments. A summary of presentation and comments received from faculty should be prepared by the supervisor. The following points should be kept in mind in preparing this summary: 1. Evaluation of significance of the research: How the research relates to solutions of real world economic problems facing us. 2. Evaluation of the contribution of the research; see point 4 in section 1 below. 3. Explanation of the skills/knowledge that the student will acquire in the course of this research; see point 2 in section 1 below 4. The students presentation skills and his/her ability to answer questions clearly, and other aspects of communication skills as displayed at the seminar should be evaluated in the letter. 5. Responses to any comments received at the seminar, or after circulation of the paper; proposal should have been revised in light of these comments. The letter should be signed by all faculty members present at the presentation. Also, the proposal should be circulated to all faculty not present for their comments as well, and a no objections signature should be obtained from them. If proposal has been circulated and there is no response within two weeks, this may be taken as no objection. A sample of the format of the report to be submitted is provided in Report Format New.doc, available from Google website: https://sites.google.com/site/iiieproposals
Step 3: Preparation of Case for presentation to IIIE Board of Studies. If faculty comments are generally favorable, then student & supervisor should apply to IIIE BoS for approval of topic. If there are a few specific objections, then proposal should be modified and approval of modification may be obtained from faculty who made objection. If there are more serious objections, then a new presentation will be required. In this case, after a thorough re-write or a change of topic, the process may be started from beginning once again.
GuidelinesforPreparationandEvaluation ofM.Phil.ThesisProposals,IIIE,IIUI 1: Requirements for An M.Phil. Thesis
Given that our M.Phil. Thesis is 6 credits, we should have in mind the workload equivalent of two courses of three credits each. This means about 72 hours of lectures, and perhaps twice this much time of preparation outside of class.
Proposed objectives to be achieved in M.Phil. Thesis:
1. Student should have mastery of coursework and topics necessary as background for the research questions to be explored in the thesis.
2. Student should be familiar with nearly all literature relevant to his/her research topic.
This second requirement is what I think is the main requirement for an M.Phil Thesis: sufficient familiarity with a body of literature that one can say that the student is an expert on this topic.
It is here that a supervisors help is essential in the choice of topic. It is necessary to chose a topic which is sufficiently narrow that the student can master all the literature related to the topic. The student will not know how much literature exists on a given topic. Generally speaking, we expect that the student should read and understand between 25 to 100 research articles, most of which should be published within the past five to ten years, relating to his topic of specialization.
Whereas a Ph.D. generally requires a substantive addition to the body of existing knowledge, requirements for an M.Phil. are lighter. There was consensus among the faculty that three minor innovations (as opposed to major ones required by a Ph.D.) were enough. This leads to our second set of requirements for an M.Phil. degree:
3. The research problem/s chosen should relate to some real world issue. The student should have an understanding how the solution would help solve some problem facing the society. Generally, the real world problem would be economic in nature and would be relevant to Pakistan, although this is not required strictly speaking.
4. As a rough guide, there should be three distinct contributions within the thesis. For example, taking a model utilized outside Pakistan and replicating it on Pakistani data is one contribution. Adapting the model by changing specifications to suit local conditions could be a second contribution. If relevant data series are not available, finding suitable proxy statistics, and developing data estimates of relevant variables could be a third contribution. Some judgment will be needed here as a major contribution could be counted as two or three minor ones. 2. Evaluation of Proposals and Theses
When the research proposal is presented, we do not expect the student to fulfill requirement 2 listed in first section above mastery of relevant literature will be acquired in the process of carrying out the research. However, we do expect to see a bibliography of journal articles and books which relate to the research topic, which the student is expected to read and master as part of his research. This bibliography should be extensive, but need not be complete at this early stage of proposal defence. However, we do expect to see a nearly complete bibliography of all articles relevant to the topic of research in the final thesis. Furthermore, we expect the student to display a genuine understanding of the material in this bibliography. This understanding should qualify him as an expert in the area of his research, which is what we expect as an outcome of the process of producing an M.Phil. thesis. To clarify further, Ph. D. research is aimed at producing innovators, who will actually make significant contributions to the area of research. The distinction is that between Alim someone knowledgeable about the area, and Mujtahid someone who can innovate and introduce new ideas about the area.
At the time of proposal presentation and defence, here is what we should look for in an acceptable proposal:
1. Basic Background: Student should be familiar with the academic background needed to do research in the area chosen. He should have had the relevant coursework, broad familiarity with the topic area, and should be able to answer questions about the relevance and significance of his topic to real world affairs. 2. Specialized Skills: If specialized skills are required to deal with the topic, student should either demonstrate familiarity with these skills, or else a plan of study to acquire these skills. Specialized skills refers to material not generally taught in courses at M.Phil. level; for example, CGE models, specialized econometric techniques, advanced topics in financial theory, wage search models, experimental game theory, etc. etc. etc. We re-iterate that while basic background (point 1 above) is required, specialized skills are not required at the proposal stage, but a plan of action to acquire these skills is required. 3. Literature Review: Comprehensive literature review is NOT required at the proposal defense. Sufficient familiarity with literature is needed to place the research problem within context of existing research. What is the research problem? Why is it important and relevant? Who has tackled it before and how? The expected contribution of the proposed research must be highlighted. This will require some discussion of existing findings, and where they are incomplete, and how the research will add to our knowledge. Contribution can ONLY be evaluated within context of existing research: what is currently known and unknown requires knowing recent literature in the field. 4. Methodology: Methodology describes HOW the proposed research is to be carried out. It is a common misunderstanding that model means regression model, and methodology means OLS (or some more complex regression estimation technique). In fact methodology is more comprehensive. The research question, which deals with solving some real world problem, must be kept in mind. Methodology refers to HOW we propose to SOLVE this problem? What kind of evidence is needed to resolve the issues raised in the research question. Ideally, we would like both historical and qualitative analysis of the problem, which attempts to answer the research question. Additionally, more formal analysis by statistical and quantitative methods would be useful. It is not necessary to run regressions; many more flexible statistical techniques for using the data to assess the research question are now available. 5. Model refers to a framework which will be used for data analysis. A regression model, which assumes a causal chain (dependent and independent variables), and certain types of functional forms (linear, loglinear, error correction, etc.) is a framework. However, frameworks can also be more informal and qualitative, and the tendency is shifting in this direction. Methods for applying the model to real world phenomena need to be mentioned here. For regression models, estimation and evaluation techniques are needed for example OLS estimates, and evaluation for various types of model misspecification. Other types of models may be calibrated against real data, or matched to data via graphical techniques without formal regressions. 6. Data: Some mention of data sources to be used for analysis of the research questions should be present within the proposal. Examiners must assess whether adequate data is available, or can be obtained, to answer the question under discussion. Lack of adequate data to address the issue can be (and often is) cause for rejection of an otherwise excellent proposal. 7. Supervisor: At proposal defense, a supervisor should ideally be present. If absolutely necessary, a letter from the supervisor approving the proposal can be substituted, at the discretion of the IIIE faculty. To encourage a broad range of research, and to reduce load on our own faculty, we should be liberal in allowing for outside supervisors. Generally speaking, we should allow supervision by qualified experts (typically Ph.D.s) in fields relevant to the research topic of the student. Assistant Professors and above at academic and research institutions would also be allowed. Requests for outside supervision should be approved by IIIE on a case-by-case basis, and letters of approval should be issued to the student, after consent for supervision is obtained from the outside supervisor.
4. Guidelines for Students on Preparation of Proposal
There are many different ways to choose a research topic. The best way is the following:
Real World Problem: Look at the world around you, and find an economic problem that interests you. Here is a list of problems recently chosen by M.Phil. students, all of which come from real world concerns:
1. Factors behind decline of milk production in Pakistan. Pakistan is one of the leading countries in the world in terms of milk production, but there some concern that milk production is declining. Is this true? If so, why? 2. Welfare impact of rising food prices in Pakistan. Food prices have risen sharply all over the world in the recent past. What is the impact of this on the lives of the poor in Pakistan? 3. Efficiency of response to Earthquake. A lot of money and aid flowed into Pakistan following the Earthquake. Was it handled in an efficient way? Can we learn something about the patterns of utilization? 4. Impact of Power Shortages on Industrial Production. This topic is self explanatory. 5. WTO and Cotton Exports of Pakistan. Changes in rules and regulation regarding cotton exports have occurred recently. How have they impacted on our cotton exports. 6. Assessing Privatization of PTCL, HBL, KESC etc. A lot of privatizations have occurred recently. How is the post-privatization performance of ? Has this been a useful exercise or has it been bad for Pakistan? 7. Social Accounting for NGOs. A lot of NGOs are operating in Pakistan. Is this good for us or bad? Conventional accounting rules look only at profit loss and therefore cannot be used to evaluate NGOs. Operations of NGOs are often in social spheres with no direct & immediate profit loss calculations possible. How can we evaluate the social impact of NGOs to assess their value? 8. Language of Education: A cost benefit analysis of whether or not English is good to use as the general medium of instruction in Pakistan. One the one hand, it provides access to jobs. On the other hand, huge numbers of children fail to understand basic lessons and are reduced to rote memorization because of inadequate language skills.
If we look at the world around us, there is no shortage of real problems for which research is needed to find solutions. Students have a mindset that we are not ready for real problems yet, and want to find simple imitative and meaningless research as way to fulfill degree requirements. This needs to be changed; we should give students confidence that they can tackle and solve real world problems. Here is a step-by-step guide to preparing a proposal for M.Phil research:
Step 1: Choosing a Research Problem.
How to select a problem from among the huge number of possibilities? I suggest that you visit places where work is done on economic problems, and talk to people who are working on solving them. There are various government ministries dealing with different types of economic problems. They often hire consultants and ask for research reports on different types of problems. There are also organizations like World Bank, IMF, ILO, other UN institutions, as well as many research organization in the private sector, and consultants. Talk to people about economic problems they are solving. Find a problem that interests you.
There are two Islamic procedures for decision making: Istikhara and Mashwera. Use both of these in selecting a research problem. Having chosen a tentative research problem, discuss it with those who have some knowledge about the subject matter. Find out about the literature, and about data sources, relevant to the research topic.
Step 2: Annotated Bibliography.
Once you have selected a problem, you need to collect and read literature relevant to the problem. Research MUST ALWAYS be related to an existing body of literature. You cannot write a thesis on a topic which is so new and different from existing research that there is no literature on it.
Nowadays, the job of finding all relevant articles has become extremely easy this used to be one of the most difficult jobs and the one which required the help of a supervisor who knew all the important articles in the area. Now we can just put in a few relevant keywords and come with all related articles. There is still some skill to choosing the right keywords, but this can be learned on your own. Some of the important data bases are Google Scholar, Google Books, EBSCOHOST (available at IIUI main library at Lincoln Corner), SSRN, RePeC. Search through these to find articles relevant to your research topic and create a cut-and-paste file of article titles, location, and abstracts. This is for your own use. There is a common misunderstanding that this is the literature review. Many proposals contain a list of articles together with their summaries this is an annotated bibliography. It must be emphasized that this is NOT a literature review. The difference will be explained later.
Next, you must start reading and understanding the key articles in the area, starting with most recent ones and also those which are more general and comprehensive (as opposed to specialized and narrow in focus). In my experience, this is one of the most difficult parts of developing a research proposal. Students do not have experience with using their own minds to read and understand articles on their own. They have been spoon fed from textbooks and learned to memorize material and reproduce it on tests without understanding. They follow the same pattern on proposals, cutting and pasting material which they themselves do not understand. Learning to read and understand articles on your own is a new skill which students do not have, and which requires hard work to develop. This is essential to preparing a good proposal. Try to read one article a day, at least. If you are lucky, you will find a literature survey in your area of interest. This is useful because it will summarize a lot a literature in a coherent and integrated way. This will give you familiarity with lots of literature without having to read it, and also point the way toward the key readings in the field.
Step 3: More Precisely Focused Research Topic
It is only AFTER you have knowledge of recent literature in the area of your research interest that it becomes possible to develop a sharply focused research topic. This is because you learn what has and has not been researched. If there are five recent studies of efficiency of Islamic Banking using DEA and Stochastic Frontier, you know that you should avoid this area it is unlikely that you can say something new about it. Similarly there are more than five recent studies of Islamic Microfinance; to venture into this area requires that you must have some new concept, which has not been utilized by previous researchers. Without knowing the literature, you cannot know whether a topic is original, fresh and new, or old, tired and stale.
From the literature, you will be able to pick out questions which have been raised but not answered. You will be able to see studies which have been done for similar problems in other countries, but have not been replicated here. You might see some patterns in the findings that will suggest some hypotheses that you would like to explore in your research. After absorbing your readings, and some consultation with experts in the field, you should be able to develop a clearly focused research topic. Here are some points to keep in mind:
1. As you read articles, you will also learn who the authors of these articles are. These are going to be your resource people, the ones to ask questions about issues in your area of research. If they are in the local area, you should try to meet them. If distant, it is always possible to contact them by email. You should also try to find experts in your research area, and consult them about questions in your reading and formulation of your research question. 2. Your preparation of a good proposal requires positioning your research in two dimensions. One is how the research relates to the existing literature in the field (based on your annotated bibliography). The second is how this research relates to the real world and solving economic problems of Pakistan. Both dimensions require separate types of effort. The first requires theoretical understanding and reading of books and articles. The second requires meeting people of action, working in the field, or practical problems facing Pakistan.
Step 4: Putting Together a Research Proposal
Once a focused and relevant topic has been selected as a result of the first three steps, there are several ingredients necessary which are blended together to create a research proposal which can be presented and defended in a seminar before the faculty. It is well to remember that presentation is itself a skill, and it would be useful to run a practice presentation before fellow students and an advisor to get some experience. Below I list the essential ingredients of a research proposal. These run closely parallel to the items used for evaluation of a research proposal, for obvious reasons.
1. Resource People: This will be an essential but hidden portion of the preparation of a proposal. To the maximum extent possible, discuss your proposal with all people who have some knowledge of your research area. Especially IIIE and IIUI faculty having interest in your topic should be consulted. Also, you should talk to experts from outside of IIUI. These people will guide you to research reports unavailable from published sources, data collections, and also provide suggestions about interesting aspects and angles related to your research that you may not be aware of. 2. Literature Review. Unlike an annotated bibliography, which just lists relevant articles and provides summaries, a literature review is sharply focused around the research question which is being explored. Every article mentioned must be directly related to the research topic, and this relationship must be brought out in the review Article XYZ develops a model for this question, and has findings. We think our research will show that these findings are not valid (or are valid) for Pakistan for such and such reason. J ust because an article is on a similar topic, it will not be put in literature review, unless it can be directly related and discussed in context of the research question. 3. Relevance, Significance and Importance of the Research Topic. Most authors explain why they are doing their research, so [i] some elements can be extracted from your reading. An important element you have to prepare on your own is [ii] the relationship between your proposed research and the existing literature. For example, such-and-such research question has been explored for Nigeria, India and Malaysia, but never in Pakistan. The third element is [iii] how the research will help solve real problems facing the Pakistan economy. Again this will require your own work and thought, your reading and understanding of relevant literature, as well as your discussions with field experts. 4. Models and Methodology: Generally speaking, we do not expect innovations in models and methodology at the M.Phil. level; these are expected at the Ph.D. level. This means that you should be able to adopt models and methodology used in existing literature, which you should have some familiarity with. When there are different models, you should be able to see which is more relevant for Pakistan. Also, you should be able to intelligently modify the models to make them suitable for local context. 5. Estimating and quantifying models will require data on variables relevant to the model. You must put some thought into identifying the sutiable variables and data sources in Pakistan which will give you access to such variables. Occasionally, it may be necessary to conduct a survey to get variables. Primary data collection is time-consuming, expensive, and tedious, generally requiring a lot of effort. M. Phil. scholars are better advised to use secondary data sources wherever possible.
HOW TO WRITE A LITERATURE REVIEW
Experience with proposals show that students have no concept about how to write a literature review. This note is intended to clarify the procedure.
As discussed in the study guide, the first step in doing research is to prepare an annotated bibliography. Let us define some terms:
BIBLIOGRAPHY: This is a list of articles, organized by date, or by author, or by topic or by some other method. For example:
Reino Hjerppe (2003). Social Capital and Economic Growth. Government Institute for Economic Research, Finland. Robert J. Barro (October 1998), Human Capital and Growth in cross-country regression. Harward University. Iza DP No. 2703. Sabatini, F. (20008) Social Capital and the Quality of Economic Development, Kyklos 61(3), pp. 466-499) Stolle, D. and Rochan, T.R. (1998) Are all Associations Alike? Member Diversity, Associational Type and the Creation of Social Capital, American Behavioral Scientist (42), pp. 47-65.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY: This is a list of articles together with a brief summary of the what the article is about. Normally the summary is done with emphasis on the topic being researched. That is, items relevant to the topic of research are summarized. Here is a typical example, taken from an actual thesis:
Jones (1996) analyzed impact of human capital on economic growth by taking the cross country data of 78 countries with five year intervals from 1960 to 1985 and found that human capital has a positive and significant effect on economic growth.
Appleton et al (1998) analyzed that both health and education are the components of human capital and contributes to human welfare through economic growth. The level of income, education and health status in Africa shows that the level of human development is the lowest of any region in the world. In this comparative study of Africa with South Asia, the Author examined the school enrolment and health (human capital) in 29 Africa countries with Asian countries, and found that the level of both education and health in Africa are lower than those in other developing countries that causes the slow economic growth which severely restricted the ability of governments and households to fund further investments in health and education which result to low growth
Robert J. Barro (1998) used to analyzed the determinants of economic growth and investment in 100 countries. Author takes the data from 1960-1995 and applied panel data estimation techniques. The result found that growth is positively related to average year of secondary and higher level of schooling of male and insignificantly related to female school attainment as respectively 0.7% and -0.0040%.author also takes the data of score on international comparable examination, quantity of schooling, score on scientific test, and found that all these variables have positive and significant relationship with economic growth. The instrument variables used were total year of adult schooling, pupil teacher ratio and school drops out rate also showed significant impact on economic growth. Michael et al (1998) examined the relationship of human capital and physical capital with economic growth by including different theories on endogenous growth in one model, in which physical capital, human capital, knowledge accumulation and R& D based technological progress, drives economic growth. Author merged Uzawa and Lucas model with Grossman and Helpman model, as 85% of human capital is employed in the production of goods. Results indicated that if educational productivity increases by 20%, long-run economic growth increases by 35%. The Uzawa and Lucas model is best for the economy where development is knowledge based, and Grossman and Helpman model is best for the economy where development in the productivity occurs due to technological progress. The paper focused more on the importance of education and training. As the physical capital contributed about 50% in economic growth while rest is due to educational quality and technical progress.
BIG MISTAKE DONE BY 90% of ALL STUDENTS that I have seen so far: WRONG IDEA: ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY =LITERATURE REVIEW The above is presented as a literature review, which it is not. A literature review is NOT a sequence of paragraphs in which each paragraph discussed one article.
LITERATURE REVIEW is organized by Concepts, Themes, Ideas. Each paragraph is devoted to some ISSUE, and all articles which discuss and take some stance regarding the issue are discussed. The same article may be mentioned in several different paragraphs because it has something of relevance to several different concepts.
Here is an OUTLINE of a literature review, taken from Saima Mehmoods Thesis:
Chapter.2 Literature Review 2.1 Motivation and Incentives . 2.1.1. Hygiene Theory . 2.1.2. Crowding Out Theory .. 2.1.3. Expectancy Theory of Motivation . 2.1.4. Theory of Behavior Modification.. 2.1.5. Pink's Theory of Motivation 2.2 Previous Research 2.2.1. Economic, Gift and Social exchange.. 2.2.2. Complexity of Gift Exchange in field .. 2.2.3. Determinants of Charitable Behavior 2.2.4. Exchange and Incentives 2.2.5. Conflict Between Social and Market Norms.. 2.2.6. Social Exchange and Remuneration Scheme
Here the issues have been organized by TOPIC. For each topic, many articles related to that topic are mentioned. For example, in discussing crowding out theory, Saima writes:
Edward Deci (1971) has emphasized the possibility of a crowding out effect, i.e., an external intervention via monetary incentives or punishments may undermine intrinsic motivation. According to his theory extrinsic awards undermine peoples intrinsic motivation to do a job. Later, many studies analyzed this theory and confirmed the idea of crowding out (Fehr and Gchter, 1997; Fehr et al., 1997; Gneezy and Rustichini, 2000). Crowding out occurs when the negative effect on intrinsic motivation of offering a monetary reward outweighs the positive extrinsic motivation. Crowding out effects are an empirically relevant phenomenon, but it does not prevail always. To identify the conditions under which crowding-out and crowding-in effects arise is a worthwhile goal for future research.
Suppose we want to turn an annotated bibliography into a literature review. Then we have to look for themes and concepts. Furthermore, these themes MUST be related to our research questions. WE DO NOT REVIEW LITERATURE which is not related to our research questions. For example, saadia yaqoob lists objectives of her research as follows:
The main objectives of this research are To measure income inequality using Expenditure Approach for the period of 2004-05 and 2007-08. To decompose inequality using Regression based estimation. Measurement of poverty and its decomposition using Datt and Ravallion (1992) method. Policy recommendation will be given for the improvement of income distribution in the country. It is the job of the supervisor to ensure that the research objectives are set correctly. They should not be too vague or too broad, or too narrow. Now a literature review relevant to THESE objectives should be done as follows:
FIRST: prepare an annotated bibliography of ALL articles which have measured income inequality in PAKISTAN. Then classify them according to approach:
Income Approach, Expenditure Approach, other approach.
If all articles use same approach then this is not a useful way to categorize them. Instead, think of some other way of organizing the literature.
Literature outside Pakistan is not directly relevant. So it should not be covered, UNLESS
it makes some methodological contribution that you plan to use The results are to be compared to yours for example you find that social capital impacts favorably on education but not on Health. Now you can cite a study from India and say that they got the same results. OR that they got different results. In both cases, the comparison is relevant.
Literature within Pakistan is relevant, but it should be covered ONLY to the extent that it relates to YOUR research questions.