Business Research Plan Assignment – BPP University, UK
Assessment Brief – This module (BRPlan) is, directly, linked to the Business Research Project (BRProject) module that students undertake during the last term. BRProject is designed in such way that students conduct a research project in topics of their personal and professional interests. The task of the assignment for the BRPlan is to provide a comprehensive and coherent plan of the research project in the BRProject module.
In particular, students are required to do the following:
1. Choose a research topic in the context of their programme/degree.
2. Write a 4,000-word summative assignment comprising of a 3,500-word individual research plan and a 500-word evaluation of the choices made in the individual research plan.
1. The Research Topic – Students can choose research topics in the context of their programme/stream that reflect their professional and personal interests and represent contemporary challenges in their field of studies. The topics should be expressed in such way that they are researchable in scientific terms (focused and answerable questions/issues) and realistic (amount of time available, access to required information and data and a reasonable level of implementation requirements).
2. The Research Proposal – The research proposal is the plan that students recommend in order to investigate the chosen research topic. It should demonstrate a critical approach to the literature using a good number of reviewed sources (academic articles, books, etc.) with the majority of them being academic and professional work and properly referenced based on the Harvard System. References should be used where appropriate throughout the whole report.
The report should also inform decisions about the general research approach (deductive/inductive view), a good understanding of the variety, the advantages and the challenges of different research methods and techniques (e.g. questionnaires, interviews), a plan of gathering data, any time frame considerations, possible and alternative ways to analyse the data, any relevant ethical and access issues. The reasons for the choices selected must be clearly outlined in the research plan and in the evaluation.
The main part of the individual plan should discuss the following:
1. Introduction
2. Literature Review (Background of the research)
3. Research Aims/Objectives
4. Research Methodology (Philosophy, approach etc.)
5. Sampling (Population profile, sampling theories and sampling size)
6. Accessibility
7. Ethical Issues
8. Significance
9. Deliverables
10. Required Resources
11. Implementation Time Table (Gantt-like chart)
3. The Structure of the Assignment – The summative assignment is, essentially, a professional report. The proposed structure includes the following sections:
A. Title page
B. Table of contents (Headings and Sub-Headings, List of Appendices, List of Numbered Tables, Graphs and Figures, Summary of Abbreviations)
C. Main Parts (see “The Research Proposal” part above): Headings/Sub-headings should guide the readers thought the text
D. A 500-word evaluation of the individual research plan
E. References (All work that has been cited in the text)
F. Appendices (if relevant and appropriate): They should present extra information not information which is crucial for the research proposal. The main text, without the appendices, should be complete and solid without the need of appendices. In addition, if appendices are used, they should be numbered and referenced in the main text.
