How to Write a Scope of Work for a Research Project
March 23 2018, By CharlesBruno Eze
Research writing is a very serious business; one that requires being approached with precision. What research really is is building upon collective body of knowledge. This requires a high level of seriousness and uniformity so that things don’t fall into chaos. To be good with research work, one has to learn the accepted methods and processes of documentations. One of such is how to write the scope of your research work which will also be part of your research project work. So this article has been specifically designed to show you how to write a stunning scope of study for your research project work in just a few minutes.
The scope of study section of your research project work contains the areas to be covered by your work. It delineates the level of the object of study that would be covered by the particular research work so that both the reader and writer have a perspective of what is aimed at and what is to be expected. It is through the content of your scope of study that one can determine whether the aims of the project have been achieved. And owing to the fact that academics is quite boundless, it is very easy for a researcher to delve into the body of knowledge that make up a discipline or even bridge disciplines and get lost in the maze of it all.
You see why the scope of study is very important and should be approached with the clearest terms. The language should be clear and explicit so as to leave out any ambiguousness that would confuse a reader or even derail the researcher’s focus.
For the most part, you have to approach your “Scope of Study” section tactfully. When your research problems implicates the whole discipline say “A Study of African Literature in the 21st Century”, you will find that the research means studying all of the literary works in all of Africa across all the genres of literature – which is not possible for lack of time and space. Your scope of study comes in here to tailor down the specific areas to focus on so that it shows us the boundaries of your work. In such a case you could pick a work from selected African countries and base your study on them.
In writing your scope of study you need to first reiterate the research problem and it’s objectives in clearly formulated sentences. You should state the time frame covered by the research in the case of a historical or philosophical research work. You need to state the extent of your primary and secondary text which is usually relevant in any of the art criticism. You should state also the length of coverage of your data compilation and method of analysis. If the use of questionnaire is made in the research work you should acquaint the readers with the demographics of the participants and how many they are.
In the last paragraph of your “scope of study” section talk about the structure of the project work. This is best suited for a work without a preface. Discuss the chapter division of your project work and what informs this format of chapter division.
You see, it wasn’t so hard after all.
