Making a Research Plan

The lesson teaches how to make a research plan, a quick guide to beginning research projects in seven stages or steps: manage your time, consider your situation, choose your topic, read broadly, discover your question and problem, focus your research, and draft a working thesis statement, or hypothesis, to get started. By following this plan, you will work smarter because you’ll understand the research essay’s complex genre and the required steps to fulfill its generic expectations in view of target readers. You will also save time by avoiding false starts, dead ends, and wandering through the project. This guide is geared for writers of qualitative research in the humanities, but all research writers will benefit from understanding or reviewing the research plan and process leading to a quality product.