How do I write a research statement for my thesis?

The research proposal document, as well as your abstract, introduction and methodology sections of your thesis, rely, to a significant extent, on four interlinked components. These components are your research statement, research questions, research aims and research objectives. All four are crucial for a successful start to your thesis journey. You start your journey by writing a research statement.

Having a robust statement, concrete questions, clear aims and unambiguous objectives allow you to confidently describe the purpose of your research and offer a reasoned case for undertaking the study. They are the principal channels through which you define your research gap, the problem or issue you are addressing and the relevant background to your investigation. In addition, your statement, questions, aims and objectives explain why the topic is of interest to both you, and the wider academic and professional communities.

Thesis Upgrade has helped many students with writing a research statement. This is a (long) sentence that contains all the core elements from your research project. You use it for your abstract, introduction, research methodology and conclusion sections of your thesis as a constant reminder of the overall thrust of your research. Our advice is to start by researching your topic broadly. Typically, at the outset of your journey, you will have a vague topic idea for your thesis. Your initial thoughts may come to your mind:

• From a personal or professional experience (such as a problem in the workplace).
• Through interactions with peers and experts (for example, by participating in a seminar Q&A session).
• As a result of observing a problem or issue (for instance, by noting that certain colleagues are less motivated than others).
• By a critique of the literature (like reading academic, peer-reviewed, research-based journal papers) that identify the need for more research in a particular area (for example, the effect of leadership styles on motivation).

A principal of effective research, and the starting point for writing a research statement, is that you build on previous work. In other words, you stand on the shoulders of academics and scholars, and practitioners professionals, who have come before you. For example as a road-safety researcher, there is little point in investigating why car accidents occur in the UK, without first examining the existing research that has been done by others, both in the UK and globally. Secondary or desk research (such as reading existing studies and reports or consulting the ‘theory’ of accidents in the extant literature), should help you to establish what is already known about the topic. This should avoid you setting out to answer a question that has already been asked before (like how and why accidents happen in general). It may, perhaps, give your ideas for your own research based on an unknown aspect of the topic. For instance, how road and weather conditions in a particular region of the UK contribute to a higher accident rate.

The next step in producing a research statement is to focus the direction of your literature review. The thesis (or dissertation) process starts with doing ‘desk research’ or ‘writing a literature review’. This involves spending a significant amount of time immersing yourself in a topic to determine what has already been researched. Equally, it may be necessary to carry out secondary research on a ‘real world problem’ by exploring websites, annual reports, internal documents, industry guidelines, and so on, to establish the practitioners’ perspective on the issue. By combining the two (that is, scholarship and practice), you should be able to identify a ‘gap’ in the literature. Additionally, and most significantly, a ‘gap’ in knowledge (that is, something that has not been researched before).

By focusing the direction of your literature review on the core rationale for your study, you are aligning the review process with your research design. Directing the focus of your literature review is based on outlining your topic and describing the problem or issue you are going to address. The purpose is to formulate a research design that collects relevant data, analyses and interprets the data to generate credible results, and, ultimately, contributes to knowledge. It requires less depth and breadth than the traditional knowledge-focused literature review, as it emphasises discovery and experimentation, rather than analysis and evaluation. As a result, it involves a high-level review, such as reading abstracts of existing scholarly literature, executive summaries of government reports and findings of industry surveys. It can be useful to use the ‘decent and recent’ rule (that is, have I read the top ten or twenty academic, peer-reviewed papers on the topic?). If you answer in the affirmative, you are now ready to start writing your research statement.

To develop your research statement, it is best practice to peruse copies of previous theses, dissertations and journal articles to check how their research statements are worded. You will usually find them contained in the Abstract or Introduction. You are identifying what do you (and others) need to know that is not already known about the topic? Ask yourself: “After I have read all the relevant literature and explored the topic, what remains unknown? What do we still need to know?” Avoid a situation where you are proposing a research statement about something that was previously investigated, otherwise your study will lack originality. This does not mean that you cannot modify an existing research statement. For example, if a study has already examined the incidence of cyberterrorism attacks on the airline industry in the USA, you could adapt the research. You could explore cyberterrorism attacks in a different mode of transport, such as trains, in a different location, such as France.

Some examples of research statements are:

• Research project A is a case study examining the online marketing campaigns of two pharmaceutical firms – X company and Y company – in India, over the past five years (2017-2022).
• Research project B is an exploratory study of the career advancement experiences of one hundred female employees in financial management positions in US-based, software multinational corporations with operations in Australia.

Research statements are not just random descriptions. They contain valuable information about scope (that is, breadth and depth of the study) and approach (that is, methodology and method). For example, the research statement for project A describes a distinct method (case study) to investigate a particular phenomenon (online marketing campaigns) for two organisations (X company and Y company) from a defined sector (pharmaceuticals) in a specific location (India), over a definite period (2017-2022).

Your research statement should help you seamlessly feed-forward to your problem, aims and objectives. The essential questions to ask when finalising your research statement are:

• Will it help me achieve my aims/objectives and answer my research question(s) within the timeframe and resources I have available?
• If I achieve all my objectives, will I achieve my aim(s)?
• If I achieve my aim(s), will I have answered my overall research question?
• If I answer my overall research question, will I be able to satisfy my research statement (or, occasionally, will I be able to make a new statement that overrides the original statement)?
• If someone were to pick up my thesis and read the title, would they find it contains a relevant statement, research questions, aim and objectives that relate to the title?

If the answer to all these questions is yes, then you are on the right track. If you answer no to any question, we suggest you go back to see if you can revise your research statement, so that it works for you. Thesis Upgrade’s Developing Your Research Proposal may aid your decision-making. The digital resource contains easy-to-understand information and straightforward explanations to help you develop a robust and realistic research proposal. Buy now for immediate use.