How to write good research plan

Before you begin writing your research plan, you are advised to carefully review the ‘Graduate School Information‘ section to make sure that the graduate school of your choice offers an appropriate curriculum and has faculty members relevant to your research plan. You can obtain more information by visiting the websites of individual graduate schools or by visiting the JDS Project Office.

NOTE: Your research plan should be consistent with one of the aforementioned ‘Sub-Program’ (Target Priority Area) and ‘Component’ (development issues), should be a program offered by the graduate school of your application and correspond to the overall objectives of the organization to which you belong. For more information, please refer to the Application Guidelines.

Please make sure to include all the points below:

1. Research Purpose/objective (describe what you aim at in your research: e.g. what you want to identify or prove any in the research)
2. Problem Statement (state the critical/problematic situation you are concerned about from global and national perspectives, referring to relevant statistics or general information)
3. Research Question/s (describe the questions, as well as sub-questions in order to achieve the research purpose)
4. Possible Methodology to Address the Question/s (describe what kinds of methods you will apply for your research: either qualitative or quantitative research methods – qualitative methods: who will be possible respondents, how to collect primary data, how to analyse the data collected, etc. – quantitative methods: what data set will be used, how to analyse it, etc.)
5. Reference: To prove that your problem statement is not based on your own subjective view/opinion, but general/objective fact which has been statistically proved, or
   stated in the past publication, you must use existing data or someone else’s idea. In that occasion, you have to state the source of data and information.

• The research plan must be typed and should be no more than 700 words [PDF: Maximum 3 (three) pages.] (Reference not included)

(You may add a very short, less than 300 words, alternative research proposal if you are not quite sure of the kind of research you may undertake for your Master’s thesis.)