The Synopsis or Research Proposal

In one line

A synopsis is the research design written down and submitted for approval before the work begins, and it is the same seven components MU requires, in the future tense.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: a synopsis or research proposal is a short document submitted before the commencement of research, setting out the proposed title, the introduction and background, the statement of the research problem, the aims and objectives, the scope and limitations, the review of literature, the hypotheses, the research methodology including the sampling and data collection design, the proposed chapterisation, the timetable and the tentative bibliography, so that the supervisor and the institution may judge whether the work is worth doing and can be done.

What a synopsis is for

Approval. Somebody must be satisfied that the study is worth doing, is feasible and is properly designed.

Supervision. A supervisor cannot advise on an intention; they can advise on a design.

And the researcher's own benefit, which is the larger one. Writing the synopsis is what forces the decisions of chapters 1250 to 1340 to be made before they can be made badly under pressure.

A student who resents the synopsis has misunderstood it. It is not a formality preceding the work; it is most of the thinking.

Its contents

Title. Provisional, specific, and containing the population, place and period if the study is empirical.

Introduction and background. Half a page, chapter 1260.

Statement of the problem. Chapter 1100.

Aims and objectives. Chapter 1270.

Scope and limitations. Chapter 1280.

Review of literature. Short, ending in the gap. Chapter 1290.

Hypotheses. With what would refute each. Chapter 1150.

Research methodology. Including the sampling and data collection design. Chapters 1310 and 1330.

Chapterisation. Chapter 1320.

Timetable. Chapter 1340.

And a tentative bibliography. Chapter 1370.

Length. Eight to fifteen pages is usual, and a synopsis that runs to forty has become a first draft.

A worked example: a specimen synopsis, written out

Title. Performance of the duty to inform an accused of the right to free legal services: an observational study of remand proceedings in one Metropolitan Magistrate's court.

Introduction and background. The Supreme Court has held that free legal services to an accused who cannot afford a lawyer is a right implicit in Article 21, read with Article 39A; that the obligation arises when the accused is first produced before a magistrate and at every remand; that the State cannot plead financial or administrative inability; and that the right is illusory unless the court informs the accused of it, a failure to do so vitiating the trial. The Legal Services Authorities Act 1987 supplies the machinery by which a lawyer is assigned once an accused asks. Whether the accused is told is not recorded anywhere.