When your ideas have been transformed into a research question, you need to develop your research plan.

The research plan is a concise document, which allows you to communicate the concepts of your project to your peers and potential collaborators. A research plan is not a research proposal but can be used as a foundational document that may help to develop one. The research plan may need to be updated as you progress through your project.

A research plan may include

• the criteria you will use for answering your question
• the types of evidence you might need to provide to convince your reader
• the methods you will use to gather and process the data you will use to complete the project
• the equipment you might need to gather the data required to answer your question
• a timeline of what you're going to complete when

There is no fixed model of what a research plan looks like. You may want to employ the project management techniques you have developed earlier in your studies.

You may want to complete the Research Data Management topic in the topic tree to help you with your research planning.

Byrne, D. (2017). Research design. Project Planner. 10.4135/9781526408532.

Leedy, P. D., & Ellis Ormrod, J., et al. (2021). Planning your research project. In Practical research: Planning and design. Retrieved from Proquest eBook Central.

Adapted from Booth, W. et al. (2016). The craft of research (4th ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.