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 elsewhere in your studies.

You may want to look at the Research Data Management Guide to help you when it comes to managing your data.

In developing your research proposal you need to explicitly consider the ethical and safety implications.  If your proposed course of research raises ethical or safety issues then you may need to obtain formal ethical and or safety clearances before undertaking your research.

The University has several committees through which ethics and safety related issues are approved see CSU's Research Ethics & Safety webpage for more information.