Hello Delaney and the rest of the list,

My first contribution- very exciting.  Anyways.  I have been going through a similar process at the moment.  Unfortunately my problem does not lie in the proposal but rather the £150K needed for the research.

1.) In response to your questions.  I would definitely include cost issues; try to break it down as specifically as possible.  This can be difficult if you've never budget for your own research before.  Remember to include everything from travel and hotel costs, to salary, to printing fees, to remunerations for patients of physicians, and even build in the cost of using licensed questionnaires (although most of these will be free for academic research).  Even if you are self-funding the university will probably want to see these.  In the event that you apply for external funding, they will definitely want to see a cost breakdown.

2.) As far as the length of the proposal, I personally feel that 3-4 pages may not be enough to explain in detail what it is that you plan to answer.  The single biggest time saver in your PhD is going to be having a well formulated question and well thought out methodology, right from the beginning.  Ethics will be another time issue for you.  If you are working with health people that you will recruit yourself you should be able to receive ethics approval from the university committee.  However, as it is a health psych program there is a good chance you might be involved in using patient from the NHS.  This will necessitate an ethics submission to the Central Office for Research Ethics Committees (COREC).  You can find their site on www.corec.org.uk and the forms on www.corecform.org.uk.  This is a fore warning if you've never made a submission to COREC- they are hard a**es.  Depending on the committee they can be extremely pedantic and slow moving, not to mention that the standard form is about 80 pages long.  This will usually inject about a 3 month delay into any work, so build that in to your time.  

3.) A full-time PhD is usually about 3 years.  That is you will submit your thesis and sit your viva approx. 3 years from the start of your course.  A part-time PhD is double this to about 6 years.  These are rough guidelines.  Many schools will not allow you to submit beyond three years, others will, many will also not allow you to submit before 2 years is up.  Each school is different and should explain their rules on the websites.

I hope this all helps.  Some other good resources can be found at the following websites:
www.educationuk.org.uk
www.grad.ac.uk

I would also recommend "How to get a PhD" by Estelle Philips and Derek Pugh.  It would be a good resource to have around before, during, and after the PhD.

Good luck.  If you have other questions you can get me on [log in to unmask]

~Scott



Scott Doyle
Senior Research Assistant
Health Care Analytics Group
United BioSource Corporation
20 Bloomsbury Square
London WC1A 2NS
Phone: +44 207 299 4550
Fax: +44 207 299 4555
Email: [log in to unmask]
www.unitedbiosource.com

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-----Original Message-----
From: Health Psychology Postgraduate Network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Miss Delaney Bucknor
Sent: 01 June 2006 21:36
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: PhD proposals

Hi everyone,

I am currently writing up a PhD Health Psychology proposal. All seems to be going well but I have a few issues. Its nothing like an MSc proposal. 

1. Do I have to include costing issues in my proposal? I originally thought that the PhD fees would cover the costs of undertaking my research. I keep hearing about costing. Can someone inform me? I'm self-funding.

2. How detailed been does the brief proposal have to be? Universities keep saying 3-4pages. I thought it was just background with research questions, methodology, methods, potential analysis of data and references. My past supervisors believe that my draft proposal is fine, but they keep giving recommedations to add (costing, ethics, timetable etc). Now I am stuggling to keep my proposal in 4pages (references make a 5th page, is this okay?).

3. I can't find an example of an appropriate timetable for carrying out the PhD. I don't know whats realistic.

Thanks

Delaney

 




 
Thanks    

Delaney