What is a prospectus?

A prospectus is a narrative proposal (i.e., not just a structural outline or a bulleted list of points, but an organized written presentation) to undertake a research project. It is a statement that briefly describes the questions, primary texts, prominent secondary texts, and methods you as a researcher will use in producing your project. A prospectus provides preliminary evidence that the research project fits in with the required parameters of a particular assignment (i.e., is relevant and useful to the discourse community for which it is produced). Its primary intention is to convince an audience to allow you (by providing academic approval, funding, access to materials, etc.) to proceed in actually undertaking the research you propose.

The prospectus is the first writing assignment in this course that asks you to begin to pull your research together. You should approach writing the prospectus as the beginning of a formal scholarly conversation on your topic. In it you will demonstrate:

that you have been listening to what other people have been saying (the scholarly context)

that, on the basis of the evidence you have evaluated thus far, you understand what questions need to be answered and which are most important (your question[s])

that the question has not been definitively answered or that you have a bone to pick with the seemingly definitive interpretation (various scholarly interpretations)

that you have educated yourself enough on the topic to have formulate ideas that are worth taking seriously (your evidence)

that the insight you offer is important and relevant to the audience for which you are proposing to write (your answer to the all-important question of "so what?").

• A prospectus contains a clear, concise introduction to the topic of the research. (NOTE: This is notnecessarily a thesis; rather this is more of a contextual introduction in which your task is to succinctly explain the subject of your research.)
• A prospectus includes the main research question – and any immediately relevant subsidiary questions – that you intends to answer in your project.
• A prospectus includes a brief summary the basic arguments that surround the research topic and a sampling of influential and/or recent positions related to those arguments. In other words, the prospectus provides a quick summary of ways in which scholars currently perceive the topic about which you will be writing.
• A prospectus indicates what the basic research materials will be. This means giving your reader(s) a clear idea of what sources will form the backbone of your research. Obviously, for literature projects this means not only listing the primary sources (the novels, plays, poems, letters, autobiographies, memoirs, etc.) that you will be examining, but which secondary sources you will use substantially to inform your discussion of those primary texts. In doing this, you will adapt the descriptive paragraphs from your annotated bibliography into the body of your prospectus. You may also wish to attach an unannotated list of all the potentially useful secondary sources that you have already consulted at the end of your prospectus as well to demonstrate the breadth and depth of your preliminary research. (NOTE: At this point, the list of research materials does not need to be a complete list of all materials that will ultimately be used in the research, but the given sources should strongly indicate the general direction of your research and critical perspective).
• The prospectus does not need to include your thesis yet, except perhaps as a presumptive (i.e., hypothetical) basis for the research questions. For example, if you believes a certain thing to be true, but have no substantive analytical evidence as yet to support that belief, then the your belief drives the questions that must be answered in order to demonstrate the validity of the belief.

The audience for the prospectus is the reader or readers who will determine whether or not the research project should be undertaken. This reader may be a professor, a research committee, a graduate degree committee, a funding agency, or the management of the company or agency for whom the researcher will conduct the study. The stylistic and content requirements of this audience should be the foremost guiding principle of how the prospectus is put together.

In what style should a prospectus be written?

A formal style generally takes precedence over an informal style. This should not be a "chatty" presentation of your ideas – it needs to be a serious, although not necessarily stilted discussion of your proposed topic. In other words, the prospectus should be written in third person, using active voice verbs, and a writer's voice that demonstrates confidence that the research has merit. A prospectus that sounds dubious or not well-considered will quite likely (and often rightly) be perceived as leading to a research project is dubious and not well-considered.

How long should a prospectus be?

There is no set length for a prospectus, either in terms of number of pages or percentage of the conceived length of a given project. A prospectus needs to cover the basic points to satisfy the reader that the researcher plans a substantive and workable project. The length of the prospectus fits the parameters of the project. In other words, if the project is very involved and has many questions to answer, the prospectus will be longer than if the project seeks to produce a 20 page persuasive paper. For example, the guidelines for a dissertation prospectus in the Comparative Literature program at UCLA calls for "a substantial document (35-50 pages) that gives a real feel for what the dissertation will be about." (http://www.complit.ucla.edu/prospectus.html). A rule of thumb is that one-fifth to one-quarter of the length of the proposed project (i.e., 4-5 pages for a 20-page research paper, or 40-50 pages for a dissertation of 200-250 pages) should suffice, but this is not universal, depending the complexity of your project. It is best to err on the side of too much, rather than too little information here if not specific guideline is given.

Adapted from material taken from:

http://provost.ucsd.edu/roosevelt/mmw/ProspectushandoutMMW4F01.htm
http://www.colorado.edu/InternatlAffairs/iafs1000/Recitation/prospectus.html