I am reposting a summary of the document from the reference folder I got for my subject P299 on the DURP course. This is a brief guide on writing a concept paper for the research proposal which is submitted prior to the submission of a full proposal. The document was written by Hanover Grants.

Applicants may use concept papers in any of the following ways:
• to interest potential funders
• to develop potential solutions or investigations into project ideas
• to determine whether a project idea is fundable
• to serve as the foundation of a full proposal

Funders that request concept papers often provide a template or format. If templates or formats are not provided, the following can serve as a useful concept paper structure.

The Five Elements of a Concept Paper

1. Introduction
– address the reason why the project should be supported.

2. Purpose or Need or Rationale
– outlines what others have written about the general topic and focuses on the gap in knowledge to be filled, the problem to be solved, or the need to be addressed

3. Project Description
-functioning as the solution to the problem, the answer to the need, or the investigation that will fill the knowledge gap.
-the applicant addresses the unique, unusual, distinctive, innovative, and/or novel aspects of the approach.

*The project description includes the project’s Goals and Objectives.
*includes an overview of the project’s Methodology (Project Activities or Action Plan or Approach)
-accomplished within the proposed Timeline.
*concludes with a Statement of Benefits or Anticipated Outcome.

4. Support of Budget
-outline of the main budget categories for the requested project support.

5. Contact Information
-of the applicant organization’s chief executive or his/her designee authorized to make funding requests.

Qualitative research is a means for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem. The process of research involves emerging questions and procedures, data typically collected in the participant’s setting, data analysis inductively building from particulars to general themes, and the researcher making interpretations of the meaning of the data. The final written report has a flexible structure. Those who engage in this form of inquiry support a way of looking at research that honors an inductive style, a focus on individual meaning. and the importance of rendering the complexity of a situation (adapted from Creswell. 2007).

Quantitative research is a means for testing objective theories by examining the relationship among variables. These variables, in turn, can be measured typically on instruments, so that numbered data can be analyzed using statistical procedures. The final written report has a set structure consisting of introduction, literature and theory, methods, results, and discussion (Creswell. 2008). Like qualitative researchers, those who engage in this form of inquiry have assumptions about testing theories deductively, building in protections against bias, controlling for alternative explanations, and being able to generalize and replicate the findings.

Mixed methods research is an approach to inquiry that combines or associates both qualitative and quantitative forms. It involves philosophical assumptions, the use of qualitative and quantitative approaches, and the mixing of both approaches in a study. Thus. it is more than simply collecting and analyzing both kinds of data; it also involves the use of both approaches in tandem so that the overall strength of a study is greater than either qualitative or quantitative research (Creswell & Plano Clark. 2007).

*quoted from the book Research Design, Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches by John W. Creswell