Questions About Research Plans

Here are some of the questions I get on a frequent basis in the comments of this blog:

• I want to study a degree in X, but I don’t know how to create a research plan. Can you help?
• Can you help me write a research plan in field X?
• Do you have a sample research plan?
• I want to study a taught master’s do I need a research plan?
• I’ve never written a research plan before. Where do I start?

The Field of Study and Research Program is the most important document in your MEXT Scholarship application. This is what the scholarship reviewers and professors will use to determine your potential as a MEXT scholar, so it can make the difference between whether or not you succeed in your scholarship application. But many applicants don’t know where to start. Does that sound like you?

How to Create Your Field of Study and Research Program Plan in 10 Steps

In the past, I have written articles about how to format your final Field of Study and Research Program Plan for the Embassy-Recommended MEXT Scholarship and the University-Recommended MEXT Scholarship. But those articles assume you already have a finished research proposal.

In this article, I will walk you through the 10 steps to go from simply having an idea of the field you want to study all the way through to a complete research question that you can use to write your Field of Study and Research Program Plan.

I have said this before in other articles, but I want to mention it again: It is most likely that I am not an expert in your field of study. (My degrees are in history and Japan studies and that was 15 years ago.) So, I cannot give specific advice about your research topic. But I can tell you how to go through the process of developing a research question using a method that should work for any field!

Steps to Develop Your MEXT Scholarship Research Plan

Here are the steps I will cover below:

0. Decide on your goal
1. Select your field of study
2. Conduct initial literature review
3. Write draft research question
4. Find potential professors in Japan
5. Conduct focused literature review
6. Refine your research question
7. Determine your research target/sample
8. Determine your research methodology and methods
9. Create a hypothesis
10. Write up your plan

Want More Detail, Worksheets, and Sample Analyzed Plans?

? This article is based on the process that I describe in more detail in my book, How to Write a Scholarship-Winning Field of Study and Research Program Plan. If you want a detailed description of what you should do for each of the steps below, complete with worksheets and analysis of sample plans, pick up the book today at your favorite online bookseller, or ask your university library to purchase it so that you can read it for free!

Step 0: Decide on your goal

I labeled this “Step 0” because you should be clear on your application goal before you start your application.

Your goal should never be “earn the MEXT Scholarship” or “Study for my degree in Japan.” Those are only steps toward the goal that you should have in mind.

Your application goal should be how you want to serve the world/your community in the future. For example, it could be something like “improve access to potable water for rural villages.” Or “strengthen the research infrastructure at universities in my country.” As you can see, these are long-term goals that you could work towards in a few different ways. Even the research that you complete during your degree won’t achieve a goal like this all at once, though it should contribute to it and set you up for a career working to achieve your long-term goal.

I go into much more detail on setting your goal as part of your application strategy in my article, “How to Maximize Your Chances of Earning the MEXT Scholarship“, so I recommend that you read that, first.

Step 1: Select your field of study

Now that you have your overall goal for how you want to contribute to society in the future, you are going to build your Field of Study and Research Program Plan around a specific research goal that will enable you to accomplish your future career goals.

The first step is to decide on your field of study. There are a few basic restrictions on the fields you can choose, listed below:

• Your field of study must be offered by a university in Japan at the graduate level and in a language you are fluent in. If you can find at least one university (more is better) that offers a program in that field in English, then this requirement will be no problem.
• Your field of study must not be related to developing weapons of mass destruction, weaponry, or dual-use technology with military applications. (Researching WMD proliferation and policy is fine, you just can’t do research that could lead to creating weapons!)
• Your field of study cannot require practical training, including training at factories, etc., as well as training in arts, such as kabuki performance.
• Additional field of study limitations may be imposed by your home country in the case of the Embassy-Recommended MEXT Scholarship.
• Your field of study in Japan must be a field that you have majored in at university in the past or its related field. In the case of “related fields” it is up to you to establish the relationship in your Field of Study and Research Program Plan in the “Past and Present Field of Study” section.

Once you get past the basic rules, you should select a research field that is essential to the application goal I described in Step 0. You will need to justify why you need to conduct this research/earn this degree in Japan in order to accomplish your application goal. For the example about improving access to potable water in rural villages, several potential fields of study come to mind: researching how to create a low-cost, low-maintenance water purification device; researching how to combat specific water-born illnesses; researching new materials to improving pipe infrastructure; researching conflict mediation case studies in water wars, etc. You could justify each of these research topics as essential to achieving your future goal.

Of course, the examples I listed above are not going to be the names of specific majors or graduate schools at Japanese universities, but as long as you can find a program in Japan where you would be able to conduct that research, you will be fine.

Step 2: Conduct initial literature review

Once you have your field of study, the next step is a literature review to narrow down the field of study that you identified in Step 1 to a sub-field where you can conduct specific, original research that will contribute to the body of knowledge in the field. You need to understand current trends of research in that field and know what has already been researched in order to identify an opportunity for your own research.

I recommend that you start with at least two to three full-length scholarly secondary sources in your field that cover your research field. Recent sources are best, of course. The more specific your sources to your field, the better you will be able to develop a research question in the next step, but if you are still searching for a research idea, it’s fine to be broad for now and choose more specific sources in the second literature review below.

Ideas for to find sources for your literature review:

• Ask your current academic advisor for recommendations,
• Refer to textbooks in your field, including the sources those texts cite,
• Read recent journal articles in your field and see who the authors refer to as the leading authorities in the field.

When reading, you should be looking for research gaps (areas that need further research) or conflicts between researchers where additional research is needed to determine which is correct. Take notes on any particular areas that interest you and where you think you might be able to contribute additional research.

Step 3: Write draft research question

Hopefully that literature review wasn’t long and tedious for you, but rather exciting and inspiring!

Your literature review should have left you with a grasp of the state of your field and given you enough background to determine a research problem that you can address. Your research problem should be focused on a research gap or research conflict that you identified in the previous step that requires additional data to address. Your research cannot simply be recombining what others have previously researched (secondary research), you must get into the field or conduct an experiment to generate new data. So, you should be looking for a research problem where that is possible.

Once you have your research problem, it is time to create your draft research question. You will validate this question in a later step, so it doesn’t need to be perfect yet, but obviously the closer it is now, the easier your work will be moving forward.

A research question should always address the “how” or “why” of a specific problem. It should never be something that you can answer with a single data point or a yes/no question, since that is too simple. In addition, your research question should match the following criteria:

• Clear: Leave no doubt about what question you will answer.
• Focused: Narrow enough that you can answer it in a single research project within the course of your degree.
• Arguable: Address an area of uncertainty.
• Significant: Contribute meaningful data to your field and research problem.

So far, you have only completed the initial literature review, reading broad, secondary sources in your field, so you might not have enough knowledge yet to write a question that meets all of the criteria above. That’s fine. There’s another literature review and question refininf step coming later.

Step 4: Find potential professors in Japan

You can have the best research question in the world, but if there is no university in Japan doing research on that subject (in English) or no professor who can supervise your research, it will be nearly impossible to get a university to accept you!

Before you get too far into further developing your research question, stop and make sure there is a professor in Japan who could be your supervisor. You do not need to get in touch with the professor or get their approval at this point – in fact, I recommend you do not contact them until you have a complete draft research proposal. But at this point, you want to make sure that there are professors in the field active in Japan.

If you create a list of potential supervisors in Japan and read up on their current research, that can also help you as you move forward with your research proposal. You can customize your proposal to be closer to your potential supervisors’ ongoing research and better appeal to them.

I have an article about how to find universities and professors in Japan that teach in English in your field as well as a book about finding and contacting professors that should help with this process.

Step 5: Conduct focused literature review

Now that you have a draft research question and target professors in Japan, it’s time for a second, more specific literature review.

In this step, your goal is to collect as much specific knowledge about the current state of research related to your question as possible. (In fact, if your research question doesn’t change, this step can overlap with the literature review that is often the first step of your research proposal in Japan.) This literature review should help you validate or revise your research question so that you can be sure you are not duplicating existing research and that your new data will contribute to the field.

In this step, you should be looking for recent journal articles including specific case studies and other primary sources. If there are academic conferences or organizations related to your research field, look for the results of their most recent conferences or publications.

As you read these articles, look for any research that has addressed your research question or problem and find the limitations to existing studies that you can address. Every research project should leave unanswered questions or areas for further research. Does your question fall into one of those?

Step 6: Refine your research question

Step 7: Determine your research target/sample

Step 8: Determine your research methodology and methods

Step 9: Create a hypothesis

Step 10: Write up your plan