Putting together a proposal can be a hassle. Often you are in a race against time to provide costs and timings to your client. Here is a simple checklist to run through when approaching your research partner so that you can mitigate any back and forth and get these key details in your hands accurately and efficiently.
You realize that you need some quick costs and timing for your research. Instead of doing a “guesstimate” and under- or over-budgeting your resources, this quick check list will help you get an efficient proposal together for your research partners!
✅ How do you define success? Clearly outlining your objective and what you want to achieve with your research guides a discussion with your partners AND helps set up the survey outline upfront. Also, simple objectives lead to shorter timelines while complex objectives normally take longer to execute.
✅ What are you looking for? Do you want to explore or validate? Exploration usually means you need a qualitative methodology while validation indicates quantitative activities. And these two different pathways determine how many people you will need to talk to in your project.
✅ Who do you want to talk to? Speaking of respondents, basic facts about your target audience lead to feasibility (how many you can reach) and how much your sample will cost.
✅ How much work do you want to do on the backend? Deliverables can range from raw data, to data tables/dashboards, to charted results/reports. Knowing what you can (or want!) to handle in terms of final analysis can also impact timing and costs.
✅ When does this all have to come together? Normally it’s easiest to work with a critical end date and then plan the project backwards from there. So, if you have a sense of when you want to complete your project, this can help build out options and timelines.
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