Writing a MSc thesis proposal

The thesis proposal helps you to – Focus your ideas – Make clear what it is you aim to achieve – Create a document to share with potential collaborators and – Provide documentation for ethical and scientific clearance if required.

The thesis proposal should be 10-15 pages long and should include: 1. Title: A short statement of the research topic, including geographic location of work e.g. Incidence of intestinal parasites in school children in Timbuktu. 2. Author: Your name. 3. Address: Your address, phone numbers and e-mail address. 4. Supervision: Name of your Supervisor and co-Supervisor (if any) along with their e-mail addresses. 5. Specialisation: Master in epidemiology or infection biology. 6. Summary: Not more than 200 words containing background, aim, approach and expected outcome of the research. 7. Introduction: Summary of what is known about the subject (1-2 pages). Do not waste space with extended descriptions; try to be to the point. Provide the reason(s) and rationale for the thesis. 8. Aim and objectives: State the aim of your thesis, e.g. identify highly variable micro- satellites of M.ulcerans. Objectives are steps or smaller goals on the way to achieving your aim. In this section you can also formulate your hypotheses, e.g. Adults have a higher burden of Schistosoma than school children, or research question, e.g. what are the dynamics of acquired immunity against nematodes in cattle? 9. Approach: Describe your proposed research activities (2-3 pages) and give a detailed description of your methods. If you intend to do a field study, start with a short description of the study population, study type (cross-sectional, case-control), sample size considerations, data collection, questionnaire design and validation, interventions, data analysis. If you intend to do a laboratory study, describe the source of the samples, the sample material you will use (worm eggs, DNA, serum samples, etc.), the methods of analysis, experiments, and evaluation of results. 10. Expected outcomes: Imagine the results you expect from your work and try to describe them, e.g. knowledge on the prevalence of P. falciparum in women. 11. Ethical statement: Identify and discuss with your Supervisor ethical concerns that may arise during your research and describe them (half page). For example, every child excreting worm eggs will receive mebendazole treatment. If you intend to work on human subjects, you require an ethics clearance. Discuss this with your Supervisor ahead of fieldwork. If ethical clearance is deemed necessary please see also section 3A "Ethical Clearance" before starting the writing process.

12. Institutional setup and collaborations: Describe briefly (half page) the department and research unit in which you will do your work. If your research will be done abroad, describe the partner institutions, department and working group. Describe possible collaboration with other students and demarcate the objectives of each project. Show how you will complement each other’s work. 13. Time frame: Make a timeline for research progress, as shown below, giving a few details about each step.

Study protocol Planning of field work Field data collection Month 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Data entry Data analysis Interpretation and write up of manuscript Handing in Thesis

14. Budget: Estimate the cost of your project, accounting for personnel, international and local travel, equipment, consumables, communication and administrative costs. Discuss with your Supervisor. 15. When preparing your documents, please consider “good documentary practice” for the proposal and all ancillary documents. The following details should appear on each side in the header: - Short running title - Version-number and date of proposal (e.g. Proposal v1.1/15.04.2014) - (use 0.x for drafts; submit v1.0 to the first ethics committee) 16. The following details should appear on each side in the footer: Clear page numbering e.g. X of Y or X/Y For study-related documents which have their own version-no and date, the version-no and date of the proposal have to be added; e.g. for the “Patient Information and Consent” –document: PIC, v1.1/14.04.2014 referring to proposal v1.2/30.03.2014 17. Add a signature page at the beginning of your proposal (Principal investigator and/or supervisor, student, statistician, if applicable other key persons to the project. Only collect the signatures on the final document version.