Producing a research proposal appears to be one of the challenges that postgraduate students often face, as research is a relatively unfamiliar concept to most postgraduate students, unlike their undergraduate studies. The research proposal is a dynamic document and serves as a guide for the research being undertaken and, therefore, is not set in stone. However, postgraduate research students seem to lack focus and battle to find a starting point. Through experience gained in postgraduate research supervision over the past 15 years, I have developed a methodology that guides students in identifying a focus and a gap in the literature for producing postgraduate research proposals. I coined this methodology as the upside-down approach to producing a research proposal, since students often begin developing the proposal with the introduction without any clear focus. Following this methodology, the student begins with a sentence or two that explains the problem they wish to research. Once this sentence is identified, the student can proceed with a literature search on credible databases using the identified keywords from these sentences. The publications are screened by reviewing the abstract and findings/results, and recommendations for future work. Compiling a table based on approximately 50 relevant publications from the past five years reveals a clear research gap, which in turn informs the formulation of research questions and objectives. Once a research problem, questions, and objectives are identified, the candidates can proceed to develop a research methodology that is appropriate to their research. From the publications contained in the summarised table, the background to the research problem can be written, as well as the introduction. The student also has sufficient publications to identify a theoretical lens and a short literature review. Seminal authors can also be identified from the table. The result is students who have a clear focus, a solid foundation, and a deeper understanding of the research problem. Using a methodology, I have guided 10 Master’s and 14 Doctoral candidates to graduating.

Keywords: Methodology, postgraduate students, research proposal.