Postgraduate Research Project Feasibility Study

What a good one includes

• A comprehensive scope boundary analysis that clearly defines what your research will cover and, crucially, what it will exclude to prevent scope creep.
• A rigorous methodological audit assessing the viability of your data collection tools, sample size requirements, and chosen analytical frameworks.
• An Institutional Review Board (IRB) risk assessment highlighting potential ethical roadblocks and strategies to fast-track your approval process.
• A realistic timeline and resource audit that cross-references your university’s deadlines with the actual time needed for recruitment, lab work, or archives access.
• A structured risk mitigation matrix identifying at least three major bottlenecks—such as low participant response rates—and detailing specific fallback plans for each.
• An advisor-ready executive summary phrased in high-level academic language that you can confidently present to your committee to justify your research design.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Assuming open access to proprietary datasets or vulnerable participant populations without securing written preliminary permissions first.
• Failing to account for institutional review board (IRB) processing times, which can delay data collection by several months and derail your graduation timeline.
• Formulating a research question that is too broad or Nobel-prize-ambitious rather than focusing on a narrow, highly defensible contribution to the literature.
• Ignoring the 'zero-result' risk, meaning the study lacks a contingency plan in case the primary hypothesis is disproven or yields statistically insignificant data.

Frequently asked questions