The Importance of an Outline in a Research Based Master of Science (M.Sc.) Degree

Before starting a Master of Science (M.Sc.) research, it is worthwhile to prepare an outline of the research or study. The purpose of the outline is to serve as a basic guideline throughout the research. The outline should consist of the studies or experiments arranged in a sequence which, subsequently can be used to construct the final write-up or thesis. To produce a good and practical outline, a student has to conduct sufficient literature searches and reviews in order to ascertain the previous works carried out by researchers in the same field of study. Let us use the title:” To improve the Bioavailability of A Poorly Soluble Drug” as an example. The title is the goal of the research and the outline should guide the student to achieve the goal. In general, the main outline may look like below:

• Introduction

• Development of an Analytical Method – to determine the concentration of the active(s) in a certain medium, for example, in the formulation.

• Formulation s of the Drug Product – this is the stage where experiments were designed to increase the drug bioavailability and should be supplemented with in-vitro tests that indicates the success or the failure of the various formulations.

• Bioavailability Studies – experiments carried out to prove that the formulation does help in increasing the bioavailability of the drug by conducting bioavailability studies.

• Conclusions

A more comprehensive outline can be detailed out for each chapter to include suitable and scientifically sound experiments. The outlines should be discussed with the academic supervisor for any feedback or opinions and views.

In research, a guideline, in the form of an outline, is important to steer a student towards the right direction as there are many challenges and problems that will crop out during the study. The moments of frustration may cause a student to steer off course.

Substantial amount of experiments are expected in a research project. After each set of experiment, a student should spend time to review the results instead of keeping the results aside and start conducting the next experiment. There are also students who prefer to do the practical part of the research and they became so absorbed in the laboratory work that they neglect the results reviewing part. This may lead the students to work out of the context and subsequently generating unnecessary data and wasting time.

However, in a research, be prepared to face some inevitable change in the study course as the research direction depends largely on the outcome of each experiment. When this happens, the outline then has to be updated or amended.