Postgraduate canditature involves three major stages:

• the familiarisation stage when the student:
  • familiarises himself/herself with past literature and theoretical frameworks,
  • recognises a niche for his/her our particular research interests, and
  • prepares and submits a research proposal;
• the research process involving:
  • the preparation of research instruments which are trialled and modified where appropriate,
  • contacting stakeholders at the research site,
  • collecting data by recording interviews, distributing questionnaires, or testing subjects, etc;
  • collates, transcribes, codes and analyses the data;
• the writing up process which is many ways represents a short history of the preceding processes where:
  • background to the research is explained;
  • knowledge of literature is demonstrated;
  • methodology is outlined in detail;
  • data formulated into visual tables, graphs, histograms or descriptions and case studies which are integrated into the whole text;
  • to produce a scholarly piece of writing which contributes to the field of research.