While formulating a research proposal, the whole scheme of things is categorized in a threefold fashion as plan, structure and strategy of research study. Plan includes the major framework of activities that the researcher wishes to accomplish under the banner of a particular research study.
It includes everything the investigator will do from writing the hypothesis and their operational implications to the final analysis of the data. The second part of a research design, the structure, is the outline and the, scheme of integrating the variables of investigation into a cohesive piece of analysis.
The third part of a research design, the strategy, refers to the specific methods which are to be used for obtaining the research data, analyzing it, verifying its reliability and interpreting the results.