The research title is the headline of any research proposal or project because it has to capture the essence of the research in a clear, accurate, and precise manner. The title immediately gives the first impression to the readers, which describes the proposed research.
In order to make a good title, we need to consider several factors including the length, the right amount of information, the clarity and persuasiveness, and of course the precision of its scope. Even though there might not be an absolute rule about how long a research title should be, a common convention used for the title length is around 10 to 30 words, and sometimes it contains a main title and supplementary information separated by a colon (:). Not to mention, the title might typically contain three elements related to the objectives of the study, namely 1) the population or item/material under investigation, 2) the intervention, and 3) the outcome. Alternatively, the title may describe the methods used to study the problem. Pay attention to the following examples:
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Motivation in the workplace: A case study of full- and part-time employees in a department store in Aberdeen
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A review of recent research in EFL motivation: Research trends, emerging methodologies, and diversity of researched populations
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Development of a critical self in the language reading classroom: An examination of learners’ L2 self
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Using semiotics to analyze representational complexity in social media
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An image-text consistency-driven multimodal sentiment analysis approach for social media
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Investigating the impact of social media advertising features on customer purchase intention
Besides the length and the content, there are some other things that need to be considered when formulating a research title; one of which is to avoid the use of acronyms when possible because it may lead to misunderstanding and confusion. Moreover, using formal academic diction is highly recommended in writing research titles. Thus, it is advisable to avoid the use of humorous language or puns.
After creating the research title, it is also necessary to double-check with the content. Again, remember that the title should be faithful to the content of the research proposal. Any mismatch between the title and the content of the proposal will harm the proposal’s prospects of success. Likewise, research titles must be grammatically correct and free from spelling errors. If a grammatical mistake is found in a research title, it will send a bad impression to the readers about what will follow in the proposal.