Having established precisely what the research needs to find out, the next question is fairly obvious: How will the necessary information be obtained? A description of the research methods is called for in order to answer this question.
Proposals always include an account of how the researcher intends to collect the data, how much data will be collected, and what techniques will be used to analyse the data. Armed with such information readers can draw
their own conclusions about whether the methods are suitable or not for the task at hand, and whether or not the proposed methods are likely to work in practice.
It is these kind of judgements, of course, that are crucial when it comes to deciding whether a proposal appears to be worthwhile and feasible, and ultimately whether it is successful or not.