**Conflict of interest**

*Global Social Work - Cutting Edge Issues and Critical Reflections*

be pursued instead of a multiplicity.

**13. Recommendations**

encouraged.

**14. Limitations of the study**

**15. For further research**

**Acknowledgements**

Coupled with language issues, is inclination to pursue more than one construct, such as perceptions, attitudes, and behavior. For purposes of research at this stage of the students' development, one would advise that one issue/construct/problem

Finally, and perhaps more controversial is that the student topics were largely social science based and never transcended into social work discipline. Social work is a practice based profession and goes beyond analysis of problems to intervention.

• Students begin their research projects much earlier than their fourth year for

• Continued hosting of English seminars and referral to the Writing Center is

The study relied solely on analysis of fourth year social work students' research proposals. As such, students' personal experiences on writing research proposals could not be explored such as reasons for choosing uniform research approaches, topics and so on. Moreover, the study was only carried out at University of

Limpopo, Department of Social Work, hence its findings may not generalize social work students from other institutions (but may shed some light). Lastly, there was a shred of literature to consult that focused specifically on the subject investigated.

• An empirical study of fourth year social work students' views and challenges of

writing research proposals for the first time at University of Limpopo.

The authors wish to acknowledge assistance and support provided by Dr. MR Manganyi, HoD Social Work, University of Limpopo; Mrs. TMA Mahlatjie, Lecturer, Department of Social Work, University of Limpopo; and Mr. NV Kekana, Principal Administrator, School of Social Sciences, University of Limpopo. A special acknowledgement to the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) for sponsoring a Kenyan conference in 2019, where this paper was

The adage "social work is about social work issues" is more applicable here.

• Students proposals must be swayed towards social work research.

• Students need to be exposed to quantitative research methods.

For future research, the following may be considered:

largely conceptualized and finally published.

Based on what the study found, it is recommended that:

more time to come to grips with research.

**144**

No conflict of interest to report.
