Writing a research proposal involves a good background section. It is the starting point where readers get their idea what researcher is going to explore. To have a good background section one need to adopt particular technique such as using a funnel shape background.
A good way to think is asking few questions, before writing the research questions
For example:
1)why the research is necessary?
2)how do you know that it is a big problem?
3)what are the current gaps?
4)how is your research question going to address those gaps?
These thinking should flow in a triangular structure where the broad area of the topic should be on the top. It can be a general statement. Gradually, taper down with more focused question, where the writer gives a clear view to the reader what is the research question.
Few components of a background are
To clearly show your reader why is the issue to important in current context . For example , after an opening sentence ,you can talk on national data .
Another way is to explain the important term which you are going to use in your title statement .One IMPORTANT tip is that ,assume that your reader don’t have any idea of your topic .Then how you are going to introduce your topic of interest to them . So key here is that -” be simple in describing your material in the introduction phase“ .
Another important tip is that try to think rationally when you are at the basic level of research proposal . Don’t fill your background with too many factual information. It is important in a post-graduate level that one show his/her own interpretation of the factual data. For instance, if you provide a fact that there are so many hospital admission due to a disease .Then ,what exactly is your own opinion about it . For example, you can talk about the intervention method or you can say that these are the risk factors .
Thus , it is important to have your story and your view in a research proposal rather than a simple collection of data and facts .
Click the link below ,in the context section you can see how to develop a funnel shaped background
Public Health 