[Title]

[Author]

Abstract

The abstract should include the research motivation and question. It should also briefly

mention the data and methods that were used, and the main results of your research. After

discussing the main results, you should talk about the contribution of this research and its

possible consequences.

Introduction

When writing the start of your journal-length article, the proper format is Times

New Roman, font size 12, justified. To emphasize an idea, use italics. Similarly, you use

italics when referring to a book or a foreign concept. Please be careful when citing and

the preference is to cite with a parenthetical citation (Family name, Year). When you

want to quote you can have this inside quotation marks but “don’t forget to cite the author

on the parenthetical citation” (Family name, Year)

The introduction situates your whole research. This is where you introduce your

paper, and this usually has a hook, a research gap, and the thesis statement or research

question.

[Level 2 title: center, headline style capitalization, roman type]

Start the new paragraph with an indented new line.

[This is a Level 3 title: flush left, headline style capitalization, bold face]
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Start the new paragraph with an indented new line.

[This is a Level 4 title: flush left, sentence style, roman type]

Similar to the one above, start the new paragraph with an indented line.

[This is a Level 5 title: indented, sentence style, bold fare]. And it continues on

to the paragraph. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox

jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Literature review

The beginning paragraph of your literature review should detail how you will

proceed with your discussion of what other scholars have said about your topic. You may

want to put subsections on the ideas that you will be using or that are related to your

research. If you plan to use these subsections, please write the flow of the subsections in

this introductory paragraph.

[Concept 1 to be used]

You can talk about the first concept (which could be the general concept you want

to use). Remember that a literature review is not a mere summary of the books or journal

articles that you have read. You should read those books and journals, and see the

insights that relate with or challenge your research question. Again, when doing the

literature review, do not forget to cite your sources inside parentheses.

You should start with the next paragraph here.

[Concept 2 to be used]
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When you have a concept 1, it does not make sense to not have a concept 2, and

you will have to write what your other concepts are.

Data and Methods

The beginning paragraph of your Data and Methods section should give a general

perspective of how you will investigate your research question. Often, you should remind

your reader about your research question. You should describe broadly how you obtained

your data (whether through a survey or through a dataset). If necessary, you can refer

your reader to an appendix that outlines the questions you asked in the survey.

When writing the data collection technique, you should specify what methods you

used to collect your data, the people you collected data from (be specific about their

characteristics, the number of respondents, and the justification for choosing them). You

can also give a sense of what questions will be asked of your research participants with an

added “(see Appendix A for the questionnaire).”

If you wish to write the ethical considerations, you should also mention them

here. When writing about the ethical considerations for research, you should detail how

you promoted informed consent, confidentiality, and compensation in your research. You

should let your readers know how you plan to approach research participants and how

you ensured that the ethical rights of your research participants were respected.

Variables / Dependent Variables

In a quantitative research, you should clarify what are your variables. You can

mention how you obtained or recoded these variables from your survey, and how each
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variable relates to your study. Often, you put the dependent or outcome variable first

since you would want to see if there are changes in this type of variable.

Independent Variables

If you plan to distinguish the dependent from the independent variable, you may

write here what the independent variables are. You should explain also what is the

inference with using these independent variables.

Analytic strategy

This section should detail how the collected data will be analyzed in order to

answer the research question or give evidence for the research argument. When doing

quantitative research, you should also say something about the way data will be

presented, such as descriptive statistics or graphs. If you plan to use correlations and

regressions, it will be helpful to mention them here also.

Results

Your results can have different sections such as: descriptive statistics, graphs,

correlations, and regressions. Each of these could have its own section. Below are the

descriptions for each of the sections.

Descriptive Statistics

You should talk about the means and percentages and what those signify. At this

section, you can start comparing and contrasting groups. You will usually have a table

with this, and you will have to write “Table 1 shows….”

Graphs
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When writing the paragraph for this section, refer to the graphs or images that you

have. For example, you will have to write “Graph 1 shows that there has been an

increasing (or decreasing) trend….” It cannot be emphasized enough that the graph and

the prose should match each other.

Correlations

In this section, you can investigate the correlations between the different variables

(see the Guide for reading and writing correlations) and you can describe the association

between the variables that have high correlations.

Regressions

For those who want to venture into inferential statistics, you can talk about the

effect of your independent variable on the dependent variable. You can write, “For every

one unit increase in X, there is an associated z unit increase in Y (p < 0.001)….”

Discussion

At the start of this section, you can remind your reader about the research

questions and how you tried answered them. Please describe three to five main points or

insights of your research. How do the results point you to those insights? What is your

interpretation of the results? How do previous studies support or challenge your insights?

You will usually have to write more than five paragraphs to discuss the insights

from your results. Your discussion section will no longer need your raw data from the

previous section. However, you will have to supply the ideas of scholars who either agree

or disagree with your findings.

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Conclusion

At this point, you will have to summarize and integrate the insights in your paper.

You will have to write this in a simple and concise manner.

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References