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How To Write A Research Paper
How To Write A Research Paper
It is essential for students to examine and write about a topic they like and know better.
Students who are invested and involved in the subject pay attention to details in
making sure that paper is as strong as it could be. Achieving this goal means
addressing requirements of each paper section such as research questions, methods,
analysis, and discussion, among others. Surf the internet to get inspired by
various research paper topics.
One of the initial steps you should perform in making a paper stand out is doing a bit of
initial exploring to see what is out there already, think about future outline, thesis or
hypothesis. Ask what has already been done about this particular issue in the past. Are
there pathways that have not yet been explored, which student should shed light on?
Indeed, one can make paper stand out by ensuring that some new or novel insights
are explored, no matter how small. This will make research paper not only publishable
or presentable at academic venues, but it’ll also receive high grades from professor
assessing it.
After going through the necessary amount of information, data and literature available
on your desired topic, it is time to narrow the research down. It’s not appropriate if
chosen issue is very broad as there may be several important aspects within this very
theme. It won’t be a good solution to cover them all in one research paper as it’ll turn
out vague or generic.
Pursue the unique pathway that caught your interest, and that’ll occupy a niche as well
as advance the value of the conversation regarding the subject. At this stage, you
should explain the reasons why your research study is essential and describe in detail
the significance of your research.
STEP 2. Find Information
For general or background information needed for an outline creation, check out useful
URLs, general information online, using search engines, or encyclopedias online such
as Britannica. Use search engines or other search tools as a starting point. Pay
attention to domain name extensions, .edu (educational institution), .org (non-profit
organization) or .gov (government). These sites represent institutions and are more
reliable, however, be aware of possible political bias on some government sites.
Be selective of .com (commercial) sites. Many of these sites are excellent; although, a
large number of them contain advertisements for products and links to outer irrelevant
sources. Network Solutions provides link where you can find out what some of the
other extensions stand for. Be wary of millions of personal home pages on the Net.
Quality of these personal homepages varies greatly. Learning how to evaluate
websites critically and search effectively on the Internet will help you eliminate
irrelevant sites and waste less of your time.
The recent arrival of a variety of domain name extensions such as .biz (commercial
businesses), .pro, .info (info on products / organizations), .name, .ws (WebSite), .cc
(Cocos Island) or .sh (St. Helena) or .tv (Tuvalu) may create some confusion as you
won’t tell whether .cc or .sh or .tv site is in reality .com, .edu, .gov, .net, or .org site.
Many new extensions have no registration restrictions and are available to anyone who
wishes to register a distinct domain name that has not already been taken. For
instance, if Books.com is unavailable, you can register as Books.ws or Books.info via a
service agent such as Register.com.
If you need books for your research in the Library, use the OPAC (Online Public
Access Catalog).
As you gather your resources, note down full bibliographical information (author, title,
place of publication, publisher, date of publication, page numbers, URLs, creation or
modification dates on Web pages, and your date of access) on your worksheet,
printout, or enter the information on your laptop or desktop computer for later retrieval.
If printing from the Internet, set up the browser to print the URL and date of access for
every page. Remember that an article without bibliographical information is useless
since you cannot cite it as a source.
Stay away from generic, too fuzzy statements and arguments. Use a particular subject.
The paper should present something new for audience; make it interesting and
educative for your readers. Avoid citing other authors in this section. Present your own
ideas in your own words instead of simply copying from other writers.
b. Offer a short justification - why your readers or target audience should care about your research paper (study
importance)
c. Brief explanation of paper’s scope and planned method to be used in examining your issue
II. ISSUE
a. History behind the issue
a. Theories, constructs and concepts (journal articles, textbooks and relevant publications)
o i. Describe related theories used to explain issue or theories used to propose a solution to the issue
o ii. How were concepts or theoretical constructs defined?
o iii. Describe relevance of major theories used to explain the issue
b. Empirical literature (journal articles)
o i. Whose concept(s) and definition(s) are you going to borrow or use in your own research (if applicable)?
o ii. Describe unique aspect(s) of issue that you will be examining
o iii. Based on what you read so far, describe method that suits best for your own research
IV. METHOD
d. Did any results surprise you? Was there anything that supported previous finding(s)?
a. A brief recap of issue examined, method used and major finding(s)
b. Briefly remind readers about original goal of this study and what you accomplished in your research work
Sometimes students are asked to submit formal outlines with their research papers. In
a formal outline, numbers and letters are used to arrange topics and subtopics. The
letters and numbers of the same kind should be placed directly under one another. The
topics denoted by their headings and subheadings should be grouped in a logical
order.
All points of a research paper outline must relate to the same major topic that you first
mentioned in your capital Roman numeral.
Example of an outline for a research paper:
c. Case of un-presidential speech – Obama is first president to deviate from norms of tone, manner and
demeanor of conversation
d. Study examines manner, tone, and keywords during Obama first term
e. Justify importance of study
b. Review of studies done on presidential communication and social media communication: strengths and
weaknesses of methodologies used
c. Identify gaps and areas that should be filled in presidential communication and social media strategy
III. METHOD
a. Use content analysis software: Timeframe is Obama tweets during one-year period
b. Code and classify them into positive, negative, and neutral language
a. Describe results of content analysis – use tables to present figures about positive, negative and neutral tone
c. How does Obama speech via social media significantly differ from the previous president(s)?
d. Is there a method to the strategy? Using agenda-setting theory, describe whether media outlets or personalities
follow his messaging lead.
e. Limitation of the study: Content analysis can only describe content but cannot offer in-depth cause-effect or
correlations of things or variables.
a. Study sought to measure tone and nature of presidential speech using content analysis
c. Study found common keywords used in his tweets (mention common keywords)
Researcher recommends that this study be expanded by using other method to measure perception
of presidential tweets such as a random survey of undecided voters
Purpose of an outline is to help you think through your topic carefully and organize it logically before
you start writing. A good outline is the most important step in writing an excellent paper. Check your
outline to ensure that points covered flow logically from one to the other. Include in your outline an
introduction, a body, and a conclusion. You may create the first outline as a draft and edit it while
writing a research paper.
Introduction — State your thesis and purpose of your research paper clearly. What is the chief
reason you are writing the paper? State also how you plan to approach your issue. Is this a factual
report, a book review, a comparison, or an analysis of a problem? Explain briefly the major points
you’ll cover in your paper and why readers should be interested in your theme.
Body — This is where you present your arguments to support your thesis statement. This section is
divided into many parts, that may vary, depending on your discipline, teachers’ requirements, etc.
Usually, the body comprises a literature review, methodology, analysis, results, and discussion.
Conclusion — Restate or reword your thesis / research question. Summarize your arguments.
Explain why you have come to this particular conclusion. Why your research is valuable and how
acquired results can be used for future researches.
Do not include any information that is not relevant to your issue under discussion, and do not include
information that you do not understand. Make sure information that you have noted is carefully
recorded and in your own words, if possible. Plagiarism is definitely out of question. Document all
ideas borrowed or quotes used very accurately. As you classify your notes, jot down detailed
bibliographical information for each cited paragraph and have it ready to transfer to your Works Cited
page.
Devise your own method to organize your materials. One method may be to mark with a different
color ink or use a marker to identify sections in your outline, IA3b – meaning that the item “Accessing
WWW” belongs in the following location of your outline:
Group your notes following the outline codes you have assigned to your notes, like, IA2, IA3, IA4, etc.
This method will enable you to quickly put all your resources in the right place as you systematize
your notes according to your outline.
Keyword Internet search. An excellent place to start with a review of related literature is by going
online and doing some preliminary search using specific keywords related to topic or your outline. Perhaps a
student can begin by looking at general information published on well-known sites and general publications
before delving into specific journal articles and academic papers. Although these two receive the highest trust
as sources because they are referred to as independent peer-reviewed work. Nevertheless, goal at this stage
of the process is really to get that preliminary information.
Check previous researches. The next step of search process is to look at the work done by credible
and respectable organizations about subject matter. What have they found, and what are they sharing and
publishing online? Are the research works privately or publicly funded? Are the researchers affiliated with a
company or foundation, or do they belong to university research institutions? It is essential to look at sources of
funding or potential conflict of interest because the inherent bias in the findings needs to be considered in
weighing credibility of research work.
Visit university library. Now that you have quite a bit of background information to work with, the time
has come for you to spend the right amount of effort doing some searching and sleuthing at university libraries.
Use research databases to look for journal articles or other primary and first-hand sources about your research
topic. This type of library research is the stage where you’ll probably get a lot of information as to the
institutions and scholars researching the specific theme (from specialties to sub-specialties) that you are
interested in exploring.
Use academic sources. Remember that peer-reviewed academic journals tend to receive the highest
credibility in academic research papers primarily because of the critical and often blind peer-review process,
which is gold standard in judging the quality of research work. Furthermore, you’ll be well served if you use
some books published by well-known researchers and academics on the topic that you are researching and
writing about. If your work gets published or accepted at a conference, you have a good chance of being
quoted or cited in subsequent work by other researchers in the area that you are pursuing.
After conducting a thorough lit review, you now have at least a comprehensive background
information and understanding of various contours and nuances of your topic. Many of thesis
questions that you may have already been answered, and you should have an idea as to where the
gaps in knowledge are and what needs to be done to advance inquiry process and therefore
contribute to the body on the topic that you have chosen.
If your research question, for example, pertains to how individual voters view women candidates for
president, perhaps the best method is by doing field interviews or by conducting a phone survey of
these voters using a random sampling method. There are many ways that may help you derive
answers to your questions. It is crucial, however, to be aware that each method has an inherent set of
strengths and weaknesses.
Focus group. It is a great method to use if the goal is to obtain a lot of information from a small group
of people without much investment in time and money. Just gathering them in one place (typically up to a
dozen people) and asking them to provide insights into your research questions is often enough.
While it is suitable for convenience sake, findings from a focus group method, however, might not
necessarily be generalizable to overall population, because participants were selected somewhat
arbitrarily. A researcher can only make a valid conclusion or inference about their findings to the
general population if everyone or every voter was given an equal chance to be chosen for the study in
the form of random sampling.
Survey. Those conducted using a large sample with participants chosen randomly tend to be viewed
highly in the realm of peer-reviewed research. However, it is essential to remember that surveys also have
weaknesses because participants might not necessarily give their honest opinion (i.e., giving ‘prestige’ or
politically correct answers), and they are influenced by many factors in the way that they answer survey
questions.
Field experiments. Giving a specific group certain things while others experience a different situation
these experiments are also employed to find answers to the impact of a treatment or a program on a
community. Methods such as content analysis, experiments, direct observation, or participant observations are
also conventional methods being used by researchers to find answers to research questions. Every student
researcher should be familiar with standard research methods available for use and understand strengths and
weaknesses that these methods bring to the study.
A note about replication: In writing the methods section of your research paper, it is crucial to be as
precise and detailed about the methodology as possible. Other researchers should replicate the
method that you employed to see if they can come up with the same findings that you arrived with.
Replication is a critical component in the process of validating results and strengthening body that we
have accumulated on specific research topics.
Results. First, it is important to talk about findings of your study. It is helpful to ask the following
questions: Were research questions in your research answered? If you created a series of hypothesis
statements (or educated guesses), were they supported or rejected? As well, it’ll be helpful if you provide
support for your research findings in the form of tables, graphs, statistical figures, and other visual
representations to aid reader in trying to understand and make sense of your data and information.
Analysis. In conducting analysis, you, as a writer and researcher, will play an important role in
interpreting findings of your study to readers. Some thoughts must be provided in the following questions, for
example: Are your results significant? Did findings support or reject previous research findings? With available
evidence, it behooves you as a researcher to provide context and explain significance of information that you
uncovered. It involves comparing and contrasting how your findings hold up against previous findings in similar
studies.
Discussion. After laying out findings and doing analysis, it is only fitting to acknowledge some of the
major or minor limitations of your study. Doing this part provides a necessary disclosure and a sense of
transparency to the reader in terms of potential weakness or weaknesses of your research. Doing this part
might even help future researchers design new methods as a way to deal with or solve the limitations of your
study.
Conclusion. This section provides a chance for writer to summarize and tie everything together into a
coherent narrative. A summary typically touches on the main points beginning with the main research question,
methods employed, results, including findings. Conclusion section gives way for readers to remember the gist
of your study. This section is especially helpful when readers don’t have enough time or when they are doing
preliminary research and are trying to assess your research paper content quickly.
It is smart to create a comprehensive outline with thesis statement to help with the clarity and article’s
organization. For it to be helpful, your outline should indicate the sections that you want to cover in
the research paper. For each section, use some bullet point statements to guide and remind you what
you should say or what ideas you should express in that particular section. A good outline allows
researcher to work in chunks (especially when you have flow in your thinking), and it helps prevent
you as a writer from getting overwhelmed by the whole task. It is highly recommended that
researchers write in bursts of time, typically two to three hours at a time, to maximize energy and
focus.
Remember, as is true in any piece of writing, a good research paper is the one that is finished.
Perfection and procrastination are enemy of good in writing process. Be sure to have enough
discipline to dedicate time, a regular schedule, for doing the writing regardless of whether you have
‘writer’s block’ or not. This is the only way that you’ll meet deadline and complete project.
Read your paper for any content errors. Double-check facts and figures. Arrange and rearrange
ideas to follow your outline format. Reorganize your outline if necessary, but always keep your
paper’s purpose and your readers in mind.
Checklist One
Is my thesis statement concise and clear?
Re-read your paper for grammatical errors. Use a dictionary or a thesaurus as needed. Do a spell check.
Correct all errors that you spot and improve overall paper’s quality to the best of your ability. Get someone else
to read it over. Sometimes only a second pair of eyes is managed to see mistakes that you missed.
Checklist Two
Did I begin each paragraph with a proper topic sentence?
Did I avoid using contractions? Use “cannot” instead of “can’t”, “do not” instead of “don’t”?
Did I use third person as much as possible? Avoid using phrases such as “I think”, “I guess”, “I suppose”
Did I leave a sense of completion for my reader(s) at the end of the paper?
For an excellent source on English composition, check out this classic book by William Strunk, Jr. on
the Elements of Style. Contents include Elementary Rules of Usage, Elementary Principles of
Composition, Words & Expressions Commonly Misused, An Approach to Style with a List of
Reminders: Place yourself in the background, Revise and rewrite, Avoid fancy words, Be clear, Do
not inject opinion, Do not take shortcuts at the cost of clarity, and much more. Details of The
Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. partially available online.
There is also a particular formatting style you must follow. It depends on the field of your studies or
requirements of your University supervisor. There are several formatting styles typically used. The
most commonly used are APA style and MLA style. However, there are such style guides as,
Harvard, Chicago Manual of Style, American Medical Association (AMA) Style, APSA (American
Political Science Association), ASA (American Sociological Association), IEEE (Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers) and more. Check informative style guides before completing formatting.
APA (American Psychological Association) style is mostly used to cite sources within social sciences
field. The detailed information is in Publication Manual of American Psychological Association, (6th
ed., 2nd printing).
MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used for liberal arts and humanities.
The most recent printed guide on it is MLA Handbook (8th ed.). Instead of providing individual
recommendations for each publishing format (printed, online, e-books, etc.), this edition recommends
a single universal set of guidelines, which writers can apply to any kind of source. Also, remember to
use parenthetical citations for MLA research paper format correctly.
Grammar checkers offer a chance to scan paper and find spelling mistakes, lexical or grammar
issues. Even if paper’s content is good, misspelled words and errors in tenses may result in a low
grade that will be very disappointing.
Plagiarism checkers provide excellent service such as text scan to make sure that your paper did
not miss any crucial citation or did not fail to give credit to specific quotations and passages.
Plagiarism is a plague that must be avoided at all costs. Researchers must take great care in giving
credit where credit is due. Doing otherwise may lead to not only failing grades but also ruined careers
and reputations.
Citation generators. Writing the research report, researchers should follow certain conventions of
citing other people’s work in final paper of the study. The most common citation styles include
American Psychological Society (APA), Harvard Citation, Chicago Manual of Style, and a few others
that can be easily generated with help of free tools. Use it to transform one citation style to another.
This is especially helpful if you are trying to submit your research report for peer-review or publication
consideration with various publication outlets prescribing different citation styles.
Title page generators. A title page is the first thing your professor sees upon grading research
paper. So, it should be formatted perfectly. Many college students find it difficult to memorize all
indents, title case letters, and spaces that are specific for each standard. Use a generator to create
title pages and format your citations in APA, MLA, Chicago and other styles.
When you have a research report ready, it is time to submit it for publication consideration or for peer-
review for a potential presentation at a conference. It is important for researcher to read and follow
carefully prescribed editorial guidelines of publication that you are submitting it to. Not following
guidelines could prove detrimental — rejection of otherwise solid research work.
Next is to conduct a thorough literature review to see what’s already been done in the area that you
are interested in doing research. This process helps you narrow your scope and will help set you up
for success in finding the niche contribution that you want to achieve in doing the research. Finally, it
is important to create a guiding thesis statement and an outline where you may work in chunks
without losing the big picture and with a clear understanding as to how each element of paper
contributes to flow and a strong organization of your final document.