Rev. 9-06
Introduction
Research is the
process of acquiring enough
information to support a
stated conclusion.
In the process of acquiring information on your subject
you will learn to compile the findings of other writers and combine them to
demonstrate how and why you arrive at your conclusion. This
process is much more than writing a personal opinion essay, reading one book or
article on a subject and reporting its contents, or stringing together a
collection of quotations from various writers.
Writing a research paper requires effort and time, but
carefully following the steps presented here will allow you to do it well. It is very important that you do each
step systematically. None should be
omitted since the next step depends on the successful accomplishment of each.
The following is a countdown, an idea of how many weeks
it takes, start to finish, to produce a paper. It is
assumed that you have more than one class and cannot devote your hours solely
to this one assignment.
Week 1 Chose a subject and begin
gathering research, making a works cited card for each source be it book,
magazine, encyclopedia or internet article.
Week 2 Skim the articles you
found, discard unusable sources, gather more articles if needed; devise thesis
statement and make an outline.
Week 3 Re-read
your sources, making notes on index
cards as you read, re-work outline if new ideas arise.
Week 4 Read. Put notes in order, make a rough draft of the paper.
Week 5 Type the paper and
works cited; proofread.
The most important preparation is allowing plenty of time. Writing at the
last minute never produces a good
paper.
Step
1: Choosing a Subject (Week 1)
There are three basic points to remember when choosing a
subject:
(1)
The subject should interest you. Since thorough
research may take several weeks to complete, the task will be easier if you
have a general interest in your subject.
Documenting what you already know is difficult.
It might be best to work on a subject you know little
about, but which will hold your attention and your interest.
(2) It must be something you can explain to anyone. A topic such as "The Evolution of Zeus in
the Plays of Aeschylus" may be fine written by a specialist in religion
and drama and read by specialists in
the fields. Stay away from a topic
which is beyond your full understanding or one you will have trouble making
clear to the non-specialized reader.
(3) There must be enough material available to research it.
A topic on a very current interest may yield no research materials except a few
newspaper or magazine articles. A
topic such as "Queen
Keeping the three basic
points in mind, you can choose your topic from many different sources. Did a television program bring up a
topic that interests you? Perhaps a
general bull session with friends suggested a topic of interest that you would
like to know more about. A
conversation with your instructor or counselor might also be helpful. The sources for topics are endless, and
these examples represent just a few.
After a topic has been chosen, you are ready to begin
your research. Have a supply of 4 x 5 index cards on hand.
Step II:
Preliminary Search (Week 1 Continued)
The next step is to acquire a general overview of your subject,
find out what the library has on it, and start looking for the special aspect
of the topic on which you will concentrate. Give yourself at least a week to gather sources; it takes time to find books on the
on-line library catalog and retrieve them from the shelves, search periodical
(magazine) indexes and locate the magazines, make photocopies, and browse the
Internet. You may also need 
to request material via an interlibrary loan if the
library doesn’t have the periodical or book you want. Loans usually take
two days. Also, you may find after skimming your books and magazines that they
are not suitable and you will need to return to the library for more resources.
With searching, reading, and weeding articles, a week spent in gathering
sources is reasonable.
At this point you begin using an important research
technique which will save much time and will greatly affect the success of your
paper: You prepare a “work cited card” for each source consulted.
A work cited card for a book, encyclopedia, magazine or
electron source may look like this:
Work cited card for a book:
Latham, David. Crazy Sundays: F.
Scott Fitzgerald in
Author’s
Name
Title
Publication
Date
Publisher
Place
of Publication
You may add the call number to help you relocate a
book later, and if only part of the book is consulted, list the page numbers.
Write all of the information
(author, publisher, date, volume, internet address, etc) found when you
searched the on-line catalog, indexes, or electronic sources and found entries
because you will need it when you do a
works cited page.
Work cited card for an encyclopedia:
Fairchild, Johnson E. “ Colliers Encyclopedia, 1960. I, 332-342.
Title
Volume number
Author
Encyclopedia Title
Pages
Work cited card for a magazine: Author
Breslin, Catherine. “Waking up from the Dream of Women’s Lib.”
Title of Article
Date
Volume number
Name of Magazine
Pages
Work cited card for an online journal
Palfrey, Andrew. “Choice of
Mates in Identical Twins.” Modern Psychology 4.1
(1996): 12 pars. 25 Feb. 2000 http://www.liasu.edu/modpsy/palfrey4(1).htm.
Author
Title of Article
Journal, Volume,
Issue,
Date
Date you consulted
source
Address
The advantages of making works cited cards as you first consult
library materials are: (1) time and effort saved
when you decide to use the material but can’t remember where you
found it, (2) you can refer briefly to the source without repeating the full
information as you make notes on your reading, and (3) you can simply
copy the cards to compile your final
works cited. Any card for a
source you decide not to use may be discarded.
As you look for your
background information, begin gathering ideas on which subject headings you will use in the
on-line catalog and periodical indexes.
The process of finding the subject in the encyclopedia should give you
some clues. Also, check the bibliography following
the encyclopedia articles as it may give you the lead to some specific books. The next thing to do is find out how
much material the library has on your topic.
At this point you decide, is my
subject of recent current interest that would be written about only in
magazines? Has it been around long
enough that books as well as periodical articles have been published about
it? Or is it so old that I would
find it only in books? The witch
trials in
Check the on-line catalog, periodical indexes, or the
Internet to find material on your subject.
If it is not listed in any way you can think of, either there is not
enough material in the library or you need help from the librarian. When you find the subject has many
subdivisions listed, you have selected too broad a topic. A long list of "see also"
references in either place will indicate, too, that your subject is too
broad. Restricting your subject to
a topic you can handle in a six- or eight-page paper is your next problem. Looking at the subdivisions of the
subject in the catalog or the subtopics in the periodical index will give you
some ideas on how to do this.
The Internet is
a new and speedy tool for research and seems limitless in its scope of topics
– archaic or current. full-text articles from on-line journals can
be accessed and printed out. Or they can be sent to your home e-mail as well as
saved onto a disk. Via computer, you can search encyclopedias, newspapers, TV
news, magazines, journals in the fields of medicine, sociology, psychology,
sports, agriculture, ecology, etc. If you don’t print or save an
interesting article and think you may want to return to the site later, it is a
good idea to make a works cited card for it.
Step III:
Developing a Thesis Statement (Week 2)
Now that you have found your subject and have done some
preliminary reading about it, you must decide how you will work with the topic
you have chosen. Developing one
sentence, the thesis statement, which
presents the scope of your entire paper, will accomplish this step.
For instance, your subject may be "Alternative
Energy Sources." To show what
you will discuss and the viewpoint from which you will write about, the thesis statement could be "The sun is a source of energy which should be
utilized as a practical method for relieving the energy crisis." With such a
statement in mind you can proceed to gather information in an intelligent
manner. You will search for
material to support the statement and work within the limits it provides.
There is no value in simply restating the facts or
opinions you have read. You must
decide to concentrate on some aspect of the topic which your
preliminary reading has suggested and which further reading will clarify.
Take the topic of the teenage runaway as an example. Your preliminary reading may have shown
what types of teenagers run away, what problems they run away from, what
problems arise for the runaway, and have found statistical studies on the problem. Your reading may suggest the public assumes
the problem of runaways exists only with families of "problem"
children. One possible thesis statement focusing
on that aspect could read "Contrary to popular myth, the teenage runaway problem is not
limited to the typical juvenile delinquent."
As you gather material on your topic, you will be able to
select the details to support your thesis statement. Remember: a good statement is never a
preconceived notion or a bias that you could prove only by distorting or
ignoring facts; nor is it the statement of any accepted fact about which research would
reveal nothing new. The more exact the statement is, the
easier the paper will be to research and to write. At this point, you will need to add more
materials to your works cited since you know which precise aspect of the
topic you are treating. Remember to
make a complete works cited card as you consult each source. With the thesis statement completed, you are ready to make a preliminary outline
for your paper.
Step
IV: Preparing the Outline (Week 2 Continued)
Having
decided what our paper will discuss by phrasing the thesis statement, your next
step is preparing a preliminary outline.
An outline is the skeleton
frame of your paper. It consists of briefly stated ideas or
topics arranged in a logical order to show the relationship between the
ideas. It makes sure that you
present everything on your subject which is necessary to reach your
conclusion. A good outline will
guide you in your reading and note-taking -
and is essential!
Start asking yourself questions about the subject you have selected,
but so far have only background information about. What do you want to find out about it
and what information will you need to arrive at a conclusion? Ask yourself: What? Why? When? Where? How? Jot down the ideas the questions give
you, then arrange them logically.
A logical order for some subjects is a chronological arrangement. For others, you can present the main idea and
then expand it; that is, introduce the subject, develop it, then show the
significance of what you have presented.
Outlines consist of a numbered list of important ideas
with subheads describing different aspects of the important idea. It may be a topical outline, which simply states the name of the idea, or it may be a sentence
outline in which a
whole thought about each idea is expressed. The sentence outline has the advantage
of making you think more clearly about what you are trying to do and allows you
to get a good start on the actual writing.
The following examples of outlines will help you as you
prepare one for your own subject. NOTE: YOUR RESEARCH PAPER WILL NOT LOOK
LIKE THE OUTLINE FORMAT. The outline is a guide for thinking and writing. Consult your Little Brown Handbook
to see what a research paper will look like.
Example 1. Topical
outline arranged in chronological order
Subject: The Effect of the Automobile on the Development
of Highways
Thesis statement:
Improved engineering and increased use of automobiles has led to the
construction of many miles of interstate and secondary highways.
A.
Early automobiles
1.
Number per capita population
2.
Speed and power
3.
Purposes for
which used
B.
Early highways
1.
Miles constructed
2.
Materials used
3.
Amount of use
C.
Modern automobiles
1.
Number per capita population
2.
Speed and power
3.
Purposes for which used
a.
Travel to work
b.
Pleasure
c
Transportation of goods
c.
Schoolhouses
D.
Modern highways
1. Miles constructed