Guidelines for Research Paper
The purpose of this assignment is twofold: (1) to allow you to explore a given topic of
your choice in more depth than is otherwise possible in a seminar, and (2) to
help you hone your research skills in making the transition from a consumer of
knowledge to a producer of knowledge.
Try to think of the paper not as just another written assignment, but as
an opportunity to make the course more relevant to your interests, and to
develop a research paper that will eventually result in a conference paper, a
publication in a scholarly journal, or a dissertation topic.
Think about the assignment as writing a slightly more
detailed version of the first half of a journal article or an NSF proposal
requesting funding for your research. In
other words, you have limited space to convince the Reader (me, or a panel of
reviewers at NSF, a journal editor and anonymous reviewers) of the importance
of your research, your ability to complete it, its contribution to the
literature, as well as the essentials of the theory, measures and the rationale
behind the design for carrying out your research. The Reader in this case is very busy and reads
tons of manuscripts, proposals and journal submissions. S/he has a selfish rule of thumb: “Tell me
only what I need to know! Don’t waste my time!” This selfish and demanding Reader
has limited time, money and journal space to devote to authors who fail to get
directly to the point and convince them that they should read their proposal
rather than doing something more important and rewarding. (In truth, of course,
I personally relish reading proposals, but just pretend for the sake of the
assignment that I don’t!)
1)
Introduction
a)
Thesis: What is the central research question that you
are investigating? Some statement like, “The primary purpose of this paper is
to...” (Or, the purpose of this paper is twofold…). The thesis of the research
should be stated early in the paper—the first few paragraphs, the first page or
two.
b)
Include in your
introduction a brief statement describing the importance of the topic and the
thesis. What are the political,
theoretical, and normative implications of your research? How does your
research improve upon the existing literature? What contribution will the
proposed research make to the literature? What new, exciting directions will
you take the literature? Like a journalist, you need to convince the reader
that the paper is worthy of careful consideration.
c)
Be sure to discuss the
political implications of your research.
d)
Plan of the paper: In
a brief paragraph, give an overview of your arguments and how the paper will be
organized.
2)
Past Research (review of the literature). Please be especially vigilant about keeping
the review relevant to the central thesis of the paper, which
should be the central organizing theme of your paper. I don’t want a bibliographic essay, but an
evaluation of relevant prior research on the topic that will describe how you
intend to improve on existing studies.
a)
Strengths and
weaknesses of prior research (see page 1 of the syllabus for ideas here); you
might discuss one or more of the following:
i)
How existing research
has overlooked or given inadequate attention to your topic, for whatever
reason.
ii)
You might critique
existing studies on a number of grounds, including inadequate measures,
inappropriate design, fuzzy concepts, lack of theory, contradictory findings,
puzzles in the literature that need to be solved, and so on. You’re obviously
going to focus on those problems that you intend to correct in your
research.
b)
Describe briefly how
you propose to correct the above problems.
3)
Expectations: What do you expect
to find? What are your
expectations? Your expectations or
hypotheses will flow from theory and prior research.
4)
Design, Measures,
Data:
The actual design of your proposed research. What basic decisions are you making about
your research design and how do you justify them?
a)
What general type of
research design is most appropriate for your study? Survey research, field research, panel
design, time-series, experimental, or some other way of collecting
observations?
b)
Define important
concepts and describe how you plan to operationalize (measure) important
variables.
c)
What type of
observations, at what level of analysis, how they should be made, and so forth?
5)
Conclusions: Reflect back on your thesis and the contribution of your
proposed research.
It’s that simple! Something else you might do is take a close
look at an article you really like and see how the authors introduce the topic,
make transitions, and all the other things listed above. Use that article as a
sort of template to organize and write your paper. Imitation is a form of
learning!