Stepping Stones to a Research Paper
This is a writing intensive source. One of the main goals in this class is to help you better understand and communicate about scientific research. This is a skill that will help you regardless of what you decide to do after you graduate.
We’ll do several types of assignments to try to improve and build up these skills:
1. You’ll work with your group to review literature, takes notes on it in your group annotated bibliography, and design a study that build on that literature.
2. You’ll work on how to write testable hypotheses so you can come up with one for your study.
3. You’ll answer questions about articles, showing that you can identify the hypothesis and the independent and dependent variables and explain the results. We’ll also look at identifying problems or confounds with what you read.
4. You’ll turn in a reference section. What I’m looking for here is whether you were able to find enough good journal articles (you need 10 references, and at least 8 of them cited in your introduction section should be empirical journal articles). I’m also looking for good APA style. The best advice is to update references as you go (or even better, use a reference manager such as Zotero—free—or EndNote) and make notes on them in your annotated bibliography, which will be due with your paper.
5. The next step will be to write an outline for your paper. There are at least two purposes to writing the outline. The first is so that I can give you feedback on your organization. But the second, and perhaps more important, purpose is to help you write a better paper. You want to think about what will make the best sections in your literature review (which is usually the hardest part to outline). Some things to think about:
· Why is this area important?
· Do all the studies tend to agree on some findings?
· Are there major points of view or theories that are supported by these findings?
· What are some major issues that I would want to remember or tell others about these findings?
Think about how you could best organize the findings (not the studies—a study might appear more than one place in an outline) to describe the research.
Remember that outlines should be in parallel format (e.g., if A. is a sentence, B should be a sentence, or if A is a phrase that starts with a noun, B should be a phrase that starts with a noun) and that you have to have at least 2 at each level.
A sample outline might look something like this (example is for a paper on online vs. face-to-face cheating in college students):
The effects of delivery type, type of course, and year in school on cheating in college students
I. Cheating as a problem
A. Prevalence
B. Reasons why cheating hurts students
II. Factors affecting cheating levels in face-to-face classes
(think of your II and A levels as being potential headings in your paper)
A. Student level
B. Student interest
C. Professor interaction
(you could even get more detailed, putting your topic sentences underneath each A, B)
III. Factors affecting cheating levels in online classes
A. Student level
B. Student interest
C. Professor interaction
IV. Current study
A. Compare the effects of student level and whether it’s a major class on cheating in face-to-face vs. online classes
B. Hypothesis: Students will be more likely to report that they have cheated in an online class than a face-to-face class in the last year, especially when they are first year students and it’s not a class in their major.
V. Method
A. Participants: 5000 randomly selected UNI students recruited via email
B. Procedure: Survey
1. Questions about whether they have cheated in different types of courses
2. Questions about participants—gender, year in school, major
VI. Results
A. Cheating rates by type of courses
B. Compare cheating in online vs. ftf and major vs. nonmajor classes for first year vs. later students
C. Expect an interaction of delivery of course, type of course, and year in school: Students will be more likely to report that they have cheated in an online class than in a ftf class in the last year, and this effect will be stronger when it’s a nonmajor class and when they are first year students.
VII. Discussion
A. What these results mean (summary)
B. Limitations and ideas for future research
1. Self-reported cheating—may not be honest
2. May not have taken an online class in the last year
3. To fix in future research—do experiments on current classes that are taught both ways and measure cheating directly
C. Implications
1. It would suggest that faculty need to do more to monitor cheating in online classes.
2. Faculty should also try to increase students’ motivation in nonmajor classes.
6. Then, using the feedback I give you on your outline, you’ll start writing the paper.
First, you’ll turn in the final draft of your introduction section (along with your group annotated bibliography). Then you’ll turn in the final draft of your method and expected results sections (you’ll also include the “current study” section from the end of the introduction). Then you’ll turn in the entire paper, including improvements on your previous sections
7. You’ll be able to get peer feedback from someone in another group before the final paper is due. You’ll need to turn in a response to this feedback and my own (if you choose to revise other sections) along with your final paper where you describe the feedback and how you responded to each of the points.
Writing is not easy, and it’s something that professors struggle with too. The best way to get better is to keep practicing. There are several books put out by APA and other publishers that can help, including the APA manual. We’ll also talk about writing strategies in class.
Click here for a detailed rubric for the paper, and here for a template.
There are also several sample papers Blackboard for you to look at, but these were done when the assignment was slightly different. You can use them to get an idea of format and what paragraphs should look like, but use the information above and on the rubric so you know how long sections should be, what information should be included, etc.