These paper tips are in addition to those found on the Course Paper site.

It goes without saying that a paper has a beginning, a middle and an end. But which pieces go where?
 
 

YOUR BEGINNING:

In your first 2-3 pages, you will lay out your research problem (see below). In your first paragraph you may want to catch your reader's attention by telling them why they should know about your research topic. Here are some examples:

• Your topic affects many people (e.g., we are all consumers; more distance learning courses are available every year; sizable numbers of students are bullied)
• Your topic addresses a change in circumstances, e.g., telecommuting; planning for new careers; Facebook or MySpace
• Your topic addresses a societal problem, e.g., violence in the schools; under representation of women in science
• Your topic can make life better for many people (e.g., service programs for "at-risk" students, extra-curricular activies in college, patient, patient's family and hospice care worker interactions)
• Your topic is important conceptually (at last! the key to group cohesion; a new slant on influence)

In your beginning you want to be certain you have answered these three questions:

• What is your topic?
• Why is this topic important?
• What will you, in this paper, add to this topic?

If you are doing a literature review, here is where your conceptual review belongs. Use subheadings to organize it. Each subheading addresses a specific topic.

If you plan to design a study or collect data, "your middle" includes: a briefer literature review, a detailed description of your methods. Methods includes describing your participants, how you obtained those participants (sampling), the exact procedures you will follow. Questionnaires or scales or other assessments or measures used go in an appendix and are briefly described under a "procedures: subheading.
 
 

YOUR END:

In any case, your concluding pages will:

• offer a synopsis what you have learned about the topic
• discuss the implications of your topic
• describe limitations of your research or the research that you reviewed
• give suggestions for directions that future research on this topic should take

I spend a lot of time emphasizing your research problem. That's because if you know your topic and its importance, the rest of the paper can virtually write itself! This is the most critical part of your paper and generally it is the most difficult to write.

As a writer, I fight inertia at every step. ANYTHING rather than begin writing. I am an expert in the inertia battle!

When I write a paper, if it is empirical and I collected my own data, I begin writing the paper by describing the methods and the analytic results section. That's because these are very straightforward sections and writing these sections breaks the inertia and gets me moving. If I am doing a conceptual review, I usually begin with a topical outline with key words in each section. Then I try to write the research problem. I go ahead and write my conclusions, including importance, limitations and suggestions, then I go back and rewrite the research problem. By about the fourth revision, the research problem has shaped up and I can quickly go through and connect the pieces and write the entire paper.

WRITING IS HARD WORK. Honest. So don't worry if you feel discouraged. Keep at it and I can promise your paper will shape up. (And if it's easy for you, please share your tips with the rest of us!)

1. What's your research problem?

In a paragraph or two, preferably on page 1, by page 2 AT THE VERY LATEST.

What is the general topic of this paper?
Why is it important to know about this topic?

• Will it help students learn?
• Make teams more effective?
• Sell more products?
• Solve a social problem?
• Increase the number of women scientists, college presidents, or athletic administrators?

What will YOUR paper contribute to this topic?

• A new design for research?
• Information we didn't know before?
• Juxtaposing two or three topics where the similarities had be ignored?
• Replicating an important finding on a new population?
• Setting out your dissertation topic?

Try writing an outline first.
The topics in your outline can become headings and subheadings in your paper.

Organize CONCEPTUALLY.
Put all the studies (for example) about group cohesion in work groups together.
Discuss overall and generic findings rather than summarizing each article one by one.
Try to avoid the "laundry list" of long descriptions of each study in term.

EXAMPLE:

It has been found that cohesive work groups are more productive in terms of group goals (Andrews & Benedicktus, 1999; Moore, 2003), which may or may not coincide with productivity in the larger organization. Workers are more comfortable in cohesive groups (Freedman, 1996) and have a stronger sense of collective identity (Militello, 1996; Swearingen, 1998).

3. REALLY DISCUSS what you have found or reviewed.

• What general conclusions do you draw about your topic?
• Is the research consistent or are there inconsistencies that are not easily explained?
• What are some conceptual implications of the research that you reviewed or the results that you found?
• What are some practical implications of the research you reviewed or the results you found?
• What are some good directions for future research in this general area?

What are the limitations of your paper?
What could be included in a future paper to extend it?
Do you have any policy suggestions, if so, what are they?
 
 

Spring in Tallahassee. Catch the pollen!

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Susan Carol Losh
March 16 2009