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Geography 300

Writing Lab: Part C - ALTERNATE VERSION AVAILABLE IN MOODLE!!

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Major Components of the Research Paper

Background: Hopefully from parts A and B of this assignment, you have improved your skills at picking a topic, organizing your thoughts, constructing logical arguments and giving proper credit/blame to other writers.  The final component of this lab is designed to introduce you to the parts of the research paper, especially the literature review, a component generally omitted from essays and either understated or absent in reports. 

Pay close attention to this because all of you will have to write a senior capstone or thesis paper in Geography 490. Your ability to anticipate this project can get prepared, even semester in advance, will greatly aid your successful navigation of the stormy waters of Geography 490.

Goal:  The goal of this assignment is to help students write a good research paper by helping them come to a solid understanding of the nature and function of the major components of a standard research paper.

Objectives:  Students identify the major components of a thesis-based research article.

Constructing the Standard Research Paper
Before your start : The Research Proposal:

In some courses, especially Geography 490, you will be asked to turn in a short document that outlines what you intend to do for a research project.  Called a research proposal, this short document can range from only a page to 10 pages or more, depending on the scope of the project you are planning.  Generally research proposals include:

  1. your rationale for the project,
  2. the research question (broad)
  3. your hypothesis, or thesis statement (more specific)
  4. your data source(s),
  5. the methodology or methodologies you plan on using,
  6. the anticipated outcomes, and frequently
  7. a discussion of anticipated troubles. 

Title Page: You may want to wait...

Generally the first component of a research paper that your readers will see is the title page.  There is a tendency to do this first, since it comes first, but it like the abstract, the introduction and the conclusion, the title page should be written during the later phases of the writing project.  This again is to ensure that there is congruence between the body of the paper and the title.  Frequently the title page includes, in addition to the title: author's name, course name/number, date and instructors name.

**Generally, its best to give your paper a title that clearly points to what the paper is about.  Avoid the urge to be cute or unnecessarily wordy.  

Part 1: Introduction:

Although how to write an introduction is partially covered in part B of this lab, it is worth reiterating several of the common strategies used in a good introduction.  Generally you want to generate interest in the paper by explaining why you are writing it.  You want to explain why someone should care about this thing you are researching.  Perhaps you would try to use some shocking statistics, or simply an anecdote that helps your readers understand why you are interested in topic.  MOST introductions incorporate the thesis statement or hypothesis, generally in the final paragraphs of the introduction. 

Question 1.  Which of the following is NOT among the common components of the introduction:

A.  a statement of the problem.
B.  a discussion of why the issue is important or interesting.
C.  an indication of implications of the research
D.  a thesis statement or hypothesis.
E. an explanation of your methodology


Part 2: Literature Review:

After the introduction, it is standard practice to include a review of the existing literature on your subject.  Unfortunately, many students, including graduate students, waste enormous mountains of time and energy writing ineffective literature reviews.  For reasons that are unclear to many faculty, many students do not seem to fully internalize the reasons for doing a literature review and therefore write something does not serve the purpose of a literature review. 

The purpose of a literature review is to frame your research in the context of research others have already completed on the topic .   That means that as you write a literature review, you must make transparent or obvious the connections between the literature you describe and your research questions.  Good literature reviews generally give the reader a brief background on the most important, existing research, so the reader can come up to speed on the issues involved in the paper.  Good literature reviews also help the author justify the need for his or her research by critically reviewing existing research and explaining to the reader how the proposed article/paper complements the existing research.  Frequently the literature review points to a question not answered by, or problem with, the existing body of research.

To reiterate, because apparently this is not clear: Literature reviews do the following:

  1. place your research in the context of existing research on the subject
  2. provide background for the reader to bring them up to speed on the subject
  3. demonstrate that there is a need for YOUR research by exposing the deficiencies in the existing body of literature (expose the 'hole' in the research).

Literature reviews frequently group various categories of research into sections.  For example, your research may be partly informed by what geographers have written about the topic, partly informed by what non-geographers have written about the same topic, and may be partly informed by methodological articles that have nothing to do with the topic, but are nevertheless useful in terms of how to do some portion of the analysis. 

Because students fail to appreciate the reasons for writing a literature review, many mistakenly write a literature review function as an annotated bibliography, which may be required writing in a class, but is rarely included in a research paper.  There are several very good on-line primers on literature reviews and annotated bibliographies.  Follow the link to a table of additional links on literature reviews and annotated bibliographies and use the information you find to answer the questions below. 

Question 2.   Which of the following is NOT among the primary goals of a literature review:

    A.    A brief description of literature that informs your research.
    B.    A brief biographical sketch of famous authors in the field.
    C.    A critical analysis of literature that informs your research.
    D.    An identification of weaknesses or incomplete regions in the existing research.

Next you'll examine the introduction and a literature review written by your instructor. You will then answer several questions about those portions of the article.

Your task is to identify the various components of a research paper's introductory material. Hopefully, by doing so you will see that Dr. Graves has used a very conventional approach to introducing the subject, stating his research question and offering his hypotheses. Dr. Graves' approach can be easily replicated by students.

GO TO MOODLE and open the link to the article there. (caution the second link may not work for all browsers?)

Question 3: Read the introduction (first four paragraphs) and find the sentence in which the thesis statement (telling you what I'm going to do) is stated. Copy it in the space below.  (keep this window and window with the article both open...there are additional questions regarding it).

4.  Refer again to the Payday Lending article.  Read through the section called "Background".  It's the literature review for this article.  Please note that in the 10 paragraphs that constitute the literature review, Dr. Graves has organized his literature review into several sections. Some of the prior research he mentions is grouped according to the subject matter. Other studies are grouped according to methodology. Read through these 10 paragraphs and list at least two of the several topics used by Dr. Graves to organize this literature review. While you're reading through this, pay attention to the manner in which other authors are cited because you'll have to write a mock literature review later in the semester.

In addition to the topics mentioned by Dr. Graves, he also referenced several methodological pieces, that although focused on different topics, nevertheless were useful in terms of helping him figure out how to (and not to) do his own research on payday lending. In the box below, write the term that Graves uses to characterize the type of studies that offer methodological guidance.

Question 5. This literature review, as it should, suggests that there is a "hole in the geographic literature". Dr. Graves points out that geographers have not studied the topic he is writing about very much. This is important because it makes a claim that his research is needed and original.  Copy that one sentence in which he suggests geographers have not done what he's planning on doing, and paste it in the response box below.

Hint: The expression "frustratingly scant" is not part of the answer....that's where Graves points out that geographers have frustratingly little public policy impact.


Part 3: Methods and Data: 

An explanation of how you went about gathering data and analyzing the data frequently appears after the literature review.  Occasionally, methods and data are put into separate sections, especially if the data acquisition process is particularly challenging or threatens the integrity of the research itself.  Generally you want to:

  1. Make sure that you explain where, when and how you obtained your data.
  2. Explain why you chose the data you are using, especially if alternative sources of data are available;
  3. Justify your choice of data sets, or defend the means you employed to gather the data;
  4. Disclose possible flaws in the data if you believe that such flaws may affect the outcome of the research.  It's O.K. to do this. It shows you're not oblivious to problems in your research.

Note: If the data set is very large, you may chose not to include it in the paper.  If the data set is still important, though too large to put in the body of the paper, you may consider placing in an appendix.  Ask your instructor if he or she has a preference.

The methods section explains how you analyzed your data.  If your analysis was quantitative, you will need to explain the techniques you used to analyze your data.  This may mean displaying a figure including the statistical formula and a reference to the book or article where you found the formula or your methodology.  Most word processors have a add-in function that allows you to compose mathematical formulas in a paper.  The other option is to digitally scan formulas from the source and paste them as pictures in your paper.  You could possibly recreate the formula neatly by hand.  If you did not use a statistical test, you should nevertheless make transparent the means by which you analyzed your data and how you came up with that strategy and why its the best for your purposes.

If you used a qualitative analysis of your data, you must take extra care to explain it well. You will probably need to make reference to other studies that used similar methods and justify the use of your methodology in your paper.

Try not to invent your own methodology. It usually doesn't turn out so well when students do that.

Question 6.  List at least three of the points you should include when you are discussing your your data?


Part 4: Analysis and Discussion: 

Another necessary component of a research paper is the analysis or discussion section.  This is probably the most important section of your paper. In this section, you explain the results of your data analysis.  Frequently, the "answers" or the significance of statistical procedures or qualitative analyses are not obvious to the reader.  Results must be interpreted for the reader.  This is the section where you make your case, where you engage logic to prove (or disprove) the argument /hypothesis you laid out in the the introduction.   This section is far more common in scientific or social scientific research, but can also appear in humanistic research.

Part 5: Conclusion:

The conclusion is the final text component of a research paper and has several thematic variants.  Sometimes students simply offer a quick play-back of the entire paper, and though this may be somewhat useful, a synopsis is insufficient.  Good conclusions generally serve grander purposes.

The first thing a conclusion should do answer your initial research question . Did you find what you thought you'd find? Did you answer the question you asked at the beginning of the paper. Frequently the first sentence in a conclusion will open with a succinct statement confirming (or refuting) the answer to your general research question.

Another major purpose of the conclusion is to offer implications.  Answer the questions: "So What?", "Who Cares?" in your conclusion.  Make sure your readers know why your findings are important. 

Another frequent component of the conclusion is the "call for further research".  Generally, as you do a bit of research, you'll wind up generating as many new questions as you answer old ones.  The questions that your research calls to mind but fails to answer are excellent additions to a good conclusion.  You may also note in this section, what failings you have found in your research project.  Frequently you can use a paragraph to point out the deficiencies you found in terms of data or method.  Try not to beat up yourself (or others), instead use these paragraphs as an invitation for further study

AND FINALLY, try not to end on some wild orgy of words and poetry.  Don't try to craft a crescendo or grand finale.  It's a research paper, not "Freebird" or "Stairway to Heaven".

Part 6: End Matter and Technical Issues.

Bibliography:  The bibliography comes at the end of the text.  Please see the AAG's guidelines based on the Chicago Manual of Style for guidance.  The most important thing you should keep in mind is that nothing goes in the bibliography that is not cited in the text.  AND, similarly, everything that is cited must go in the bibliography. Please refer to other exercises in this course, or with your professor about what is and what is not a credible, worthwhile source. 

Appendices:  Appendices are sometimes used by authors as a means to include material that is largely for reference purposes.  It is typically data tables that are important enough to include, but would significantly interrupt the organization of the text if it were included elsewhere in the document. 

Graphics and Maps: Generally, maps, small tables, graphics of various sources used to support the argument are NOT included in the appendix of a paper.  Maps and graphics generally should be included in the text and each labeled clearly, captioned and each graphic referenced in the main body of the paper.  The graphic or map should be placed as close as possible to the spot in the text where the graphic or map is first referenced. 

Table of Contents: Often long papers, like your senior thesis, will require a table of contents to let your reader know where they can find specific sections of your work.  If you bother to take the time to learn how to use the outline function in MS Word (from part B of this exercise), then creating a table of contents, a table of figures, a table of maps, will logically flow from the outline.  In MS Word, once you have an outline with different headings, you can insert a table of contents by clicking on Insert, and select from the drop down menu "reference", and from its submenu, "index and tables".  The dialog box that appears will allow you to chose from several table types (you may need several of them).  For a table of contents, select " table of contents" from the possible options and click OK.  Once you have a table of contents inserted into your paper, you can dynamically update it by right clicking in the table of contents (should be grayed out) and selecting from the options "update field".  To insert captions beneath figures or maps, select from insert drop down menu, "reference" and this time select "caption".  The table of figures function searches for those field (lines) that you inserted as a caption. NOTE: These directions may not be accurate for those users with Microsoft Word 2007.

Click on this link for a Microsoft Word template-style document that already has a table of contents and a table of figures...you may find this helpful as you learn how to put these tables in.  You might be able to use this as a template if you could carefully erase those things that you don't need and put your stuff in where you need it. 

Good luck with it and feel free to stop by to visit Dr. Graves if you need extra help on any of this. Answer the final questions below.

Question 7. If you think it essential to include your dataset, but mostly for readers to reference, where should you include the data set?

8.  If you have a map or graphic in your paper, what is the rule of thumb for its placement and identification?

9.  List three recommended points (or issues) that you should include in your conclusion chapter (or section).

10.  Name at least one thing to avoid in a concluding statement?

11.  What is name of the style manual used by journals published by the Association of American Geographers?

Fill in your information and submit.

 

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