Research Paper

What is a research paper?

If you are in college and you cannot exactly define this term, you may be in a bit of trouble. Your professors will assume you understand the concept and will not spend any time with explanations – they will just assign them – lots of them!

Terms are thrown around a lot, but there is a definite difference between a research paper and other works that use the term “research.”

Here are the “down and dirty” distinctions:

Research Abstract

An abstract is, primarily, a summary of a piece of research that has been conducted.

The abstract provides the research question, the research design to address the question, the methodologies, an analysis of the results, and general conclusions.

Abstracts usually accompany theses and dissertations, so that future researchers are able to read the abstract and decide if it is relevant to the research they are now conducting.

Research Articles

These are reports of actual research that someone has conducted, and they go into a lot more detail than an abstract. These little gems will report the raw data that was collected, the analysis of that data and the conclusions.

If you want examples of research articles, pick up a medical, scientific or psychiatric journal and have at it! They are filled with research articles that you will probably fall asleep reading, unless you have a burning desire to learn more about the topic!

Research Report

There’s not a lot of difference between a report and an article, although the report may be somewhat longer.

You can read these in journals, too, or in the stacks at your campus library, or online. Pick your poison! If you want to know how to write a research report, look at samples in the topic area.

Design a question and a study, collect the raw data, churn that data into reasonable conclusions, and write it all up. Your study will not be as far-reaching as that done for a dissertation, but it must be scholarly and of merit.

Science lab reports are typical of this type of research and writing.

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Research Essay

Wow! Another type of writing with the word “research.”

Just remember this: an essay is shorter than a research paper, has a thesis (or point!), and the writer usually has a point of view which s/he supports with some basic research.

Let’s say you are asked to write an essay on income inequality in America. You will have an opinion; you will look up some figures to support your opinion.

If you want to know how to write a research essay, look at a good essay – an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion – and understand that the topic will require you to add some research that others have conducted.

Research Papers

Ah, now we are on to the most common writing assignments at the college level.

Yes, you are familiar with the term papers of high school. You conducted your research from what you now know were secondary resources – books, magazines, Internet articles – and you gathered information and put it together to inform your reader.

The college research paper, on the other hand, is something else entirely. After all, you are a university-level scholar now, and, while the structure of the paper may be very much like the structure of a term paper, the resources used will be quite different – they will be primary resources.

And, for a research paper, you will need to establish a thesis or a research question that you are addressing. You will need to go to original sources of information – scholars who have conducted original research or who have first-hand knowledge of the topic (e.g., someone who served under General Patton during World War II), and you may only use these primary resources in your research. The goal of your research paper is to answer your research question or to “prove” your thesis.

You may now seriously be asking, “How do I write a research paper?”

We get it. So, let’s go through the process and make you sufficiently excited, bored, or stressed!

Identify Your Topic and Establish Your Thesis and/or Research Question

This may be one of the most frustrating parts of the entire process.

It was easy in high school to decide that you would just write a term paper on the causes of the Civil War. You read the source materials, organized it, and wrote your paper, discussing each of the established causes.

Now, however, you must have a thesis or a question. You may have decided that the “real” cause of the Civil War was the overriding issue of states’ rights vs. federal power, and that the War was fought to determine which of these two political positions would prevail. Good! You have a thesis – onward!

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Now for the research!

No, you can’t go find books on the Civil War; no, you can’t read what historians have to say about it.

You have to go back to original sources.

You must pour through speeches in Congress, papers and articles written by political figures of the time, diaries that have been preserved, newspapers, speeches – all of these things are the primary sources you must use to prove your point. How do you find these?

One great way is to read the actual research conducted by others – theses and dissertations, or articles in Civil War Journals. You aren’t going to use these per se; you are going to look at their source materials and go find those yourself!

Sound like fun? Maybe, if you didn’t have 3 other research papers to work on at the same time! Carve out a lot of time for your research – you’ll need it.

Organize your research, and don’t forget to carefully make note of each resource, and the page number, from which you have extrapolated your stuff!

This can be an organizational nightmare, but you must stick to it! Put your notecards or paper notes in piles based upon sub-topics – you’ll have at least a cursory structure for your outline.

Make the outline – most important points first and going forward in descending order. You have a skeleton for your rough draft.

Write the rough draft: Hopefully, if you have organized your stuff well, you can move through this without too much frustration, but it is only, after all, the rough draft – your work is not over!

Read, re-read, and re-read, correcting all kinds of stuff – issues of logical flow, sentence structure, grammar, etc., keeping in mind that you must always keep track of the in-text references you have to cite.

Write the final draft, minus the introduction and conclusion.

Now you are ready to learn how to write an introduction for a research paper.

If you haven’t answered your research question or proved your service, you are in a world of hurt!

But, let’s say you have, and now you want to figure out how to write a good introduction for a research paper. Here’s how – address the question and the thesis and state it clearly, along with the fact that you have researched thoroughly and now have your answer or your proof!

Now you need to figure out how to conclude a research paper.

And you have options! You can summarize your sojourn and repeat the answer to your question or the proof of your thesis, or you may want to point the reader in the direction of more research. Be honest!

At some point, you will be required to produce one more document in the research paper production – the abstract.

So, you better know how to write an abstract for a research paper. Your first step is to read some abstracts so you know what is included. The abstract is a short summary of all that work you did, and it is really a sales document. You want other readers to see your research as valuable and something they might want to read.

It should come as no surprise that college students all over the country buy research papers rather regularly!

How do they do it? Simple! They go online and find a research paper service that they hope will come through for them.

And, it’s pretty amazing how many research paper writing services there really are – thousands upon thousands of them! When you have this many, however, you have to understand that there are a huge number of scams and frauds (who would have guessed?).

How do you find them?

Well, first, you ensure that when you go to a site to buy research paper products, you at least see well-written content. If not, run away fast! They are foreigners and so are their writers, if they even have writers!

Next, if you are going to buy a research paper, will they allow you to talk with your writer?

If you don’t have communication, how do you know you even have a writer? You may have some foreign student cutting and pasting away!

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