How to Write a Research Paper Step by Step, how to write an research paper.

To make proofreading and editing a bit faster and easier, you can use tools like Grammarly, Hemingway Editor, etc. Such tools can come in handy when checking the grammar, structure, style of writing, clarity, and prevalence of plagiarism. These tools can speed up the whole process significantly. However, do not rely on such tools completely. After all, a computer is not always as accurate as a real proofreader.

It is recommended to create your first draft as early as possible—yet, not to rush the process. Proofreading and editing can take a lot of time, so you should ensure that you have enough time to do everything before the deadline.

Many students don’t realize the importance of proofreading and editing. They believe that once they finish writing their research paper, it is all set and ready to be submitted. However, that’s the wrong approach. These two steps are vital for ensuring the overall success of your paper. Thus, they should not be neglected.

1. Bibliography Cards
Bibliography cards can help you keep track of your sources. Write your source on them, in MLA format, and number them for reference. Put source numbers on your note cards, so you know which source every note is from.
2. Note Cards
Note Cards can help you keep track of information from your sources. Take a note card and write down relevant information on the front, with the source number on the back. This will help you with organizing your facts and writing your paper later.

Research Paper Examples

You need to get familiar with the assignment in the first place, to ensure that you have a clear idea of what is expected from you. Many students underestimate the importance of this step. Read the instructions carefully, to understand what exactly your professor asks you to do. Also, don’t hesitate to ask for any clarification if necessary. This will help to ensure that you are on the right track!

You have finally finished working on your research paper, what’s next? Now, the last thing you should do is to double-check everything to ensure that your paper is ready to be turned in. Our checklist should help you with this:

This sentence reveals the main topic of your paper. However, if you make it your thesis statement just as it is, it will be weak, which in turn, will influence your grade. Therefore, you should only consider your answer as a starting point, and then evolve it to make a powerful, definitive statement. A good example of a thesis statement based on the topic mentioned above would be:

The most common topics are relevant social, political, cultural or technological issues. If you want to see more of those, we have a separate research paper topics post.

Organize materials you have gathered according to your outline. Critically analyze your research data. Using the best available sources, check for accuracy and verify that information is factual, up-to-date, and correct. Opposing views should also be noted if they help support your thesis. This is the most important stage in writing a research paper. Here you’ll analyze, synthesize, sort, and digest info you have gathered and hopefully learn something about your topic which is real purpose of doing a research paper in the first place. You must also effectively communicate your thoughts, ideas, insights, and research findings to others through written words as in a report, an essay, a research or term paper, or through spoken words as in an oral or multimedia presentation with audio-visual aids.

Research act in itself is a cumulative process. This means that one is expected to contribute something to the body of knowledge. And because of this expectation, this is where literature review process becomes so helpful in narrowing down and also providing background information about the topic. Engaging in a literature review helps determine what’s already known about problem that you are interested in exploring. No doubt doing a comprehensive literature review will save you time down the road by having clarity about the specific research questions that you want to explore.

Pursue the unique pathway that caught your interest, and that’ll occupy a niche as well as advance the value of the conversation regarding the subject. At this stage, you should explain the reasons why your research study is essential and describe in detail the significance of your research.

• Keyword Internet search. An excellent place to start with a review of related literature is by going online and doing some preliminary search using specific keywords related to topic or your outline. Perhaps a student can begin by looking at general information published on well-known sites and general publications before delving into specific journal articles and academic papers. Although these two receive the highest trust as sources because they are referred to as independent peer-reviewed work. Nevertheless, goal at this stage of the process is really to get that preliminary information.
• Check previous researches. The next step of search process is to look at the work done by credible and respectable organizations about subject matter. What have they found, and what are they sharing and publishing online? Are the research works privately or publicly funded? Are the researchers affiliated with a company or foundation, or do they belong to university research institutions? It is essential to look at sources of funding or potential conflict of interest because the inherent bias in the findings needs to be considered in weighing credibility of research work.
• Visit university library. Now that you have quite a bit of background information to work with, the time has come for you to spend the right amount of effort doing some searching and sleuthing at university libraries. Use research databases to look for journal articles or other primary and first-hand sources about your research topic. This type of library research is the stage where you’ll probably get a lot of information as to the institutions and scholars researching the specific theme (from specialties to sub-specialties) that you are interested in exploring.
• Use academic sources. Remember that peer-reviewed academic journals tend to receive the highest credibility in academic research papers primarily because of the critical and often blind peer-review process, which is gold standard in judging the quality of research work. Furthermore, you’ll be well served if you use some books published by well-known researchers and academics on the topic that you are researching and writing about. If your work gets published or accepted at a conference, you have a good chance of being quoted or cited in subsequent work by other researchers in the area that you are pursuing.

A RESEARCH PAPER BASICALLY HAS THE FOLLOWING STRUCTURE:

For general or background information needed for an outline creation, check out useful URLs, general information online, using search engines, or encyclopedias online such as Britannica. Use search engines or other search tools as a starting point. Pay attention to domain name extensions, .edu (educational institution), .org (non-profit organization) or .gov (government). These sites represent institutions and are more reliable, however, be aware of possible political bias on some government sites.

If your research question, for example, pertains to how individual voters view women candidates for president, perhaps the best method is by doing field interviews or by conducting a phone survey of these voters using a random sampling method. There are many ways that may help you derive answers to your questions. It is crucial, however, to be aware that each method has an inherent set of strengths and weaknesses.

Paper Title: An un-presidential rhetoric? A content analysis of Ex-President Obama’s tweets

Introduction — State your thesis and purpose of your research paper clearly. What is the chief reason you are writing the paper? State also how you plan to approach your issue. Is this a factual report, a book review, a comparison, or an analysis of a problem? Explain briefly the major points you’ll cover in your paper and why readers should be interested in your theme.

These rhetorical devices will help your essay stick in the minds of readers. They can be powerful tools and really prompt change.

If you aim to make a clear and focused conclusion rather than an inspiration one, you want to go with hard facts. Merely stating the problem and consequences isn’t enough though. People don’t want to hear hard facts, and you have to trick them into paying attention.

Your conclusion should be appropriate. How is this achieved?

• Give the reader a graphical illustration of the consequences of idleness. Remember, most won’t care until they see how it relates to their life. Check out the introduction to the blog for an example.
• Recommend a solution or a course of action. This may have been the goal of your research paper all along.
• Refer back to a relevant scientist, expert, or great thinker. If Einstein said it, most people would likely believe you too.
• Demonstrate urgency. Do we really need oceans to flood the financial centers of New York City to believe in climate change?
• Show a critical statistic which speaks facts. Statistics can be catchy. However, as mentioned in point one, nobody cares until they see how it relates to them
• Reflect on yourself and personal experience. It may be subjective, but this way you connect to the audience on a human level. Illustrate your conclusion with a situation from your life.
• Reuse a hook from the introduction, but show it in light of all this new knowledge. Remember that anecdote everyone laughed at in the introduction? Well now they know the truth, and it isn’t funny anymore. In fact, it’s a bit scary.
• Give the readers a new hook they can take home and think about.
• If your research doesn’t answer the question or provide solutions — say it! Hopefully, someone in the audience will pick up where you left off.

Making a Conclusion Effective Logically

1. If the argument is too complex, summarize it again to the reader.
2. If you have not talked about the significance of your results, here is the chance to do it.
3. Swiftly proceed from a detailed to a more general overview of your topic.
4. Do not include any new context or a lot of new ideas which could have been discussed previously in more detail.
5. Persuasively and succinctly restate your research problem or topic. You may even include your own reflections about the evidence presented in your work – be introspective.

• Lack of concision. Some students can go on and on with the work they have written, which is usually unnecessary and irritating. Try to be as concise and to the point as possible. The conclusion is not the right place for small details. Talk about the implications, evaluations, insights, but do not talk about some minor points which can be easily omitted. These minor points include the multiple steps you might have taken when writing the research, additional topics which stem from the main topic, unnecessary details which could be compressed into several short sentences instead of several paragraphs, and so on.
• Lack of comments on larger and more significant issues. The introduction usually goes from general to specific. In comparison, the conclusion usually goes from specific back to general. So this is where you need to put your research into a larger context.
• An absence of the negative aspects of your research process would make your paper seem not as authentic as it should be. So, if you had certain problems, drawbacks, and challenges, it will help the paper seem more relatable, personal, and in-depth—which is often the key to a successful research.
• No clear summary of what was learned. Talk about your own experience and what knowledge you have accumulated along the way. It can be only a few sentences long, but it is still very important.
• Inability to match the objectives of your research. You need to address how your original objectives in your introduction have been achieved throughout the work. Make a nice structural circle to show how the introduction and conclusion are interlinked.
• Inability to unify your work. You need to tie all of the sections of your academic work together so that the professor can see a whole picture. You can even use the same images and concepts in the introduction and the conclusion to link everything.
• Poor logic. In some papers, there may be different, or even opposite, points. The conclusion is a perfect place to create a single and clear opinion for the problem. If your paper contains certain questions that weren’t clearly answered in the paper, they must be answered in the conclusion. You can even ask readers to draw their own conclusions. The best way to do it is to ask the readers questions instead of always providing them with answers. Still, this approach may not work in all disciplines, but it may be quite effective if you are writing a research paper on some social issues or politics.
• No personal recommendation. If you are creating a call to action, you need to explain which actions you consider the most important or effective. This will help to better understand the topic and the general context of your research.

Important to remember: effective conclusions are about synthesis rather than a summary.

1. If you have been writing about a contemporary problem, talk about what can happen if the problem is not solved, but do not add new information. Do not bring in new evidence or new facts.
2. Don’t hesitate to offer or to recommend some course of action.
3. Use relevant quotations or expert opinions to make your conclusion more authoritative.
4. Repeat a key statistic, fact, or even a visual image that represents the main point of your paper.
5. Express personal reflection. You can even talk about your own life experiences.
6. Interpret the results in your own way to give them a fresh perspective. Do not be afraid to be a researcher who introduces something new—even for the most common problems.
7. Finish your conclusions with a short, but powerful message which will help others remember your study. This message is something that can differentiate you from others.
8. Do not say "in conclusion" or similar sayings. This includes "in summary" or "in closing." Why? These sayings sound a bit unnatural and stiff. They make your work appear too formal and pragmatic. A strong conclusion does not need the word - “In conclusion”. It will stand on its own.
9. Use the same consistent tone through your entire paper. It sounds unnatural if you suddenly use an absolutely different tone or style of presenting the information.
10. Check your entire paper to make sure that you have not left any really important points behind.

The way you frame this varies. An argumentative paper presents a thesis statement, while an empirical paper generally poses a research question (sometimes with a hypothesis as to the answer).

The five steps in this article will help you put together an effective introduction for either type of research paper.

The way you present your research problem in your introduction varies depending on the nature of your research paper. A research paper that presents a sustained argument will usually encapsulate this argument in a thesis statement.

The research question is the question you want to answer in an empirical research paper.

Empirical paper: Relate to the literature

This is because it can be easier to introduce your paper once you’ve already written the body

The rise of social media has been accompanied by a sharp increase in the prevalence of body image issues among women and girls. This correlation has received significant academic attention: Various empirical studies have been conducted into Facebook usage among adolescent girls (Tiggermann & Slater, 2013

Present your research question clearly and directly, with a minimum of discussion at this point. The rest of the paper will be taken up with discussing and investigating this question

Take a look at this, which logically fills in the gap for the reader, so that the reader doesn’t have to fill in the gaps themselves:

Yes, it seems a bit silly. But now you have an anchor. If you get stuck while writing, pull out this sentence and see where you’ve gone astray, or where you go to get back on track.

Second, go micro. Go through and underline actionable items. These are the items that must be included in the paper for you to get a good grade. Usually they are very specific:

Keep in mind that one of the crucial ingredients of successful writing is time. You need time to think, research, and create. If you fail to acknowledge this, you will write a crumby paper every time.

– The author identified the relationship

From there, you can also build your outline, and break up your potential sources, like so:

The author sees that the relationship is one of contrasts, so they try to name the contrast to create a connection in the transition—the green text is the merging of contrasts:

Don’t forget to find your revision buddy, and make an appointment at the writing center!

Once you have that rubric and assignment sheet in hand, you’re ready to discern the things your prof will look for when grading the assignment. This means you can begin with the end in mind, crafting the paper around what you know the prof wants to see. To begin with the end in mind, you need to follow three simple steps:

After you have done all your work, start checking for mistakes. If you do it in the morning the next day, your mind will be much clearer. This way, you can have a look at your paper from another perspective and find mistakes more productively. While proofreading, get rid of all extra sentences that don’t relate to the main topic, check for grammar and spelling mistakes, and check your citations’ format.

While preparing your work, do not read the whole book! You don’t have time for it. Find the sections that are related to your topic, copy and paste them into the draft document and use them while working on your research. Then rewrite the material in your own words.

You should do the research before creating an outline because you must understand if there is enough information on your topic.

Your thesis does not have to reinvent the wheel. Just follow the central focus you have chosen and give the necessary information.

6. Proofread Your Paper

To write a good conclusion, figure out what the most important facts are and restate them briefly using different words. The conclusion should contain the facts that should be memorable for your reader and emphasize the general idea of your text.

Research papers are usually time-consuming. You must research and document it correctly. This is why it is important to learn how to write a research paper fast. After that, you can fully concentrate on the research itself.

While writing a thesis, you should not limit the things you are talking about but at the same time, you should make your thesis statement as specific as possible.

Ok, it happens. You postpone your work until the last day for some reason. What do you need to do if you have only one day before the deadline? Follow our advice in this article or get a research paper in one day with the help of our service!