How is a research paper written
My Step by Step Guide to Writing a Research Paper
hi everyone this is Laura hammock from
the marble jar Channel and in today's
video I'll go through the step-by-step
process that I use when I'm writing a
research paper
every person is different but I think
that there are some basic steps to
writing a good research paper and it
doesn't involve just typing out as many
words on a topic that you could possibly
think of now what I'm going to give you
our fairly generic steps but I think
that they would apply to the majority of
research papers give or take a couple
steps if your paper is eight pages or
longer I would strongly urge you to plan
out the steps for your paper at least
four weeks in advance
so you can watch my video on planning
out big projects or research papers on
that
I'll give you an idea of how long I
think most of these steps would take for
a 15 page paper and you can adjust
accordingly based on your assignment and
your general research and writing speed
here we go number one understand the
instructions so read through the
instructions for the assignment and make
notes it's obviously really important to
understand exactly what the assignment
is asking for and as early as possible
you don't want to find out that you
don't understand something when you are
down to the wire plus if you have
questions I guarantee you're not the
only one oh and if you want to get a
good grade you need to follow the
assignment instructions even if you
think it's a dumb assignment I have
learned that the hard way so take the 30
minutes that it takes to understand the
assignment completely number two choose
a topic so after you figured out what
the assignment is asking for you'll need
to pick a topic you can pick one out of
the air but I would suggest choosing a
couple of topics that seem interesting
to you and then doing some superficial
research just to make sure that there is
enough interesting information out there
to do a paper on if you don't do this
you may have to change your topic later
in the process after you've wasted
considerable mental and mental energy so
this step can take one to two hours
depending on how much research you do on
your possible topics number three build
a basic outline so now that you have a
topic you are going to build a basic
outline for your paper based on the
instructions given so I'm going to do a
video on some of the outline tools that
I use but there is really no need to be
fancy just make a list of the sections
and some bullets underneath to give them
more detail so at this point you haven't
researched fully yet so the outline is
not going to be very
detailed until you do for example I did
a paper recently that asked me to
explore a concept and gave several areas
that needed to be addressed
in the paper a definition two related
theoretical perspectives how the concept
has changed over time current practice
or policy issues and how these issues
might differ for two countries so based
on these instructions I put together the
following initial outline if your
teacher or your professor provides
exemplars or examples of exemplary
papers from previous classes I always
use these to help me build a good
outline so I try to ignore the content
since I don't want to be overly
influenced by somebody else's work but I
will not hesitate to completely rip off
a good structural design for a paper as
long as it flows with the way that I
thinks this should take you no more than
an hour
number four make a list of relevant
research studies so now you're going to
use all of your resources online and
otherwise to make a list of studies and
articles to read for your paper you can
use Google Scholar or if your learning
institution has a library portal you
will have even better access to research
journals and other scholarly resources
so I have a video that covers how I keep
and reference this information but for
this step you are just gathering a giant
list of things to read that might be
relevant to your research compiling this
list can take two to four hours number
five read research and make notes so
this is the step where you actually read
through the studies and the articles and
the papers on your list plan for this to
take a little while you need to read and
take notes as you read so I keep all of
my quotes from the literature and a
giant spreadsheet again you can see my
video on this I highlight and copy into
my spreadsheet any quotes that I might
need to reference important pieces of
data good arguments examples and
findings from studies I cut and I pasted
all of those quotes into a spreadsheet
that is referenced back to the original
article as a roll
I don't usually need to read the entire
Journal article if I'm mostly interested
in the results of the study I simply
quote the findings which can usually be
found in the abstract if I'm citing
liberally from a book I try to get that
book in Kindle format so that I can
export those highlights into my
spreadsheet you can see my video on that
as well
also many articles are in PDF format and
I have a video on exporting all the
highlights
PDF so you don't have to do it laborious
Li one passage at a time this step can
take a really long time I had almost 50
references for my last 17 page paper and
reading them took 8 plus hours or so
number 6 categorize highlights by
outline section or topic so once I have
a giant list of highlights I read back
through them all and as I do I try to
categorize each quote roughly mapping
back to my outline so in the case of my
paper does this quote have to do with
the differences between two countries or
does it have to do more with current US
policy sometimes it doesn't match well
in which case I put it into a
miscellaneous category inevitably I need
more granular categories so I can also
create a subcategory column for example
this quote has to do with a section of
the paper on theoretical perspectives
but it has specifically to do with
cognitive theory so I can mark that
differently than this quote about life
course perspective number 7 make
decisions by mind map so as you're
reading through the research that you
have gathered you might have to make
some decisions about what are the
strongest points to make in your paper
so how do you come to these decisions
sometimes I use a mind map to gather my
thoughts a mind map is a visual tool to
help you see how ideas are related to
each other so I make do a video just on
my maps but for now let's say you're
trying to determine the three strongest
arguments that you want to present you
write your main topic in the center and
then you write down all of the ideas
that have emerged from your research now
you're gonna move the idea those ideas
into clumps that are related and you
will start to see some patterns emerge
showing which arguments have the most
back up in literature it's not required
but if you are a tall visual mind maps
will help you to see relationships and
make decisions number eight fill an
outline with your research so sort your
reference spreadsheet based on paper
section and now beef up your outline
with the information from your research
if you have three arguments to make add
those statistics data findings and
quotes that support those arguments this
step is not required but it helps to
make the writing process much faster
number nine
write your draft so now you're gonna
work off of your detailed outline
or off of your basic outline and
reference spreadsheet if you would skip
the last step and start writing your
draft I usually estimate about one hour
per double-spaced page you can go twice
as fast if you have a detailed outline
at the drafting stage instead of filling
in full APA formatted references and
citations I use the reference numbers
from my spreadsheet otherwise I break
the flow of writing since for me writing
and fixing style issues are two really
different cognitive processes so my rule
of thumb is to write in shifts no longer
than six hours at a stretch after six
hours I'm just not as good a writer but
you may have really different parameters
number ten edit paper fix APA and fill
in your references so it's best to put a
little time between this step and the
last one just to clear your brain so I
aim for at least 24 hours but 48 is even
better so this is when you reread you
edit Grammer you look at sentence
structure etc I like to print out and
edit with a red pen this is also the
time to fix your APA or writing style
problems and format all of your
citations I format all of my citations
on my spreadsheet and then I sort them
alphabetically before pasting them into
my paper I find that this saves me the
hassle of alphabetizing as I go so I
just have to remember to italicize the
relevant bits once I've pasted them back
into the paper I give myself at least
four hours for this step I'm still
learning on APA format so I need the
extra time number 11 find a second
reader so my graduate program employs a
writing advisor I use him all of the
time I ask him a bunch of esoteric APA
questions and I always have him read my
papers so even if he doesn't provide
that much feedback I feel better having
another set of eyeballs read through it
and point out obvious issues if you
don't have access to a writing advisor
get a friend or a colleague who's pink
whose opinion you respect to read
through it and number 12 make final
edits and submit implement whatever
suggestions came from your second reader
provided that you agree with them give
it one last read through and submit and
that's it those are the steps that I
follow for decent length research papers
let me know what you think comments are
always appreciated
thanks for watching
