Week 13: The End is in Sight

Introduction

by Shant Shahoian adapted by A. Lerner

This week, we discuss how to read, assess, organize, and cite sources. You have your sources for a refined research question: how do you put this all together?

Reading and Assessing

All media have predictable formats and structures. Books have title pages with relevant information and movies have a predictable pattern with opening and closing credits. Scholarly articles are the same way, and knowing about this structure can help you find the most appropriate information as quickly as possible. Of course, what originally seems like a perfect article may turn out to be less than ideal. It may be enough on-topic to get your attention but be enough off-topic not to warrant inclusion in your research paper. Other times, the information found therein may not actually prove your claim, contain deceptively useful statistics or fall short in another way.

At this point, your group should have 15/20/25* excellent sources, and if each of them hasn't been annotated yet, they should be soon. As you annotate, consider if the source answers your research question as directly as you initially thought. If not, it's time to change the sources. There are two things to keep in mind about choosing new sources. First, this is totally normal, even after you start writing a research paper.

Research Process diagram: steps of the research process. This diagram shows a series of interlocking gears, each representing a stage in the research process: Step 1: Define the topic Step 2: Narrow the topic Step 3: Gather background information Step 4: Create a research question Step 5: Develop a working thesis statement Step 6: Find and Evaluate sources Step 7: Cite sources Step 8: Write the paper

Finding new sources is never out of the picture. Your research is always evolving, and your sources will change, too. Of course, as you approach the final stages of a traditional research paper, finding many new sources is probably a sign that you lack focus in your question. Reviewing THE RESEARCH PROCESS graphic, Steps 5, 6, 7, and 8 forms an iterative cycle. If you find resources that no longer fit into your research question, go back with your new focus to find new sources. 

Organizing and Abstracts

The second thing to keep in mind about finding more sources is that you may need to do so. If you have 15/20/25* sources that all say the same exact thing, you have no depth or range to your research. You're compiling a summary of a single idea. That's not research. So you want your sources to have variety and cover different topics, so you can actually organize ideas around separate ideas. You won't be able to write an outline unless you can organize slightly different dimensions of a problem into an outline. 

Putting together an outline should help you see the trajectory of your work, making it easier to write an abstract, which is a special kind of summary of your research paper. 

Again, you won't have to write a formal research paper for this course, but we are doing everything but the final paper, including an outline and an abstract. You'll want to have a clear sense of what your research paper will cover in order to complete this outline and abstract.

 

Review: Picking your topic is Research! Links to an external site. video. It demonstrates how you are already iterating your research focus as your research deepens on your topic. 

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    • 15: Groups 1 & 3
    • 20: Groups 2,4,6,7
    • 25: Group 5