FORMAT FOR PAPER ON GROUP RESEARCH PROJECT
Title Page
Centered on the page, the title page should announce: the title of your paper, your name, the course's name and number, the instructor's name, and the date. Your title should announce clearly the paper's topic.
Abstracts are brief summaries, no longer than 150 words,that summarize your paper's topic, research methods, results, and conclusions.
Abstracts are standard in professional writing. When researchers are scouring hundreds of articles for information, abstracts help them to decide whether or not a paper contains information that they will find useful. Indeed, as you do your own research you'll find that abstracts are enormously helpful.
To show your first-hand research, you must include a section on methodology. This section describes how you conducted your research. Did you use a survey? Conduct interviews? If you created a questionnaire, you'll want to include that in an appendix.
This page is necessary if your paper includes data generated from your own research. Here you'll provide the reader with any data generated by your study. You may need to include tables or graphs. These might also be placed in appendices.
The text of your paper should follow the standard format for margins, spacing, fonts and so on. These standards can be found in style guides published by the Modern Language Association (MLA).
Tables, charts and graphs help your reader to draw conclusions. Such graphical information should say something new and be able to stand on its own without further clarification from the text; it should not restate the content of the text. Number your tables, charts and graphs consecutively, and either place them in the text where the appropriate data is being discussed or place them after the text in appendices.
The reference page and its citations must follow the guidelines of the MLA. Sources also provides assistance in creating your reference page.
Appendices appear at the end of a paper. They help answer questions raised in the text. Often scholars prefer to place maps, charts, tables, and so on at the end of the paper rather than inserting them in the text. If you have multiple appendices, label each with a letter (e.g. "Appendix A," "Appendix B," and so on).
Using Sources
When conducting research, it is important to consider the validity of your sources. An article in Time does not carry the same "weight" as an article in an academic journal. Magazines like Time might provide an interesting "lead" to more scholarly articles, but it's up to you to find the article or study the original source to review it for yourself.
The Internet too often leads to sloppy research. Just because information appears on the Internet doesn't mean the information is accurate. The Internet has no standards for posting information. So beware.
Students often make one grave mistake when they write academic papers: overwhelmed by what their sources have to say, they permit their papers to crumble under the weight of scholarly opinion. They end up writing not an informed argument of their own, but a rehash of what has already been said on a topic. The background section of the paper can do this but the rest of the paper must be the words and ideas of the students involved in the project The paper might be informative. It might also be competently written. But it does not fulfill the requirements of a good academic paper. A good academic paper must be analytical. It must be critical. It must be a well-crafted, persuasive, informed argument.
Gathering Data for First-hand Research:
Quantitative data are based on surveys, censuses, and statistics. Qualitative data, on the other hand, comes from participant observation, in-depth interviews, data and texts, as well as from the researcher's own impressions and reactions. Qualitative research gives insight into the way people actively construct and find meaning in their world. This is probably the type of data you will collect for gender and language research. A qualitative study would develop its own information by, perhaps hanging around the campus studying people's interactions, or doing in-depth interviews with some of the subjects.
When you begin your case studies or research, be sure that you focus your topic. For example, you'll want to discuss not every relationship between people in that group, but certain relationships -- say, the relationship between mothers and sons in single-parent/single-child households. When doing your research, make sure that the facts you collect are solid. Observe your subjects carefully. Be meticulous in your collection of data. Once you have your data, remember: interpretation of data is risky, because it's subjective. Avoid being simplistic in your interpretation. In other words, don't settle for the first interpretation that comes to mind. Try out several theories, and challenge each one of them. Only then can you be confident in your interpretation.