Research is the careful consideration of study regarding a particular concern or research

problem using scientific methods. According to the American sociologist Earl Robert Babbie,
“research is a systematic inquiry to describe, explain, predict, and control the observed
phenomenon. It involves inductive and deductive methods.”

Steps in Researching and Preparing Academic Paper

1. Identify the main trends and issues, opportunities, and problems you observe. Write a
sentence describing each one.

2. Keep track of the frequency with which each of the main findings appears.

3. Make a list of your findings from the most common to the least common.

Steps in Researching and Preparing Academic Paper

4. Evaluate a list of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats identified in a SWOT
analysis.

5. Prepare conclusions and recommendations about your study.

6. Act on your strategies

Steps in Researching and Preparing Academic Paper

7. Look for gaps in the information, and consider doing additional inquiry if necessary

8. Plan to review the results and consider efficient methods to analyze and interpret results.

Structuring Research Paper ko

Introduction

Introductions usually have three parts:

1.presentation of the problem statement, the topic, or the research inquiry

2.purpose and focus of your paper

3.summary or overview of the writer’s position or arguments

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Methodology

You should include any materials you used or designed for yourself, such as questionnaires or
interview questions, to generate data or information for your research paper. You want to
include any methodologies that are specific to your particular field of study, such as lab
procedures for a lab experiment or data-gathering instruments for field research. The methods
section is usually written in the past tense.

Results

How you present the results of your research depends on what kind of research you did, your
subject matter, and your readers’ expectations.

Results

Quantitative information—data that can be measured—can be presented systematically and

Qualitative information, which includes brief descriptions, explanations, or instructions, can also
be presented in prose tables. This kind of descriptive or explanatory information, however, is
often presented in essay-like prose or even lists.

Discussion

Your discussion section should generalize what you have learned from your research. One way
to generalize is to explain the consequences or meaning of your results and then make your
points that support and refer back to the statements you made in your introduction. Your
discussion should be organized so that it relates directly to your thesis. You want to avoid
introducing new ideas here or discussing tangential issues not directly related to the exploration
and discovery of your thesis. The discussion section, along with the introduction, is usually
written in the present tense.

Conclusion and Recommendation

Your conclusion ties your research to your thesis, binding together all the main ideas in your
thinking and writing. By presenting the logical outcome of your research and thinking, your
conclusion answers your research inquiry for your reader. Your conclusions should relate
directly to the ideas presented in your introduction section and should not present any new
ideas.

Conclusion and Recommendation

You may be asked to present your recommendations separately in your research assignment. If
so, you will want to add some elements to your conclusion section. For example, you may be
asked to recommend a course of action, make a prediction, propose a solution to a problem,
offer a judgment, or speculate on the implications and consequences of your ideas. The
conclusions and recommendations section is usually written in the present tense.

What is referencing?

Referencing is the process of acknowledging the sources you have used in writing your essay,
assignment or piece of work. It allows the reader to access your source documents as quickly
and easily as possible in order to verify, if necessary, the validity of your arguments and the
evidence on which they are based.

Citations

You identify sources by citing them in the text of your assignment (called citations or in-text
citations) and referencing them at the end of your assignment (called the reference list or end-
text citations).

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is a term that describes the unacknowledged use of someone else's work. This
includes material or ideas from any (published or unpublished) sources, whether print, web-
based (even if freely available) or audiovisual. Using the words or ideas of others without
referencing your source would be construed as plagiarism and is a very serious academic
offence.

What is plagiarism?

The following are considered forms of plagiarism:

1. Passing off as your own a piece of work that is partly or wholly the work of another student.

2. Citing and referencing sources that you have not used.

3. Quoting, summarizing or paraphrasing material in your assignment without citing the original
source.

4. 'Recycling' a piece of your own work that you have previously submitted for another module
or course (i.e. self-plagiarism).

How can you avoid plagiarism?

You might therefore find it helpful to:

1. Manage your time and plan your work – ensure that you have enough time to prepare, read
and write.

2. When paraphrasing an author's text, ensure that you use your own words and a sentence
structure sufficiently different from the original text.

How can you avoid plagiarism?

3. In your notes, highlight in colour/bold any direct quotations you want to use in your
assignment - this will help to ensure you use quotation marks with an appropriate reference
when you are writing up your work.
4. Allow enough time to check your final draft for possible referencing errors or omissions: for
example, check that all your in-text citations have a corresponding entry in your reference list,
and vice versa.

5. Save all your notes and files until you receive your final mark or grade.

How to cite a reference

1.The Harvard System

For example:

Watts (1999) offers suggestions about how to prepare for university.

It has been found by Holmes and Watkins (2000), that criminals are …

This module is no longer offered (Smith, 2004).

If you use the Harvard system in the main body of your work, you will be expected to cite your
references in full in your bibliography.

How to cite a reference

2. Footnotes/endnotes

Footnotes are flagged in the main body of the text by a number and then the reference written in
full at the bottom of the corresponding page.

•Author surname, initial(s)/ Title of book/ (Publisher/ Place of publication)/ Page number

•Author surname, initial(s)/ ‘Title of article’ in Journal title/ Volume number (Issue number)/
(Year)/Page number

How to cite a reference

3. APA Citation Style

You may also come across the APA style, which is frequently used in the social sciences. Like
Harvard style, APA style uses the author-date system for in-text citations.

Johnson suggests that more research is needed to … (2014).

How to cite a reference

3. APA Citation Style

Book:

Format: AuthorLastName, FirstInitial. (Year). TitleBook (edition). City, State/Country:

In reference list: Porter, M.E. (1998). Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries
and

Competitors (1th ed.). New York, NY: Free Press.

How to cite a reference

3. APA Citation Style

Journal article:

Format: AuthorLastName, FirstInitial., & Author LastName, FirstInitial. (Year). TitleArticle.

Volume(Issue), Page Number(s). https://doi.org/DoiNumber

In reference list: Andreff, W., & Staudohar, P. D. (2000). The evolving European model of
professional

sports finance. Journal of Sports Economics, 1(3), 257-276.

https://doi.org/10.1177/152700250000100304

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