Writing a Research Paper

Components

• Title page• Abstract• Introduction– General opening– Literature review• Use subheadings

– Current research (state hypotheses/research questions)

Components continued

• Method– Participants– Materials– Procedure

• Results– Overview– Hypotheses/Research questions– Subsidiary/exploratory

Components continued

• Discussion– Recap motivation– Recap findings– Implications• theoretical• Practical

– Problems– Future research

Writing

• Write simply and directlyOmit needless wordsAvoid metacomments (e.g., Now I’m going

to…Use parallel construction and repetition (e.g., She likes cooking, jogging, and to read.Use active voice (I/We…..)

• Write at the level of a BSU undergraduate – Avoid jargon

Writing

– Use past or present perfect when reporting previous research of others (e.g., Bandural et al. reported

– For method section, use future tense for proposal and past tense for final

– For Results, use present tense for results in front of reader (e.g., As Table 2 shows, xxxx)