Writing the Research Paper

As you conduct your research, the specific nature of your question will change, as will your tentative hypothesis. At the early stages of your research, your in­quiry will focus on your initial questions and on questions raised by the data or material you uncover. As you begin to write your paper, your focus changes – it now centres on testing and justifying the conclusions you have reached. Your goal should be to offer a tightly reasoned case that supports your conclusion on a ques­tion at issue.

Because of this shift in focus, the shape you lend to your case usually does not reflect the actual twists and turns in the process by which you arrived at your conclusions. Likewise, your paper will not include all of the information you have uncovered nor will it mention all of the insights you have gained. The paper inverts the direction of inquiry – you are now reasoning from and supporting a conclusion rather than working your way toward one. Nevertheless, the questions you have used to draw relationships among ideas can prepare you to justify them.

Your research question can serve as the basis for your paper\'s occasion. Just as your question focused and guided your inquiry, so too can your occasion launch your presentation of its fruits. You needn\'t voice all the preliminary research questions that led you to settle on your particular concern. In fact, you should avoid retelling the story of your research process. Focus instead on articulating the question at the heart of your project. That question, not the trail of your research, will engage your readers\' interest and establish the relevance of your conclusion. How you frame your occasion will depend on the audience you address. If your au­dience is not specified, engage the question at issue much as you would for someone who entered the research process knowing only what you did yourself.

The hunches and tentative hypotheses that helped direct the research process can serve as the basis for your dissertation. As you draft and revise your paper, your obligation is to refine and appropriately qualify the con­clusion you present. As with preliminary research questions, you needn\'t discuss those hypotheses that proved inadequate or were misguided. Your task is to articulate your best, reasoned opinion on a matter of dispute or concern. Drafting your research paper can help you arrive at conclusions and test whether you can justify them before intelligent readers.

The information you gather during the research process will surely con­tribute to the reasons that project the organization of your paper. But to turn information into evidence, you must place information in the service of your analysis or argument. Having worked toward a conclusion, you must now call upon key pieces of information to serve as evidence in support of your point. You needn\'t, in fact shouldn\'t, include all that you uncovered during your research. Your task is to justify your conclu­sion while answering whatever questions or objections sceptical readers may pose. To sharpen the analytic or argumentative edge your paper should carry, make sure that you organize it as carefully as a lawyer who is trying a case. If you simply reshuffle the deck of your note cards into loosely related topical headings, you may lend some surface organization to your paper but little if any logical coherence to your case.

By viewing the research process in light of the conceptual demands of analysis and argument, you can avoid the three pitfalls into which many novice writers fall.

• • Their research papers often lack motivation, a reason to be written and read.

  • The papers usually waffle on (or entirely avoid) a point or conclusion, opting instead to catalogue existing views or moderate differing opinions.

  • The papers often become little more than strings of sources overwhelm­ing readers with an avalanche of information that might otherwise be used to build a tightly reasoned case.

By focusing on the shape and shaping of ideas, you can lend to your own work the continuity and coherence that others often lack. Don\'t let your research justify the old joke that you\'re simply moving bones from one grave to another. If you think critically from the start, you can find and justify the best possible an­swers to questions that matter. For you, as for your professors, this shared inquiry is what university study is all about.