When students are assigned a research project, the prospect of planning and executing such a large project (that usually comprises a large proportion of your grade) can be overwhelming. Below are steps I use to guide students in each of my courses through the research and writing process.

Step #1. Choosing a Topic

If you have the opportunity to choose your topic on which to write a research paper, spend time just browsing different topic choices. For International Affairs majors, I encourage them to choose a topic using one of these three strategies:

• Choose something you already know a great deal about, but of which you had not considered the political aspects. For example, my research agenda - the focus on food insecurity and food policy - came about because of my interest in cooking and eating delicious food. One time, when I was traveling in Croatia, I noticed that everywhere I went the sandwiches were delicious except for the tomatoes, which were somehow both under and over-ripened. When asking around, I learned that this was the product of a deal between the Croatian government and the EU during its accession period, in which the Croatian government agreed that Croatian farmers would not compete with EU farmers, but instead import their goods. Not their best goods, however, but the leftovers not sold in the EU. Voila! A perfect marriage for me between my passion for politics and food!

• Choose something you need to know more about for your future dream job. I have a student currently planning to be in the intelligence community with a focus on counterterrorism. Guess what topic I encourage her to pursue for her projects? Any that give her the background in terrorist literature and policy needed to excel at her dream position.

• Choose something you know nothing about, but it seems important, really relevant to the current international system, and compelling. For this strategy, I encourage students to peruse these media outlets below, looking for the best topics to cover:

Step #2. Find a Puzzle

Like any puzzle, a research project puzzle needs to be solved. It is the mystery that drives the writer to do research and the reader to keep reading. It truly is the driving force of any good research project. And it is the driving force of most media we consume as well. Have you ever binged watched an exciting show? Chances are the show didn't give away the plot ending in the first ten minutes. Instead, they draw out mysteries, create tension between characters, and keep the viewer engaged and willing to continue watching to find out what happens. Research projects should ideally do that same thing.

So, what is a research puzzle? Imagine the world at first glance looks like a pile of puzzle pieces. Now, imagine you chose to puzzle pieces from the pile. At first glance, these pieces have nothing to do with each other. One is blue with clouds. The other is brown and tan. If you have the cover of the box, you probably know that those pieces do fit into the same picture, say of a beach scene. In International Affairs, the whole picture is rarely available to us. Our job as analysts of the international system is to create the entire scene.

So, when you choose a research puzzle in Intl Affairs, consider it similar to choosing two random pieces of a puzzle. Likely they might not be meant to be put together and if you examined these two next to one another, they would appear to be seemingly-incompatible. Yet, scholars know that if two seemingly incompatible events, ideas, groups, phenomena, etc. exist together in the international system, something must explain how these two pieces fit together. That is, we just need to find the missing piece or pieces that make these two pieces make sense together.

So, the next step in this process is to choose at least two events, ideas, actors related to your topic that seem not to go together. Take my Croatian sandwich example. I was puzzled by the terrible Croatian tomatoes because Croatia is located across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. How could they have bad tomatoes in that climate, when Italy is world-renowned for its tomato sauces? Further, Croatian sandwiches were fresh and delicious in every way except for the tomatoes. It seems strange to have one ingredient off, while the others were so good. Thus the puzzle was: while Croatia seemed to have a great culinary culture and climate for growing fresh produce, many of the tomatoes (and other fresh produce) were less than appealing.

Step #3 The Research Question

This component is so closely related to the puzzle that it could almost be considered an extension of it. The research question is simply an explicit sentence that asks what best explains how these two seemingly-disjointed puzzle pieces can exist in the same picture?

Why even write this question down? It is more so that the reader knows exactly what question the researcher will be answering and to keep the researcher focused on answering that question and only that question.

Step #4 The Literature Review

When trying to answer the research question, you may have some ideas about the possible answers or you may not. Need not fear! Likely, someone else has already attempted to answer your research question as well. So, the next step is to go find other people's writings on this topic and see if they offer any insights into how your puzzle can be solved/your question can be answered.

Students have a really hard time with this process the first go-round. In part, because it is really hard to find relevant material from credible sources, interpret other's writings to determine how they are answering your question, and to include this information in clear paragraphs without making it sound awkward.

As a result, I am dividing up the literature review into five smaller steps to help this process along.

1. Create a list of any possible answers to your research question. At this point, no answer is terrible. Consider this a brainstorming session. For example, if I were trying to understand my tomato puzzle, I might have a list that reads: Croatians hate delicious tomatoes, Croatia does not import fresh produce, there are few Croatian farmers, and on and on.

2. Organize this list in some coherent grouping. In International Affairs, we find that many problems can be explained by examining the role of politics, economics, and/or cultural play. So, if I were to organize my admittedly silly list of possible answers to the tomato puzzle, I might organize them by political, economic, and cultural answers.

Though this step does not get me to the right answer yet (the EU made a deal with Croatia that is would not grow fresh tomatoes, but instead import its older ones), it helps me start to put some ideas down and begin to order possible answers.

3. Now it is time to begin searching Google Scholar for others' answers to your question. This is when it is time to start investigating what others have written on this topic. But where do I start? I choose two general locations. If it is current event, I start with the news (see above list of reliable sources). If it is a little older, I will also search for academic articles in Google Scholar. If you haven't tried Google Scholar, do! Why? You can change the settings so it will bring you back articles from UGA's library database (so you will not be blocked from reading some articles) AND it automatically provides the citations for every article or book you find!

• What do I search for? This takes practice, but I tend to type in keywords that are relevant and specific my first try (think Croatia, tomato, rotten). If this doesn't work, I change one of the words to a broader one (e.g. tomato to produce, or even agriculture).

• What if I get thousands of articles back? It also takes time to learn how to cull through so many articles.

  • Recent Articles: One strategy I have learned is to focus only on the most recent articles. This ensures you are not learning about things that may no longer be relevant to your puzzle. Further, I make the assumption that if there are great, older articles, then these newer ones will cite them.

  • Judge the Titles: Another strategy is to judge the titles and journal titles before choosing which articles to even open. Does the title not only seem to be about your topic but suggest that the article will answer your research questions? This is where research questions help you to stay focused on the task at hand.

  • Judge the Journals: Also, if the title of the Journal something about Economics? If so, it will likely give you an answer to your question that fits into the economic grouping. So, if you are like me and have no possible answers yet under Politics, perhaps first choose journals that have politics in the name.

  • Read Only the Introduction & Conclusion: If, by the end of reading the first and last few paragraphs of the article you cannot find how this article may answer your research question, move on.

• What do I do once I find a great article? Great, then take a minute to summarize what the article is saying (in your own words!!!) and cite it. Good literature reviews at the undergraduate level might have about twelve great articles for a 25-page paper (give or take based on the topic and the professor's expectations).

4. Review the literature. Anyone who has ever been assigned to submit an annotated bibliography may have been familiar with many of the steps mentioned in this section. An annotated bibliography is an unorganized literature review. That is, a completed literature review section for a project, should:

• Group the answers to the research question. For example, consider having three sections in the literature review: one for political answers, a second for economic answers, and a third for culture answers.

• Within each group, offer two or three authors' answers. For each author, make sure to include name, to summarize their answer to the research question (and even to provide a direct quotation if it is a powerful one), and then discuss both the strengths and weaknesses of this argument. Here is where you must remember that, though you are talking about another's ideas, everything must be written in your voice or properly cited.

5. Find the gap (i.e. what is the literature is missing)? It is difficult to understand the purpose of the literature review until you have gotten through the above steps, but in reviewing other people's answers to your research question you are weighing the merits of these to determine what you think best answers the question. Returning to the puzzle analogy, imagine you try out several pieces that may look promising, but don't fit quite right. In this way, you are determining what works and what doesn't from others' ideas. This should ideally lead you to determine what missing puzzle piece(s) would bring the first two disjointed pieces together. The missing pieces you combine to join the original two puzzle pieces together is your theory.

Step#5 Theory

Here it is! The moment you've been working towards. The place in the research project for your original ideas to take flight. A theory is a well-informed guess about the best possible answer to the research question.

You have taken all the right steps to ensure your reader that this is a puzzling question, that others have attempted to answer it and here they are now, waiting for you to inform them of the best possible answer.

So, your theory should explain the missing pieces between the first puzzle piece and the second one. When you are done, the relationship between these original pieces should make sense. That is if you have one blue piece with clouds and another that is sand-colored, your theory would fill in the missing pieces, joining these together, into a complete beach scene.

Step #6 Evidence

So, how do you know that your theory is the best answer to the research question? Well, as far as theories go we judge them based on how well the facts support them. Thus any facts that work to bolster your theory are called evidence. Here is another key component that requires you to do some research. Specifically, you need to break up your theory into component pieces, and then research whether or not these pieces match with reality. Imagine, for illustrative purposes, that you believed the original puzzle pieces, one blue with clouds and the other brown and tan, were pieces of a desert image, not a beach. How would you be able to determine which theory (beach or desert) was best? You would need to determine what you would expect to find and then research whether these things are the images on the other puzzle pieces. If you found a beach ball and umbrella, instead of cacti, you would be finding evidence that bolstered your theory.

What if the evidence undermines my theory? Here is a question that highlights one of the downsides to research currently. We seem to put a lot of focus on success in our culture, and research is no different. However, as in life, sometimes mistakes can teach us more. One of my favorite examples of errors leading to other discoveries is when an inventor named Percy Spencer was trying to fix some radar equipment in 1945 for the U.S. government. Upon fiddling with energy sources for radar far more powerful than the known, he noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket melting. This led him to invent the microwave.

Step #7 The Conclusion

Please do not assume the conclusion is unimportant. Far too often, the readers is fully engaged through the theory and evidence sections and then left hanging as the writer explains they are done with the project now and will simply restate what the reader has already learned. Though that is a helpful first-step, the conclusion can be so much more. What if you are right? What if your theory truly is the best answer to your research question? What does that mean for the bigger picture? Many of my students have used their conclusions to advocate a key foreign policy change by the U.S. or another government to solve global conflict or crises. Take time explaining to your audience that, if your theory is right, it was broad, lasting implications for others. Then explain what these implications would be.