The Research Process: Seven Steps to a Successful

Paper

1. Understand the Assignment

• You cannot expect to produce a successful paper if you don’t understand the assignment

• An off-topic paper or paper that does not follow the assignment will not receive a good grade

• Figure out what you are expected to do before you begin

• Are you being asked to– Compare/contrast? – Analyze? – Report?

• How you approach the paper depends on what you’re being asked to do

• Ask for clarification if you need it

2. Choose Your “Plan of Attack”

• Know the other steps of the research process and think through them

• Know the requirements of your assignment• Know the deadlines you will be required to

meet• Gather everything you’ll need before you start

– Guidelines– Instructions– Worksheets/questionnaires

• Look over the resources available to you; know what’s out there– Books– Databases

• Decide where you want to start

3. Narrow Your Topic / Focus Your Research• Choose your topic (in our case, you’ll choose a

controversial topic)• Make a list of the various subtopics you think you might

explore (list as many as you can)• Look into each item on your list; you will quickly find out

that some will be more difficult to research than others• Keep notes as you browse; this will prevent you from

wasting your time later– Note any sources that look useful– Note any sources that are NOT useful– Note any information you find that you find interesting or that

you think might be useful—and note its source• Choose topics that are easy to research, but that have

lots of information available about them• Choose the top three ideas you want to research; you

can change these if you need to, but if you did the preliminary research listed above, you probably won’t need to

4. Gather Your Information

• Evaluate the sources you plan to use– Use the Pathfinder created for you– For this assignment, Google is NOT your friend– You may not use Wikipedia unless I give you a

specific article

• Take notes as you go• Always note the source of information• Keep yourself organized by topic and

source• Create your thesis statement

5. Prepare to Write• Create an outline• For this assignment, you will be required

to complete a sentence outline for a grade

• The outline will allow you to– Find gaps in your paper that need more

information – See any extraneous information you have

(get rid of it!)– Finalize your thesis and the organization of

your paper

6. Write the Paper

• You will write a ROUGH DRAFT first– This is the paper you will turn in– The more thorough and organized you are and the

more effort you put into the rough draft, the easier your final draft will become

• Use the outline you created to write your paper

• Include source citations• Proofread your own paper• Peer edit• Revise/rewrite

7. Finalize the Paper

• Make the changes noted during the editing process

• YOU’RE NOT FINISHED YET!• Reread your paper again; odds are, you

will find at least one new error to be corrected

• Print out the paper• Reread it one last time—do NOT turn in

your paper without looking over the printed final draft

Other Topics We’ll Explore This Week

• Evaluating Sources and Information: How do I know if I should use information or not? What makes a good source?

• Paraphrasing: You’ll be doing a lot of it in this paper

• In-Text Citations: It’s not a research paper without them; it’s plagiarism

• Specifics about the Assignment: What will be expected of you