Your research paper should have a purpose. Decide what you want your readers to learn from your paper. Start by asking yourself some questions: Are you trying to educate your readers on your topic? Do you want to persuade them to agree with your viewpoint on this topic? Do you want them to take some action based on the information you share with them? Once you've determined the purpose of your paper, you will be better able to meet the needs of your readers.
The content of a research paper must be limited so that the topic can be explored effectively. Consider your main topic. It may be too broad to address in a paper. You will probably need to ask yourself what subtopics exist and select one. Then, consider that subtopic and decide if you should narrow it down once more. For instance, if your topic is alternative energy sources, you could narrow this to solar energy. Next, you could narrow this topic to solar panels. The final topic should be one you can cover thoroughly in your paper.
An outline serves as the road map for your essay. Begin by listing the major sections of your paper, such as introduction, history, prevalent theories and current research. After listing the major sections, divide them into subsections so your information is presented in organized sections. Examine each subsection and determine if further refinement is needed.
Online library databases, such EBSCOhost and LexisNexis, are excellent sources of peer-reviewed articles. Other places to locate valid research are government websites that end in .gov, college and university websites that end in .edu, and non-profit organization websites that end in .org. Major hospital websites contain research information, as do websites for national news organizations.
Utilize resource information as a way to illustrate and reinforce the ideas you're presenting in your paper. You'll want to include resources when you present major points, offer current ideas and opinions, incorporate statistics and data or draw conclusions. Quotations are very useful when you want to reinforce a stance by showing the specific opinion of an expert.
All resource information needs to be acknowledged in a research paper. Information that is quoted, paraphrased or summarized needs to have both a citation in the text of the document and an entry on a page that appears at the end of the essay. The exact format you use varies depending on the documentation standard you are following. Two popular stylebooks for research papers are the American Psychological Association (APA) format and the Modern Language Association (MLA) format.