Thursday 7 November 2013

Research Papers - How to Write an APA Style Paper

Most teachers want research papers written in APA style, and many college classes require research papers. Where do you start?
Pick a thesis
A thesis is a premise for your argument, a hypothesis, or a brief statement of what your paper is about. A thesis for a research paper is just like a thesis for an essay, except that the thesis probably isn't quite as narrow since your research paper will be larger.
Your thesis shouldn't be too narrow or to broad. Take into consideration the teacher's specifications for the assignment; that is, how long is the paper allowed to be? Then consider your thesis and if you can fill the space of your paper without making it too long.
How can you tell how much space you can fill defending your thesis or supporting it? Well, this depends a lot on how you write, but it also depends on how much information is available and how many sub topics there are for the thesis.
Research and take notes
Go to the library and read some books on your topic. Check out the magazines and journals. Go online and look for more information. Be particularly careful about your sources when you research online. Remember, online content isn't subject to peer review or even a traditional book publisher and copy editor.
A great place to start your online research is at scholar.Google.com, because journal style articles are returned. Books.Google.com or Amazon.com will allow you to see parts of books before ordering them. Another good place is to go to your local library's website and find their "Online Resources and Databases." These are links to library vetted websites.
Make a list of all your sources. This was traditionally done on index cards, but it might be easier to keep a log file in Word or Excel. For each book keep track of the author(s), the title, the publisher, city, state, and county of publishing, date of publishing, the name of the editor if it's listed, and even the ISBN. Then, for each source, give it a unique number of phrase so you can easily keep track of it. For instance, I might give this article a phrase of "Nico-APA."
Write down your source next to each piece of information you keep as a note.
If some things don't make sense, try drawing pictures or putting some of the information into charts to help make sense of the data.
Revise your thesis
Now that you know what information is available, look at your thesis and determine if it needs to be revised or not. Remember, it needs to fill the space requirement of the assignment without going over.
Write an outline
A lot of people skip this step, but don't. It's important. Write an outline. Your outline should look something like this, but don't be overly concerned about the roman numerals, letters, and such. In fact, you can skip those and just use indenting to keep track of which headings are major headings and which are sub headings.
Major Topic
^^^^^Sub Topic
^^^^^Sub Topic
^^^^^^^^^^ Sub Topic
^^^^^^^^^^Sup Topic
^^^^^Sub Topic
Major Topic
^^^^^Sub Topic
^^^^^Sub Topic
^^^^^Sub Topic
Determine if you need any tables, graphs, or charts
Did you run an experiment and you data to show? Did someone else run an experiment and you want to show their results and attribute the credit to them? Did you come up with an awesome chart or graph to help you understand the topic and it should be included in the paper?
Write a draft
Write the draft of your paper. Follow your outline, and if it's easier for you, just write one section at a time. Before you type your research paper, set up your word processor for Times New Roman 12 point. Set up the margins to be 1 inch. Make sure each paragraph is more than one sentence. Make sure each paragraph is less than one page. Put two spaces at the end of sentences. Make sure the document is double spaced. Make sure each page has less than 27 lines of text (and this does not include the running header). Indent the first line of each paragraph.
Add a running head
The running head is a shortened version of the title. It should appear at the top of each page and it needs to be flushed to the left. The running head should be less than 50 characters. An example is:
Running head: THE TITLE OF MY PAPER
Edit, proofread, and revise
Look for potential bias in your paper and remove it. Remove jargon. Run a spelling check. Run a grammar check. Ask someone else to read your paper and have them mark it up. Don't use abbreviations if you can avoid it, and if you do use abbreviations, explain the abbreviation the first time you use it. Do not use spaces inside the abbreviations. Dashes, such as en dashes, em dashes, and hyphens, should not have spaces on either side of them. Number all the pages, except pages that are entirely figures, sequentially. The title page is included in this numbering.
Create a title page
Create a title for your paper. Don't use words like "experiment" or "method" in it. The title should have a maximum size of 10-12 words. Ideally, the title is less than 50 characters and fits into the running head. The title page should contain at least the name of the paper, the author's name in the format of Firstname, M., Lastname. The last piece of mandatory data on the title page is the school's name.
Write your abstract.
After you've written the paper, write an abstract. Your abstract should be less than 120 words and people should be able to read it and get the gist of your paper.
Put your paper in order.
Title page
Abstract, less than 120 words, on its own page
The text should start on Page 3
References, each appendix, and the author note should start on a separate page
List the footnotes together but on a separate page
List of tables should start on a separate page
List figure captions together on a separate page
Figures should be on a separate page.
Research paper online
Best Essay

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