Tips and Strategies for Creating a Coherent Research Paper

Literature Review

Task:

Your final assignment is where you will weave the first two elements (the Cyber White Paper and Cyber Research Proposal) together, and incorporate your research analysis, to create a coherent research paper that is 13-15 pages in length. While it is inappropriate (not to mention a violation of university policy) to cut-and-paste from past assignments in old courses into new ones, this research project is evolutionary and builds itself up from a white paper to a completed product. For this reason, in this class it is permissible to paste the information (as appropriate and as it makes sense) from the first two assignments assigned in this course into your final assignment. Format. Your research paper should include a title page, body, and reference page. Your paper should have a one-inch border on all four sides, use Times New Roman 12-point font, be double-spaced, and not have an extra space in-between paragraphs. (You may need to turn this off in MS Word by going to "paragraph" and clicking "Don't add space between paragraphs of the same style). Use the Chicago style Author-Date format with a references page. You can refer to Wendy Belcher’s Writing your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success (2009) if you choose to purchase it. This resource has an excellent step-by-step process for enhancing your writing. Your research paper should include the following sections: Introduction. This section should be written last and should pull from some of the elements of your research proposal. You will need to clearly provide an overview of the topic you are writing about, a concise synopsis of the issues, state your research question, and discuss why the situation is important to investigate. Writing the introduction last is helpful in ensuring that you've incorporated any changes that may have taken place over the course of your research. This section should be one page in length. Literature Review. Your literature review section is a synthesis of the sources that you identified in your second assignment in addition to other sources that you have identified to support your research. This section should be 3-4 pages in length. Methodology. This section will pull from, and expand upon, your research design section within your first assignment. Methodology sections are another standard element in research papers as they provide the reader with a clear understanding for how the research was carried out. In this section you should discuss your case study methodology and explain the validity of your approach. In your explanation, be sure you explain how you chose the case to investigate, your data collection method, your data analysis (i.e. the questions you asked to help guide your research and thus answer your primary research question), and any potential data limitations and biases that pertain to this specific project. In your discussion of the studies limitations you should keep in mind that itis always best to end on a positive note, so be sure you discuss your plan to mitigate the limitations and biases, if any. This section should be 1-2 pages in length. Analysis and Findings. This section and the conclusion discussed below are essentially the two newest components of your research project. Your analysis and findings section should provide a narrative of your research and the analytical arguments that you will make as a result of your findings. In this section you will discuss the different information processing errors that occurred within your chosen situation and explain how they lead to or are leading to errors in analysis and/or decision-making. Within this section you should provide the evidence that proves or disproves your research hypothesis. This section should be 5-6 pages in length. Conclusion. This section will contain the concluding analytical arguments based on what the research has revealed. Here you will discuss some of the techniques and strategies that can be used to help mitigate the information processing errors and/or decision-making errors that occurred during the situation under investigation. Like any conclusion, it should provide a synopsis of the project, the strategy, the results, and what the research adds to our body of knowledge. Within your conclusion you should also offer suggestions for avenues of future research for other scholars as all knowledge is evolutionary. This section should be 1-2 pages in length. References. This section will contain all of the references that you have cited within your paper. They should be listed in Turabian References format and arranged alphabetically. Entitle this section as "References," each source notation should be single-spaced with one space between each source. At this level your references should fall within the 18-25 sources range and be made up primarily of peer-reviewed content.