HOW TO WRITE A HIGH-GRADE RESEARCH PAPER

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The first time I had to write a research paper for university was one of the most stressful experiences I’d ever had - it was so different to anything I’d ever done before and caused me so much anxiety! It turned out that I’m pretty damn good at writing research reports and I’m now looking to pursue a career in psychological research.

I have never received less than a First (or 4.0 GPA for you American studiers) in my research papers so I thought I’d share my top tips on how to write a kick-ass, high-grade research paper.

*disclaimer: I am a psychology student, my tips are based on my personal experience of writing up psychological research (quantitative and qualitative); therefore, they may require some adaptation in order to be applied to your field of study/research*

These tips will be split up into the different sections a research paper should consist of: abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, references and formatting.

ABSTRACT

The aim of an abstract is to summarise your whole paper - it should be concise, include key-words, highlight the key points of your paper and be written last.

When I say concise, I mean concise! The abstract is what other students and researchers will read in order to decide whether your research is relevant their own work and essentially determines whether or not they’ll read on - they want to know the key details and don’t want to be overwhelmed with information.

I always aim to keep my abstracts under 250 words. I set myself this limit to stop myself waffling and dwelling on unimportant points, it helps me to be really selective of what I include and ensures I’m gripping the reader from the start.

Your abstract should discuss the research rationale, the methods and designs used, your results and the general conclusion(s) drawn. One or two sentences on each of these topics is enough.

Make sure you’re using key-words throughout your abstract as this will also help the reader decide whether your work is relevant to theirs. You can make key-words super obvious by highlighting them in a key at the bottom of your abstract (see below) or just used jargon consistently. Using key-words is also important if you’re looking to get your work published, these words will help people find your work using search engines.

Finally, write your abstract last! An abstract is a summary of your whole research paper which makes it practically impossible to write well first. After writing the rest of your paper, you will know your research inside and out and already have an idea of what key things you need to highlight in your abstract.

INTRODUCTION

For me, the introduction section is always the most intimidating to write because it’s like painting on a blank canvas - massively daunting and leaving you terrified to make a mistake!

The aim of an introduction is to provide the rationale for your research and justify why your work is essential in the field. In general, your introduction should start very broad and narrow down until you arrive at the niche that is your research question or hypothesis.

To start, you need to provide the reader with some background information and context. You should discuss the general principle of your paper and include some key pieces of research (or theoretical frameworks if relevant) that helps your reader get up to speed with the research field and where understanding currently lies. This section can be pretty lengthy, especially in psychological research, so make sure all of the information you’re including is vital as it can be pretty easy to get carried away.

This background should lead you onto the rationale. If you’ve never written a research paper before, the rationale is essentially the reason behind your own research. This could be building on previous findings so our understanding remains up to date, it could be picking up on weaknesses of other research and rectifying these issues or it could be delving into an unexplored aspect of the field! You should clearly state your rationale and this helps lead into the next section.

You should end your introduction by briefly discussing your current research. You need to state your research question or hypothesis, how you plan on investigating the question/hypothesis, the sample you plan on using and the analysis you plan to carry out. You should also mention any limitations you anticipate to crop up so you can address these in your discussion.

In psychology, references are huge in research introductions so it is important to use an accurate (and modern as possible) reference for each statement you are making. You can then use these same references in your discussion to show where your research fits into the current understanding of the topic!

METHODS

Your methods section should make use of subheadings and tables where necessary and should be written in past tense. This can make the (potentially) lengthy section easier to navigate for the reader. I usually use the following headings: participants, materials, design, procedure.

The participants section should describe the sample that took part in your research. Age, gender, nationality and other relevant demographic information should be provided as well as the sampling technique. Personally, I use a table (see below) alongside my continuous prose as an alternative way of viewing my sample population. Please note, if you’re using a table make sure it adheres to your university guidelines.

The materials section of your methods should include any equipment, resources (i.e. images, books, diagrams) or any other materials used in your data collection. You should also reference the program that helped you conduct your analysis. For example, if you are writing a qualitative research paper, you may want to include Microsoft Word in your materials if you use the program to transcribe interviews.

You should then describe the design used in your research. All variables should be identified in this paragraph, if relevant. You should also discuss whether your research is within-groups or between-groups, again only if relevant.

Last is your procedure section - the most important one! You must write this section with enough detail so that anybody could pick it up, read it and conduct the same experiment with ease. You should describe what participants were required to do, how data was collected and it should be written in chronological order! While it’s important to provide enough information, try not to overwhelm the reader with lengthy sentences and unnecessary information.

RESULTS

Your results section’s sole purpose is to provide the reader with the data from your study. It should be the second shortest section (abstract being first) in your research paper and should stick to the relevant guidelines in regards to reporting figures, tables and diagrams. Your goal is to relay results in the most objective and concise way possible.

Your results section serves to act as evidence for the claims you’ll go on to make during your discussion but you must not be biased in the results you report. You should report enough data to sufficiently justify your conclusions but must also include data that doesn’t support your original hypothesis or research question.

Reporting data is most easily done through tables and figures as they’re easy to look at and select relevant information. If you’re using tables and figures you should always make sure you’re stating effect sizes and p values and to a consistent decimal place. Illustrative tables and figures should always be followed by supporting summary text consisting of a couple of sentences relaying the key statistical findings in continuous prose.

DISCUSSION

The discussion section should take the opposite approach to your introduction! You should start discussing your own research and broaden the discussion until you’re talking about the general research field.

You should start by stating the major findings of your study and relating them back to your hypothesis or research questions. You must must must explicitly state whether you reject or accept your experimental hypothesis, if you have one. After stating your key findings you should explain the meaning, why they’re important and where they fit into the existing literature. It’s here that you should bring back the research you discussed in your introduction, you should relate your findings to the current understanding and state the new insight your research provides.

You should then state the clinical relevance of your research. Think about how your findings could be applied to real-life situations and discuss one or two practical applications.

After this, discuss the limitations of your research. Limitations could include sample size and general sample population and how this effects generalisability of findings, it could include methodological problems or research bias! These limitations will allow you to discuss how further research should be conducted. Suggest ways in which these limitations could be rectified in future research and also discuss the implications this could have on findings and conclusions drawn.

Finally, you need to give the reader a take-home message. A sentence or two to justify (again) the need for your research and how it contributes to current understanding in the field. This is the last thing your audience will read so make it punchy!

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That’s it folks! My tips for writing a kick-ass, high-grade research paper based on my personal experience. If you have any questions regarding things I’ve missed or didn’t provide enough detail of, then please just send me an ask!

Also, if any of you would like to read any of my past research papers I would be more than happy to provide you with them :-))

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100 Things You’ll Learn Fourth Year of Medical School

Every year I’ve been putting together a list of 100 things I learned in that year of medical school.

Here’s the (slightly belated) list for fourth year!!

Read the other years here:

First Year

Second Year

Third Year

Bonus: 75 Things I learned about Step 1

This list includes things I learned about sub-internships, applying for and interviewing for residency, matching, and graduating!

Sub-I is the smartest you will ever be in all of med school, enjoy it.

ERAS will crash the day you apply. Don’t panic.

Nothing feels as good as cancelling an interview. NOTHING

Airport wine is ridiculously overpriced and often not that good, but so worth it after a long interview.

Say thank you to all the people who got you here – it takes a village to make a doctor – you didn’t do this alone.

Keep reading

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swirlspill-study

6 years ago

This is a summary of college only using two pictures; expensive as hell.

That’s my Sociology “book”. In fact what it is is a piece of paper with codes written on it to allow me to access an electronic version of a book. I was told by my professor that I could not buy any other paperback version, or use another code, so I was left with no option other than buying a piece of paper for over $200. Best part about all this is my professor wrote the books; there’s something hilariously sadistic about that. So I pretty much doled out $200 for a current edition of an online textbook that is no different than an older, paperback edition of the same book for $5; yeah, I checked. My mistake for listening to my professor.

This is why we download.

Alternatives to buying overpriced textbooks

Textbooknova

Bookboon

Textbookrevolution

GaTech Math Textbooks

Ebookee

Freebookspot

Free-ebooks

Getfreeebooks

BookFinder

Oerconsortium

Project Gutenberg

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swirlspill-study

1 year ago

So I was back in Mandarin class and the teacher let us know that in ancient times sometimes they wouldn’t even give their girl children names. Their attitude was why bother getting attached to her when she’s just going to grow up and belong to someone else? She doesn’t need her own identity because she is the property of her future husband. If they needed to refer to a woman they would say that’s Wang’s wife. In the same way you would say oh, that’s Wang’s car or Wang’s house. Let’s remember that we give names to dogs, horses, ships and buildings but some human women don’t deserve such recognition. She also touched on sex-selective abortion for a bit and it was all in all a pretty sad discussion today.

I was really moved but it felt like everyone else didn’t care or thought that stuff doesn’t matter because it doesn’t happen anymore. And yet even now women’s identities are being erased when they get married. Their personal history and family ties are untraceable because they are “adopted” into their husbands family. It’s disgusting and I hate that its so nomalized and I hate that even women’s names are not our own. We might as well never have been given names in the first place.

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swirlspill-study

7 years ago

Read JY Yang’s “Waiting on a Bright Moon”, a story of rebellion among far-flung colonies united by song magic.

Xin is an ansible, using her song magic to connect the originworld of the Imperial Authority and its far-flung colonies— a role that is forced upon magically-gifted women “of a certain closeness”. When a dead body comes through her portal at a time of growing rebellion, Xin is drawn deep into a station-wide conspiracy along with Ouyang Suqing, one of the station’s mysterious, high-ranking starmages.

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swirlspill-study

7 years ago

Researching for a project? Looking for open-access, high quality databases, encyclopedias and resources to help you write your next paper? Here’s a list of some great ones to help you find exactly what you were looking for.

Research Managers

Zotero

Mendeley

Qiqqa

General

List of academic databases and search engines

Our World in Data

Search Engines

100 Time-Saving Search Engines for Serious Scholars

Top 11 Trusted (And Free) Search Engines For Scientific and Academic Research

Ten search engines for researchers that go beyond Google

12 Fabulous Academic Search Engines

The 6 BEST Search Engines for Academic Research

20 of the Best Search Engines for Students

Best Educational Search Engines For Academic Researchers

Databases

Directory of Open Access Journals

New York Public Library Articles and Databases

UCSB Article Indexes & Research Databases

DATABASES: Library of Congress E-Resources Online Catalog

FINDING CURRENT RESEARCH USING FREE ONLINE RESOURCES

Free Databases for Magazine/Journal Articles, etc.

Free Full-Text Resources for Grad School Papers

Online Reference: Open Access Databases

Free Online Full-text Articles

Free scholarly resources

International Education Research Database

PubMed

Sci-Hub

Database checklist: Key academic research resources — both free and restricted

Research Databases and Other Online Tools

Encyclopedias

Top Encyclopedia Sites for Student Research Papers

RefSeek’s Encyclopedias

Encyclopedia.com

Infoplease

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Medline Plus

Dictionaries

RefSeek’s dictionaries and thesauri

The 10 Best Online Dictionaries

Essay and Paper Writing

Essay and Paper Writing Masterpost

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swirlspill-study

7 years ago

12/04/2016

For AP Gov’t, I like to type my chapter notes then annotate them during class discussions.

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swirlspill-study

7 years ago

“It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this.”

Hi, everyone! If you’re like me and you love a good game soundtrack or a great playlist of all sorts of game music, this is the masterpost for you. I’m one of those people who studies better with some music in the background, and what better way of making a study session more enjoyable than by listening to the soundtrack of your favourite game?

Why listen to music while you study?

Multiple studies have proven that certain students who listen to music while they study perform better academically. Unfortunately, it’s not for everyone, so you should really figure out if this is the right method for you before commiting yourself to it! The main arguement for studying with music is that research has proved that listening to classical music in particular helps the brain absorb more information and also helps stimulate one’s thinking!

On the other hand, some people tend to lose all concentration when there’s any music or noise in the background, which leads to procrastination and lower productivity. In short, if you can’t concentrate on the task at hand and get distracted easily, this isn’t the best method for you!

Playlists

I started actively looking for playlists with game music about two years ago and instantly fell in love. There are so many good playlists of various lengths and genres that are accessable on platforms like spotify, 8tracks, youtube, etc. All of the playlists include the tracklist in the description below them!

Note: I won’t be adding any playlists from 8tracks because they only work in the US and Canada.

i. General

Game music for studying: Some of you might have already heard of these videos before. They’re roughly an hour and a half long and include some of the more calming tracks from a lot of different games. All the names of the tracks are listed in the description below, which is super handy if you want to find out which game it’s from! I thought I’d put in the playlist of all of them so you can just press play and enjoy!

Video game music! 2.0: Probably the longest playlist you’ll find anywhere. a n y w h e r e. 223 hours of amazingness that you’ll never regret!

ii. Calming/ relaxing

5 hours of atmospheric game music: This is one of my personal favourites. It’s very long so you don’t have to worry about looking for another playlist when this one finishes.

Relaxing video game music: Another gem! Once again with all the tracks in the description. This one’s great for shorter study sessions since it’s only and hour long.

More relaxing video game music: If the previous playlist was too short for you, check out this 3 hour one! I used this one a lot last year!

Calming Nintendo music: A super great playlist for all you Nintendo fans! It includes some really nice tracks from the Legend of Zelda series, if you’re into those soundtracks!

Jesper Kyd playlist: Ever since I first played Assassin’s Creed 2, I’ve loved Jesper Kyd’s work. This is quite a long playlist including some of his best tracks from various games. My favourites are towards the end!

Relaxing Legend of Zelda music: You had to see this one coming. The LoZ series has some of the best soundtracks to study to (, in my opinion,) and some of the prettiest and most calming tracks. I highly recommend this 42 minute playlist for those times when you just don’t feel like working.

2 hours of sleepy video game music: This is also a little series of playlists. There are 4 of these videos in total, which adds up to 8 hours of sweet, sweet music.

iii. Epic/ badass

Epic video game music: For all of you who need a little badass music in the background! 2.5 hours of epic and awe inspiring music to really get some work done!

Focus - video game music: Spotify has some really great playlists, so I thought I’d include a few! This playlist is a little more epic and loud, but if that’s the mindset you really need to push through, this would be great for you. It’s an amazing 11 hours long so you’ll never run out.

Orchestral video game music: Another epic playlist, including the occasional lullaby. This is a 7 hour long playlist, so a little shorter than the previous one, but by no means less epic and badass!

Soundtracks

Compared to the playlists, soundtracks tend to be a mix of epic and calming music. Most games have their perilous moments and their I’m-so-relieved-I-managed-to-beat-that-boss-with-only-one-heart-left moments. The world of video games is vast, so I’ve selected a few of my favourite soundtracks to share with you instead of listing all of the ones I can find.

Legend of Zelda - Skyward Sword: One of my favourite all time games! The soundtrack is long too, so you don’t have to worry about looking for a new one afterwards.

Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time: This game is widely believed to have the best soundtrack in video game history. All I can say is so sit down, gather your work and to just enjoy.

Final Fantasy VI: This 1994 gem has an avarage playtime of 65-70 hours. The game has such a good storyline and the soundtrack is a little old school with a lot of non-orchestral tracks. I’d still recommend this to everyone who likes an older style of video game.

Suikoden Tierkreis: I have memories of me just going to the overworld map so I could listen to the music. It’s that good.

Bioshock Infinite: I’ve only ever played the first in the series, but I watched a walkthrough of this particular game and I loved it so much! The music is slightly creepy and loud sometimes but it’s a really great soundtrack overall.

The Last of Us: Another game I’ve never actually played, but the walkthrough was amazing. The soundtrack is very atmospheric and doesn’t have a lot of loud parts, so it’s generally calm.

Assassin’s creed 2: My all-time favourite game ever. As you know from before, I think Jesper Kyd is amazing, so putting these two elements together makes a truly great game. The soundtrack is actually quite well known because a few of it’s most popular tracks are featured a lot in other playlists. E.g. Dreams in Venice and The Madam.

The Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim: I’ve listened to this one a few times and I think it’s really good! It starts off quite strong but it has a lot of calmer songs too.

Fable 2: The Fable series is well-known for being short, so the soundtrack is also on the shorter side. I know the dialogue in the game almost by heart and I can guarantee you that there’s a lot of atmospheric music in this soundtrack.

Fragile: This one was recommended to me by a friend on tumblr years ago. It has really sweet songs and has a lot of piano centered tracks.

Now get to work!

I hope I’ve helped you find the perfect game music to accompany you while you study! If you have any recommendations, feel free to send me a message! I’m always up to discovering new playlists/ soundtracks.

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swirlspill-study

7 years ago