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for more information). When you are writing a literature
review, you should not rely on other research summaries;
rather you should go to original sources. Original sources
are empirical sources--those that report research findings
for the first time.
After reviewing the research on your topic, you will want
to come up with a thesis statement for your paper. Your
thesis statement should present some conclusion about
the research on that topic—a statement that summarizes,
integrates, or reinterprets the data. Your thesis may be, for
example, a theory that explains why two sets of research
seem contradictory or a theory of how two seemingly
disparate research traditions are relevant to one another.
Literature reviews are not divided into a fixed set of
specific sections, but you should use sub-headings when
introducing new topic areas within a paper. At the very
least a good research summary should include a clear
introduction, a body in which the evidence is presented,
and a discussion. Here are some questions to consider as
you draft your research summary:
• Introduction Why is this topic important? What is
the history of this topic? What are the related theories
or findings? What is your claim or thesis statement?
• Body What is the evidence that supports your claim?
What evidence runs contrary to your claim and how do
you reconcile that with your claim? The body of your
paper should describe the research that has previously
been done on this topic, as well as any controversies or
alternate opinions. At each stage of your discussion,
you should relate the evidence you present to the major
conclusions you are trying to make.
• Discussion/Conclusion/Implications – What is
your final conclusion? What questions remain? What
does your conclusion mean for other people’s theories
or explanations? In this final section you will want to
synthesize the findings you described in the body into a
succinct summary. You should return to the issues that
you raised in the introduction, and close the loop. You
should also discuss the possible implications of your
argument for existing theories and for everyday life.
Empirical Paper or Research Proposal
An empirical paper or proposal should describe a proposed
or completed study in enough detail to demonstrate what
question the research was designed to answer, what else
is known about the topic (which makes it clear why your
study is needed and important), exactly what was done
or will be done in the experiment, and what the findings
do or will mean to the field. Your senior thesis will be
an empirical paper; in some courses you will be asked to
design a research study but not to conduct the research.
This is a research proposal. This type of paper tends to be
divided into six parts, indicated by subheadings:
• Abstract The abstract is a summary (usually 150
words or fewer) that provides the reader a framework
for what is to come. The abstract should appear on a
separate page and should summarize each of the paper’s
sections in a sentence or two. The abstract should be
comprehensible even if the reader never actually reads
the full paper.
• Introduction The introduction should begin on
the page after the abstract, and should not be labeled
with a subheading. In the introduction you provide
your reader with information about what question you
have tackled (or plan to tackle) and how that question
relates to other work in the field. You should focus on
explaining why the question is important, summarizing
the history of the question, and describing previous
theories and data that are relevant to the study you will
describe. Finally, you should present the hypothesis
that you have tested (or will test) in your study. You
should also note alternative possible answers to the
question you raise, and indicate how your study will
allow you to garner support for the hypothesis and at
the same time rule out the alternative possibilities. A
study that will produce results that are consistent with
all possible hypotheses is of no interest.
• Method The method section explains how the study
was conducted (or how it will be conducted). This
section details the study’s participants, the materials
used in the study, and the procedure the participants
followed (or will follow) in the study. The format for
the method section is specified in the APA style guide.
You should include enough details so that another
person could replicate your study precisely, without
consulting you.
• Results/Predicted Results What did the study
find or what do you expect it will find? In this section
your job is to provide the evidence that psychologists
like best—data. In addition to detailing the results
of the study, you will need to describe any steps you
took in cleaning up the data (e.g., removing outliers,
computing composite variables), the analyses used, and
the results of those analyses. For a proposal you still
need to describe how you will clean the data and what
analyses you will conduct. Sometimes, for proposals,
professors will want you to speculate about what the
results will look like. Present first the results that bear
directly on your hypothesis, and always present the
descriptive statistics (typically means and standard errors
of the mean, often in a graph) along with the inferential
statistics (such as tests of an analysis of variance).
• Discussion In the discussion section, your main job
is to synthesize the results and offer your conclusions.
What do these results mean? How do these findings