Research Paper Outline

RESEARCH PAPER OUTLINE

Below is a basic outline for any research paper and a description of what should be found in each

section. Please consult this handout, along with your class notes and readings for the course, as

you write the various installments of your paper. Remember that each installment of your paper

should have a title page, endnotes or footnotes, and a bibliography.

I. Introduction. An introduction introduces the reader to your research paper. It does so by:

A. communicating what your research question is (not in question form);

B. explaining why that question is interesting and important to a general reader as well as to

a political scientist, i.e. by identifying the debates it will illuminate; and

C. providing a ÐŽ§road mapЎЁ to the rest of the paper, i.e., your introduction contains at least

one sentence summarizing each major section of your paper.

II. Literature Review. A literature review presents to the reader the most important scholarly

answers to date to your general research question. You should group the answers to your

question into schools of thought, where the schools are defined by the different factors (or

sets of factors) that are the most important for answering your question. Literature reviews

necessarily uncover debates in the field and show exactly where and why the participants

disagree. In the conclusion of your literature review, you should choose which school of

thought you find most convincing and justify your answer. In addition, you should identify

the most compelling alternative argument. To summarize, a literature review:

A. explains the different possible answers to your general research question;

B. develops a label or name for each school of thought;

C. concludes by explaining to the reader which approach appears best and which seems

second best. These choices are clearly justified.

There are several common mistakes students make when writing the literature review:

i) ÐŽ§I canÐŽ¦t find any literatureÐŽK.ЎЁ If weÐŽ¦ve approved your question, there is literature out

there and youÐŽ¦re not looking in the right places. How to find the ÐŽ§right places?ЎЁ Make

sure that youÐŽ¦ve stated the general form of your question properly. Once youÐŽ¦re satisfied

that you have, a good place to start is ALWAYS your introductory textbook (in

American, Comparative, IR). If, for example, the general question is why or under what

conditions has voter participation in the U.S. declined, go to the table of contents and/or

index and look up voting and voter participation and see what your textbook authors say,

and MORE IMPORTANTLY, what sources they cite. Your textbook authors will,

undoubtedly, identify the schools of thought for you and tell you who the leading

proponents of these views are. Then you need to read those works for yourself to get a

better understanding of the arguments and debates.

ii) ÐŽ§There is only one answerÐŽK.ЎЁ Students often think that their job in writing a research

paper is to show that they have found THE ANSWER to the question. Therefore, when

they find the answer theyÐŽ¦re looking for, they stop looking for others. Very few

questions in political science, however, are settled; there is almost always debate.

Moreover, our understanding of any phenomenon improves when we acknowledge that

debate exists and try to learn from the various participants in it. Again, if you go to your

textbook, youÐŽ¦ll be able to find the debate easily; otherwise, if you happen upon a good

scholarly article or book, you can use that authorÐŽ¦s literature review to help you

understand what the different possible answers to your question are.

iii) Perspectives but not answers. As you may have noticed from some of your courses or

your research, there are several general perspectives out there ÐŽV institutionalism, the

Ppr outline, p. 2

political culture school, constructivism, materialism, the rational choice perspective, or

realism, to name a few. Any one of these general perspectives might be helpful to you in

answering your question. But if you choose to put forth an answer consistent with one of

these perspectives, be sure that you do more than simply explain the philosophical

underpinnings of that approach. You must answer your question in a manner consistent

with the perspective.

iv) Summary of sources. Sometimes students take the first few sources they find on the

subject, write a paragraph summary of each source, and call that a literature review.

There are a couple of problems with that approach. First, while there may be one leading

exponent of a particular view, most of the time you want to cite several sources for each

approach. Remember, youÐŽ¦re looking for a school of thought. That phrase implies that

several different people