A Brief Guide to

How to Write a Term Paper

  • This is a quick reference andnot intended as a detailed description. For more information you may refer to one or all of the following web sites to guide you in writing your term paper. Do not forget to click on the “sub-links” in each web site.

http://www.wooster.edu/psychology/apa-crib.html

http://www.uwsp.edu/psych/apa4b.htm#A1

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/01/

One of the most famous writing formats is APA format (APA: American Psychological Associations).

General Overview

A research paper presents and interprets information gathered through an extensive study of a subject.

An effective research paper contains all of the following:

  1. A clearly stated thesis statement
  2. Convincing textual evidence from a variety of outside sources, including direct quotations whose sources are cited
  3. A clear organization that includes an introduction, body, and conclusion
  4. A works Cited list (References), or Bibliography, that provides a complete listing of research sources.

Although you may draw information and ideas from many sources, you are encouraged to make judgment about the information you discover in the sources.

The research process comes down to three essential operations.

  1. Searching:
  • You must search harder than most people realize for a good topic. It is rare to find a topic merely by thinking about the matter. Then you must learn how to find information.
  1. Reading:
  • This operation involves more than understanding the materials you are reading. You must learn how to recognize what information is likely to be useful to your research goals.
  1. Writing:
  • Writing consists of organizing intelligently your ideas, and writing style.

Advice:

  • start early
  • make more than one copy.

Important Steps

Choose a subject:

  • Decide what question the research will answer.
  • However, your thoughts first are likely to be very general, only indicating the direction of your immediate interest.
  • The subject must lead to a good topic - one that raises some questions that have not been answered.

Find a topic:

  • Narrow your subject to a topic that can lead to answering some questions.
  • Evaluate the information and ideas that you discover to arrive at a clear well-thought conclusion.
  • Decide what questionthe research is going to answer
  • Once you believe you have a good topic, take time to do some background reading in the subject area.

Form a hypothesis:

  • To put you in the right direction so you can reach the conclusion. A hypothesis must be reasonable.

Prepare your list of sources:

  • Survey Books, periodicals, internet, government and international publications, and interviews, etc. These sources will be your bibliography.
  • Skim the sources
  • Evaluate potential sources
  • Read the sources and take notes. There are three ways to take notes
  • Paraphrasing: Expressing another person’s idea in your own words. This will lead to
  • fewer words than the original
  • Increase understanding
  • Summarizing: Consist of a general idea that you have derived from several details.
  • Quoting:If paraphrasing is longer, clumsier, or inaccurate than the original, then it is better to quote:
  • For support
  • For beauty and power.

Start writing

  • Organize your notes
  • Construct the outline
  • - Example: Introduction
  • Theoretical Foundation- optional
  • Literature review
  • Methodology: Library search

and/or

  • Interview
  • Analysis and Findings
  • Conclusion and Recommendation

Writing Format

General Appearance

  • Choose the right standard paper (A4 or letter).
  • Font and size: Times New Roman, 12 points
  • It is preferred to have all tables and charts in portrait style with Times New Roman, 11 points
  • Text should be double (or 1.5) spaced
  • Skip one line between paragraphs.
  • Paragraphs should not be indented.
  • Start each new section on a new page
  • Spacing:Top, bottom: 2.5 cm; right, left: 2.5 cm (or 1 inch each)
  • Maximum of 20 pages (inclusive notes, references/appendices, tables/figures/ charts etc
  • Page Numbers: down, center, donot include the number in the title page.

Mistakes to avoid

  • Placing a heading at the bottom of a page with the following text on the next page (insert a page break!)
  • Dividing a table or figure - confine each figure/table to a single page
  • Submitting a paper with pages out of order
  • Avoid use of superfluous pictures - include only those figures necessary to presenting results

Headings

  • Major headings are to be centered in a bold font and in capital letter without underline. They may be numbered, if so desired (which personally I don't like).
  • Insert one line above and below each major heading.

Subheadings

  • Subheadings should be in a bold font in lower case with initial capitals. They should start at the left-hand margin on a separate line.
  • Insert one line above but not below each subheading.

Sub-subheadings (if necessary):

  • Sub-subheadings are to be in a bold font. They should be indented and run in at the beginning of the paragraph.

Title Page:

  • Title should be concise and informative. Avoid abbreviations and formulae. (Bold, 16 points)
  • Your name (Bold, 14 points)
  • Your instructor’s name (Bold, 14 points)
  • Course No. & Title (Bold, 12 points)
  • Semester/Year (Bold, 12 points)
  • UniversityCollege (Bold, 12 points)
  • Leave one line between each of the above

Abstract

  • Abstract is a concise single paragraph summary of completed work or work in progress. It should summarize the content of the paper.
  • Be direct, “reader-friendly”, and informative for non-specialists.
  • A concise abstract should briefly state the purpose of the research, general approach to the problem, the main results, and the important conclusions or new questions.
  • An abstract is often presented separate from the article, so it must be able to stand alone, and not refer to any other part of the paper such as a figure or table
  • .Keep the abstract to no more than 200 words,
  • Use single line spacing throughout the abstract.
  • Do not insert references or equations in the abstract.
  • As a summary of work done, it is always written in past tense
  • What is reported in an abstract must be consistent with what is reported in the paper

Keywords:

  • Include up to six keywords that describe your paper for indexing and for web searches.

The research paper is generally broken into six (6) specific sections as follows. Each of these sections should be separated from the others with a subheading which labels the section.

  1. Introduction:
  • Write the word INTRODUCTION centered in bold capital letters. Skip one line and begin with the text.
  • The purpose of an introduction is to acquaint the reader with the rationale behind the work, with the intention of defending it. It places your work in a theoretical context, and enables the reader to understand and appreciate your objectives.
  • The introduction should state clearly the statement of problem (the motivation and context of the research), the specific hypothesis(es), the objective of the paper, the importance (significance) of the study as well as the organization of the paper.
  • Your introductions should not exceed three pages (double spaced, typed).
  1. Literature Review and Background Information:
  • source: books, journals, magazines, newspaper articles, case studies, personal research, etc
  • The literature review should be limited to the articles, books and other items that have a direct bearing on the topic being addressed.
  • Theoretical papers may devote a full section to the motivation and potential usefulness of the proposed theoretical framework.
  • Empirical papers that do not develop new theories or hypotheses should be kept short.
  1. Methods:
  • This section should give details of the methodology used only if it is new.
  • If it is not new you should highlight it and state the main references and authority in this methodology.
  1. Findings / Observations:
  • What did you discover? data, facts ascertained
  • Interpretation, analysis of findings, comment; what, if anything, have you added to the available literature?
  1. Conclusions and Recommendations:
  • The conclusion should summarize key findings and state their importance to the field.
  1. References / Bibliography:
  • What books, articles, web sites and other resources did you use? List all sources, even if you did not quote directly from them.
  • Referencesrefer to specific works that you used and cited in the text of the article/ paper/ report/ project.
  • A bibliographyrefersto all books, journals or websites which are a not actually used or cited in the text but are relevant.
  • In research papers usually references are listed only but if both are listed, they should be included as the last pages of the studybutreferences are first.
  • All citations in the text should refer to:
    - Single Author: the Author's name (without initials, unless there is ambiguity) and the year of publication;
    - Two Authors: both Authors' names and the year of publication;
    - Three or more Authors: first Author's name followed by "et al." and the year of publication.
    Examples: "(as demonstrated in Allan, 1996a, 1996b, 1999; Allan and Jones, 1995). Lee et al. (2000) have recently shown"
  • In the references list references should be arranged first alphabetically and then further sorted chronologically if necessary. More than one reference from the same Author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters "a", "b", "c", etc., placed after the year of publication. Examples:
  • The reference list should follow the notes at the end of the paper.
  • You should make certain that there is a complete reference for every citation in the text and that the cited dates and the spellings of the authors' names in the text and references are in agreement. The following are examples of proper form:
  • Journal Articles

Cosset, J. and Suret, J. (1995) "Political risk and benefits of international portfolio diversification", Journal of International Business Studies, 26(2): 301-318. (note that journal names are not to be abbreviated)

  • Books

Donahoe, J.D. (1989) The Privatization Decision, Basic Books:New York.

  • Papers

Harley, N.H (1981) "Radon Risk Models", in A.R. Knight and B.Harrad (eds.) Indoor Air and Human Health, Proceedings of the Seventh Life Sciences Symposium; 29-31 October 1981; Knoxville, USA. Elsevier: Amsterdam, pp 69-78.

  • Chapters in Edited Books

Teece, D.J. (1987) "Capturing Value from Technological Innovation: Integration, Strategic Partnering and Licensing Decisions", in R.B. Guile and H. Brooks (eds.) Technology and global industry: Companies and Nations in the World Economy, National Academy Press: WashingtonDC, pp.19-38.

  • Dissertations

Salk, J.E. (1992) 'Shared Management Joint Ventures: Their Developmental Patterns, Challenges and Possibilities" Unpublished Ph.D Dissertation, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.

  • Online documents

Van de Vliert, E. (2002) '"hermoclimate, Culture, and Poverty as Country-level Roots of Workers' Wages", [www document] (accessed 13 January 2003).

  • Online journal articles

Van de Vliert, E. (2002) "Thermoclimate, Culture, and Poverty as Country-level Roots of Workers' Wages",Journal of International Business Studies, doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400007

Note that an interview is not considered recoverable data, so no reference to this is provided in the References. You may, however, cite the interview within the text as a personal communication. For example,

(M. Afandi, The socio-Economic Importance of Zakat, March 15, 2008)

To cite secondary sources, refer to both sources in the text, but include in the References list only the source that you actually used. For instance, suppose you read Feist (1998) and would like to paraphrase the following sentence within that book: Bandura (1989) defined self-efficacy as "people's beliefs about their capabilities to exercise control over events that affect their lives" (p. 1175).

In this case, your in-text citation would be "(Bandura, 1989, as cited in Feist, 1998)." Feist (1998) would be fully referenced within the list of References. Bandura (1989) would not be listed. For more information on citing secondary sources

Tables and Figures:

  • All tables and figures should be included in the text where appropriate.
  • Tables should be numbered consecutively 1, 2, 3.
  • Figures should be numbered consecutively 1, 2, 3 and be referred to as Figure 1, etc., in both headings and the text.
  • Both should have short titles.

Footnotes:

  • Footnotes should be avoided as far as possible. They should only be included where they provide either an important qualification to or a clear illustration of statements in the text. They should not be used to elaborate on the main text or present related material. If footnotes are used, they should be kept short. They should be numbered consecutively and included at the end of the article after the references.

Appendices:

  • Avoid using appendices; if used, appendices should follow the references.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism refers to stealing the ideas or words of another as one's own, using another's production without crediting the source, and /or presenting as new and original an idea or work that is derived from an existing source.

These ideas and products include opinion, theory, any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings or any pieces of informationthat are not common knowledge;

Most cases of plagiarism can be avoided, however, by citing sources, simply acknowledging that certain material has been borrowed, and providing the information necessary to find that source,.

There are many web sites that explain plagiarism and how to avoid it. You may refer to some of them to learn more about this problem

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