How to Write a Research Paper for the USC SAE 550 ClassK. Cureton
How to Write a High-Scoring Research Paper
For the USC SAE 550 Class
by
Kenneth L. Cureton
Systems Architecting and Engineering 550
Systems Architecting and the Political Process
University of Southern California
December 15, 2017
(Should you have a Title Page? Yes, you should, if for no other reason than to make sure that your name shows up somewhere on your paper. You’d not believe the number of Research Papers that are submitted without identity of author, without a title, without a date, without reference to the course number, etc.)
(You can use this Microsoft WORD file as a template for your Research Paper—but please be sure to change all the sample information on the Title Page, in the Headers/Footers, etc. Alternatively, you can use Adobe PDF to construct your paper, as long as you follow the guidelines in this paper to ensure that your paper is in electronic format and readable on most Microsoft Windows-based computers. The “Format Police” will not penalize you if you adjust margins, fonts, headers/footers, line spacing, alignment/justification, or section titles—within reasonable limits. And by the way, please remember to delete these words if you use this file as a template…)
Abstract
This paper describes how to write a research paper for the USC SAE 550 Class. Students in the class often wonder how to pick a topic? How to conduct research? What format to use? How much to write and how to present research findings? And perhaps most importantly, how to get an “A” on their paper? This paper answers those questions.
(Your abstract provides a quick summary of your paper. It informs the reader of the general topic, the scope of the presentation, and one or two key findings. Most importantly, an abstract explains why the topic is important, and why the reader should read your paper. Keep it brief—about a page should be sufficient. Your abstract should be able to “stand alone” if published separately from the rest of your paper.)
(Early in the course you’ll develop and submit an abstract for approval. Just update that abstract and put it in front of your paper. Your abstract should summarize both your chosen project/process and also how the political process influenced the architecture and design of that project/process. You can use the Political “Facts of Life” (FOL) to describe that influence.)
(You should end your abstract with a brief biography. Who are you? What is your experience, if any, with your chosen project/process? What are your qualifications?
Why should the reader believe your findings? For example...)
Mr. Cureton has been the instructor for the SAE 550 “Engineering Management of Government-Funded Programs” (originally known as the “Political Process in Systems Architecture Design”) class since 1996, building on the work originated by Dr. Brenda Forman. Mr. Cureton has over 46 years of experience in Governmental, Commercial, and Aerospace engineering programs, and provides first-hand witness of Federal and State Government political impacts on those programs.
Recommended Reference: A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition by Kate L. Turabian, The University of Chicago Press, Seventh Edition (published April 2007), Hardback ($35.00) ISBN: 9780226823362, Paperback ($17.00) ISBN: 9780226823379.
PURPOSE: You need to write a purposeful paper—it needs to have an academically acceptable goal (something more than well-formed but unsubstantial regurgitation of research material). Your purpose must be something more than demonstrating that you can accomplish research and write a Masters-level Research Paper, as those are necessary but not sufficient goals for academic purposes. For this class, your purpose should be two-fold: first, to demonstrate that you understand and can properly apply the concepts presented in the class in the accomplishment of structured political analyses of a technical topic. Second, to inform the reader and “teach” your Instructor regarding political impacts on the architecture and design of your chosen topic (or “teach” your Instructor regarding recent political and technical events in your chosen topic). Failure to achieve any of the above will impact your paper’s grade!
(A useful heuristic for writing Engineering Research Papers is “There is No Substitute for a Good Topic with Good Research, Good Organization, Good Analysis, Good Iteration and Good Writing”. If you wait until the last minute or skimp on any one of these factors, it will show up in your paper and will be reflected in your grade!)
So, how should you go about writing your paper? I suggest following the above heuristic, step-by-step. Note that this (and the following) are just suggestions.
TOPIC: First, you’ll need to pick a topic: some technical project that you’ve worked on (or are working on), or something that you’d like to work on, or something that you find interesting. It doesn’t have to be a US Federally-funded Aerospace or Science or Engineering project—even though many of the USC SAE 550 Case Studies are based on such projects because of the “Big Budget=Big Politics” nature of such programs. The topic can be past, present, or future (but be mindful of the potential difficulty of obtaining research material for obscure projects in the distant past or in the far future). The topic can be a non-US project, or a commercial project. I submit that the Political “Facts of Life” are the same for such projects but their specific impact is greatly dependent on the government and cultural context surrounding such projects. Your topic can even be a technical “process” instead of a project: USC SAE 550 Case StudyFour (Fire-Fighting) is an example of a “process” topic, as opposed to Case Studies One, Two, andThree which are all “project” topics.
Whether a “project” or a “process” topic, be sure to choose a technical topic that pertains to engineering, science, or mathematics (after all, this is an engineering class)! You can address social issues pertaining to a technical topic (for example, “Federal Funding of AIDS Medical Research”) but in such case your intent should be to demonstrate how the social issues drive the political process which in turn drives the technical architecture and design (remember that this is the fundamental point of this class).
Your topic doesn’t have to be unique. In other words, it doesn’t matter if your proposed topic has been used in prior semesters, or if two or more students write independent papers on the same topic—as long as there is no collusion of effort (you can work on a joint author paper as a team if you obtain my permission). If you’re curious as to topics addressed in prior semesters (or if you just need some ideas for topics), then you’ll find lists of research paper authors and titles at the bottom of the class web site.
My experience in teaching this class shows that many students adjust or change their topic once they begin to do research, or even after they start writing their paper. This is normal and even encouraged! Too many students choose too broad of a topic (e.g. “Everything Ever Contemplated In The Strategic Defense Initiative”), or a topic for which research material (especially political influences and impacts) is hard to obtain (e.g. “Tenth Century B.C. Engineering Techniques In Atlantis”) or for an obscure topic (e.g. “The Political Process In Funding Tiddlywinks Tournaments”), or a particularly obscure time-period for an otherwise-excellent topic (e.g. “The Politics of Nuclear Waste Storage Prior to World War II”).
RESEARCH: Next, you’ll need to start your research. You should start as soon as you pick your topic. Your sources will be highly dependent on your topic. Most people use the Internet as their primary research tool—and this is fine as long as you give the URLs in your References. But you may want to consider that the Internet is a great source of post-1990 information… and unless someone has taken the time to post specific information then “ancient history” (i.e. before 1990) may be sparse on the Internet (especially data from the 1970’s and 1980’s). And please read the recommendations at the end of this paper regarding use of Wikipedia and other Internet sources in the conduct of your research.
Please consider use of one of the USC libraries and public libraries. You can find copies of The Congressional Record and other political sources in those libraries. You can order hard-to-find books on loan through most libraries, if you give them enough time:
hint-hint-hint, start your research early!
You may want to ask knowledgeable co-workers, friends, and faculty members for recommended reference materials and sources of information regarding your chosen topic. You may even want to show them your research findings and ask for their continued guidance, as your quest for research material should not be a one-time thing.
I’ve provided URLs for many technical/political sources on the class web page. In addition, please refer to the Research Hints link on the class web page. And of course I’m willing to provide more specific help if you still have trouble researching your chosen topic—please feel free to ask for guidance/help at any time!
ORGANIZE: Next, you’ll need to organize your efforts. You should start as soon as you begin your research—and by the way, had I mentioned that you should start your research early?
You should develop a fairly detailed outline as your first step in organizing your paper. Don’t try to make it “perfect” at first—you’ll be improving your outline over time, if you apply the following methods. Please feel free to submit your outline to me for review and comment, and I’ll try to provide helpful suggestions. By the way, this is just an offer to help. It’s not required—your research paper grade will be based on the final product, and not on whether or not you asked for my assistance and review.
A detailed outline will help immensely in conducting your research! As you uncover information in conducting your research, include that raw reference data in the appropriate section(s) in your outline.
You may choose to have your outline match the order of topics in the appropriate Research Paper Checklist, but this is not required. In other words, you can change the order of most items (excluding Title page and Abstract with Biography, which must be the first two items in your outline) and use different terms for each section. But you should be very careful to ensure that all of the required sections and analyses are included in your outline.
Now, most students fall into the trap of “shotgun” research: they grab as much information as possible regarding their chosen topic. Only after they start writing their paper do they discover that they have too much information in some areas, and not enough information in others. If you “sort out” your key reference findings into your outline, then you’ll readily determine where to focus your research efforts!
You probably won’t believe this, but if you use the “shotgun” research approach, then my experience shows that you’ll only use 10%-to-20% of your research material! And you’ll spend a lot of time at the end of the semester searching for that “perfect” reference when you probably already have enough related material to make your point. And all that time you should have been researching information to fill in “holes” in your analyses. Using your outline to guide the breadth and depth of your research efforts will save you a lot of effort, and contribute to a better grade!
And perhaps most importantly, it will help you to adjust your topic and adjust your outline to match your research findings.
My experience shows that for most topics, there’s not enough time to access enough of the “juicy” political details in one semester to fully address your original topic. You’ll probably need to focus your topic in order to realistically achieve a relatively short paper in the relatively short time period of one semester. Focusing your topic and your outline to match your research findings is an honorable and time-proven method of writing a hard-hitting, high-scoring research paper. So obviously you need to start your research early in order to have enough time to determine how to focus your efforts.
ANALYZE: Don’t start writing just yet! Your next step is to perform good analysis of your “raw” research data. Now you need to determine the significance of that raw data: especially in terms of the political impacts on your chosen topic. This is the fundamental point of the entire class! Don’t skimp on this effort, as this will adversely impact your grade. (Unfortunately, each semester I receive one or two papers that provide a good description of a project/process, and only mention the appropriate Political “Facts of Life” in passing without explaining why or how those factors influenced the fundamental nature of the project/process itself.)
I suggest that you “walk through” your outline, and label each and every bit of raw research data with the letters “Data:” and follow each datum with the letters “Significance:”. Now, examine each datum and ask yourself: so what? Why is this significant? How did this affect the project/process? If any of the Political “Facts of Life” were exhibited, then which one(s)? Write down your answers next to “Significance:”. And if you can’t think of a good answer to a particular significance, then leave it as a question mark—you may discover something at a later time that provides an important answer. (If you never do come up with a good “significance” answer for an item, then you should simply not use that data when you get to the final step of actually writing your paper.)
By the way, not all data will be of earth-shaking significance. Many items will simply be background information, names of key people, etc. The only significance of such information may be completeness of information, or support of continuity in your message. That’s fine! Just mark their “Significance:” with the appropriate label.
For example, suppose that you’ve uncovered the following data in your research, and you’ve recorded it in the example header “The Early Years” in your outline:
The Early Years
- First proposed on December 18th 1967 by Robinson (Ref #1)
- Adopted as ISO standard 1 year later (Ref #1)
- 2/3 requested budget approved by HAC-D 1st year (Ref #2)
- Robinson fired for insubordination and replaced by Jones (Ref #1)
- Robinson hired by competitor to lead a different project (Ref #1)
- Jones stretches out project schedule 10/1/68 due to budget limit (Ref #3)
- Key supplier Acme declares bankruptcy 6/1/69 (Ref #4)
- State Dept. disapproves sending specs to alternate supplier in Ukraine (Ref #5)
- Jones funds R&D 10/15/69 for internal replacement but Sen. Bigego pressures to fund supplier in his home state of Hawaii, at 50% higher cost than internal (Ref #4)
Notice that each entry records “what” happened, some key information, and points to the source of the data (“Ref” being short-hand for “Reference”, and a reference number pointer to the References section at the end of the paper).
Given this example, you’d then insert the “Data:” and “Significance:” tags for each line, and write down the meaningfulness of each line:
The Early Years
- Data: First proposed on December 18th 1967 by Robinson (Ref #1)
Significance: Background info - Data: Adopted as ISO standard 1 year later (Ref #1)
Significance: Background info but possible FOL #3 for constituency - Data: 2/3 requested budget approved by HAC-D 1st year (Ref #2)
Significance: FOL #1 constraint - Data: Robinson fired for insubordination and replaced by Jones (Ref #1)
Significance: Background info (need more research as to why Jones?) - Robinson hired by competitor to lead a different project (Ref #1)
Significance: ? (maybe none—research?) - Data: Jones stretches out project schedule due to budget limit (Ref #3)
Significance: Probable FOL #2 Cost Rules corollary - Data: Key supplier Acme declares bankruptcy 6/1/69 (Ref #4)
Significance: Acme was key leader of constituency (FOL #3) and no credible alternate domestic supplier with anything even close to a replacement - Data: State Dept. disapproves sending specs to alternate supplier in Ukraine (Ref #5)
Significance: FOL #1 constraint - Data: Jones funds R&D 10/15/69 for internal replacement but Sen. Bigego pressures to fund supplier in his home state of Hawaii, at 50% higher cost than internal (Ref #4)
Significance: FOL #5 detraction but also possible FOL #3 constituency builder?
Your next step in performing good analysis is to sort your data within each section of your outline according to the “significance” information. If you find duplicate entries, then you may want to combine the data into a single “data/significance” entry. But what you’re really looking for are “holes”—are there a sufficient quantity and quality of “significance” items to support that part of your outline? If not, then you’ll want to do one of two things: either (1) do more research to fill in the holes, or else (2) change your outline. Notice that there is no option (3): write your paper with lots of words and without sufficient substantiating data!