An Introduction to Research Techniques

A research paper presents the results of your investigations on a selected topic. Based on your own thoughts and the facts and ideas
you have gathered from a variety of sources, a research paper is a creation that is uniquely yours. The experience of gathering,
interpreting, and documenting information, developing and organizing ideas and conclusions, and communicating them clearly will
prove to be an important and satisfying part of your education.

There are many approaches to research — an essential part of every business and profession — and many ways to document
findings. The library has books which will help you, and most English composition textbooks contain chapters on research
techniques and style. It is important to follow consistently and accurately a recommended format that is clear and concise and that
has been approved by your teacher.

The formatting of citations recommended in this guide is based on Modern Language Association recommendations.

Gathering Materials
Once your topic has been approved, begin to gather information from authoritative reference sources: pertinent books,
encyclopedias, and articles in magazines, journals, and magazines. Librarians will be happy to show you how to use the various
research tools within the library and may suggest other sources of information. Important new resources are now available to you
through electronic services which provide many learning and reference tools as well as access to the Internet, where you can often
discover an abundance of information.

Depending on the resources available and the length requirements of your assignment, you may find it necessary to widen or restrict
the scope of your topic.

Taking Notes
As you examine each source, make a separate note of each fact or quotation you might want to use in your paper. It might be wise to
use index cards when preparing notes. Be sure to identify the source of the information on the listing (include the author's name and
page number on which the information appears). Try to summarize the information in your own words (paraphrasing); use quotation
marks if you copy the information exactly. (This rule should apply whether you are copying a great deal of material or only a
phrase.) Give each listing a simple descriptive heading.

Your listings — whether they appear on index cards or on paper — will now provide the authoritative basis for your paper's content
and documentation. By arranging and rearranging the listings and using your descriptive headings, you may well discover a certain
order or different categories which will help you prepare an outline. You may find that you need additional information, or that
some of the listings may not be appropriate and should be set aside or discarded.
Preparing and Using Outlines
Using an outline can help you organize your material and can also help you discover connections between pieces of information that
you weren't aware of when you first conceived the plan of your paper. It can also make you aware of material that is not really
relevant to the purposes of your paper or material that you have covered before and should therefore be removed.

A Working Outline might be only an informal list of topics and subtopics which you are thinking of covering in your paper.
Sometimes, however, an instructor might require that a working outline be submitted at the beginning of your work; then your
instructor might suggest ways in which the work needs to be further developed or cut back. Your instructor might also see that
you're trying to accomplish too much or too little for the scope of the assignment he or she has in mind. The working outline can be
revised as you discover new material and get new ideas that ought to go into your paper. Most word processing programs have
outlining features with automatic formatting that make it easy to create and revise outlines. It is a good idea to keep copies of old
outlines in a computer folder in case new versions of the outline lead you in false directions that you will later have to abandon.

A Final Outline should enhance the organization and coherence of your research paper. Instructors sometimes require that a final
outline be submitted along with the final version of your paper. Material that is not relevant to the purpose of your paper as revealed
in your outline should be excised from the paper; if portions of your outline seem weak in comparison to others, more research may
be required to create a sense of balance in your argument and presentation.

Outlines can be organized according to your purposes. Are you attempting to show the chronology of some historical development,
the cause-and-effect relationship between one phenomenon and another, the process by which something is accomplished, or the
logic of some position? Are you defining or analyzing something? Comparing or contrasting one thing to another? Presenting an
argument (one side or both)?

In any case, try to bring related material together under general headings and arrange sections so they relate logically to each other.
An effective introduction will map out the journey your reader is about to take, and a satisfactory conclusion will wrap up the
sequence of ideas in a nice package.

A final outline can be written as a topic outline, in which you use only short phrases to suggest ideas, or as a sentence outline, in
which you use full sentences (even very brief paragraphs) to show the development of ideas more fully. If your instructor requires
an outline, follow consistently whichever plan he or she prefers.

The MLA Handbook suggests the following "descending parts of an outline":

Logic requires that if you have an "A" in your paper, you need to have a "B"; a "1" requires a "2," and so forth.

The following sample of a topic outline is also taken from the 1994 MLA Handbook:
A Statement on Plagiarism
Using someone else's ideas or phrasing and representing those ideas or phrasing as our own, either on purpose or through
carelessness, is a serious offense known as plagiarism. "Ideas or phrasing" includes written or spoken material, of course — from
whole papers and paragraphs to sentences, and, indeed, phrases — but it also includes statistics, lab results, art work, etc. "Someone
else" can mean a professional source, such as a published writer or critic in a book, magazine, encyclopedia, or journal; an
electronic resource such as material we discover on the World Wide Web; another student at our school or anywhere else; a paper-
writing "service" (online or otherwise) which offers to sell written papers for a fee.

Let us suppose, for example, that we're doing a paper for Music Appreciation on the child prodigy years of the composer and pianist
Franz Liszt and that we've read about the development of the young artist in several sources. In Alan Walker's book Franz Liszt:
The Virtuoso Years (Ithaca: 1983), we read that Liszt's father encouraged him, at age six, to play the piano from memory, to sight-
read music and, above all, to improvise. We can report in our paper (and in our own words) that Liszt was probably the most gifted
of the child prodigies making their mark in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century — because that is the kind of information we
could have gotten from a number of sources; it has become what we call common knowledge.

However, if we report on the boy's father's role in the prodigy's development, we should give proper credit to Alan Walker. We
could write, for instance, the following: Franz Liszt's father encouraged him, as early as age six, to practice skills which later
served him as an internationally recognized prodigy (Walker 59). Or, we could write something like this: Alan Walker notes
that, under the tutelage of his father, Franz Liszt began work in earnest on his piano playing at the age of six (59). Not to
give Walker credit for this important information is plagiarism.

Some More Examples

(The examples below were originally written by the writing center staff at an esteemed college.) The original text from Elaine Tyler
May's "Myths and Realities of the American Family" reads as follows:

Because women's wages often continue to reflect the fiction that men earn the family wage,
single mothers rarely earn enough to support themselves and their children adequately. And
because work is still organized around the assumption that mothers stay home with children,
even though few mothers can afford to do so, child-care facilities in the United States remain
woefully inadequate.

Here are some possible uses of this text. As you read through each version, try to decide if it is a legitimate use of May's text or a
plagiarism.

Version A:

Since women's wages often continue to reflect the mistaken notion that men are the main wage earners in the family, single mothers
rarely make enough to support themselves and their children very well. Also, because work is still based on the assumption that
mothers stay home with children, facilities for child care remain woefully inadequate in the United States.

Plagiarism: In Version A there is too much direct borrowing of sentence structure and
wording. The writer changes some words, drops one phrase, and adds some new language, but
the overall text closely resembles May's. Even with a citation, the writer is still plagiarizing
because the lack of quotation marks indicates that Version A is a paraphrase, and should thus
be in the writer's own language.
Version B:

As Elaine Tyler May points out, "women's wages often continue to reflect the fiction that men earn the family wage" (588). Thus
many single mothers cannot support themselves and their children adequately. Furthermore, since work is based on the assumption
that mothers stay home with children, facilities for day care in this country are still "woefully inadequate." (May 589).

Plagiarism: The writer now cites May, so we're closer to telling the truth about the
relationship of our text to the source, but this text continues to borrow too much language.

Version C:

By and large, our economy still operates on the mistaken notion that men are the main breadwinners in the family. Thus, women
continue to earn lower wages than men. This means, in effect, that many single mothers cannot earn a decent living. Furthermore,
adequate day care is not available in the United States because of the mistaken assumption that mothers remain at home with their
children.

Plagiarism: Version C shows good paraphrasing of wording and sentence structure, but May's
original ideas are not acknowledged. Some of May's points are common knowledge (women
earn less than men, many single mothers live in poverty), but May uses this common
knowledge to make a specific and original point and her original conception of this idea is not
acknowledged.

Version D:

Women today still earn less than men — so much less that many single mothers and their children live near or below the poverty
line. Elaine Tyler May argues that this situation stems in part from "the fiction that men earn the family wage" (588). May further
suggests that the American workplace still operates on the assumption that mothers with children stay home to care for them (589).

This assumption, in my opinion, does not have the force it once did. More and more businesses offer in-house day-care facilities. . .

No Plagiarism: The writer makes use of the common knowledge in May's work, but
acknowledges May's original conclusion and does not try to pass it off as his or her own. The
quotation is properly cited, as is a later paraphrase of another of May's ideas.

Penalty for Plagiarism

The penalty for plagiarism is usually determined by the instructor teaching the course involved. In many schools and colleges, it
could involve failure for the paper and it could mean failure for the entire course and even expulsion from school. Ignorance of the
rules about plagiarism is no excuse, and carelessness is just as bad as purposeful violation. At the very least, however, students who
plagiarize have cheated themselves out of the experience of being responsible members of the academic community and have
cheated their classmates by pretending to contribute something original which is, in fact, a cheap copy.

Students who do not thoroughly understand the concept of plagiarism and methods of proper documentation should request
assistance from their teacher and from librarians.
Working with Quotations
Quotations that constitute fewer than five lines in your paper should be set off with quotation marks [ “ ” ] and be incorporated
within the normal flow of your text. For material exceeding that length, omit the quotation marks and indent the quoted language
one inch from your left-hand margin. If an indented quotation is taken entirely from one paragraph, the first line should be even with
all the other lines in that quotation; however, if an indented quotation comes from two or more paragraphs, indent the first line of
each paragraph an additional one-quarter inch.

If quotation marks appear within the text of a quotation that already has the usual double-quote marks [ “ ” ] around it (a quote-
within-a-quote), set off that inner quotation with single-quote marks [ ‘ ’ ] . Such a quote-within-a-quote within an indented
quotation is marked with double-quote marks.

In the United States, the usual practice is to place periods and commas inside quotation marks, regardless of logic. Other
punctuation marks — question marks, exclamation marks, semicolons, and colons — go where logic would dictate. Thus, we might
see the following sentences in a paper about Robert Frost:

The first two lines of this stanza, "My little horse must think it queer / To stop without a
farmhouse near," remind us of a nursery rhyme.

(Note, also, the slash mark / (with a space on either side) to denote the poem's line-break.) But observe the placement of this
semicolon:

There is a hint of the nursery rhyme in the line "My little horse must think it queer"; however,
the poem then quickly turns darkly serious.

Pay close attention to the placement of commas and periods in the use of citations.
A Writer's Practical Guide
to MLA Documentation
Documentation will take two forms in your final paper:

• In the Works Cited section, where all the sources you've used should be listed alphabetically, and
• Within the text of your paper, where parentheses should show your readers where you found each
piece of information that you have used. These textual citations allow the reader to refer to your
Works Cited page(s) for further information.

Example for the Works Cited Page

Cassatt, Mary. Sara Handing a Toy to the Baby. Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT.

Example of In-text Citation

The sculpture entitled Family, given to the college in 1991 and permanently exhibited in the college's Woodland Street lobby, was
carved from an enormous cherry tree that grew in the sculptor's back yard (Rosen).

MLA Citation (for most common resources)

Make sure you use the following guide to cite all sources.

Basic Book Citation:

Author. Title of Book. City where book was published: Publisher, copyright date.

Wilson, Frank R. The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human
Culture. New York: Pantheon, 1998.

Articles:
Author. “Title of the article.” Publication Volume (year) : Page numbers for article.

Craner, Paul M. “New Tool for an Ancient Art: The Computer and Music.” Computers
and the Humanities 25 (1991) : 303-13.

Article in a Reference Book:

“Title of encyclopedia article.” Reference Book. Edition. Copyright year.

“Ginsburg, Ruth Bader.” Who’s Who in America. 52nd ed. 1998.

CD-ROM:
1. Author’s name (if given)
2. Publication information for the printed source or printed analogue (including title and date of print
publication)
3. Title of the database (underlined)
4. Publication medium (CD-ROM)
5. Name of the vendor (if relevant)
6. Electronic publication date
Russo, Michelle Cash. “Recovering from Bibliographic Instruction Blahs.” RQ:
Reference Quarterly 32 (1992) : 178 – 83. InfoTrac: Magazine Index Plus.
CD – ROM. Information Access. Dec. 1993.

Online Scholarly Project or Information Database:

1. Title of the project or database (underlined)
2. Name of the editor of the project or database (if given)
3. Electronic publication information, including version number (if relevant and if not part of the title), date of
electronic publication or of the latest update, and name of any sponsoring institution or organization
4. Date of access and network address

Victorian Women Writers Project. Ed. Perry Willett. June 1998. Indiana U. 26 June
1998 <http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/glossary/glossary.html>.

*** Sample citations are from the 5th edition of the MLA handbook.***