Cabrillo College Library

Timetable

Identify general topic

Read to narrow -- initial research

APA style

Research & notetaking

Outline

First draft

Using APA
Writing A Research Paper

In doing research, you diligently search for information that pertains to a focused topic or question. The purpose of writing a research paper is to show that you have learned information about topics important to the course, that you have thought about what it all means, and that you are able to clearly formulate and communicate your thinking.

Set Work Schedule/Timetable -- Map out the time period you have to research and to write your paper. Schedule where you want to be with what activity and when. It's good to write down your final due date and work backwards. For example

Identify General Topic Your instructor or your textbook may provide you with appropriate general ideas about a subject to get you started.

Read To Narrow Topic -- Initial Research -- Once you have your general topic in mind, you will want to read several general pieces about your topic to help you decide which aspect of the subject will be your focus.

For example, suppose you are interested in writing about oral health and nutrition in relation to infants -- what should new mothers know? Your interest might be piqued because a relative has a new baby, or for some other reason. Your textbook covers general information, but you would like to dig deeper. You need background information so you can see what the issues and questions are.

One good approach is to find academic periodical articles on the topic.

  1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage http://libwww.cabrillo.edu
  2. Click on Full Text Articles
  3. Click on CINAHL Plus with Full Text (CINAHL = Clinical Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature) (If you are coming in from off campus, use your library card number to gain access.)

My search could look like this:

  • The asterisk ( * ) in the search term child* is a truncation sysmbol: any word beginning with child will be searched, e.g., child, children, etc.
  • Had I put all the search terms on the same line, they would have to be next to each other. By putting them on separate lines allows more flexibility.
  • By clicking in the little box next to Full Text assures that only articles I can read all the way through will be retrieved.

Here's information about one article on my topic:

The title of the article is Nutrition Needs and Oral Health in Children. The author is C. C. Mobley. The article was published in Topics in Clinical Nutrition, volume 20, issue number 3, July-September 2005, on pages 200-210. There are 56 references at the end of the article (citations to additional literature on this topic).

Just reading the abstract may give you ideas about how to narrow and focus the topic. Click to get to the whole article.

Reading the article, I learn that ECC stands for Early Childhood Caries. Then I run across this information:

Suppose I decide to focus on how infants and children are introduced to foods, since that seems to be related to the incidence of caries. I can even go to the References at the end of this article and find out what is being cited to support this statement.

The Library doesn't have a copy of this Journal of Public Health Dentistry article, but we can get a copy of it for you from another library. It's called an interlibrary loan. Just stop by the Library's Reference Desk.

You can glean more ideas from reading the article. You can find information about related articles in the References list to this article. And/or, go back to CINAHL and do some more searches using different search terms.

Note that once you find an article, you can email it to yourself. Look for:

Other library periodical databases to use for dental hygiene topics:

  • Academic Search Premier (a very large academic periodicals database)
  • Medline (the world's largest medical database)
To get to them go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage and click on Full Text Articles, as you did above.

Keep track of the sources of your information for your APA Style paper When you research, keep track of the facts and opinions you will use in your paper by noting down where you got those facts and opinions. Your instructor wants you to use APA style. Consistent, accurate documentation is critical to good research. Get used to noting down sources as you use them. Check out what is required for APA citations by using Selected Citation Guide APA Style (Word document).

Draft Working Outline -- As you go along, do an informal outline to organize the main ideas, major and minor details, you want to use to develop and support your main ideas. In addition, outlining helps you present yourideas in a logical order

Research and Notetaking -- Explore books, more periodical articles, and other materials on your topic. Remember to keep good track of the sources you use. If you use Web resources, it is helpful to remember that the Web is an open publishing environment. Anyone can publish, and sometimes it seems as though everyone does! It is very important to evaluate what you find. In searching the Web, you want to use resources that are not only recent and relevant to your topic, but that are also based on reliable, believable information resources.

Five important evaluative criteria to keep in mind: Authority. Accuracy. Objectivity. Currency. Coverage.

A savvy Web user on medical and related topics will know about and use these sources:

Write First Draft -- From your reading you should be ready to rewrite the statement summarizing your main ideas into a clear, brief sentence that precisely focuses your paper. Your draft paper should be a well-crafted combination of direct quotes, idea summaries, paraphrased ideas—all properly credited—and your original writing tying it all together as a new contribution to understanding the topic. If often helps to think of the paper as structured in four parts, plus the References page.

  1. Introduction to the topic; statement of your main ideas or arguments; preview of argument (e.g., "I will show that...")
  2. Main body of paper: point one, with its supporting statements; point two, with its supporting statements; point three, with its supporting statements; etc.
  3. Arguments to the contrary should be summarized/discussed (either as part of the main body, or after it)
  4. Summarize the main points of the paper, referencing how the main ideas of the paper have been supported, or proven.
  5. References -- your list of sources, in APA citation style.

Using APA Click to see a guide to APA Formatting and Style. In APA style, you create in-text references, and put the sources you refer to in a References page. (APA uses References like MLA uses Works Cited.)

Here are some Web resources that might help you

You can use Google Books to look up chapters in books about researching and writing papers. Here are some suggestions:

Also available in the Cabrillo Library's electronic book collection is The Research Project: How to Write It -- Routledge Study Guides; 5th Ed. by Berry, Ralph. London Taylor & Francis Routledge, 2004. To get to the NetLibrary ebooks:

  1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage <http://libwww.cabrillo.edu>
  2. Click on Full Text Articles
  3. Click on NetLibrary eBooks
  4. Look up the title: The Research Project: How to Write It. There are several similar books available as well.

The key to good writing is rewriting. Have someone, like a friend, read your final draft.

Lastly: edit, format and proofread once more.

 

T.N. Smalley rev. 4/08