On-line Research Writing:  English 102 
Professor Gary Parks (gparks@shoreline.edu)
Shoreline Community College 
Shoreline, WA, USA 

Common Problems
in Writing Research Papers

There are many challenges that arise in writing research papers. The four below seem to be the most common problems experienced by students in online English 102.

1. Looking for information exactly on your topic (and nothing else)
2. A paper without an edge
3. A source-driven paper
4. Not taking the time to finish the paper

Problem #1: Looking for information expressed exactly in terms of the paper's topic (and nothing else).

If your topic ethical concerns around cloning, you probably won't have this problem. You'll find more information than you can use. But if your topic is, for example, the effects of computer expertise on college performance, you may have problems finding sources written exactly on this topic in the limited time and space available. What can you do?

First, realize that you don't necessarily need information that is focused exactly on your paper's topic. Your role is to stand at the "center" of your information and integrate it to support a thesis. Although it may be helpful if someone else has researched your exact focus area, many topics can be approached by combining content, or background, or specific detailing from different areas of knowledge that help support the thesis.

For example, one student who was studying dental hygiene decided to research the effects of dental office decor on patient comfort. This is a great topic, but when she entered key word searches like "dental" AND "decor" AND "comfort" (and similar terms) she found nothing that had been written specifically on this topic. Frustrated, she contacted her instructor (almost always a great step), who advised that her role was not just to find and regurgitate source material already written on the topic, but also to synthesize, analyze, and compare various related source material and come up with her own position (the thesis).

She began to think critically about her topic and to search for the information components that would be needed to address her question. She did research on interior decoration, finding plenty of information and views on what constituted soothing, calming decor. She did research on the psychological effects of various colors and shapes on the human psyche, again finding plenty of information. In dentistry literature she found information about making patients comfortable. Although none of it addressed interior decor, she was able to understand more fully some of the issues for patients, some of the factors considered in the field, and some of the existing gaps or needs in creating comfort for patients (gaps she hoped to try to address with the decor suggestions). Finally, the caveat, she went to three different dentists' offices and examined the decor of the waiting rooms in detail, recording her results. By gathering these different types of information, thinking about them, and synthesizing them, she was able to advance and support a thesis on the probable effects of certain kinds of waiting room decor on patient comfort.

This process of building from smaller, more detailed elements of knowledge to a larger generalization is called inductive reasoning, and it is a key to good synthesis of source material for almost any project. Even for topics for which plenty of material has been published, like cloning, or the effects of computers on education, the writer will have to evaluate and synthesize various types of information and arrive and his or her own thesis. These kinds of topics will also benefit greatly from "indirect" but relevant research as described above.

Here are some other suggestions in case you can't find information about your topic:

• Get the help of a reference librarian. Be ready to explain clearly what you are looking for.

• Try different key word and subject search terms. For example, if you are entering "computers" AND "college performance" in a key word search and getting nothing, try "computers" AND "grades," or "computer skills" AND "academic performance."
  
  
• Look for coverage in a more general source. A book or general magazine article may contain a chapter or section about your topic. For example, a book on educational trends of the 90's may contain information on how computer skills affect college performance. Use the table of contents of the book and its index to search for related terms. Skim articles or, on electronic documents, do Control-F searches for key words related to your topic.
  
  
• Remember that your paper will also need general background information about the topic as well as extremely detailed information to flesh out its outline. For example, general information about computers in education may help provide background for a paper about the effects of computers on grades. Extremely detailed information about the advantages or capabilities of particular software may help flesh out a particular passage of the paper. Neither of these types of information would be found searching for "computers" AND "college performance" but they would fit well within the paper.
  
  
• As demonstrated in the dental decor example above, use your own experience, if relevant, and/or your own research (surveys, interviews, direct observation) to fill in any gaps.

Problem #2: Writing a paper that has no perspective, "angle," unique focus, or position--i.e., writing a derivative, encyclopedic paper.

• Modern healthcare can be extremely expensive because of the cost of medical equipment.
  
  
• Computers are used for a variety of functions in the business world.
  
  
• Advertising helps to shape the values of Americans.

These statements show promising topic areas, and they provide acceptable directions early in a research project, but a final paper written with one of these thesis statements is likely to be nothing more than a summary of existing general information. These paper ideas need some kind of controversy, focus, or analysis to make them interesting and give them the necessary "edge." Often the way to add these dimensions can be found by improving the general or obvious parts of the thesis' language.

Adding controversy to an encylopedic thesis

It's easy for most student writers to create controversy. Sometimes a ho-hum thesis can be made interesting by calling for some kind of specific action, like a political or social change, or by making an ethical judgement about the material. For example, let's take the "advertising" idea and work on it. By analyzing the language of the thesis, we would recognize that the general, obvious part lies in the phrase "helps to shape the values." Isn't this more or less universally known? In what way are the values shaped? What values are shaped? Does it matter? Should we as a society do something about it? The phrasing is too general to get to the interesting issues. So let's add controversy by calling for a social change:

Since advertising has the power to shape values, courses in how to read the bias in ads should be made mandatory in high school.

Or perhaps you find that most advertising reinforces positive values. Your thesis might become:

Most advertising promotes healthy values such as respect for community, cleanliness, efficiency, hard work, aesthetic appreciation, and competition.

Or, your research might reveal that many ads target people with less developed defenses against media, such as children, adolescents, or young adults. Another potential thesis might be:

Advertising aired during children's programming should be regulated more closely by the Federal Communication Commission to reduce its violence, unhealthy consumption patterns, portrayals of disrespect, and other unsocial or unhealthy behaviors.

Adding focus to an encylopedic thesis

Adding focus often means restricting the scope of the thesis to a particular population, geographical location, or sub-topic within a topic area. For example, while Computers are used for a variety of functions in the business world is fairly obvious, and would not lead to an insightful paper, the following alterations might:

Voice and video communication over the Internet is changing the way many businesses are organized and the way work is conducted.

Although this is still somewhat a statement of known fact, the added focus promises to reveal more detailing and bring in more specific research. Here's another:

The prevalent use of computers in the business world makes it easer for employees already trained to be productive, but it can be prohibitive for young employees entering the workforce as well as older employees who are less comfortable with technology.

Adding analysis to an encylopedic thesis

Analysis often involves identifying the elements or parts of a topic and selecting or re-ordering them. Typical forms of analysis include cause-effect, comparison-contrast, classification, and definition writing. Analysis also occurs when discipline knowledge such as principles from sociology, psychology, physics, criminal justice, etc. are applied to a topic in order to highlight specific elements of the topic for discussion purposes.

Speaking of analysis, a linguistic analysis of Modern healthcare can be extremely expensive because of the cost of medical equipment reveals areas of general phrasing to work on. The phrases "extrememely expensive," "because of" and "the cost of medical equipment" raise a variety of issues and areas to expand upon with analysis, as in these examples:

• Health care costs today are so high largely because of the development of costly medical equipment that benefits only two percent of patients.
  
  
• Because of doctors' fear of lawsuits, expensive diagnostic equipment remains necessary in modern medicine, keeping the costs for patients high.

• Realize that your job as a research writer is to try to show your readers something new, to add insight and perspective to their knowledge. Look for a particular angle or focus, a neglected aspect of a topic. Use your own personal experience and observation to your advantage. This may seem like a lofty challenge, and it is. Sometimes it is impossible to write about something new, but at least you'll step beyond the general encyclopedic level, and add interest for your readers. Who are your readers? Unless you have another readership in mind (contact the instructor about this), imagine them to be members of your class.
  
  
• Recognize that a research paper should represent your own informed view on the selected topic. It is not a simple regurgitation of source material. It's your thesis, your organization/outline, your decision as to which resources to include, when and how to splice / synthesize them, when to quote, when to paraphrase, and so on. You as a writer provide the transitions, the analysis, the conclusions, and in general guide readers on how how everything fits together. Check the sample essays in WRP for examples of this. Writers who conceive of the paper in this way won't let themselves write something encyclopedic.
  
  
• Avoid vast expanses of summary from secondary sources to provide large areas of your paper. Too much straight summary can cause a vareity of development and organization problems. Synthesize with other sources to flesh out your outline (see below).

An effective research paper should follow the author's outline and show good integration of sources. Avoid papers that simply present various patches/stretches of source notes, moving from one source to another without integration. For example, let's say that four authors, Chung, Bhandari, Jones, and Stevens, are each writing about fruit production--the process of growing fruit and getting it to market. In the early stages of taking notes and perhaps even early pre-writing or drafting, the material is encountered like this:

I. Chung
     A. banana growing
     B. banana shipping
     C. market presentation of bananas

II. Bhandari
     A. marketing melons
     B. marketing citrus
     C. marketing tropical fruits
              1. bananas
              2. mangoes

III. Jones
      A. problems growing citrus
      B. problems shipping citrus
      C. problems shipping berries
      D. problems shipping bananas

IV. Stevens
       A. long-distance shipping of berries
       B. long-distance shipping of apples
       C. marketing highly perishable fruit

However, to present the material in this source-driven fashion in the paper would be a disaster. At some point in the drafting stage, the writer needs to take control of the material and enforce an organization that supports the thesis. For example, a re-mixed version of the above might look like this, in draft outline form:

I. Agricultural production issues
     A. problems growing citrus (Jones)
     B. problems growing bananas (Chung)
     C. others? (author's note to self)

II. Shipping fruit
     A. banana shipping (Chung, Jones)
     B. shipping citrus (Jones)
     C. shipping berries (Stevens, Jones)
     D. long-distance shipping issues (Stevens)

III. Marketing Issues
      A. Citrus (Bhandari)
      B. Bananas (Chung, Bhandari)
      C. Marketing Highly Perishable Fruit (Stevens)

Integrated writing shows a focused author at work selecting material, creating transitions, creating effective sequencing, and, most importantly, guiding the reader on how to interpret the information through topic sentences, concluding sentences, explanation, and the author's own analysis.

If large sections of your paper come from one source, or if each paragraph or section is derived from one source with little integration / mixing of sources, you may have a source-driven paper. For an example of a paper that shows excellent integration of source material, see the sample paper on immigration in Ch 21 of WRP. Note the number of paragraphs that use two or more sources to make the point.

Problem #4: Not taking the time to finish the paper