Step-by-step Research Paper Writing Process

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll go through the step-by-step process I use when writing a research paper.

Every person is different, but I think there are some basic steps to writing a good research paper -- and it doesn't involve just typing out as many words on a topic that you can possibly think of.  Now, these are fairly generic steps, but I think they would apply the majority of research papers give or take a couple.  If your paper is 8 pages or longer, I would strongly urge you to plan out the steps for your paper at least 4 weeks in advance.  You can watch my video on planning out big projects or research papers.  I'll give you an idea of how long I think most of these steps would take for a 15 page paper and you can adjust accordingly based on your assignment and general research and writing speed.  Here we go:

1. Understand the instructions - read through the instructions for the assignment thoroughly and make notes!  It's obviously really important to understand exactly what the assignment is asking for and as early as possible.  You don’t want to find that you don’t understand something when you are down to the wire.  Plus, if you have questions, I guarantee that you are not the only one!  Oh, and if you want to get a good grade -- you need to follow the assignment instructions even if you think its a dumb assignment.  I have learned that the hard way.  Take the 30 minutes that it takes to understand the assignment completely. 
2. Choose a topic - After you've figured out what the assignment is asking, you’ll need to pick a topic.  You can pick one out of the air, but I would suggest choosing a couple of topics that seem interesting to you and then doing some superficial research just to make sure that there is enough interesting information out there to do a paper on.  If you don't do this, you may have to change your topic later in the process after you've wasted considerable mental energy.  This step can take 1-2 hours depending on how much research you do on your possible topics. 
3. Build a basic outline - Now that you have a topic, you are going to build a basic outline for your paper based on the instructions given.  I’m going to do a video on some of the outline tools that i use, but there is no need to be fancy — just make a list of the section and some bullets underneath them to give more detail. At this point, you haven't fully researched yet, so this outline won't be very detailed until you do.  For example, I did a paper recently that asked me to explore a concept and gave several areas that needed to be addressed in the paper: a definition, two related theoretical perspectives, how the concept has changed over time, current practice or policy issues, and how these issues might differ for two countries.  Based on these instructions, i put together the following initial outline. If your teacher or professor provides exemplars or examples of exemplary papers from previous classes, i always use those to help me build a good outline. I try to ignore the content since I don’t want to be overly influenced by someone else’s work, but I will not hesitate to completely rip off a good structural design for a paper!  As long as it flows with the way I think.  This should take you no more than an hour. 
4. Make a list of relevant research studies - now you are going to use all of your resources, online and otherwise, to make a list of studies and articles to read for your paper.  You can use Google Scholar or if your learning institution has a library portal, you will have even better access to research journals and other scholarly resources. I have a video that covers how I keep and reference this information, but for this step, you are just gathering a giant list of things to read that may be relevant for your research. Compiling this list can take 2 to 4 hours.  
5. Read research and make notes - This is the step where you actually read through the studies, articles, and papers on your list.  Plan for this to take a while.  You need to read AND take notes as you read.  I keep all of my quotes from the literature in a giant spreadsheet — again, you can see my video on this.  I highlight and copy into my spreadsheet any quotes that i might need to reference, important pieces of data, good arguments, examples, and findings from studies.  I cut and paste all of those quotes into a spreadsheet that is referenced back to the original article.  As a rule, I don’t usually need to read the entire journal article if I’m mostly interested in the results of the study.  I simply quote the findings, which can usually be found in the abstract.  If I’m citing liberally from a book, I try to get that book in Kindle format so that I can export those highlights into my spreadsheet — see my video on that as well.  Also, many articles are in PDF format and I have a video on exporting all of the highlights from a PDF so you don’t have to do it laboriously one passage at a time. This step can take a long time.   I had almost 50 references for my last 17 page paper and reading through them took 8 hours or so. 
6. Categorize highlights by outline section or topic - once I have a giant list of highlights, I read back through them all. As I do, I try to categorize each quote roughly mapping back to my outline. So, in the case of my paper, does this quote have to do with differences between two countries or does it have to do with current US policy?  Sometimes it doesn’t match well, in which case I put it into a miscellaneous category.  Inevitably, I need more granular categories, so I also create a subcategory column. For example, this quote has to do with the section of the paper on theoretical perspectives, but specifically has to do with Cognitive theory, so I can mark it differently than this quote about Life Course Perspective. 
7. Make decisions by mind map - as you are reading through the research you have gathered, you might have to make some decisions about what are the strongest points to make in your paper. How do you come to these decisions?  Sometimes I use a mind map to gather my thoughts. A mind map is a visual tool to help see how ideas are related to each other. I may do a video just on mind maps, but for now, let’s say you are trying to determine the three strongest arguments that you want to present.  You write your main topic in the center and then write down all of the ideas that have emerged from your research. Now move ideas into clumps that are related and you will start to see patterns emerge showing which arguments have the most back-up in the literature.  It’s not required, but if you are at all visual, mind maps help you to see relationships and make decisions. 
8. Fill in outline with research - sort your reference spreadsheet based on paper section and now beef up your outline with information from your research.  If you have three arguments to make, add the statistics, data, findings, and quotes that support those arguments.  This step isn’t required, but it helps to make the writing process much faster. 
9. Write draft - now work off of your detailed outline (or off of your basic outline and reference spreadsheet if you skipped the last step) and start writing your draft. I usually estimate about 1 hour per double spaced page.  You can go twice as fast if you have a detailed outline.  At the drafting stage, instead of filling in full APA formatted references, i use the reference numbers from my spreadsheet. Otherwise, i break the flow of writing since for me writing and fixing style issues are two different cognitive processes. My rule of thumb is to write in shifts — no longer than 6 hours at a stretch.  After 6 hours I’m just not as good a writer, but you may have different parameters. 
10. Edit paper, fix APA, and fill in references - it’s best to put a little time between this step and the last one, just to clear your brain.  I aim for at least 24 hours, but 48 is better.  This is when you reread, edit grammar, sentence structure, etc.  I like to print it out and edit with a red pen.  This is also the time to fix your APA or writing style problems and format all of your citations. I format them all on my spreadsheet and then sort alphabetically before pasting into my paper.  I find this saves me the hassle of alphabetizing as I go.  I just have to remember to italicize the relevant bits once I’ve pasted back into the paper.  I give myself at least 4 hours for this step — I’m still learning on APA format, so I need the extra time. 
11. Find a second reader - my graduate program employs a writing advisor.  I use him all of the time. I ask him a bunch of esoteric APA questions and always have him read my papers.  Even if he doesn’t provide much feedback, i feel better having another set of eyeballs read through it and point out obvious issues. If you don’t have access to a writing advisor, get a friend or colleague who’s opinion you respect to read through it.  
12. Make final edits and submit - Implement whatever suggestions came from your second reader provided you agree with them, give it one last read through, and submit!  

And that’s it!  Those are the steps that I follow for decent length research papers. Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!