This document provides guidance on key sections of a research paper, including the literature review, methodology, results, and discussion sections. The main points are: 1) The literature review should selectively review high-quality, unbiased prior research and build a case for the paper's research question and hypotheses. 2) The methodology section should describe the study design and procedures in enough detail to allow replication. 3) The results section should present statistical findings without interpretation, including descriptive and inferential statistics relevant to testing the hypotheses. 4) The discussion section should interpret the results in the context of the research questions, hypotheses, and prior literature, and discuss limitations and implications.

1. This lecture helps you prepare your final document and highlights key points you should
consider in the major sections.
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2. Good writing is important for any paper, and for this research project it’s no exception.
A good paper should be a joy to read. What do readers want? They want a story that they
can follow and understand.
Make sure you provide a clear and logical structure. Have a storyline. With a research
paper, you should simply tell us, what problem you’re trying to solve, what you did to solve
the problem, and what you found.
Because this is your research paper, not advertisement for some company’s product, avoid
hyperbole. The paper should clearly demonstrate logical integrity and critical thinking. You
should do your best to “sell” your hypotheses by providing convincing evidence from the
literature and using sound logic. Your reader will be sold if you have a compelling case for
your hypotheses. There’s no need to oversell.
A good paper should also be free of editorial errors. Read the paper carefully before turning
it in!
Last but not least, we’re using the APA style for this paper. Make sure you follow the
conventional practices, and use the resources available to you. 4 sample papers are
provided for your reference. Review them carefully and you should develop a pretty good
idea of what’s expected.
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3. The literature review is probably the hardest section to write. You’ve spent quite some time on it
and have accumulated some good materials. However, there’s still plenty of room for improvement
in all groups.
First of all, be selective about what you review. As we’ve learned in this class, commercial materials
are usually not considered research because of their self‐serving purposes. Someone’s opinion (e.g.,
Dr. Chung said Giant Eagle is the largest grocery store in the world!) is also not research, unless it’s
substantiated with good evidence. As a researcher, your job is to build new scientific evidence
based on previous scientific research. Follow Joe Best’s advice. Always make sure the research you
cite is of good quality and free of obvious self‐serving biases. How do you do that? You need to
examine their methodology carefully and make sure it meets the same rigor that you are expected
to produce in this class.
You all know by now that the lit review is not just a list of facts. Then what is it? This may sound
counterintuitive – with the lit review you’re summarizing other people’s work, but in fact the lit
review is ALL about you. Why? Because this is your project, your paper, your research. You’re
reviewing prior lit for a very selfish goal: You want to build a case for your own agenda! So don’t let
it become a laundry list of other people’s accomplishment. Make it your story!
Specifically, you need to use prior work to explain why your research question is important. You
also need to synthesize prior work in a way that convince people that your hypotheses make sense.
For example, if I hypothesize that women work harder than men, I have to summarize prior
literature and research findings in a way that convince the reader that I will very likely find a
correlation between gender and number of work hours. Remember, you’re graded on the logical
integrity of your arguments, and the quality of the evidence you use to support your arguments.
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4. The methodology section is a recipe book. Someone else interested in replicating you work
should be able to read the procedure section, follow the steps, and recreate the same
study. There should be sufficient information about the participants so that people can
replicate the sample if they want.
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5. The results section is where you tell people what you found with the data you collected.
This section usually begins with descriptive statistics about key variables. Descriptive statistics are
things like frequency counts, mean, standard deviation, range, sample size, etc. For example, if I did
a study to find out if women work harder than men, I should document the number of men vs.
women included in the study, and the mean, standard deviation, and range of number of work
hours for each gender.
Descriptive statistics, however, are useless when it comes to testing hypotheses. You need
inferential statistics for that. Inferential statistics are things like correlation, regression, t test, and
ANOVA. These tests help you determine the statistical significance level of your hypothesis which
you can use to support or reject a hypothesis.
You might have a lot of questions about what statistics to include, and what tables/figures you
need. Please use the lecture slides on statistics as your first reference. You might be surprised by
how much we have covered and you have forgotten! Chapter 12 of your textbook is also a good
resource. Finally, I’ve provided a few online resources for your reference. Use these tools and ask
questions!
This section is for summarizing and presenting the results. There’s no need to discuss them in this
section. Save that for the discussion section. Again, you’re not selling a product. Present whatever
you’ve found in simple, straightforward language.
As always, use clear logic and scientific evidence as the basis of your argument. Emotional
appeal, drama, and sales tactics should be reserved for your colleagues in the sales and
marketing department. Those skills are not part of the core toolkit for writing a research report!
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6. So you’ve run a bunch of statistics. What do all those numbers mean? Most importantly, what do
they mean in terms of your research question and hypotheses? In the discussion section, your job is
to explain these numbers and what they mean for your research in plain English.
First of all, remind us of your research questions and hypotheses. It’s been a while. What are they
again?
Then, summarize your findings using no numbers. Just tell us whether X is significantly different
from Y, whether Y is significantly correlated with Z, etc.
The next step is to discuss whether these findings support your hypotheses. Discuss each of them
briefly, and summarize these findings in a table. Remember to discuss what these findings mean in
plain English.
The most fun part is to speculate what these findings mean. Be creative! Tell us what these results
mean for the theories you have discussed in the lit review. If the results are different from what
you expected, what does this mean to prior research? Was it wrong? Or perhaps there’s something
that’s been overlooked? What do these findings mean for future research? And how should
practitioners use this information?
Don’t forget to discuss potential limitations of your study. No study is perfect and it’s important to
recognize the boundary conditions of your research so others don’t overgeneralize it
inappropriately.
Please make sure you use the grading rubric as a checklist to make sure your report meets all the
requirements. I hope you find this set of tips useful during your writing process. Good luck and have
fun!
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