Aphorisms on Structure for Empirical Papers

Introduction: The goal of your introduction is to frame and justify your study. Your introduction needs to explain why your study needs to exist. In order to do so, include three sections: 

Question or Problem: Describe the observation or situation that gave rise to your interest in the subject you’re going to consider. Clearly state the research question(s) that you want to ask in your study.

Literature Review: Having stated one or more research questions, next describe the existing scholarly research relevant to your question(s)? Have other researchers already asked your question(s)? Have others asked similar questions? Is there debate or consensus in the field regarding your topic? Through citation, quotation, paraphrase, and summary, review and analyze these previous scholarly interpretations, narrating the various camps or perspectives that exist in this academic conversation, identifying any classic or landmark scholars or works, and explaining which interpretations are the least satisfactory and which are the most illuminating. Then, justify the need for your paper to exist by identifying any gaps in the scholarship, any unresolved issues regarding your topic, and/or any issues that are wrongfully thought to be resolved.

Hypotheses: Based on your observations, your knowledge of the scholarship, and your common sense, state what you expect the answer(s) to your research question(s) to be. Also, note any specific predictions that follow from your hypothesis.

Method: Your hypothesis is your “sense of things” based on your current knowledge of the situation at hand, but you need to determine whether or not your sense of things actually matches up with the facts of the matter. That is, you need to determine whether or not your hypothesis is true. Therefore, you need to conceive and conduct a data-gathering study that will collect the information needed to determine confidently whether or not your hypothesis is correct. The section on your method is where you describe the study that you’ve conceived. The method section is a detailed breakdown of your study, including your subjects, equipment, design, and procedure. Based on your method section, your reader should be able to replicate your study – that is, should be able to recreate your study in an attempt to confirm or disconfirm your results.

Subjects: If your study involved human or animal participants, explain who they are, how they came to be involved, any relevant information about their identities, etc.

Equipment: Note any materials or tools you used to collect data.

Design: Explain the logic behind your study: how will your study generate reliable results? This is also the place to explain, if necessary, what your independent and dependent variables were. In a scientific study, an independent variable is the variable that is changed to test the effects on the dependent variable. The dependent variable “depends” upon the independent variable. As the researcher changes the independent variable, the change in the dependent variable is observed and recorded.

Procedure: Describe in sequence the steps you took to administer your study.

Results: If your section on method is where you describe how you’re going about your research, your section on results is where you report the findings of that research. At this point, you’re not yet interpreting your findings (that comes next in the “discussion” section). Right now, you’re simply reporting the findings that need to be interpreted: “Just the facts, ma’am.” Report the information, statistics, data, etc. gathered from your study. Consider using tables and figures: they often represent results more clearly and concisely than text does. If you use tables and figures, however, be sure to direct your reader to them in your text, and use your text to draw your reader’s attention to the most significant findings.

Discussion: Your results are a what: they are what is true. But your discussion is a why: it is the place to explain how the facts, data, information, etc. reported in your results came to be. Why did what happened happen (or, why does what happens happen)? Interpret your findings by considering your hypotheses in the context of your results. Did your results support your hypotheses? How do your results relate to your research question(s) in general? Discuss possible explanations for your results, especially unexpected results. Discuss the implications of your findings. Identify any follow-up studies that might need to be conducted. Discuss limitations of the experiment that could be remedied in future experiments. Avoid overstating the importance of your findings. Be modest rather than expansive. Avoid speculating beyond the data.