Qualitative Research Paper

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Title of Paper

Student Name

Department of Study, South College

Course Number: Class Name

Professor Name

Date

Full Title of Paper

For this paper, your intro can be multiple paragraphs long. Use the first paragraph to answer the “why?” question. Why are you interested in writing about this topic? Why is it important to write about this topic at this particular point in time?

Your next intro paragraphs will discuss your secondary sources, using them to give important background information on the topic and to describe the conversation surrounding it. You will describe what the other participants in the debate are saying and what’s not being said.

Finally, you’ll explain how what’s NOT being said in the current debate led to your research question. You’ll directly state your question and then provide your thesis, which is the answer you found to your question when you conducted your interview.

Methods

Use this space to talk about the who, what, where, when, and your primary research—the interview. Describe your process. Who did you interview? Why them? Where, when, and how did you interview them? In person? Through Skype or email?

Results

Stay OBJECTIVE. Do not discuss what your results mean just say what those results are. Describe your data. What questions did you ask and what were your participant’s responses? What observations about your interviewee’s behavior and emotions did you make during your interview? Again, stay OBJECTIVE. Just describe.

Discussion

This is where you analyze and interpret your results. This is where you theorize on what your results mean and most directly address/answer your research question. You may, if you like, restate your RQ at the beginning of this section and then restate your thesis to keep you and your reader focused on the argument you will be making in this section of the paper. The purpose of this section is to use your results to prove to your reader that your answer to the research question is the correct answer.

This section should be at least two paragraphs long, with each paragraph discussing one main take-away point from the primary research. Refer back to your results section here in order to prove your arguments. Your discussion section will tell us what you FOUND during research, not what you thought you might find or hoped to find. You might have several answers to the RQ and you need to discuss them all here, as well as relate to your audience HOW you arrived at these conclusions. Explain in clear language how your research answered your question and what that answer is.

Conclusion

A good conclusion for a paper of this sort does two things. First, it discusses the weaknesses of the project. What change in methods or demographics would help improve your results? This paper is not comprehensive, so there are limitations to what you can do for this assignment. If there were no limitations, how might you extend your research to improve your results? Second, ask yourself where the research should go from here. What does the future of the project look like? What questions remain unanswered?

You must also include a References Page at the end of the paper. Note that only your published sources should be in your references page; your interview will not be listed under references, because it is not published anywhere. However, you should have an in-text citation wherever you use information from your interview (outside of the Methods and Results sections). That citation will look like: (J. Doe, personal communication, May 4, 2019) – though of course with your interviewee’s first initial and last name and the date on which you conducted the interview.