Research Paper

Research proposal: Proposals are a critical part of a good writing. But as this is a professional skill that is rarely taught or expected. The proposal I require is tool for you, not for me. That is I teach you a skill that you can apply in any class or in the real world when you have to prepare a paper, and want to organize up front.

This is a narrative proposal, much like the introduction of a paper. The research proposal has three parts. The first part is your introductory paragraph or paragraphs setting the tone of your paper.

The second part is a couple to a few paragraphs outlining what the key issues or arguments you will need to develop or argue. This is what you need to focus your research on what you need. Otherwise if you use broad statements or keywords, you my stumble across what you need, but with a proposal you go looking for exactly what you need.

The last part of the proposal is the most important, and often what you have to determine first. What is it you want to conclude, that is what is it you hope to learn, that is lessons of the paper, and take away from those lessons. A good paper identifies a problem or issue for which you will offer a solution or recommendations. For an historical paper this would be lessons and what could have been done, should have been done, lessons that were not learnt, or lessons that can apply recommendations for a current or future event.

The proposal helps with topic selection, which is your choice. You can have a case study, an historical evaluation, or evaluate some current problem or issue related to security. If you wish you can do a risk analysis of some local or notional business. If you choose this topic, contact Dr. Gideon for specific advice.

So altogether, depending on the focus and scope of the paper, which is determined by the conclusion you will hope to reach, not the problem or a bunch of general questions, you will have from a few to several paragraphs for your proposal.

Remember you only have a total of nine weeks to complete the paper. So your topic has to be narrow enough so you can fully discuss and develop your ideas. Research is not done in a weekend or just a week. Good professional or upper level research is multi-sourced, corroborated, primary when available, and current or appropriate for the topic discussed.

Let me iterate. Once you have described the issue or problem and set the parameters of the paper, then you transition into the second part of the research proposal. This part lays out how you plan on approaching the paper, the type of research you plan on conducting, and in general, the direction the paper will take.

Finally, the most important part of the research proposal is the conclusion. Or, more specifically, what you hope to conclude. For a proposal, one may refer to the conclusion as the meat of hypothesis, if

one wishes to use an academic term. That is the entire proposal is holistically your chosen hypothesis.

The conclusion is the whole purpose behind the paper. The conclusion is the reason you write a paper. It is nice to do research so you, the student can learn more about a topic, or to inform a reader about a problem and the surrounding issues, but that is not the purpose of the paper itself. The purpose is for you to draw a conclusion – lessons and takeaway.

A conclusion may be a recommendation or recommendations based on your research for whomever reads the paper, the lessons learned from the examples you gave, lessons that can be applied to a current situation, or a lesson that was not learnt and therefore a mistake had been made in either a current or past situation, or your unique opinion or perspective on how history developed based on the research you did and your analysis.

For this class you will need to identify any homeland security issue or problem and offer both lessons from the arguments you make and solutions or recommendations to resolve the issue or problem.

You may do a case study, and offer your lessons and takeaway from those lessons or, you can have any other security topic related to this course’s subject matter.

A well written proposal can then serve as the introduction of the paper itself when you begin writing it. But be sure that you edit the proposal to reflect the final paper itself.

Once you have a working proposal, you can then develop an outline. An outline is not elementary school work; professional writers nearly always use outlines. It not only helps organize one’s thoughts, but helps one to focus on the topic. The more detailed the outline the easier it will be to write the paper.

There are some writers who prefer to think through an outline and then write the proposal. If this is what works best for you, then by all means follow that pattern.

Finally, with an outline and research proposal in place, you can begin to think about your research questions. That is the questions you will need to answer, quotations you will need, and any data that will be required for your paper. Then you can build your requirements list. That is where to find the sources you will need find the answers to your research questions.

Note: Research question in this context are not the broad based ones that seem to be choice of minimalist instructors, but specific ones from your outline. If your outline states you need to find arguments supporting funding of new overhead satellite system for national security, then the research questions might be:

Which Members of Congress support such a system? Find direct quotes to support their arguments. Are there any former presidents, or military figures?

Has the White House made any supporting statements?

Are there any non-government support for such systems?

This way you look for specific statements, not hope you might stumble across statements from secondary source material.

See documents in the writing materials folder to assist you in editing; and, to help better understand assignments.

The proposal will be submitted in week 3 so you can benefit not only from the professor’s comments but get input from your classmates as well.

Working Bibliography: A good research paper is worked over several weeks, not just when the paper is due. One must start with the proposal/outline and consciously see out the best materials, locate primary source material, identify potential direct quotes, data, and example, and corroborate all information. So research is more than just finding a single source for each argument or just a few sources for an entire paper.

As I expect everyone to do a bit of research every week, by week 5, you should have started a good bibliography of potential sources from which you may cite. A bibliography is not a reference page, that page is just what you cherry pick and will use in the paper. A bibliography is the total research you do in preparation for the paper, which includes the sources that were cited directly.

Research Paper: The research paper topic will be selected by the student with approval of the instructor via the proposal above. That is you have a virtually unlimited choice here. That is why the proposal is so critical so you can narrow your topic to something that can be handled reasonably well in an 11 week term.

For this class you will need to identify any homeland security issue or problem and offer both lessons from the arguments you make and solutions or recommendations to resolve the issue or problem.

You may do a case study, and offer your lessons and takeaway from those lessons or, you can have any other security topic related to this course’s subject matter.

There is no length minimum or maximum. This is a 400 level course and a paper commensurate with

400 level work is expected. The paper length is determined by the parameters the student sets in his or her introduction and the amount of writing necessary to fully develop the topic, and the conclusion once reaches. A paper is never, in the real world, determined by some number someone pulls from

the air. All sources of information must be documented and selected bibliography of all sources used or referenced expected. School requires APA format.

I do not expect nor want an abstract, but I do require a bibliography in addition to your reference

page. One secret to successful academic and professional writing is keeping a working bibliography, and annotated bibliography/note file going from the start. Every time you visit a website, data base, refer to a book or other resource, you put that item – assuming relevance to the topic—properly cited in your working bibliography. For those sources that are dealing with the specific questions or arguments you need for each of your outline points, you note any ideas, data, corroboration,

examples, or direct quotes, properly cited you put in your working note file.

Then at the end, when you begin writing everything you need initially is already done, and in

place. So, as you write you may find you need a quote or something from a source you look at early, while you were still formulating your ideas, you can go to your working bibliography, and find that source easily. And there is a very good chance that if you are taking good notes, and corroborating ideas, you will not be using material in your note files, but the citation would be in your bibliography.

A reference page is only that material you are citing in the paper. A bibliography will show me the extent of your research, that information was corroborated, and the material you had made your choices for in the body of the paper. The bibliography includes the material from the reference page.