This is general guidance to help you develop and organize your research project. Please note that this is not intended to be an inflexible template. Use your judgment about how to best state, defend, and communicate your position.
The project is to be a coherent written (or alternative) argument. I have found key elements of successful projects to be:
Economic globalization is doing more harm than good, and it should be discontinued; the practice has caused the industrial heartland of the United States to become vulnerable to unemployment, poverty, economic decline, and out-migration.
Your research project should generally take one the following approaches.
1. Introduction. Give a brief overview of the project that tells the reader what to expect from your work. State your thesis, and your expected results and/or hypotheses.
2. Literature Review. A literature review summarizes and discusses the relevant scholarly research (e.g., academic articles and books) and gray literature (e.g., official reports by government agencies or analyses by think tanks) with regard to your thesis. This serves two functions: first, if you know what people have studied, you can determine the ‘gaps’ in the research that serve as a starting point for your work (i.e., it identifies what’s missing from our understanding). Second, it helps justify and situate your work within a broader context. That is, it identifies what your work adds to our understanding and why that’s important.
3. Theoretical framework. Summarize and discuss any relevant concepts introduced in the course reading materials (including online lectures). Draw on additional theoretical materials (go to our sources!) and explain how you are using these concepts in your research project. This section might not be necessary for some projects but will be important for others. If you aren’t sure whether your project should include a theoretical framework, contact your instructor.
4. Methodology and Evidence. Describe the methods, techniques and/or research design that you used. Explain how you collected your evidence. Give enough detail so that someone could duplicate your research.
5. Analysis and Discussion. Offer interpretations of the set of evidence based on theories. What is your evidence? “Digest” the evidence. What does it mean? What are the important patterns? What new concepts can you form? Discuss the significance of your results for your question. Are these results expected or unexpected? What new or alternative theory might explain your results? This is the most important part of a research project, as it is where you demonstrate the strength and importance of your argument.
6. Conclusion. Briefly return to the “big picture.” Restate your thesis and state your results. Include a brief discussion of the shortcomings and possible future research.