Reviewing the Literature and Theory in a Research paper

Introduction

This is a guide to writing a research paper in MLA format. It is intended for students who have already completed their first draft of the paper and are ready to submit it to their instructor, but also serves as an introduction for new writers.

In a research paper, you should use the literature and theory to make your case.

In a research paper, you should use the literature and theory to make your case. This is called a literature review. It’s an overview of what’s been written on a topic before; it gives you an idea of how others have approached it before, so you can form your own answer to the question or hypothesis that you’re trying to answer.

The first step in writing a good literature review is deciding what type of information will be most useful in answering your research question—and then organizing that information into sections that correspond with those questions. For example: if I’m writing an article about why people eat fast food at least once per week (my hypothesis), then I might divide my long list into three parts:

• Background Information About Fast Food Consumption Rates Throughout History

• Observations Based On Survey Results From My Own Small Sample Size Studies Of Fast Food-Eating Adults Who Live In My Area And Have Identical Income Levels As The Average Citizen In My Country

Your literature review should be guided by a central research question.

In a research paper, your literature review is the foundation of your argument. It should be guided by a central research question. Your goal is to make sure that you:

• Are able to describe and summarize key information from each chapter (or section) of the book or article in question;

• Have clear ideas about what you want to learn from this text;

• Have thought through how these findings might relate back to your own experience or interests;

• Are able to identify holes in existing knowledge and offer new perspectives on old problems

Use the literature and theory to explain your own data.

The literature and theory can be used to explain your own data. It’s important to explain how your data fits into the broader picture, why you chose the methods you did, and why you chose the sample of students that you did.

Use the literature and theory to justify your methodology.

In addition to using the literature and theory, you can also use the literature to justify your methodology. This will help you in making sure that the research questions are valid and relevant for your study.

If you are doing a qualitative research paper, then it is important for you to know how best to select participants for your study. You need an appropriate sample size so that you get enough data points on which basis can make conclusions about what actually happened during the events studied (Bergman & Swanee). For example: if there were only two participants who participated in an event then there would be no way out of forming any conclusion from their participation alone; but if there were 3-5 people involved at least one good thing could be said about their role during this particular event!

Choose your sources carefully, and make sure you’re interpreting what they say correctly.

You should also be careful about using sources that are too old. For example, if you want to use a book written in the 18th century and translate it into modern English, you’ll need to check the edition of that book and make sure it has been translated correctly.

You should also be careful about using sources that are too modern. If you’re looking at an article published by a news website today (or even tomorrow), this will likely contain information from yesterday’s paper and thus won’t provide any insights into current events or trends related to your research topic.

You should cite a key source at least once in each paragraph.

There are three ways to cite a source:

• In text, where you put the author’s name and page number. For example: “Jane wrote in her book that she was tired of being asked to be an example for children.”

• In a footnote or parenthetical citation, where you give additional information about the source. This method can be used only when there is no way for readers to find out what you’re referring to without it (for example, if they don’t know who Jane is). Here we would write something like this: “Jane wrote in her book that she was tired of being asked [to] be an example for children.”

• Finally, if your reader wants more information on how they can access this particular article or book (e.g., by checking library databases), then they can always go back into their bibliography section at any time during their research process so far!

Make sure your research paper uses scholarly sources to back up its assertions

A good research paper should be based on scholarly sources. This means that the author has done their homework and found reliable information to support their claims. It also means that they understand what the source says, so they can make sure it’s relevant to their argument.

If you want to use an un-scholarly source (like Wikipedia), ask yourself: does this source agree with my argument? Does it contradict my argument? Does this source help or hurt my case? If there is no way for me to tell if a particular piece of information supports my position or not, then it won’t do anything for me except confuse readers who might otherwise have been able to see through some questionable claims about “facts.”

Conclusion

Theories and findings are the building blocks of a research paper, but they’re not enough. You also need to use them in support of your own conclusions. When you do this right, readers will be able to connect with your ideas and make sense of them—and that’s what good writing is about!