WS/ES 390/ Das Gupta/ S 08

GUIDELINES FOR FINAL RESEARCH PAPER

Length: 12 pages minimum not including the list of references

Sources: At least 10 -12 sources drown from the following:

1. Journal articles (available at Voyager Online Resources; search for full text)
2. Newspaper articles or magazines as primary sources (i.e. documents you will analyze to make your argument).
3. Academic books (monographs) and/or chapters in edited volumes
4. Max of 4 references from non-academic sources if used as secondary sources (i.e. documents that you will use to back up your argument). Such sources would include newspaper articles, popular magazines or non academic books and websites.  These cannot form the bulk of your references.  The web can be great source but you have to look at reliable sites.  For eg., if you want to research issues of gender equity, the Labor Dept or the Economic Policy Institute websites would be great sources.  You should avoid websites that put up half-baked "information."  While you may use them to demonstrate prevalent attitudes, you should not use their data or opinions to make your point.

Introduction: A clear statement of your argument. The argument will be based on your research findings. An argument is NOT a research proposal.

Body: The body of the paper should be organized around the key themes you have laid out in your argument. For a 12-page paper three themes are ideal. Elaborate on each theme by presenting evidence from the interviews and from the books and articles you have read. This is a research paper. The body of your paper must support your argument. The paper must be analytic and not merely descriptive.

Conclusion: DO NOT repeat your argument in the conclusion. Depending on your topic, you can end with recommendations you might make; the new questions that came up for you in doing this research; issues that you were not able to cover in the paper but were interesting and important in understanding your topic; or your reflections on the process of research and what you got out of it.

• Please remember the paper must deal with race and gender, preferably from an intersectional approach. Do not lose this focus.
• Format the list of references following a bibliographic format (MLA, Chicago, APA or see R# 1). The list of references contains only those books, articles, websites, and other source material that you actually use in your paper. Otherwise you’ll be penalized.