RESEARCH AND WRITING IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HISTORY

This is a term-paper manual specifically created for students in Daniel Headrick's Social Science seminar and History courses. You may read it in its entirety here, or print it out, or visit the various sections by clicking on the titles listed in the Table of Contents below. (Click here to return to Daniel Headrick's home page.)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE: THE RESEARCH PROJECT 
Picking a Topic  
Locating Promising Sources
The Method Proposal
Judging Sources
Taking Notes
Analyzing and Organizing Your Information
Writing Your Paper
How to Document Your Sources
Criteria for Judging the Research Paper

PART TWO: THE BOOK REVIEW

Doing a research project is an essential part of every advanced course in social science, liberal studies, or the humanities. It improves the skills–developing an idea, testing a hypothesis, finding information, analyzing that information, and writing in a coherent and persuasive manner–that you will need in professional and in managerial careers.

There are five stages to the research project:

1) picking a topic and submitting a Topic Proposal;

2) locating sources of information on your topic and submitting a Method Proposal;

3) doing research on your chosen topic;

4) writing your paper and documenting your sources; and

5) revising your paper and submitting it a second time.

Your choice of a topic makes a huge difference! You should pick a topic that is:

a) appropriate to the course;

b) interesting to you;

c) clearly defined; and

d) narrow enough so that you can do a good job of research before the deadline.

Where to start? Ask yourself:

What social phenomenon (e.g., marriage, warfare, diseases, education, crime, women’s work, and so on) are you interested in?

What particular example of that phenomenon would you like to investigate? Where would you situate it in time and place? For example, instead of diseases in general, you might study AIDS in contemporary South Africa; instead of war in general, you might study submarine warfare in the Atlantic in World War Two; instead of education in general, you might investigate Japanese high schools; instead of crime in general, you might write about kidnapping in Colombia.

Now pick a second phenomenon that you think is related to the first. For instance, AIDS in South Africa AND the policies of the government; submarine warfare AND code-breaking; Japanese high schools AND the success of Japanese corporations; kidnaping AND the drug traffic in Colombia.

Now explain how you believe they are related. Is one phenomenon the cause of the other? Are both the consequence of a third phenomenon? Or are is their relationship just a coincidence? This is your hypothesis.

Remember: a hypothesis is NOT a conclusion. It is an educated guess about a relationship between two phenomena that you plan to investigate. It’s okay to present your hypothesis in your Topic Proposal and in the thesis statement of your paper, even if your research later shows that your guess was wrong. Remember: the purpose of doing research is not to prove you were right all along, but to show that you have learned something new.

Now please write a Topic Proposal, that is a description of the phenomena you would like to study and how you think they might be related. It will be returned to you with suggestions.

There are many places where you can find information for a social science or history paper: in books and articles in a library; by interviewing or observing people; or on the Internet. Each of these will help you develop a different skill. If it appropriate to your topic, you should try several kinds of sources.

The first place to look is in bibliographies. If your instructor hands out a bibliography of useful sources, use it! Also look in your textbook(s); often at the end of each chapter these is a list of "Suggested Readings." Libraries also have bibliographies on many different subjects, such as the American Historical Association’s Guide to Historical Literature and the Harvard Guide to American History. To search online, go to www.roosevelt.edu, then click on "Library," then "Search by Subject" or "Books" and search by subject.

If the library has open stacks, you’re in luck. Find one book on your topic in the stacks, then look at the other books on the same shelf and on the shelf above and the shelf below. Chances are, you’ll find several other books on your topic.

There are many useful article indexes: For scholarly articles, try the International Index, Social Science Index, and Humanities Index. For popular periodicals, look in the Readers’s Guide to Periodical Literature. For news articles, see the index to the New York Times and other periodicals. To search online, go to www.roosevelt.edu then click on "Library," then "Articles," then "Choose Journal Indexes by Subject," then "Wilson Readers Guide Abstracts."

When you look in books or articles on your topic, you will find a lot of other references in the footnotes, endnotes, or "works cited" section. Check these also.

Each time you see the title of a book or article that looks promising, make a note on a separate 3x5 card or piece of paper; you want separate notes because you will be organizing them in dif-ferent ways: useful or not so useful ones, chronologically, by topic, alphabetically by author, etc.

In the case of a book, write on each card: the full name(s) of the author(s), starting with the last name of the (first) author; the title and sub-title (in italics or underlined); the city, the publisher, and the year of publication; and the library and call number.

In the case of an article, write the full name(s) of the author(s), the title of the article (in "quotation marks"); the title of the periodical (in italics or underlined); the volume number; the date of publication; and the page numbers of the article. (See "Documenting your Sources" below for further information.)

Some topics lend themselves to live research: do you know a war veteran? A political activist? Someone who has witnessed an event? An expert on your topic? If it seems appropriate, ask if you could interview them. Then prepare a list of questions you would like to ask them at the interview. (Don’t conduct the interview just yet, however.)

Perhaps you have some personal experience that is relevant to your paper. Have you traveled to a foreign country? participated to an interesting event? had an experience that fits in with the topic of your paper? Perhaps you have access to letters or papers that contain useful information (if they aren’t your own writings, you will need to ask permission of the writer, if you can.)

Databases of published (printed) matter must not be confused with the World Wide Web, which does not go through the publishing process. Information is very easy to find on the Web, but very hard to trust. That is because people with computers and a minimum of training can put anything they want on their websites. On the Web, it is very difficult to determine what is reliable and what isn’t. It could be the truth, or it could be a disguised advertisement, or a political message, or the fabrication of a lunatic.

You must be much more skeptical when you do research on the Internet than in a library. Don’t assume, just because a website has an impressive title like "The Truth About the Middle East" or an URL (Universal Resource Locator) like "www.thetruth.com," that it is reliable.

How can you tell? First, look for the name of the human being who put the information on the Web. Is it a name you recognize? Is it a well-known author, politician, or journalist? If you recognize the name, then you probably know what to expect, and whether to trust this person.

If there is no person’s name, or if you don’t recognize it, then look for the organization that put out the information. Is it one you recognize, like the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, or the Encyclopaedia Britannica? Is it the CIA, the NAACP, the Republican Party? If you recognize the organization, you can tell whether to trust what it put on the Web, or what its biases are. If you don’t recognize (and trust) the name of the person or the organization that put information on the Web, DON’T USE IT!

Where to look for web sites: First look in the bibliography and citations of your texts; then in the handouts called "Web Sites for Current Events and Social Sciences" or "Web Sites for History."

For Internet and live research, like for library research, you should make a card for each source: Web site, person, document, experience, etc.

As soon as you begin your search for sources, you will discover whether your topic is feasible or not. Some topics are so broad (e.g., the history of Mexico) that you’d only to scratch the surface of all the information out there. Other topics are so narrow (street names in Eichendorf) that you will find little or nothing. Yet others (e.g., drug dealers in New Orleans) are too dangerous.

Remember: the Method determines the Topic, as well as the other way around. If your search for sources brings up too much or too little, narrow or change your topic. After all, you have a limited time to do this project, so you want to pick a topic that is both interesting and feasible. Remember: it’s okay to change your topic; the Topic Proposal is not a contract, it’s a proposal.

The Method Proposal is a list of sources that you hope will have the information you need.

A. Books and Articles. Put your cards in alphabetical order by the first author’s last name; then type up the list. (But keep the cards!)

B. Interviews, Personal Experiences, and Documents: List them by order of importance, with a description of what you’ve found, whom you expect to interview, what questions you plan to ask, etc.

C. Internet Sources: You must give both the full citation--the name of the person and/or organization that put the information on the Web, the title, the date it was put there, the URL (for example: "www.nytimes.com"), and any other relevant information.

Please attach your Topic Proposal to your Method Proposal. They will be returned to you with suggestions.

After your Topic and Method Proposals have been approved, it’s time to collect information. Where to start?

You need to prioritize your sources, starting with the most relevant, promising, and reliable. Prioritizing by relevance means starting with the sources most likely to contain information on your topic. But it is also important to recognize different kinds and different qualities of sources. Sources can be classified into three categories: primary, secondary, and tertiary.

A. Primary sources are the raw material of social science and history. They are information produced by participants or eye-witnesses to the events you are studying; they include journalists’ reports, autobiographies, important speeches, census data and other government documents, private letters, diaries, and memoirs, and the oral accounts of survivors; photos and film footage shot on the spot (newsreels, documentaries, etc.) are also valuable primary sources.

You should definitely try to locate at least one primary source, to get a feel for what social scientists and historians do and to give your paper authenticity. But be critical and keep an open mind. Primary sources can be honest and factual, but they can also be biased and self-serving, or downright lies.

B. Secondary sources are those produced by experts on your topic who have studied and analyzed the primary sources. Scholarly books and articles are typical secondary sources, but so are some of the better films, such as "Patton," or "Schindler’s List," or "Amistad."

Secondary sources are not infallible either, for even experts have biases. However, there is a test of quality, namely the selection process that books and articles have to go through. Before a reputable publisher or journal will publish a book or an article, the editor will send it to several readers who will advise whether it should be published. Once it is published, librarians decide whether to buy the book. Finally, other scholars may or may not cite this book or article in their writings. So if you find a scholarly book or article in a good library, or if you see it cited favorably by a reputable scholar, then you can assume it is trustworthy.

C. Tertiary sources, such as textbooks and encyclopedias, are produced in a hurry by hack writers who have quickly read a few of the secondary sources and summarized them without checking or analyzing. DON’T USE TEXTBOOKS OR ENCYCLOPEDIAS!

 

What you want to extract from your sources is facts not words. I suggest you use 3x5 paper or a computer database. The goal is to make one note per fact: a name, a date, a statistic, an idea, but NOT a full sentence. That way, you will avoid copying, paraphrasing, and plagiarizing.

Exception: If, in your research, you run across a sentence or a brief paragraph that is either exceptionally lovely ("To be or not to be, that is the question") or somebody else’s opinion (As Hitler said: "Deutschland ueber alles"), then—and only then–is it permissible to copy. If you do, make sure you quote exactly, word for word. And keep each copied sentence or paragraph on a separate piece of paper (or field).

At the top of each piece of paper, note the source, such as the author’s last name and the page number, so you can later document where you found it.

 

 

 

Live sources and personal documents must be treated differently from secondary sources such as books and articles.

Interviews are a supplement to, not a substitute for library research. Do some library research before you go out to interview someone. Find out what you can about the situation you are going to ask him or her about, so you don’t waste time with irrelevant or ignorant questions ("What year was Pearl Harbor bombed?"). Always go prepared.

If you interview someone, ask whether you can tape-record the interview and then transcribe it. You can then use the transcript as your source. You can quote your interviewee in the body of your paper, or attach excerpts from transcript of the interview to the back of your paper as an appendix.

If you’ve interviewed several people, you can draw some generalizations from the interviews ("Seven out of the ten people interviewed agreed that....").

If you use documents such as personal letters as your source, it is also all right to quote from them at length. If you wish, attach copies of the documents to your paper.

If you find a Web site that looks both interesting and reliable, you should print out the pages that contain information relevant to your research. Internet sources often disappear quickly, and you may not find again the information you once saw.

But remember to take down the complete information about the Web site. Be sure to establish that the Web site you are looking at is reliable. And even if you have print-outs in front of you, be sure to take notes on 3x5 paper or on a database, just as you would with a book, and for the same reason: you want data, not words.

If you quote from an Internet source (as from a document or an interviewee), you must make it clear that you are quoting, either by putting the excerpt you are copying in "quotation marks," or by indenting the quotation in a separate paragraph.

 

 

After having done (most of) the research for your paper, you should have:

1) a set of bibliographical cards with information about the sources you have used, and another set for sources you have not used;

2) a stack of 3x5 papers (or their electronic equivalents) containing the data (in abbreviated form) and a few quotations in quote-marks;

3) some other documents (e.g., transcripts of interviews, personal documents, print-outs of Internet sources, a clippings file) which you have also used as sources for your 3x5 cards.

What now? First, rethink your topic. What is your research about? Did you find enough information? Did the information you found prove anything or answer any question? Did it prove something you hadn’t expected or answer a question you didn’t ask? Have you discovered something new? (I hope so.)

Next, make an outline. There are many ways of doing so. Here is a familiar example:

a) the thesis statement: what is this paper about?

b) the evidence: how does it relate to your topic?

c) the analysis: does it answer your question? does it verify or nullify your hypothesis?

d) the conclusion: what have you learned from this project?

Then, rearrange your notes. Flip through your stack of 3x5s. Your notes will be arranged by source, in the order in which you did your research. Now rearrange them to fit your project. Try different arrangements: by topic, by geographical area, chronologically. Each time, ask yourself: does this make sense? does it make more sense any other way?

Historical narratives: In any paper–not just a paper for a history course–that discusses past events, those events should be in chronological order with the dates clearly stated. This is to avoid giving the impression that an event that happened later caused one that happened earlier.

Maybe your arrangement matches your original outline. More likely, you have to rewrite your outline, then rearrange your data, then go through the process again and again until you are satisfied. This interactive process is the most important part of your project!

The first rule is: Put away your sources! Return books to the library, put away your documents and copies of articles and Web sites. To avoid being tempted to copy from your sources, keep only your notes near you when you write. Your paper must contain information from your sources, but in your own words.

A. Quoting:

You should quote ONLY the words of a participant or eye-witness OR an opinion (particularly one you disagree with) OR a line of poetry or other beautiful phrase. Never quote just to convey information!

In those rare cases when you must use whole sentences taken from a source, make it clear that you are quoting. A short excerpt should be in "quotation marks." One that is longer than four lines should be indented in a separate paragraph.

B. Writing:

As you write, refer to your outline. Your paper should have an introduction or thesis statement; a section for your evidence; a section for your analysis of the evidence; and a conclusion. In addition, you might have an appendix, where you attach copies of documents, statistical tables, and other material that does not fit into the body of your paper.

Usually, your paper will follow the order of your outline, and within each section, the order of the data on your 3x5s. But sometimes, as you write, you may realize that there is a better order, one that makes more sense. If so, go back to your notes, reorganize them, write another outline, and rewrite (or cut and paste) what you have written. Make sure all your information is documented (see "Documenting Your Sources"). Remember: writing is not a linear process, but an interactive one between your data, your thesis, and your analysis. Go back and forth between them until you are satisfied.

Don’t mix the singular and the plural: "he," "she," and "it" are singular; "they" is plural. For instance, do not say "When a person walks in, they sit down." Instead, say: "When a person walks in, he or she sits down" or (better) "When people walk in, they sit down."

Don’t confuse it’s and its: It’s means it is (example: "It’s on the shelf"). Its means of it (example: "I put it in its place.").

Don’t mix tenses: your narrative should be either in the past or in the present, not both.

Possessives of words that end in s: Singular words get apostrophe-s (example: "Mr. Jones’s house"). Plural words get s-apostrophe (example: "The cups’ handles").

Avoid sentence fragments (e.g., "When he said that.") and run-on sentences (e.g., They drove away he coughed."

D. Presenting Statistics:

There are three ways to present statistics: as part of your narrative, in a table, or in a graph. If you have more than two or three numbers, and if they relate to the same phenomenon (e.g., population, income, or prices), then you should present a table. Better yet, use both: draw a graph based on the numbers in your table.

E. Proof-reading: Be sure to proof-read your paper before you hand it in. Check for errors in logic, in data, in grammar, and in spelling.

In the course of your research, you will discover information and opinions you did not know before, and you will read sentences or paragraphs that you would like to incorporate into your paper.

Whenever you present new information or someone else's opinion and whenever you quote someone else's words, you MUST document your source. You do not need to cite a source for information that you knew before you started the research, such as "President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963." But if you didn't know it, then you MUST document it. The purpose of documenting is to show where you got your information, opinion, or quotation, and to allow your reader to look up your source. This means you may well cite one or several sources in each paragraph of your paper. With the MLA system, it's easy.

Attention History Majors! If your paper is for a History class, then you must use the footnote/endnote system instead of the MLA. See the Liberal Studies office for guidelines.

The MLA system, also known as parenthetical citations, has replaced the footnote/endnote system, because it is easier to handle and to type. The MLA system consists of two parts: citations in parentheses in your text, and a "Works Cited" page.

1. Whenever you have information you need to document, at the end of the sentence or paragraph in which that information appears you simply add a parentheses containing the author's last name and the page number; for example:

In eighteenth-century Bohemia, peasants paid 41 percent of their gross income as taxes (Black 123).

2. If you have already mentioned the author in your text, then the page number is enough; for example:

    As Jeremy Black points out, eighteenth-century Bohemian
    peasants paid 41 percent of their gross income in taxes
    (123).

3. If you are citing several works by that author, then you need to give, in addition to his or her name, also a short title; for instance:

Count de Buffon died in 1788 (Worster "Vulnerable Earth" 7).

4. If the author is unknown (as in the case of newspaper articles), then give a short title; e.g.,

    Only Mayor McCarthy expressed the least optimism 
          toward the city's future ("Rebirth" 2).

5. If the work you are citing has two or three authors, then give all their names, for example: (Randall and Donald 271). If it has more than three authors, give the first one and "et al." (meaning "and others"); for example: (Sapperstein et al. 12).

At the end of your paper, you must list all the works (and ONLY those) you have cited in your text. They must be in bibliographical form, alphabetically by the author's last name (or, if there is no author, by the title). Examples:

1. A book by one author:

Black, Jeremy. Eighteenth Century Europe. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990.

2. A book by several authors:

Randall, J.G., and David Donald. The Divided Union. Boston: Little, 1961.

3. An article in a periodical:

Gould, Stephen Jay. "A Most Ingenious Paradox." Natural History Dec. 1984: 20-29.

"Rebirth of a City." News-Times [Danbury, CT] 6/9/1977: 2.

4. An article in a book:

Worster, Donald. "The Vulnerable Earth." In Donald Worster, ed. The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

5. A government report:

Federal Council for Science and Technology. First Annual Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Geodynamics. USIGP-F476, Washington, 1978.

6. An interview:

Interview with Franjo Mulac, custodian, December 12, 1991.

7. The Internet is not a source but a medium. In addition to the URL ("http://www. some-thing.com"), you MUST give the author and the full title of the work you are citing, as if it were in print. Attach a printout of the Internet document to your paper.

These examples illustrate some of the more common kinds of sources you are likely to use. For more complex cases, consult a recent edition of a term-paper manual.

IMPORTANT! Please note the punctuation, underlining, etc. in the above examples: book and periodical titles are underlined or in italics, while article titles are in "quotation marks."

What does a teacher look for in a research paper? The following criteria are pretty universal, so keep them in mind as you write.

A. Clear Focus

Is your topic clear? It is relevant to the course? Is it clearly introduced at the beginning of the paper? Are the body of your paper and its conclusion clearly related to your topic?

B. Research

Does your paper contain enough information to back up your ideas? Have you found enough sources of information? Are your sources reliable? Are they recent? Are they varied and balanced, especially on controversial issues? When appropriate, have you used different types of sources, such as books, journals, newspapers, interviews, or the Internet?

C. Reasoning and Organization

Are your key concepts defined and presented in a clear way? Does your argument follow a logical outline? Are the parts of your paper coherent? Are they logically connected?

Do you present your information clearly? When appropriate, do you use statistics, tables and/or graphs?

Do you quote only when necessary? If so, so you quote exactly, word for word? Do you introduce every quotation and cite its source?

D. Documentation

Is your information documented in the body of your paper? Are your sources cited in the MLA Style? Are they in the right places?

Does your "Works Cited" page list ALL the works you have cited in your paper, and no others? Are they cited correctly?

E. Writing Mechanics

Is your paper free of grammatical, spelling, and typing errors? Are your sentences short, clear, and free of unnecessary jargon?

 

Does the second version of your paper show real improvement in those areas that were weak in your first paper?

A book review is neither a book report nor a literary critique, but a learning instrument. The purpose of a book review is to improve your skills in reading and critical analysis. To do this, you will incorporate several different kinds of information into your review:

1) A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR (half a page)

This alerts the reader to the author’s profession, to his or her intentions in writing this book, and to his or her culture, attitudes, and biases.

For information on authors, look in Contemporary Authors, Directory of American Scholars, Who’s Who in America (or its British equivalent Who’s Who), Directory of International Biography, Biography Index, Current Biography Index, and other sources. Ask a librarian to help you!

2) THE GOALS OF THE BOOK (half a page)

What was the author’s purpose in writing this book?

What is the book’s basic thesis or argument?

What are the major themes of the book?

What audience is the book aimed at?

You will find these important points, or clues to them, in the introduction or preface and/or in the conclusion of the books. Read them before you read the rest of the book.

3) THE SOURCES (a few lines)

What information did the author use in writing this book? Where did he or she get this information?

Primary sources: personal interviews, surveys, original documents, newsreels, etc.

Secondary sources: other books and periodicals

References: Are they in MLA or APA-style citations? in footnotes or endnotes? Is there a useful bibliography? an appendix?

4) THE CONTENTS OF THE BOOK (one to three pages)

Is the book organized chronologically? topically? Is it clear and logical?

What are the most important points the book makes?

What new knowledge or understanding did you get from reading it?

5) PUBLISHED REVIEWS (one or two pages)

You can find out a lot about a book by reading the reviews in the press and in scholarly journals. Finding a review is a two-step process: a) locating a reference to the review; b) finding the review itself. You MUST do both!

Look in the following sources, starting with the year the book (or its first edition) was published, or the year after:

Book Review Index (scholarly books from 1965 on)

Index to Book Reviews in the Humanities (since 1960)

The New York Times and The New York Times Book Review (check the Times index)

You can find references to recent reviews online at www.roosevelt.edu. Click on "Library," then "Search by Subject," then "Book Review Digest" or "Expanded Academic ASAP" or "Library Literature." (For Book Review Digest, the authorization number is 100121039 and the password is Sullivan.) You can also check www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews or http://infotrac.galegroup.com.

B. Finding the Review Itself:

The indexes listed above tell you where to look for the full review. Some indexes, like the Book Review Digest also give you excerpts from the reviews. Excerpts are not enough! You MUST find the full original review. For example, the Book Review Digest will give you references:

"Library J 86:1482 Ap 1 ‘61 120w" means "Library Journal, vol. 86 page 1482, April 1, 1961, 120 words"

"Sat R 44:16 Jl 8 ‘61 340w" means "Saturday Review, volume 44 page 16, July 8, 1961, 340 words"

Find the original review, copy it, and attach the copy to your own review.

6) YOUR CRITICAL EVALUATION (one or two pages)

Don’t just say the book is "interesting" or "boring." Say why you think so.

Did the author achieve his or her goals?

Is the book dated or is it still relevant to today’s concerns?

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the book?

Is the argument fair or biased, and if so, how?

How valid is the information presented in the book? How well was it researched?

How well is the book written and organized? Is it clear or confusing?

How significant are the book’s findings and conclusions?

Give a few examples (maybe even a quotation or two) to illustrate your opinions. Do you agree or disagree with the published reviews that you found? Why?