How to conduct effective research for academic papers

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Why do you think colleges value assignments and homework over exams? Depending on your academic program, you’ll realize that many assessments take approximately 30 minutes to 5 hours. However, you might need up to or more than a year to complete a dissertation and several days for some assignments. What does this mean when it comes to intellectual stimulation? Professors take advantage of assignments and homework to engage their students in academics. For instance, while students will mostly read notes covered in class only when preparing for continuous assessment tests (CATs), they tend to review several sources, even for a 2-page (approximately 600 words) discussion post. It’s because of this reason that assignments account for approximately 60% of marks in many subjects.

Owing to their significant contribution to your final score at the end of the semester or term and learning, you should always strive to perform exceptionally well in your homework. One of the easiest ways to achieve this goal concerns relying on a paper writing service that not only promises to offer human-written and plagiarism-free texts but also offers you a chance to purchase digital sources and smart papers. These extra features in buying an assignment help you gain an in-depth understanding of the concepts. Purchasing custom papers allows you to sharpen your research skills and consequently become a pro writer!

4 steps to conducting effective research 

1. Understand the topic or instructions

Even if you write an A+ research paper or essay without vividly adhering to points on the prompt or rubric, you’ll never score distinguished. In the same way, when you can plant dates, you don’t expect to harvest mushrooms, regardless of your effort to follow proper farm practices for the latter. So, if the instructions require you to write about “The Impact of Telehealth on Healthcare Access,” how do you dissect this question to avoid answering the question(s)? Or do you dive straight into research?

Depending on your knowledge level, you can start by understanding specific terms of the question. For example, in this case, you search for the meaning of Telehealth online. You’ll realize that it all has to do with virtual medical services ranging from consultation and treatment to follow-up. Since the question requires you to write about “the impact,” you can decide to explore positive and/or negative effects. The next deliberation would be whether to narrow your research on the influence of the patients and/or healthcare providers or not. With this dissection of the question, you’ll have made a good start toward researching information pertaining to your topic. 

2. Develop an outline

Throughout your college life, you’ll come across different types of assignments. Notable examples of these tasks include discussion posts, replies, essays, capstone projects, literature reviews, and research papers, among many others. For example, if you need to write a research paper on “The Impact of Telehealth on Healthcare Access,” you might need the introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion. Depending on the instructions, you can include the abstract and appendix. So, how does knowing the sections of your papers assist you with research?

Segmenting your paper into segments and subsections allows you to allocate the number of words or pages accordingly. In other words, it reduces the instance of you overwriting the introduction or any other part of the paper. Also, this strategy allows you to understand specific information you’ll be searching on the Internet. For example, on the topic, “The Impact of Telehealth on Healthcare Access,” you will specifically look for sources on the problem of accessing medical services without technology and a brief history of virtual care. Even if you’re a pro in writing, you should always develop an outline for your paper prior to researching.

3. Decide on the databases for research

Even though you can directly Google information without targeting a specific online database, such a strategy might be ineffective, especially on topics with limited information or when you need sources that meet certain criteria. For instance, on the topic, “The Impact of Telehealth on Healthcare Access,” you can use PubMed®. Once you enter this information in the search box, you can decide on inclusion criteria such as “Free full text,” “Article published within 5 years,” “Clinical trials,” and “Randomized controlled trials.” During the time of writing this article, the search results based on the above mentioned steps were 54.

With this technique, you won’t waste a lot of your time searching for information on the Internet. You can scan abstracts of the articles in your search results and select the number of articles you need. For example, if you need 10 scholarly sources on the topic, “The Impact of Telehealth on Healthcare Access,” you might want to choose those that appear on the first page because of the exact match with keywords. 

4. Start writing

Your first sentence doesn’t need to be perfect. Ideally, you should jot down whatever comes to your mind. According to evidence-based findings, this approach to writing would stimulate your thinking and logical arranging of ideas borrowed from scholarly sources. After you have finished writing, you’ll have the time to perfect your texts. You can use writing assistant tools such as Grammarly to rectify typo mistakes.

Although this article gives you a straightforward way of writing academic papers, it shouldn’t be an excuse for missing deadlines. Ideally, you should apply this step to the extent that fits your demand. For example, you don’t need an outline for discussion posts or replies, but you can find it useful for long papers. Always remember, the Internet has every help you need!




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