SBLY 110: Sustainability Studio
Final Research Paper: Writing the Introduction + Literature review sections
Final Research Papers
• See past example posted on Canvas (Course Documents)
• Today à Introduction
Research Proposal à Final Research Paper
• Your proposal is a good foundation, but many edits will be needed:
• Introduction will need to be rewritten and tightened up. Your research questions likely changed. • Literature Review will need to be condensed and updated based on
results. • Data and Methods will need to be expanded substantially • Results, Discussion, and Conclusions sections will be written from
scratch
• What should an introduction include? • What makes a good introduction?
• What does the literature review include? • What makes a good literature review?
Introduction and Literature Review
Introduction and Literature Review Introduction
1. Provide context for why the research is important (why this topic? and why now?)
2. Include your research questions(s) and hypotheses
3. Recommended: provide an overview of the structure of the paper.
Literature Review (or “theory”):
1. Identify your topical area of study.
2. Provide theoretical context: a snapshot of our current understanding and key work in this area of study
3. Identify gaps in literature/areas where expansion is needed
4. Clearly demonstrate the significance of your work (i.e., relate #1 to #2 and #3!)
Class activity #1: Identify the components of an introduction Look at my research paper or a research paper from your literature review and identify the following components in the introduction:
1. Provide context for why the research is important (why this topic? and why now?)
2. Include your research questions(s) and hypotheses
3. Recommended: provide an overview of the structure of the paper.
Add comments or annotations to the pdf file.
Class activity #1 Part 2: Identify the components of a literature review.
Now, look for the following components of the literature review:
1. Identify your area of study.
2. Provide theoretical context: a snapshot of our current understanding and key work in this area of study
3. Identify gaps in literature/areas where expansion is needed
4. Clearly demonstrate the significance of the work (i.e., relate #1 to #2 and #3!)
Use comments or annotations on the pdf.
How to demonstrate the significance of your work • Discuss the gaps in the existing literature
• For example, “While studies A, B, and C, have all studied issue X, no study has yet done this for [my time period/region/specific research question/new method/etc.]…”
• This can transition nicely right into discussing how your research fills this gap • For example, “…therefore, my research study focuses on X time
period/region/new method ……”
Revising your research questions
• Ensure these still match what your study ended up focusing on (this likely changed)
• 1-3 research questions are ideal. You could have a broad research question and a couple of sub-questions.
