AA S 591.01
Baldeep Pabla, LCSW
Research Paper Guidelines
Purpose: This project provides an opportunity for students to develop and/or refine their skills at
researching, collecting, and analyzing primarily data. The project also provides an opportunity
for students to critically assess previous studies in the areas they have chosen for their research
topic to either test out existing information or further a particular question that was lacking from
your literature review.
Each student is expected to undertake and complete a research project that will advance their
own knowledge and skill in some aspects of Asians in an American community.
The Research Paper should be 5-7 double-spaced pages in length, not counting a required APA-
style cover page, in-text citations, and a works cited page. The paper is going to be graded based
on four main sections: Introduction, Method, Results and Conclusion.
In the introduction section, students are required to give an overview of their topic through their
library research. Your task here is to provide me with information about your topic. What have
people written in relation to your topic? If your topic is not directly addressed in your library
research, you should look at a related topic to help you understand and/or put your topic in
context to this class. It is very important that you make a clear thesis statement or hypothesis of
your research project.
In the method section, students are expected to state the method they have chosen to gather their
data – including rationale for topic of interest and what the process was for obtaining specific
information, articles, and narrowing down results for their topic. What kind of databases,
research methods, experiments, or studies did the student come across when narrowing their
search?
In the results/discussion section, students are required to summarize their findings in some
logical manner, either by theme or major concepts you discovered from your literature review.
After you present your findings, students are expected to discuss and make some assessment of
their findings. Students should give some explanation to why they think their findings came out
the way it did using concepts presented in readings, class lectures, or class discussions.
In the conclusion section, you are required to summarize your key findings (approximately 3-5
findings). Then, you should discuss the significance and or contributions of your topic to Asian
American community health. Lastly, you will provide some recommendations to future research.