Choose a Research Topic
Choose a Research Topic which interests and challenges you. Your attitude towards the topic may well determine the amount of effort and enthusiasm you put into your research.Focus on a limited aspect. As example, narrow it down from "Religion" to "World Religion" to "Buddhism". Obtain teacher approval for your topic before embarking on a full-scale research. If you are uncertain as to what is expected of you in completing the assignment or project, re-read your assignment sheet carefully or ASK your teacher. Select a subject you can manage. Avoid subjects that are too technical, learned, or specialized. Avoid topics that have only a very narrow range of source materials.
Find Research Paper Information
Surf the Net. For general or background information, check out useful URLs, general information online, almanacs or encyclopedias online such as Britannica. Use search engines and other search tools as a starting point.
Pay attention to domain name extensions, e.g., .edu (educational institution), .gov (government), or .org (non-profit organization). These sites represent institutions and tend to be more reliable, but be watchful of possible political bias in some government sites. Be selective of .com (commercial) sites. Many .com sites are excellent; however, a large number of them contain advertisements for products and nothing else. Network Solutions provides a link where you can find out what some of the other extensions stand for. Be wary of the millions of personal home pages on the Net. The quality of these personal homepages vary greatly. Learning how to evaluate websites critically and to search effectively on the Internet can help you eliminate irrelevant sites and waste less of your time.
The recent arrival of a variety of domain name extensions such as .biz (commercial businesses), .pro, .info (info on products / organizations), .name, .ws (WebSite), .cc (Cocos Island) or .sh (St. Helena) or .tv (Tuvalu) may create some confusion as you would not be able to tell whether a .cc or .sh or .tv site is in reality a .com, a .edu, a .gov, a .net, or a .org site. Many of the new extensions have no registration restrictions and are available to anyone who wishes to register a distinct domain name that has not already been taken. For instance, if Books.com is unavailable, you can register as Books.ws or Books.info via a service agent such as Register.com.
Find books in the Library and check out other print materials available in the Library such as:
Almanacs, Atlases, AV Catalogs
Encyclopedias and Dictionaries
Government Publications, Guides, Reports
Magazines, Newspapers
Check out public and university libraries, businesses, government agencies, as well as contact knowledgeable people in your community. Read and evaluate. Bookmark your favorite Internet sites. Printout, photocopy, and take notes of relevant information.
As you gather your resources, jot down full bibliographical information (author, title, place of publication, publisher, date of publication, page numbers, URLs, creation or modification dates on Web pages, and your date of access) on your work sheet, printout, or enter the information on your laptop or desktop computer for later retrieval. If printing from the Internet, it is wise to set up the browser to print the URL and date of access for every page. Remember that an article without bibliographical information is useless since you cannot cite its source.
Research Paper Objective
Once the need for research information has been clearly defined, the researcher must specify the objectives of the proposed research and develop a specific list of information needs. Research objectives answer the question "Why is this project being conducted?"
Indentify the Dependent and Independent Variables
The terms "dependent variable" and "independent variable" are used in similar but subtly different ways in mathematics and statistics as part of the standard terminology in those subjects. They are used to distinguish between two types of quantities being considered, separating them into those available at the start of a process and those being created by it, wmanipulated.
here the latter (dependent variables) are dependent on the former (independent variables).
The independent variable is typically the variable representing the value being manipulated or changed and the dependent variable is the observed result of the independent variable being
Experiment Setup.
Make observations. In order to set up a scientific experiment, you will need to make observations about a particular phenomenon that you wish to investigate further. For example, you notice that birds eat more from a feeder in the winter than in the summer.
Make a hypothesis. A hypothesis is an educated or logical guess about how or why something occurs. For example, using the bird feeder scenario again, you may make a hypothesis that would say something to the effect of: "Cold temperatures make birds eat more."
Design and perform an experiment. You want to create an experiment that would test your hypothesis and the end result would be that the evidence from your experiment would either support or disprove your hypothesis. In the bird feeder scenario, you might set up an experiment that would have a group of birds with a feeder in a warm environment and a group of birds in a cold environment, and measure how much each group eats.
Collect data from your experiments. You need to have several consistent dependent variables that rely on your independent variable in which you collect data. In the bird feeder situation, you would want to measure the exact temperatures of the rooms in which the birds are kept, and how much food is eaten by the birds.
Check to see if your data from the experiment supports or rejects your hypothesis. If the data coincides with what you predicted (in the bird feeder case, the birds in the cold room ate more than those in the warm room), then your evidence supports the hypothesis.
Data Collection.
Accuracy and Precision
In the fields of science, engineering, industry and statistics, the accuracy of a measurement system is the degree of closeness of measurements of a quantity to its actual (true) value. The precision of a measurement system, also called reproducibility or repeatability, is the degree to which repeated measurements under unchanged conditions show the same results. Although the two words can be synonymous in colloquial use, they are deliberately contrasted in the context of the scientific method.
Accuracy indicates proximity of measurement results to the true value, precision to the repeatability or reproducibility of the measurementA measurement system can be accurate but not precise, precise but not accurate, neither, or both.
