Parts of an Academic Paper

Pre questions What are the four general sections of an essay? What about academic papers? What sections do you think appear in an academic paper? Do we need to follow an order of presentation in our academic papers? What might be the reasons of this? What do we mean by an ‘experimental study’? What do we mean by a ‘review article’? What is meant by ‘literature review’?

Introduction: Parts of an article See p. 227-228. Abstract An abstract can be regarded as the most important paragraph of your article since your readers decide whether to read your study or not by reading your abstract. Apart from readers, also libraries and other information services use abstracts in order to present full articles to their readers. In this respect, your abstract should reflect the content of your study properly. Also remember that APA limits abstracts with 120 words and many information services set a word limitation for abstracts, usually between 120 and 250 words.

Although an abstract appears in the beginning of an article, you cannot write your abstract first. To write it, you should have finished writing your paper. Using your thesis statement might be a good idea to start your abstract whereas using your concluding comment might be best to finalize it. For the rest, you may summarize major topics of each section. If you are writing an abstract for an empirical study, mention the problem you address, and also participants, methodology, findings, and conclusion of your study. However, for review articles it is sufficient to identify the topic along with its purpose and mention conclusion in relation with the main sources. See p. 229.

Key words Key words assist researchers to find your study in databases. In this respect, information services add your key words in their search engines to allow readers find related studies. APA usually requires the employment of 4 to 6 key words. See p. 229.

Introduction The aim of the author is providing basic information with the study. In this respect, the author aims to explain what was done and what the aim was in conducting the study. Every academic paper is supposed to address a problem in it. The introduction section is also expected to present this problem to its readers along with suggestions with reference to its results. You need to allocate the length of your introduction in relation with the contents of your study. See p. 230.

Literature review See p. 231-232. Before you explain your study to your readers, deal with the relevant literature in order to develop theoretical background. This means that you search for studies in relation with your topic and try to find out what other authors reveal and indicate in relation with this topic. Therefore, try to identify the problem that you have mentioned in your introduction clearly to your readers by providing major conclusions of the other studies. Remember that it is extremely important to use APA in-text citations rules specifically when you deal with the other sources. See p. 231-232.

Method In methodology section, your aim is presenting the details of your study. Thus, you are expected to describe how you conduct your study and how appropriate the methodology you follow in your study is. Therefore, deal with the setting of the study in which you explain where you conduct it. Besides, under the subtitle of participants, describe basic characteristics of your participants. Moreover, explain the instrument that you use in your study. For example, deliver a questionnaire in order to collect data about your participants.

Then, explain the details about this questionnaire in order to persuade your readers that the instrument that you deliver is a reliable and valid research tool to collect data. Finally, explain the procedure that you follow to collect data along with the procedure you use to analyse your data. In this respect, including the subsections of setting participants, instruments, procedure for data collection, and procedures for data analysis might be appropriate for the methodology section. Remember to report your methodology by using past tense. See p. 233-234.

Findings After analyzing the data you collect, explain your findings, in other words, your results, to your readers. You should present findings both supporting the relevant literature and running counter to the expected results. To present your results, most of the times you need to draw tables. However, do not forget to explain how significant the result in your table is to your readers. Findings section may involve various statistical analyses such as the presentation of descriptive statistics, T-tests, analysis of variances (ANOVA), regression, correlation, and so on. Remember that you will refer to your findings in the following sections of your paper later, in order to draw conclusions. See p. 235-236.

Discussion In the introduction section, you have addressed a problem. In relation with this addressed problem form your hypothesis or research question. Then, it is a good way of opening your discussion section with reference to your hypothesis or research question. Explain whether your results support or reject the hypothesis. In this respect, discuss the similarities and differences between your results and the other researchers’ findings in the relevant literature. Then, in relation with the problem you have addressed in the introduction section, explain the solutions you can provide by the help of your results. See p. 236-237.

Conclusion See p. 237. Implication After discussing the similarities and differences between your results and the others, you are expected to draw conclusions. See p. 237. Implication After drawing conclusions, move to your recommendations. Remember that in order to recommend, your results must be generalizable. This means that they should not be restricted with any specific group.

For implications, it might also be valuable to lead the other researchers for further studies in relation with the findings of your study. Then, remind the aim of the present study and what needs to be investigated in order to move one step further. See p. 238-239.

Acknowledgements See p. 239. At the end of your article, you may wish to thank to several people and organizations for their contribution to your study. For example, your university might be the source of funding for your study. Then, you acknowledge their financial support in this section. Apart from financial support, also the existence of some people might be crucial. For example, you may wish to thank to your participants. See p. 239.

References Academic papers require the involvement of ideas by the other researchers and authors in the related field. Therefore, while writing your paper, you refer to several studies as in-text citations. When you finalize your paper, in the reference list you must provide corresponding reference entry for all in-text citations. Remember that there should be an exact match between your in-text citations and reference list entries. Therefore, you are not allowed to provide reference entry for any source that you do not refer to in the body of your paper.

Appendix You may provide some additional information to your readers in this section. If you consider that presenting the information has the risk of spoiling the flow of ideas in the body of your paper; then, you may leave it to be presented in the appendix section. For example, you may provide a copy of the questionnaire that you use to collect data in this section. This will allow your readers to better interpret your study. If you have single appendix to be included; then, use appendix as the section heading. However, if you have several materials to be included; then, use appendixes as the section heading and discriminate each one by adding an identifying letter of A, B, C, etc.