Step 1: Identify your topic. Arguably the most important step in any research project is to understand your topic and where you want to go with the subject. So: break the subject down. I’ll give you an example of what I did for my major research project in 11th and 12th grade. My question was “Cognitive Agency: Does It Exist and What Are Its Ethical Implications?” So, the first step was to break down the topic of cognitive agency - what is it? What do the words means separately and then together? As it was also a philosophy paper, I had to delve into what “existence” meant. After some preliminary research on the topic, we can move forward into what direction we want to take the research in.
Step 2: Find a direction. Many students realize too late that their research wasn’t adequately focused or only had an idea for a topic and didn’t know what to do with it. That’s fine; it is better to ask what direction you want to take your research in now rather than later. As I did preliminary research on the topic to identify my subject, I had read some points of weakness in the cognitive agency theory. From there, I decided I wanted to focus the paper on three ideas: defining the concept, analyzing its potential existence, and applying it to modern-day philosophy. Often times, when you read a bit more on the subject, you will find similarity between what numerous researchers or authors say. Or, perhaps you’ll find where they contradict and latch onto that. Either way, delving a bit more into the subject before you organize your ideas into a structure is a good way to find a direction to you paper.
Step 3: Organize your thoughts. Now that you know your topic and direction and have done a bit of research into it, you can organize your thoughts into headings and subheadings. As I had found that there were three contexts in which to “prove” my theory and three potential fields and ideas of philosophy that would be impacted by cognitive agency, I made my layout so that there were three major headings: definition, existence, and impact with three subheadings each. This helped me focus my research on each part. It also helped me later make a research schedule in which I did research and wrote a part of the essay every day according to the subheadings. While this isn’t necessarily as important, naming the headings and subheadings can be another way to focus your research and stop you from opening books or articles that seem to coincide with your topic but doesn’t really.
Step 4: Bulk of research - break it down. This is the biggest step in all of the process and generally what students dread the most. Going through dozens of academic journals and books can seem tedious. However, carefully annotating and checking for footnotes is a sure way to make sure the research you are doing is important to your actual essay/thesis. Make sure to pace yourself and not do all of your research in one week and burn yourself out.
Step 5: Writing and Researching. One advice I got when I was beginning my thesis in high school was to research first and write later. However, I don’t agree with that method. Personally, I was able to work better when I researched a bit, wrote a bit, and then researched more. When I was done with subheading, I reread over what I wrote now that I saw the full picture and made the according edits. This worked better for me because I was able to write down specific details I would not have remembered if I researched first and then wrote the whole subheading. Once you understand the structure of your research paper, then you can allocate different parts for different days. This leaves you with sufficient time to write and research a chunk each day.
Step 6: Proofread. After you have finished writing and researching the paper, your energy will be sapped. However, you should spend a day simply going over the paper and checking the flow and spelling. Sometimes when you break down your research paper into parts and write it in bits and pieces, you’ll find that it does not flow very well. Proofreading is necessary to eliminate that.
This process can take weeks to months to years, but it’s important to never give up. You may be running into a wall in any of the steps, but remember to then widen your scope of research to filter in new ideas and perhaps even take your research paper a whole new direction. I knew people who did a great job with their research papers and didn’t narrow down question until they were almost done/done. These steps have been how I have navigated through research, but everyone is different. You may like to research all first and then write or not specify the topic entirely until the end.
Resources:
Here are some links where I was able to find some of my academic journals (sorry this is a bit centric on what I used for my thesis in high school)
For all subjects:
JSTOR ;
Academia * ;
Google Books * (do not underestimate this! Sometimes whole books are published here and only miss a couple of sections) ;
Questia ;
Frontiers * ;
Directory of Open Access Journals *
For science: National Center for Biotechnology *
For philosophy: Philpapers *
*Can be free downloads
If anyone knows anymore resources please add them!