Question

I am having a difficult time understanding what my professor is looking for in this research paper and he told me to reread his outline... I am at a loss of how to structure my research paper and would appreciate some quidence.

Class: Healthcare Informatics

Research paper topic: Information technology in public health disaster emergencies.

Outline:

-Your task is to produce a review of published literature (at least 70% of sources to be refereed journal papers, the rest can be from secondary sources).

-The paper report needs to have a title, table of contents, introduction, a main body in several sections presenting the results of your research of literature sources on the specified topic, conclusion, At the end of the paper list your references (sources of information). Use only the Harvard notation for references, a copy of which is provided by your instructor electronically) or the APA reference guide (The Harvard notation is using a subset of the APA rules, hence they are very similar).

-5-20 line abstract as one paragraph (note that it is written at the very end after the paper is finished). (I am also confused as to what I am supposed to put in this abstract where I feel what the paper is supposed to be is on my findings from various conducted research, so wouldnt't this be the same as my conclusion and thoughts throughout the essay? I feel in this case it is repatative where I am not conducting my own research or looking for a solution to anything, I am just recording information that is already out there about this topic.... Or again I could be totally off on what he is looking for..)

-The paper needs to be not longer than 10 pages single spaced text

-needs to present a synthesized analysis of the particular topic as a Word report.

-needs to have a separate PPT presentation outlining the main points in the paper (of no more than 12 slides)

Thank you in advance for any insight you can give me.

Answer 1

Hi, I wish i can write the entire research paper. But there are certain limitations like word limit for me to answer this question. Since you have already mentioned to provide you with some insights on as to how to start the research paper.

Firstly, your research paper has to have a review of an already published paper (70% of it) and the rest can be added by your own knowledge after you gain while giving in the 70% of the input from the published paper. Now, how do we find the 70% of the information from a published paper? That is something you will have to look for from databases such as EBSCOHOST. Go to the ebscohost login page and try finding information related to your topic.If you have a problem with EBSCOHOST, I would request you to visit googlescholar and retrieve the information from there.

Next, I am sure that you can tackle the table of contents and the introduction part on your own. When it comes to abstract, abstracts give us a summarised version of the topic and these are presented normally at the very beginning of the report. Now, in your case, you are askd to put it at the end of the report. So, the 70% -80% contents of the abstract should be the sumamrised version of the 70% information that you gather from published papers and the 20-30% of the remaining abstract should be somthing that you have learnt or concluded from your findings.

Since the paper need not be longer than 10 pages. One page of abstract would do wonders.

Make sure that you only add the important headings of your work in the PPT and do not add abstract in your PPT.

All the best!