Research Topic and Bibliography

1. You should at least find 10-15 articles or books that relate to your research. Focus on academic sources.

2. Read the articles and find out

a. how scholars write research papers (especially quantitative papers).

b. how scholars convince you that their works are original.

c. how long their bibliographies are.

d. how they cite sources

e. what you can do in your research to contribute to our knowledge.

f. what scholars are trying to explain. For example, they may be interested in the impact of electoral rules on party systems. In this example, they are trying to explain cross-national variations of party systems by electoral rules.

Other examples

a. The impact of economic growth (Independent Variable) on democratization (Dependent Variable)

b. The impact of gender (IV) on party support (DV)

c. The impact of race (IV) on voting behavior (DV)

d. The impact of guns (IV) on crime rates (DV)

4. Create your own bibliography.

5. Start to write the introduction of your paper and try to convince me that your work is original. In other words, if your bibliography contains only ten articles, I will not be convinced that your work is original since you have not checked the literature thoroughly.

6. You do not turn in your introduction, yet.

7. Remember that you do not have to give me a complete list at this point. You will keep adding articles and books as you study more about your research topic.

8. Look for data. Check my web pages. You may find some data that are related to your topic.

http://www.bsu.edu/web/mnishikawa