Structure of a quantitative empirical research paper

Organization

Most quantitative empirical research projects have a similar structure that includes a very similar set of sections. These are detailed below.

Formatting will usually vary between journals (e.g., APA6, Chicago, MLA, etc) but will almost always be stipulated.

Front matter

Not a formal section but a critical piece. This usually includes:

• Titlepage or other title information including:
  • The full title of the paper
  • The name, affiliation, and email of each author
  • A note (often in a footnote) thanking others for support
• An abstract, usually between 150-250 words

Introduction

Abstracts should be short, usually not more than 5-6 papers and should do the following things:

• Introduce and motivate your work.
• Establish the importance, relevance, and impact of your work providing a clear answer to the question, "Why should a reader care?"
• In the final paragraph, lay out the organization of the rest of the paper.

Background

I have more general advice on this elsewhere on the wiki but the important point is that the background really only needs to do two things:

1. Define the terms you'll be using in your study.
2. Build up the rationale for your hypotheses.

Critically, a background section is not a comprehensive literature review. It should be a coherant argument that explains and presents your research questions.

The background section should end with your hypothesis or hypotheses. If you have several distinct hypotheses, you can end each subsection with the hypothesis once you have presented the terms and rationales for each.

Research Design

This section should present details of how you carried out your study. Usually, it will includes subsections that touch on (if they are not explicitly named):

Empirical Setting

Describe the site of your research in detail.

Research Ethics

Describe any IRB approval you carried out for this research. If your work does not require IRB approval, describe this and explain how your work minimizes risks to the human subjects whose data is captured in your dataset.

Procedures

Describe the process that you used to collect your data. Detail choices you made along the way that include or excluded any data.

Measures

Describe every variable you included in your model and how it was constructed and how it is coded. It usually makes sense to start with dependent variables, then focus on question predictors, and finally talk about control variables.

Sample

Describe your sample. This will include the number of observations in your sample but also any other details or summary statistics that help us understand the nature of the sample you have collected.. This is an appropriate place to include your tables of univariate and bivariate statistics.

Analytic Plan

The analytic plan should detail all the of the analyses that you perfromed. Typically, this includes specifying the regression model that you've used by writing out the equation. You should mention what type of model you used and you should explain why you believe it is the appropriate method.

Findings

With good preparation a findings section can be very short.

Appendix

Typically, all scholarly manuscripts follow a similar organizational template.

While the template below does not suit every research report exactly, it is useful to work from this template and consider how your own paper fits into it or requires modification. The template usually requires double, or one and a half line, spacing, one inch margins all the way round, and a running head that excerpts the title. And, don’t forget that every major style manual – APA, SRCD, MLA – stipulate very strongly that you must write in the active, not the passive voice! The latter died with Queen Victoria. Then, the template requires that some, or all, of the following sections be included in the paper, usually in the listed order: 1. Cover Sheet. The first page is usually a cover sheet on which you list the full title of your paper (with its colon!), and your name and affiliation. You can also include an author’s footnote in which you celebrate the support and help of important others. 2. Abstract. On the second page, you usually present an abstract, again with a full title at the top, but often you can omit your name and affiliation. 3. Introduction. On the third page, you begin your paper proper, starting with a full title at the top, but often omitting your name and affiliation. On this page, you begin a brief introductory section of three to four paragraphs in which you: (a) introduce and motivate the broad research theme that drives your work, (b) establish its educational, practical and/or scholarly importance, and (c) pre- organize your reader to comprehend the coming organization of the paper itself.

Credit

Much of this material is drawn and adapted from John B. Willett's "Structure of a Scholarly Research Paper."