A Student's Online Guide to History
HOW TO RESEARCH A PAPER: CREATING A RESEARCH OUTLINE

A research outline is different from the one you will create when you write your paper. A research outline helps you to investigate your theme in an organized way. It tells you which parts of your research should come first.

Sample Research Outline
Here is a sample research outline for investigating the topic of agrarian reform in the Mexican Revolution, which, after preliminary research, led to the theme: "The Land Reform Program of Emiliano Zapata."

Research Outline:  Things I need to do before I begin. Take a tour of the library. Find out what kinds of information are kept where. Leave myself enough time to do all of the tasks I list.

Task #1: [Background] Gain a general knowledge of the Mexican Revolution from a good encyclopedia or textbook. Time = 1 day.

Task #2: [Background] Learn about land reform before the revolution. An encyclopedia or a general history of Mexico in the 19th century. Time = 1 day.

Task #3: [Information about Zapata] Life in Ananecquilco, Morelos (village and state where Zapata grew up). A biography of Zapata, and a book or articles examining the changes in village life in Morelos in the decades before 1910. Time = 3 days.

Task #4: [Information about land reform] Books, articles, and documents about how the villagers lost their lands before 1910. Time = 3 days.

Task #5: [Zapata’s role in the effort to regain village lands] Sources that examine Zapata’s early career as a village leader. Time = 3 days.

Task #6: [The period of the Revolution, 1910–1920] Sources examining the role of Zapata and his followers in the revolution. Time = 4 days.

Task #7: [Specific land reform programs] Books (maybe old ones on microfilm or microfiche) that contain quotations from or copies of the actual proposals by Zapata. Time = 2 days.

Task #8: [The fate of the programs] Read about the final years of the revolution and of the fate of Zapata (assassinated in 1919). Time = 2 days.

Not all research outlines need to be this specific. The time frame, in particular, is merely for purposes of illustration. It contains twenty-one days of research, assuming that you spend about two or three hours each day conducting research and reading. Your particular assignment may require more or less time, depending on the length of your paper and the importance given to it by your instructor. (Remember this is only time needed for research. Writing your paper will, of course, take additional time.) Moreover, the outline is only suggestive. Your own research may move back and forth among the tasks (especially the later ones) on a given day in the library. While you are gathering material on Zapata’s early life, you may come across a book about his land program. In fact, the same book may discuss both.

Using your research outline
The information in the library will not be neatly divided into the tasks you have laid out. The purpose in organizing your research in a formal way, even if the actual process is much messier, is that your research has a sense of direction that it otherwise would lack. If you don’t know what kinds of sources to look for first, which to read first, and which to read later on, you may try to take notes on specific land reform proposals before you even know who Zapata was or how long the revolution lasted. Even if you cannot actually follow an outline like the one above, just making it and having it in mind as you do your research will help you. In short, don’t begin serious research until you have a clear idea of what you will be looking for. You may change directions (even change your theme) after some background reading, and you can always adjust your outline. It is better to have a research outline that you can change than none at all.

After conducting preliminary research to help you decide what part of your topic interests you most, narrowing it to manageable size, and formulating a theme and a research outline to direct your research, you will be ready to seek out sources of information. The library catalog will help you create a list of books, articles, and other relevant sources. If these works lead you to specific sources (e.g., the title of a book or the volume of a periodical), the next step is to see whether your school library has them. You will also want to know of any other books, articles, and so on that your library possesses on your topic. To find these sources, you will first have to learn how to conduct library research.