HOW TO RESEARCH A PAPER: ORGANIZING YOUR RESEARCH
During the process of research you are aided by your research outline which helps you to determine what sources to seek first and when to read them. When your reading is finished (or almost finished), it is time to arrange all those notes and note cards so that you can create a paper out of them. It is time to prepare a writing (as opposed to a research) outline. Take a good look at your note cards and especially at the headings that you placed in the corners of the cards. It is from among these headings that you should find the major parts of your theme.
Preparing a Writing Outline
If your topic is the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and you have narrowed it to the theme, "Origins of the 1947 Partition of Palestine," several major points should have appeared in your reading and should be reflected in your notes and in the headings to your note cards. The claims of three parties (Arab, Jewish, British) were no doubt mentioned in many of your readings. As a result, you should have notes concerning Arab nationalism, Zionism, and British colonial policy. These three perspectives are natural sections of your paper, each with a place in the writing outline. The shifting state of opinion within the United Nations (the body that would vote on the partition of Palestine) and the role of the United States (the most important power outside the region) should have appeared in your research and in your notes as well. This suggests two more possible sections for your paper. If your notes reflect what your research uncovered about your theme, you should have more notes, say, on the British decision to withdraw from Palestine than you do, say, on the Balfour Declaration of 1917. That declaration should be mentioned in your paper, but the British decision to withdraw is much closer to your topic and thus deserves a section rather than a mention. That is why, as noted above, British colonial policy should be an important part of your writing outline. Be guided by your notes. If your research has been broad and thorough and your notes contain material closely related to your theme, you will end up with more notes on some points than others.
Choosing a method of organization for your paper
Once you have a general plan for the parts of your paper, the next question is: In what order should you include them in your paper? If your theme is "The Impact of the Great Depression on African Americans," you may decide to deal with the theme chronologically and separate your paper into sections dealing with the period before 1929, the Hoover years, the early New Deal, and the late New Deal. Or perhaps you want to cover the subject topically, setting up separate sections on African American reactions to economic discrimination, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the U.S. Communist Party, organized labor, and New Deal legislation. Or perhaps you will want to consider the ideas of important African American leaders and writers of the day, setting up sections dealing with E. Franklin Frazier, Richard Wright, Ralph Bunche, W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Claude McKay.
Chronological organization
A chronological approach begins with events that predate those that are the main focus of the paper. It then moves, step by step, through stages that group together spans of time. These spans may be in years, decades, or—for a very broad topic—centuries. Each time span is later than the one preceding it, and they generally do not overlap.
Time spans do not have to be the same length. It is best to use larger time units when discussing events that occurred long before the main events covered in the paper and to use smaller units when covering the period closest to the main events. A different rule applies to the length of each section of the paper: those portions dealing with periods removed from central events should be briefer than those portions close in time to such events.
A common problem with chronological organization is determining how far back in time to begin. Do you start ten or a hundred years before the time of the main events of the paper? A similar problem is determining where to stop. Do you stop with the main events themselves, or do you add short sections covering later periods as well? There is no hard and fast rule, but it is wise not to cover too much ground. That is, don't start too long before or end too long after the principal events of your topic. A paper covering a long period of time can be very unwieldy, and is best handled by another form of organization.
Sample chronological outlineJapanese invasion of Indochina turns U.S. attention to the area. (1940-41)
U.S. policy toward Southeast Asia in W. W. II (1942-45)
Strategy against Japan
Aid for anti-Japanese guerrillas in Vietnam
The U.S. military and the Viet Minh
U.S. attitude toward the return of French control (1945-49)
Defeat of Japan
Creation of a government by the Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh
Tensions between U.S. and French goals in Vietnam
Impact of the Cold War (1949-54)
The "fall" of China and its impact on U.S. policy
Need for French involvement in NATO
War in Korea and the "Containment" of Communism
Geneva Conference and the Creation of the Republic of South Vietnam (1954-1960)
France defeated by the Viet Minh
The Geneva Conference
The roles in the conference of: France, China, the Soviet Union, and the United States
The United States and the Government of Ngo Dinh Diem
The failure of reform efforts in the South
The rise of insurgency in the South
Aid from the North
United States defends the South from "aggression" from the North (1960-1963)
The role of U.S. advisors
Instability in the government of South Vietnam
The overthrow of Diem’s government
Growing U.S. military involvement to prevent the defeat of the Saigon government (1963-68)
U.S. ground troops sent to Vietnam
The escalation of the air war
Conclusion (1968- )
Military stalemate in Vietnam
Growing domestic opposition to the war
The decision to withdraw from Vietnam
The lessons to be learned
Note that the sections are in almost perfect chronological order. Don't expect to write your paper in fixed time compartments, however. There are bound to be sections that run into each other. In fact, to tie your paper together, some overlap between sections is necessary.
Topical organization
A topical form of organization is suited for more general themes—those that deal with ideas, social systems, or other complex phenomena that involve a mixture of political, social, economic, cultural, and intellectual backgrounds. In this form of organization, the task is not so much to build a historical sequence leading up to a particular event, but to weave a fabric composed of the many separate lines of historical development that form the background to the main topic. In some cases, the same topic can be organized by either method.
Sample topical outline
Anti-communism in America
The Red Scare after World War I
The New Deal and the debate over American "socialism"
The cultural bases of anticommunism
The Cold War and resurgence of anticommunism in the United States
The Soviet Union as a threat to the American "way of life" The "loss" of China"the domestic political debate
Stalemate in Korea"the domestic political debate
U.S. interests in Southeast Asia
Strategic positions and economic investments
The "domino theory"
Debate over U.S. involvement in Vietnam
The debate within the U.S. government
The debate in Congress
The debate in the universities
Conclusion
The forces that drew the United States into Vietnam
Contemporary judgments about U.S. involvement in Vietnam
This paper covers some of the same ground as the chronologically organized one. Nevertheless, this particular organization leads to a different paper from the first one. In the final analysis, the outline that you create will reflect the nature of your interest in your theme, the kind of research materials you have uncovered, and the way they have influenced your thinking.
Organizing Your Notes
Go back to your notes and decide which section of the paper they are most relevant to. For example, the notes concerning the impact of the Korean war on U.S. involvement in Vietnam, which you took from a book about the Cold War in Asia, should become the basis for the section in the chronologically organized paper named "War in Korea and the ‘Containment’ of Communism," or the section in the topically organized paper named "Stalemate in Korea—the domestic political debate."
Mark each group of notes (usually in the upper right-hand corner) with the name of the section of the outline to which they are most directly related. Some groups of notes will not neatly fit in just one section; in that case, mark two or more section headings in the corner. If you cannot find any place in your outline where certain notes go, then something is wrong. Either don't use this set of notes, because they are not dealt with in the outline, or change the outline to accommodate them.
Make sure that you have enough information on each section of your outline to do it justice. If, looking at your notes, you see a mismatch between a section of the outline and the notes needed to support it, you must alter or eliminate that section or, more likely, reread the relevant sources and take notes more directly connected with the point you want to cover in your outline. Notes and outlines are rarely in perfect harmony at the outset.
Be sure you have the notes you need. Don't wait until the paper is half written to discover that an important part lacks the kind of documentation it should have.
The piles of note cards and the kinds of information they contain have helped you to create a writing outline (at least a tentative one) for your paper. Now that the outline is done: