Use footnotes only for citations
Include a literature review of about 2-3 pages
incorporate the following basic parts: the puzzle or question animating the project; a discussion of the usual answers; the presentation of your answer; your method for gathering evidence; and the significance of the project. Once you have articulated your puzzle – and you must be able to clearly and plainly state it, usually in one, single paragraph – you will need to discuss the ‘usual suspects’. In other words, what are the typical answers and who gives them. This serves
to provide the reader with a sense of how your project fits in and how extant literature seems to
miss or leave unanswered the puzzle at the heart of your design. Clearly there is a critical element
here: you should not only summarize this work but provide a balanced assessment of its relevance and merits as well. Because your design is relatively brief, you must be expedient and choose your sources wisely. but the next stage of your design
should turn to address the deficiencies described in the previous section by providing the answer
you intend to give. Essentially, what is your argument? I emphasize this term to draw our attention
to a very important condition: your research design should not merely be descriptive. Instead your
project must be driven by a central claim (read: hypothesis) that you advance to reconcile the initial
puzzle. And like your puzzle, this argument must be expressed clearly and concisely. You do not want your reader to wonder what exactly you are trying to do. You must also refine your claim so that it is ultimately falsifiable. At first glance this may seem strange: construct an argument that can be proven wrong? Isn’t the goal to be right?
Include the chart that is in the brief design in the research paper.
