Description
Research Paper: requirements & instructions
Perform the research on the subject you posted on the research proposal discussion board. Review my feedback on your proposal and reply to me with any questions. Research on environmental health problems should include scientific evidence supporting the associations between [the environmentally hazardous substances] and [the health effect (diseases)]. To investigate the associations (often aims causal relationships), you will have to explain about appropriate exposures and characteristics of health effects.
Section format and ideal word counts per sections
1) Introduction (300-350 words): The general backgrounds, interesting aspects, and objectives
2) Methodology (200 – 250 words): Description of cited research focusing on study designs and population studied
3)Research and Discussion (1,400 – 1,750 words): This section incorporates the studies done from credible sources. Group the referenced contents based on the subjects and organize into subsections under the Research and Discussion. Paraphrase multiple studies into your own words. Do not list one study by another. The results are the facts observed. Discussions are the interpretations of the results.
4) Conclusions (100 – 150 words): The most clarified findings that are suggested from your study. Never state your conclusion like this, ‘Although many studies found many things, it is still unclear about the exposure to a toxic substance and its association with a disease. More studies are needed.’
Do’s:
Focus on the association between cause and effect. It is highly recommended to focus on one substance (or groups of chemicals called congeners) to one specific health outcome.
Find reliable sources that support the association (recently published peer-reviewed research articles since 2010).
Incorporate the various research for explaining the current knowledge on the topic. Be specific. Results and discussion should be more than 2/3 of the overall paper (roughly over 1,400 words to 1,750 words).
The length of the paper should be between 2,000 words to 2,500 (from title to the end of the conclusion). The word count will exclude the list of references (bibliography, citation).
Follow the APA style for in-text citation and list of references.
Refer to at least 5 references. No more than 10 references though.
Complete with clear conclusions. The conclusion should be the answers to your questions.
Don’ts:
Don’t spend too many paragraphs to explain the well known general facts like, “what is the substance, where we can find, how the disease is diagnosed.” Most often it happens in the lengthy introduction and too much detail in methods. The more you explain these, the more you waste. This should be brief and clear. Focus more on the association of the substance and disease.
Don’t rely on unreliable sources, such as news articles. Find the most reliable sources, such as more prominent scientific journals or scientists. Peer-reviewed is the key.
Don’t use too much information from webpages, even from federal agencies.
Don’t copy and paste (like every sentence is “quoted”). Use your own word and paraphrase everything and reorganize based on your thoughts and ideas.
Don’t cite other’s works wrong. This can be lengthy in-text citation include too many details like including full names of every author and institutional info etc. Just follow the rules; citing the research works not used, not citing research referred. These are considered plagiarism.
Don’t go over the Turnitin similarity report (SR) score of 20%. It is considered as plagiarism. You will get a 50% point deduction from your grade when your SR% is over 20% and less than 33%. If SR% is higher than 33%, the violation is severe. Your research paper will get zero points. You will be reported to the University for plagiarism. To avoid this you should submit the draft as early as possible so that you can have a chance to review your report and fix the potential problem before the last minute.
Don’t miss the submission of the paper. This is a requirement for this course as an upper-level General Education course. Missing this assignment will end with the F grade of the course.
Instruction for submission: Use this link to upload the research paper.
You can submit multiple times by due date/time. It is a great advantage that you can review the Similarity report on your draft to fix the problem before final submission. I strongly encourage you to submit the research paper earlier than the deadline because it may take two days to see your similarity report, especially near the end of the semester due to massive demand. If you want to use this advantage, I would recommend you submit the first draft as early as possible and improve your paper avoiding plagiarism based on the similarity report.
Only the last submission will be graded. Make sure you submit the final version at the end.
Only the MS office Doc format will be accepted. Txt, pages, or pdf formats are not allowed. Some formats are incompatible with Turnitin. It will delay grading.
The list of references will be excluded for plagiarism detection by Turnitin.