What? Why?

This is the basic structure your research project should have. Follow the outline as you construct your final draft. Now that you’ve chosen a topic let’s focus on the introduction. Post the objectives and research questions you wish to work on.

Chapter 1: Introduction
In this section, let the reader know in a few sentences what your project will be addressing. State at the outset what you are interested in researching and why. Explain how the topic of your project is related to your studies. Clearly state your research problem and break it down into a series of more specific research questions, or, whenever feasible, into hypotheses.

Chapter 2: Review of literature
Indicate which studies have already been done on the same or related topics; which questions or hypotheses have been offered; major findings; consistencies and inconsistencies among these findings. Appropriate citations would include recent peer-reviewed articles published in regionally, nationally, or internationally recognized professional journals; books; monographs; etc. After reviewing the literature, place your own research within a context of already existing knowledge. Is your research an attempt to retest previous research findings? Investigating some aspect(s) of previous research in greater depth? Exploring areas suggested by previous findings? Studying a problem about which little or nothing is known, but which needs to be investigated for practical or theoretical reasons?

Chapter 3: Methodology
Identify your research variables and the method of investigation. Specify the research sample -who the subjects of your research will be and how you are going to select them. Give your reasons for choosing such a sample. Identify your procedure. Indicate which techniques of data collection you intend to use (observation, interviews, questionnaires, records, personal documents, etc.), and any relevant information about your research design. Discuss how you wish to analyze your data. Produce a Gantt chart to help you plan the different stages of the research process.

Chapter 4: Results
In this section, the results of the survey (or research) should be presented without comment. It should be divided appropriately. Appropriate charts and graphs should be presented either in this section or in the appendices.

Chapter 5: Conclusion
This section essentially returns to section one and should present how this study answers its research questions and how it fills the knowledge gap presented in chapter two. This section should be clearly divided by the research questions and it should reveal how the results of this study match or do not match other similar research. Great care should be taken to discuss why this study is important and how the results can be used. There should be a large number of citations to aspects that have been previously mentioned in other sections of the study. There should also be a reference to the limitations of the study and where future research should be conducted.

Citations (References)
This section should be a bibliography of all the sources you have used and cited throughout your paper/project. APA style must be used for all citations throughout the text and for your bibliography.

Appendices
Include your research instruments.

Adapted from: http://www.mtsu.edu/universitycollege/mps/pdf/Project_Final_Draft_Outline.pdf