Project...Research Paper Option

Research Paper Tutorial

Initial Research

Now that you have a topic of interest, and maybe even a question, it is time to get a FEEL for the research that is out there.

First of all, we need to go back to the textbook and build on that source...then we are going to use that wonderful, huge, encyclopedia of information...the web!

In the text where I found my Female Gangs topic there was a researcher listed named Egley. It was printed in the text as follows:

"Today females are more visible in some previously all-male gangs as well as in female gangs (Egley, 2000)"

Now this means that in the year 2000, Egley published a research paper about female gangs! (Remember what I said about a Research Paper really being a Literature Review at this level? Well, it is very likely that this article by Egley is not only "literature" but it is also "Peer-Reviewed"...which we will get to later.)

This might be a good initial source of information so I'm going to go to the back of the book and look up the actual article that Egley wrote in 2000. You will find all the sources from your text in a section called "References" (Make note of this as YOUR paper is going to have a section at the back called "References" as well...where you are going to write down all the sources of YOUR information!)

Here is the reference (in APA format) that I found...

(by the way, the references in the back of this particualar text were NOT written in APA format...too bad. So, I had to rewrite it...I will go more into that in the APA section of this Tutorial.)

Now, this was not an article, it is a publication or a book...but, heck, I didn't even know there was something called the "National Youth Gang Survey", this is definately a good lead! Let's see if we can get it for free!

I Googled "National Youth Gang Survey" and was able to get the 2004 National Youth Gang Survey.

I found something else though...that is even more important...Since 1995 the National Youth Gang Center has conducted this survey...and they have their own website!!!

http://www.iir.com/NYGC/

I'm pretty sure I will be coming back to this website soon!

Using the Web for Initial Research

I've already made some progress in terms of initial research on my question...but I can do more. I'm going to do some initial searches in Google to help me get a better handle on my topic and give me some leads.

First I'm going to go "topical". My subject matter is "female gangs" and "pregnancy" so I'm going to type these into the Google search engine...be sure to put quotes on them as this will make sure that Google searches for pages that have "female gang" not "female" only or "gang" only.

I got 791 hits but some good ones right up front. Check these out...

• http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p167984_index.html
• https://drum.umd.edu/dspace/bitstream/1903/4073/1/umi-umd-3820.pdf *
• http://www.uri.edu/personal/mpet4228/
• http://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/jjbul2001_3_3/contents.html
• http://yas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/36/3/333 *
  

OK, now this is just a sample of some leads, but I want to point out something.

Notice that I do not have any websites that are from About.com or Ask.com or even Wikipedia. I'm selecting better sources of information, more professional. I want to be sure that the information I get is credible and written by professionals in the field.

Even from these few sources I have a sense of my topic and some details.

• Female gangs and females in gangs is becoming more popular
• Many females exit gangs when they are pregnant
• The lifestyle of female gang members puts them and their child at risk

And this is just from scanning the titles and contents of these pages! However, there is some even more important information that I'm getting from these sites...NAMES! On each of these sites there are researchers listed that did the initial work that these websites use (in fact two of my sources, marked with a * above are actually articles by these authors)

I did another search typing in the terms "all-female gangs" and "pregnancy" and got a slew of other good hits...be creative!

Now, the information on these pages is OK, and I can make notes and I can use them in my paper. But I want to go to the SOURCE...I want to get to the bottom of this question so I'm going to now see if I can find what these people have written. I'm going to see if I can find some Peer-Reviewed Articles...the pro stuff!

Links for Research Paper Tutorial

Introduction | Picking a Topic | Initial Research | Peer-Reviewed Articles | Outlining | Structure of a Paper | Giving Credit and Avoiding Plagiarism | Submitting the Paper