Final Paper
You must submit a 3,000 – 3,500-word final research paper that is structured as an academic article in the field of comparative historical sociology building on your Initial Proposal and Annotated Bibliography to explain how and why a historical outcome happened the way that it happened. This requires you to select (at minimum) 8 credible sources that will help you synthesize an argument.
Format and Organization of the Final Paper
At the top of the first page, please put a title for the paper and your name. Your paper should be organized into the following sections. Use headings to separate sections or subsections:
Abstract
In no more than 150-words, include the motivation for the paper, your thesis, the methods you used, the main empirical findings, and the main conclusion. This is a too long; didn’t read (TL;DR), meaning there should be no new information here, but rather it should have the key parts of your paper neatly summarized. You can copy and paste from your paper. The abstract is typically written last and does not count as part of the 3,000 – 3,500-word limit.
Introduction
A brief description of the historical outcome, your research question (RQ), a brief description of what kinds of sources you draw on to help you answer your questions (e.g., newspaper articles from when the event occurred), and short summary of the answer(s) you found. Provide an answer to the dreaded so what question: why should anyone be interested in the project you are proposing to do?
Optional: Description of Outcome (max. 500 words) You may want to have a section where you describe your historical outcome in more detail before going into its causes, especially if it seems necessary for understanding the different possible explanations.
Methods
What are the explicit comparative historical methods that you will be using to answer your question? Why are these methods appropriate? You must include where you will find your data, how you will analyze the data, and why the data and the analysis strategy are appropriate for your research question. To do this effectively, you must explicitly and directly cite either course readings or lectures on methods. For example, if you are process tracing, you must directly quote the readings or lecture from “Processes and Mechanisms” within this section.
Findings and Discussion
What is the case(s) you are using as the empirical evidence to support your claims (the answers to your research question; your thesis)? You must explicitly define the case(s), the case boundaries (what is part of the case and what is not part of the case), and support your decision for why the case(s) you chose are appropriate. In so doing, you must analyze evidence and/or arguments from sources that answer your RQ in a synthetic way; you are not merely telling us what happened, but why and how it happened in the way that you are claiming it happened.
Conclusion
Restate your argument (the answer to your research question). Answer the so what question and why it matters that this historical outcome happened the way in which it happened. Discuss any counterfactuals (or paths not taken) and how the historical outcome would have been different if those paths were taken.
References
Please follow the American Psychology Association (APA) style for in-text citations and your list of references. At the end of your paper, the list of references should start on a separate page from the rest of the text and be formatted in APA Style.
Furthermore, you must include an in-text citation anytime you are drawing on information from a source in a paragraph. The in-text citation can either go after the first sentence or at the end of the paragraph. In addition, whenever you make a factual claim, you need to back it up with an in- text citation to a credible source. Don’t make claims that aren’t confirmed by sources.
Helpful Guides on Sources and Synthesis
Sources
You must find at least 8 credible sources from which to incorporate information/evidence for your research paper. See the feedback on your annotated bibliography to determine how many more sources you need to find at this stage of your research. If some of the sources you described on your annotated bibliography were not credible or useful, then you’ll need to find others. You may need more than 8 sources to do a good job of answering your research question; it depends how much information you can get out of each source. For example, 8 full-length books would probably be sufficient, but 8 brief news articles would not be. Some of your sources can just provide information about the historical outcome itself. However, the bulk of your sources should help you answer your research question by addressing the possible causes of (or explanations for) the outcome. You can use assigned readings and lectures from Sociology 110 as sources for your paper, but they do not count towards the requirement to have at least 8 sources.
Synthesis in Research and Writing
For your final paper, you will need to synthesize information from numerous sources. One element of this is fact-checking. For claims about your topic (what happened, who was involved, etc.) try to find multiple sources to confirm that these claims are accurate. Then, when you reference these facts in your paper, cite multiple sources at once to show they are well-supported. (You can also point out disagreements over key facts). We expect to see some indications of fact-checking in your final paper.
Another way you can synthesize information from multiple sources is by presenting it in the form of a narrative. For a narrative, you would put most (or all) of the information you’ve found in a chronological order. Instead of talking about each source separately, you would present each piece of information where it fits temporally. Presenting information in a narrative will not necessarily work well for all topics, though. (You can also present some information in narrative form, and other information in non-chronological order).
A third way of synthesizing information is identifying similarities and differences in how the sources answer your research question. As mentioned above, most of the sources you use should either implicitly or explicitly tell you about why the outcome occurred. Sort your sources by the different explanations they offer. Then, in the paper itself, you can make it clear which sources are agreeing on a particular explanation and contrast them with sources that present a different explanation. You might even organize your paper into sections, with each presenting a different explanation, then assess which one(s) is most convincing at the end. (This might not work well for all topics)