Research Project Reports

        The report should be formatted like any other paper, with a title, page numbering, Works Cited section, and properly formed paragraphs in the body.  You aren't trying to persuade your readers about much.  You only are reporting the results of a focused investigation to answer a specific question. 

• The introduction should introduce the question you are trying to answer (about the need for data or expert opinion or both) and explain why your paper's best readers need the answer to that question as part of an improved draft of your paper. 
• The body should explain what you are doing to answer it.  That is the most important part of this report, because it tells me what you have learned about college-level research sources and strategies.  This should include what search engines you used, what bibliographic indices you instructed them to search, and how you constructed your search terms (e.g., what you typed in the search windows).  You also should mention people you asked for assistance and describe the help they gave you.
• Finally, in the conclusion, tell me what you discovered and give me one example of how the information you have retrieved will improve the paper.  End the paper with a proper Works Cited section.

        Be careful to support the authority of any source (in your text or in an endnote) if your best readers are not likely to accept it as expert based on the Works Cited information, alone.  Remember that, except for peer-reviewed journals and university press books, you have to be skeptical about any source's accuracy, wisdom, and freedom from distorting bias.  Non-peer-reviewed sources are entirely acceptable for English 104 papers, but you have to do a careful job of investigating their qualifications, and you have to defend potentially questionable sources if you decide to use them.  For non-peer-reviewed authors, consider their training, work experience, rank or membership in professional societies, and other publications in reputable journals or presses as evidence of their reliability.