HNSC 2109W Principles in Health Sciences

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Research Paper Outline
Please follow the instructions in this document.
You will be severely penalized for missing content, as well as
spelling/grammar/writing issues!
Your research paper: What do you have
so far?
 A “working” topic and thesis
 Some sources about your topic (peer reviewed journals,
books, etc)
 A lot of ideas
 The paper requirements
You are ready to write an outline!
HNSC 2109W Principles in Health Sciences
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What is the point of an outline?
 To help you organize your ideas about your topic
 Identify what is missing
 Weed things out if there is too much information
 To help you map out your paper and see it as a single
coherent work
 To demonstrate to me that you have been putting in time and
effort to gather sources, read sources, think about the topic
and follow the guidelines of the paper
 Be sure to read the documents pertaining to the paper that
have been posted on Blackboard!
Remember the parameters of the final
paper
 Your 7-8 page paper must, at minimum, consist of the
following sections:
 I. Introduction
 II. Statistical overview
 III. Different explanations for the cause/contributors of the
problem (e.g., biological, social)
 IV. Different types of interventions to address the problem (e.g.,
health education aimed at individuals or new policies)
 V. Conclusion
 VI. Bibliography (not included in page count)
8ish
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The outline you submit must have…
 Each of the 6 sections of your paper, clearly labeled
 An approximate page count for each section
 Bullet points with some kind of information pertinent to that
section under each heading (see instructions for specific
sections). These bullet points must be in full, grammatically
correct sentences.
I. Name of Section (about _ pages)  Bullet point A  Bullet point B  Bullet point C, etc. Introduction I. Introduction (about pages)
 Thesis statement
 Roadmap statement (tentative is okay)
 A roadmap statement presents to your reader what you will be “doing” in
your paper. For example, “In this paper, I will examine X, Y, and Z”.
 Definition of health condition
 Other stuff you think is important for a reader to know
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Statistical Overview
II. Statistical Overview (about pages)  How many people does the condition affect generally?  May be presented as percentages (15% of the adult population) or rates (150 per 1,000 adults)  Rates are generally used when there is a low prevalence or incidence rate such that a % would look weird  0.004% of live births versus 4 per 100,000 live births  Be very clear about the denominator (e.g., are you talk about children or adults? Men or women? Live births? etc)  Your specific focus or population  Same as above  Any other statistical information that will help the reader grasp how the size and scope of the problem (e.g., are rates increasing or decreasing?) Different explanations for the cause/contributors (e.g., biological, social) III. Different explanations for the cause/contributors (about pages)
Biological cause/contributor
 Back it up with sources
Social cause/contributor
 Back it up with sources
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Different types of interventions (e.g., health
education aimed at individuals or new policies)
IV. Different types of interventions to address the problem
(about pages)
 Intervention A
 Intervention B, etc
Conclusion
V. Conclusion (about _ pages)
 Restate your thesis statement
 Recap what you covered in paper
 Some kind of synthesis of the various sections (can be
tentative)
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Bibliography
VI. References
 All the references you are planning on using
 References must be in APA style
 I need to be able to tell what type of document each source is
(e.g., peer reviewed journal, book, newspaper, etc.)
A few things to remember about the
outline requirements
 Again, bullet points must be in full, grammatically correct
sentences.
 Double-spaced, 12 point font, 1 inch margins, page numbers
 There is no page limit
 Some sections may be more developed than others. The point
is to see where you need further work (e.g., doing research,
getting sources, developing ideas).