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Research Paper – Structure, Examples and Writing Guide

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Research Paper

Definition:

Research Paper is a written document that presents the author’s original research, analysis, and interpretation of a specific topic or issue.

It is typically based on Empirical Evidence, and may involve qualitative or quantitative research methods, or a combination of both. The purpose of a research paper is to contribute new knowledge or insights to a particular field of study, and to demonstrate the author’s understanding of the existing literature and theories related to the topic.

Structure of Research Paper

The structure of a research paper typically follows a standard format, consisting of several sections that convey specific information about the research study. The following is a detailed explanation of the structure of a research paper:

The title page contains the title of the paper, the name(s) of the author(s), and the affiliation(s) of the author(s). It also includes the date of submission and possibly, the name of the journal or conference where the paper is to be published.

The abstract is a brief summary of the research paper, typically ranging from 100 to 250 words. It should include the research question, the methods used, the key findings, and the implications of the results. The abstract should be written in a concise and clear manner to allow readers to quickly grasp the essence of the research.

Introduction

The introduction section of a research paper provides background information about the research problem, the research question, and the research objectives. It also outlines the significance of the research, the research gap that it aims to fill, and the approach taken to address the research question. Finally, the introduction section ends with a clear statement of the research hypothesis or research question.

Literature Review

The literature review section of a research paper provides an overview of the existing literature on the topic of study. It includes a critical analysis and synthesis of the literature, highlighting the key concepts, themes, and debates. The literature review should also demonstrate the research gap and how the current study seeks to address it.

The methods section of a research paper describes the research design, the sample selection, the data collection and analysis procedures, and the statistical methods used to analyze the data. This section should provide sufficient detail for other researchers to replicate the study.

The results section presents the findings of the research, using tables, graphs, and figures to illustrate the data. The findings should be presented in a clear and concise manner, with reference to the research question and hypothesis.

The discussion section of a research paper interprets the findings and discusses their implications for the research question, the literature review, and the field of study. It should also address the limitations of the study and suggest future research directions.

The conclusion section summarizes the main findings of the study, restates the research question and hypothesis, and provides a final reflection on the significance of the research.

The references section provides a list of all the sources cited in the paper, following a specific citation style such as APA, MLA or Chicago.

How to Write Research Paper

You can write Research Paper by the following guide:

• Choose a Topic: The first step is to select a topic that interests you and is relevant to your field of study. Brainstorm ideas and narrow down to a research question that is specific and researchable.
• Conduct a Literature Review: The literature review helps you identify the gap in the existing research and provides a basis for your research question. It also helps you to develop a theoretical framework and research hypothesis.
• Develop a Thesis Statement : The thesis statement is the main argument of your research paper. It should be clear, concise and specific to your research question.
• Plan your Research: Develop a research plan that outlines the methods, data sources, and data analysis procedures. This will help you to collect and analyze data effectively.
• Collect and Analyze Data: Collect data using various methods such as surveys, interviews, observations, or experiments. Analyze data using statistical tools or other qualitative methods.
• Organize your Paper : Organize your paper into sections such as Introduction, Literature Review, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. Ensure that each section is coherent and follows a logical flow.
• Write your Paper : Start by writing the introduction, followed by the literature review, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. Ensure that your writing is clear, concise, and follows the required formatting and citation styles.
• Edit and Proofread your Paper: Review your paper for grammar and spelling errors, and ensure that it is well-structured and easy to read. Ask someone else to review your paper to get feedback and suggestions for improvement.
• Cite your Sources: Ensure that you properly cite all sources used in your research paper. This is essential for giving credit to the original authors and avoiding plagiarism.

Research Paper Example

Note : The below example research paper is for illustrative purposes only and is not an actual research paper. Actual research papers may have different structures, contents, and formats depending on the field of study, research question, data collection and analysis methods, and other factors. Students should always consult with their professors or supervisors for specific guidelines and expectations for their research papers.

Research Paper Example sample for Students:

Title: The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health among Young Adults

Abstract: This study aims to investigate the impact of social media use on the mental health of young adults. A literature review was conducted to examine the existing research on the topic. A survey was then administered to 200 university students to collect data on their social media use, mental health status, and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. The results showed that social media use is positively associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. The study also found that social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) are significant predictors of mental health problems among young adults.

Introduction: Social media has become an integral part of modern life, particularly among young adults. While social media has many benefits, including increased communication and social connectivity, it has also been associated with negative outcomes, such as addiction, cyberbullying, and mental health problems. This study aims to investigate the impact of social media use on the mental health of young adults.

Literature Review: The literature review highlights the existing research on the impact of social media use on mental health. The review shows that social media use is associated with depression, anxiety, stress, and other mental health problems. The review also identifies the factors that contribute to the negative impact of social media, including social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO.

Methods : A survey was administered to 200 university students to collect data on their social media use, mental health status, and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. The survey included questions on social media use, mental health status (measured using the DASS-21), and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and regression analysis.

Results : The results showed that social media use is positively associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. The study also found that social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO are significant predictors of mental health problems among young adults.

Discussion : The study’s findings suggest that social media use has a negative impact on the mental health of young adults. The study highlights the need for interventions that address the factors contributing to the negative impact of social media, such as social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO.

Conclusion : In conclusion, social media use has a significant impact on the mental health of young adults. The study’s findings underscore the need for interventions that promote healthy social media use and address the negative outcomes associated with social media use. Future research can explore the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing the negative impact of social media on mental health. Additionally, longitudinal studies can investigate the long-term effects of social media use on mental health.

Limitations : The study has some limitations, including the use of self-report measures and a cross-sectional design. The use of self-report measures may result in biased responses, and a cross-sectional design limits the ability to establish causality.

Implications: The study’s findings have implications for mental health professionals, educators, and policymakers. Mental health professionals can use the findings to develop interventions that address the negative impact of social media use on mental health. Educators can incorporate social media literacy into their curriculum to promote healthy social media use among young adults. Policymakers can use the findings to develop policies that protect young adults from the negative outcomes associated with social media use.

References :

• Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2019). Associations between screen time and lower psychological well-being among children and adolescents: Evidence from a population-based study. Preventive medicine reports, 15, 100918.
• Primack, B. A., Shensa, A., Escobar-Viera, C. G., Barrett, E. L., Sidani, J. E., Colditz, J. B., … & James, A. E. (2017). Use of multiple social media platforms and symptoms of depression and anxiety: A nationally-representative study among US young adults. Computers in Human Behavior, 69, 1-9.
• Van der Meer, T. G., & Verhoeven, J. W. (2017). Social media and its impact on academic performance of students. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 16, 383-398.

Appendix : The survey used in this study is provided below.

Social Media and Mental Health Survey

• How often do you use social media per day?
• Less than 30 minutes
• 30 minutes to 1 hour
• 1 to 2 hours
• 2 to 4 hours
• More than 4 hours
• Which social media platforms do you use?
• Others (Please specify)
• How often do you experience the following on social media?
• Social comparison (comparing yourself to others)
• Cyberbullying
• Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
• Have you ever experienced any of the following mental health problems in the past month?
• Do you think social media use has a positive or negative impact on your mental health?
• Very positive
• Somewhat positive
• Somewhat negative
• Very negative
• In your opinion, which factors contribute to the negative impact of social media on mental health?
• Social comparison
• In your opinion, what interventions could be effective in reducing the negative impact of social media on mental health?
• Education on healthy social media use
• Counseling for mental health problems caused by social media
• Social media detox programs
• Regulation of social media use

Thank you for your participation!

Applications of Research Paper

Research papers have several applications in various fields, including:

• Advancing knowledge: Research papers contribute to the advancement of knowledge by generating new insights, theories, and findings that can inform future research and practice. They help to answer important questions, clarify existing knowledge, and identify areas that require further investigation.
• Informing policy: Research papers can inform policy decisions by providing evidence-based recommendations for policymakers. They can help to identify gaps in current policies, evaluate the effectiveness of interventions, and inform the development of new policies and regulations.
• Improving practice: Research papers can improve practice by providing evidence-based guidance for professionals in various fields, including medicine, education, business, and psychology. They can inform the development of best practices, guidelines, and standards of care that can improve outcomes for individuals and organizations.
• Educating students : Research papers are often used as teaching tools in universities and colleges to educate students about research methods, data analysis, and academic writing. They help students to develop critical thinking skills, research skills, and communication skills that are essential for success in many careers.
• Fostering collaboration: Research papers can foster collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers by providing a platform for sharing knowledge and ideas. They can facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations and partnerships that can lead to innovative solutions to complex problems.

When to Write Research Paper

Research papers are typically written when a person has completed a research project or when they have conducted a study and have obtained data or findings that they want to share with the academic or professional community. Research papers are usually written in academic settings, such as universities, but they can also be written in professional settings, such as research organizations, government agencies, or private companies.

Here are some common situations where a person might need to write a research paper:

• For academic purposes: Students in universities and colleges are often required to write research papers as part of their coursework, particularly in the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities. Writing research papers helps students to develop research skills, critical thinking skills, and academic writing skills.
• For publication: Researchers often write research papers to publish their findings in academic journals or to present their work at academic conferences. Publishing research papers is an important way to disseminate research findings to the academic community and to establish oneself as an expert in a particular field.
• To inform policy or practice : Researchers may write research papers to inform policy decisions or to improve practice in various fields. Research findings can be used to inform the development of policies, guidelines, and best practices that can improve outcomes for individuals and organizations.
• To share new insights or ideas: Researchers may write research papers to share new insights or ideas with the academic or professional community. They may present new theories, propose new research methods, or challenge existing paradigms in their field.

Purpose of Research Paper

The purpose of a research paper is to present the results of a study or investigation in a clear, concise, and structured manner. Research papers are written to communicate new knowledge, ideas, or findings to a specific audience, such as researchers, scholars, practitioners, or policymakers. The primary purposes of a research paper are:

• To contribute to the body of knowledge : Research papers aim to add new knowledge or insights to a particular field or discipline. They do this by reporting the results of empirical studies, reviewing and synthesizing existing literature, proposing new theories, or providing new perspectives on a topic.
• To inform or persuade: Research papers are written to inform or persuade the reader about a particular issue, topic, or phenomenon. They present evidence and arguments to support their claims and seek to persuade the reader of the validity of their findings or recommendations.
• To advance the field: Research papers seek to advance the field or discipline by identifying gaps in knowledge, proposing new research questions or approaches, or challenging existing assumptions or paradigms. They aim to contribute to ongoing debates and discussions within a field and to stimulate further research and inquiry.
• To demonstrate research skills: Research papers demonstrate the author’s research skills, including their ability to design and conduct a study, collect and analyze data, and interpret and communicate findings. They also demonstrate the author’s ability to critically evaluate existing literature, synthesize information from multiple sources, and write in a clear and structured manner.

Characteristics of Research Paper

Research papers have several characteristics that distinguish them from other forms of academic or professional writing. Here are some common characteristics of research papers:

• Evidence-based: Research papers are based on empirical evidence, which is collected through rigorous research methods such as experiments, surveys, observations, or interviews. They rely on objective data and facts to support their claims and conclusions.
• Structured and organized: Research papers have a clear and logical structure, with sections such as introduction, literature review, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. They are organized in a way that helps the reader to follow the argument and understand the findings.
• Formal and objective: Research papers are written in a formal and objective tone, with an emphasis on clarity, precision, and accuracy. They avoid subjective language or personal opinions and instead rely on objective data and analysis to support their arguments.
• Citations and references: Research papers include citations and references to acknowledge the sources of information and ideas used in the paper. They use a specific citation style, such as APA, MLA, or Chicago, to ensure consistency and accuracy.
• Peer-reviewed: Research papers are often peer-reviewed, which means they are evaluated by other experts in the field before they are published. Peer-review ensures that the research is of high quality, meets ethical standards, and contributes to the advancement of knowledge in the field.
• Objective and unbiased: Research papers strive to be objective and unbiased in their presentation of the findings. They avoid personal biases or preconceptions and instead rely on the data and analysis to draw conclusions.

Advantages of Research Paper

Research papers have many advantages, both for the individual researcher and for the broader academic and professional community. Here are some advantages of research papers:

• Contribution to knowledge: Research papers contribute to the body of knowledge in a particular field or discipline. They add new information, insights, and perspectives to existing literature and help advance the understanding of a particular phenomenon or issue.
• Opportunity for intellectual growth: Research papers provide an opportunity for intellectual growth for the researcher. They require critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity, which can help develop the researcher’s skills and knowledge.
• Career advancement: Research papers can help advance the researcher’s career by demonstrating their expertise and contributions to the field. They can also lead to new research opportunities, collaborations, and funding.
• Academic recognition: Research papers can lead to academic recognition in the form of awards, grants, or invitations to speak at conferences or events. They can also contribute to the researcher’s reputation and standing in the field.
• Impact on policy and practice: Research papers can have a significant impact on policy and practice. They can inform policy decisions, guide practice, and lead to changes in laws, regulations, or procedures.
• Advancement of society: Research papers can contribute to the advancement of society by addressing important issues, identifying solutions to problems, and promoting social justice and equality.

Limitations of Research Paper

Research papers also have some limitations that should be considered when interpreting their findings or implications. Here are some common limitations of research papers:

• Limited generalizability: Research findings may not be generalizable to other populations, settings, or contexts. Studies often use specific samples or conditions that may not reflect the broader population or real-world situations.
• Potential for bias : Research papers may be biased due to factors such as sample selection, measurement errors, or researcher biases. It is important to evaluate the quality of the research design and methods used to ensure that the findings are valid and reliable.
• Ethical concerns: Research papers may raise ethical concerns, such as the use of vulnerable populations or invasive procedures. Researchers must adhere to ethical guidelines and obtain informed consent from participants to ensure that the research is conducted in a responsible and respectful manner.
• Limitations of methodology: Research papers may be limited by the methodology used to collect and analyze data. For example, certain research methods may not capture the complexity or nuance of a particular phenomenon, or may not be appropriate for certain research questions.
• Publication bias: Research papers may be subject to publication bias, where positive or significant findings are more likely to be published than negative or non-significant findings. This can skew the overall findings of a particular area of research.
• Time and resource constraints: Research papers may be limited by time and resource constraints, which can affect the quality and scope of the research. Researchers may not have access to certain data or resources, or may be unable to conduct long-term studies due to practical limitations.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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Writing Research Papers

• Research Paper Structure

Whether you are writing a B.S. Degree Research Paper or completing a research report for a Psychology course, it is highly likely that you will need to organize your research paper in accordance with American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines.  Here we discuss the structure of research papers according to APA style.

Major Sections of a Research Paper in APA Style

A complete research paper in APA style that is reporting on experimental research will typically contain a Title page, Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and References sections. 1  Many will also contain Figures and Tables and some will have an Appendix or Appendices.  These sections are detailed as follows (for a more in-depth guide, please refer to " How to Write a Research Paper in APA Style ”, a comprehensive guide developed by Prof. Emma Geller). 2

What is this paper called and who wrote it? – the first page of the paper; this includes the name of the paper, a “running head”, authors, and institutional affiliation of the authors.  The institutional affiliation is usually listed in an Author Note that is placed towards the bottom of the title page.  In some cases, the Author Note also contains an acknowledgment of any funding support and of any individuals that assisted with the research project.

One-paragraph summary of the entire study – typically no more than 250 words in length (and in many cases it is well shorter than that), the Abstract provides an overview of the study.

Introduction

What is the topic and why is it worth studying? – the first major section of text in the paper, the Introduction commonly describes the topic under investigation, summarizes or discusses relevant prior research (for related details, please see the Writing Literature Reviews section of this website), identifies unresolved issues that the current research will address, and provides an overview of the research that is to be described in greater detail in the sections to follow.

What did you do? – a section which details how the research was performed.  It typically features a description of the participants/subjects that were involved, the study design, the materials that were used, and the study procedure.  If there were multiple experiments, then each experiment may require a separate Methods section.  A rule of thumb is that the Methods section should be sufficiently detailed for another researcher to duplicate your research.

What did you find? – a section which describes the data that was collected and the results of any statistical tests that were performed.  It may also be prefaced by a description of the analysis procedure that was used. If there were multiple experiments, then each experiment may require a separate Results section.

What is the significance of your results? – the final major section of text in the paper.  The Discussion commonly features a summary of the results that were obtained in the study, describes how those results address the topic under investigation and/or the issues that the research was designed to address, and may expand upon the implications of those findings.  Limitations and directions for future research are also commonly addressed.

List of articles and any books cited – an alphabetized list of the sources that are cited in the paper (by last name of the first author of each source).  Each reference should follow specific APA guidelines regarding author names, dates, article titles, journal titles, journal volume numbers, page numbers, book publishers, publisher locations, websites, and so on (for more information, please see the Citing References in APA Style page of this website).

Tables and Figures

Graphs and data (optional in some cases) – depending on the type of research being performed, there may be Tables and/or Figures (however, in some cases, there may be neither).  In APA style, each Table and each Figure is placed on a separate page and all Tables and Figures are included after the References.   Tables are included first, followed by Figures.   However, for some journals and undergraduate research papers (such as the B.S. Research Paper or Honors Thesis), Tables and Figures may be embedded in the text (depending on the instructor’s or editor’s policies; for more details, see "Deviations from APA Style" below).

Supplementary information (optional) – in some cases, additional information that is not critical to understanding the research paper, such as a list of experiment stimuli, details of a secondary analysis, or programming code, is provided.  This is often placed in an Appendix.

Variations of Research Papers in APA Style

Although the major sections described above are common to most research papers written in APA style, there are variations on that pattern.  These variations include: 

• Literature reviews – when a paper is reviewing prior published research and not presenting new empirical research itself (such as in a review article, and particularly a qualitative review), then the authors may forgo any Methods and Results sections. Instead, there is a different structure such as an Introduction section followed by sections for each of the different aspects of the body of research being reviewed, and then perhaps a Discussion section. 
• Multi-experiment papers – when there are multiple experiments, it is common to follow the Introduction with an Experiment 1 section, itself containing Methods, Results, and Discussion subsections. Then there is an Experiment 2 section with a similar structure, an Experiment 3 section with a similar structure, and so on until all experiments are covered.  Towards the end of the paper there is a General Discussion section followed by References.  Additionally, in multi-experiment papers, it is common for the Results and Discussion subsections for individual experiments to be combined into single “Results and Discussion” sections.

Departures from APA Style

In some cases, official APA style might not be followed (however, be sure to check with your editor, instructor, or other sources before deviating from standards of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association).  Such deviations may include:

• Placement of Tables and Figures  – in some cases, to make reading through the paper easier, Tables and/or Figures are embedded in the text (for example, having a bar graph placed in the relevant Results section). The embedding of Tables and/or Figures in the text is one of the most common deviations from APA style (and is commonly allowed in B.S. Degree Research Papers and Honors Theses; however you should check with your instructor, supervisor, or editor first). 
• Incomplete research – sometimes a B.S. Degree Research Paper in this department is written about research that is currently being planned or is in progress. In those circumstances, sometimes only an Introduction and Methods section, followed by References, is included (that is, in cases where the research itself has not formally begun).  In other cases, preliminary results are presented and noted as such in the Results section (such as in cases where the study is underway but not complete), and the Discussion section includes caveats about the in-progress nature of the research.  Again, you should check with your instructor, supervisor, or editor first.
• Class assignments – in some classes in this department, an assignment must be written in APA style but is not exactly a traditional research paper (for instance, a student asked to write about an article that they read, and to write that report in APA style). In that case, the structure of the paper might approximate the typical sections of a research paper in APA style, but not entirely.  You should check with your instructor for further guidelines.

Workshops and Downloadable Resources

• For in-person discussion of the process of writing research papers, please consider attending this department’s “Writing Research Papers” workshop (for dates and times, please check the undergraduate workshops calendar).

Downloadable Resources

• How to Write APA Style Research Papers (a comprehensive guide) [ PDF ]
• Tips for Writing APA Style Research Papers (a brief summary) [ PDF ]
• Example APA Style Research Paper (for B.S. Degree – empirical research) [ PDF ]
• Example APA Style Research Paper (for B.S. Degree – literature review) [ PDF ]

Further Resources

How-To Videos     

• Writing Research Paper Videos

APA Journal Article Reporting Guidelines

• Appelbaum, M., Cooper, H., Kline, R. B., Mayo-Wilson, E., Nezu, A. M., & Rao, S. M. (2018). Journal article reporting standards for quantitative research in psychology: The APA Publications and Communications Board task force report . American Psychologist , 73 (1), 3.
• Levitt, H. M., Bamberg, M., Creswell, J. W., Frost, D. M., Josselson, R., & Suárez-Orozco, C. (2018). Journal article reporting standards for qualitative primary, qualitative meta-analytic, and mixed methods research in psychology: The APA Publications and Communications Board task force report . American Psychologist , 73 (1), 26.  

External Resources

• Formatting APA Style Papers in Microsoft Word
• How to Write an APA Style Research Paper from Hamilton University
• WikiHow Guide to Writing APA Research Papers
• Sample APA Formatted Paper with Comments
• Sample APA Formatted Paper
• Tips for Writing a Paper in APA Style

1 VandenBos, G. R. (Ed). (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.) (pp. 41-60).  Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

2 geller, e. (2018).  how to write an apa-style research report . [instructional materials]. , prepared by s. c. pan for ucsd psychology.

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• Formatting Research Papers
• Using Databases and Finding References
• What Types of References Are Appropriate?
• Evaluating References and Taking Notes
• Citing References
• Writing a Literature Review
• Writing Process and Revising
• Improving Scientific Writing
• Academic Integrity and Avoiding Plagiarism
• Writing Research Papers Videos

How to Write a Research Paper: Parts of the Paper

• Choosing Your Topic
• Citation & Style Guides This link opens in a new window
• Critical Thinking
• Evaluating Information
• Parts of the Paper
• Writing Tips from UNC-Chapel Hill
• Librarian Contact

Parts of the Research Paper Papers should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Your introductory paragraph should grab the reader's attention, state your main idea, and indicate how you will support it. The body of the paper should expand on what you have stated in the introduction. Finally, the conclusion restates the paper's thesis and should explain what you have learned, giving a wrap up of your main ideas.

1. The Title The title should be specific and indicate the theme of the research and what ideas it addresses. Use keywords that help explain your paper's topic to the reader. Try to avoid abbreviations and jargon. Think about keywords that people would use to search for your paper and include them in your title.

2. The Abstract The abstract is used by readers to get a quick overview of your paper. Typically, they are about 200 words in length (120 words minimum to  250 words maximum). The abstract should introduce the topic and thesis, and should provide a general statement about what you have found in your research. The abstract allows you to mention each major aspect of your topic and helps readers decide whether they want to read the rest of the paper. Because it is a summary of the entire research paper, it is often written last. 

3. The Introduction The introduction should be designed to attract the reader's attention and explain the focus of the research. You will introduce your overview of the topic,  your main points of information, and why this subject is important. You can introduce the current understanding and background information about the topic. Toward the end of the introduction, you add your thesis statement, and explain how you will provide information to support your research questions. This provides the purpose and focus for the rest of the paper.

4. Thesis Statement Most papers will have a thesis statement or main idea and supporting facts/ideas/arguments. State your main idea (something of interest or something to be proven or argued for or against) as your thesis statement, and then provide your supporting facts and arguments. A thesis statement is a declarative sentence that asserts the position a paper will be taking. It also points toward the paper's development. This statement should be both specific and arguable. Generally, the thesis statement will be placed at the end of the first paragraph of your paper. The remainder of your paper will support this thesis.

Students often learn to write a thesis as a first step in the writing process, but often, after research, a writer's viewpoint may change. Therefore a thesis statement may be one of the final steps in writing. 

Examples of Thesis Statements from Purdue OWL

5. The Literature Review The purpose of the literature review is to describe past important research and how it specifically relates to the research thesis. It should be a synthesis of the previous literature and the new idea being researched. The review should examine the major theories related to the topic to date and their contributors. It should include all relevant findings from credible sources, such as academic books and peer-reviewed journal articles. You will want  to:

• Explain how the literature helps the researcher understand the topic.
• Try to show connections and any disparities between the literature.
• Identify new ways to interpret prior research.
• Reveal any gaps that exist in the literature.

More about writing a literature review. . .

6. The Discussion ​The purpose of the discussion is to interpret and describe what you have learned from your research. Make the reader understand why your topic is important. The discussion should always demonstrate what you have learned from your readings (and viewings) and how that learning has made the topic evolve, especially from the short description of main points in the introduction.Explain any new understanding or insights you have had after reading your articles and/or books. Paragraphs should use transitioning sentences to develop how one paragraph idea leads to the next. The discussion will always connect to the introduction, your thesis statement, and the literature you reviewed, but it does not simply repeat or rearrange the introduction. You want to: 

• Demonstrate critical thinking, not just reporting back facts that you gathered.
• If possible, tell how the topic has evolved over the past and give it's implications for the future.
• Fully explain your main ideas with supporting information.
• Explain why your thesis is correct giving arguments to counter points.

7. The Conclusion A concluding paragraph is a brief summary of your main ideas and restates the paper's main thesis, giving the reader the sense that the stated goal of the paper has been accomplished. What have you learned by doing this research that you didn't know before? What conclusions have you drawn? You may also want to suggest further areas of study, improvement of research possibilities, etc. to demonstrate your critical thinking regarding your research.

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How to write chapter two of a research pape r.

As is known, within a research paper, there are several types of research and methodologies. One of the most common types used by students is the literature review. In this article, we will be dealing how to write the literature review (Chapter Two) of your research paper.

Although when writing a project, literature review (Chapter Two) seems more straightforward than carrying out experiments or field research, the literature review involves a lot of research and a lot of reading. Also, utmost attention is essential when it comes to developing and referencing the content so that nothing is pointed out as plagiarism.

However, unlike other steps in project writing, it is not necessary to perform the separate theoretical reference part in the review. After all, the work itself will be a theoretical reference, filled with relevant information and views of several authors on the same subject over time.

As it technically has fewer steps and does not need to go to the field or build appraisal projects, the research paper literature review is a great choice for those who have the tightest deadline for delivering the work. But make no mistake, the level of seriousness in research and development itself is as difficult as any other step.

To further facilitate your understanding, we have divided this research methodology into some essential steps and will explain how to do each of them clearly and objectively. Want to know more about it? Read on and check it out!

What is the literature review in a research paper?

To develop a project in any discipline, it is necessary, first, to study everything that other authors have already explored on that subject. This step aims to update the subject for the academic community and to have a basis to support new research. Therefore, it must be done before any other process within the research paper. However, in the literature review (Chapter Two), this step of searching for data and previous work is all the work. That is, you will only develop the theoretical framework.

In general, you will need to choose the topic in question and search for more relevant works and authors that worked around that research idea you want to discuss. As the intention is to make history and update the subject, you will be able to use works from different dates, showing how opinions and views have evolved over time.

Suppose the subject of your research paper is the role of monarchies in 21st-century societies, for example. In that case, you must present a history of how this institution came about, its impact on society, and what roles the institution is currently playing in modern societies. In the end, you can make a more personal conclusion about your vision.

If your topic covered contains a lot of content, you will need to select the most important and relevant and highlight them throughout the work. This is because you will need to reference the entire work. This means that the research paper literature review needs to be filled with citations from other authors. Therefore, it will present references in practically every paragraph.

In order not to make your work uninteresting and repetitive, you should quote differently throughout development. Switching between direct and indirect citations and trying to fit as much content and work as possible will enrich your project and demonstrate to the evaluators how deep you have been in the search.

Within the review, the only part that does not need to be referenced is the conclusion. After all, it will be written as your final and personal view of everything you have read and analyzed.

How to write a literature review?

Here are some practical and easy tips for structuring a quality and compliant research paper literature review!

Introduction

As with any work, the introduction should attract your project readers’ attention and help them understand the basis of the subject that will be worked on. When reading the introduction, you need to be clear to whoever is reading about your research and what it wants to show.

Following the example cited on the theme of monarchies’ roles in the 21st-century societies, the introduction needs to clarify what this type of institution is and why research on it is vital for this area. Also, it would help if you also quoted how the work was developed and the purpose of your literary study.

Basically, you will introduce the subject in such a way that the reader – even without knowing anything about the topic – can read the complete work and grasp the approach, understanding what was done and the meaning of it.

Methodology

Describing the methodology of a literature review is simpler than describing the steps of field research or experiment. In this step, you will need to describe how your research was carried out, where the information was searched, and retrieved.

As you will need to gather a lot of content, searches can be done in books, academic articles, academic publications, old monographs, internet articles, among other reliable sources. The important thing is always to be sure with your supervisor or other teachers about the reliability of each content used. After all, as the entire work is a theoretical reference, choosing unreliable base papers can greatly damage your grade and hinder your approval, putting at risk the quality and integrity of your entire research paper.

Results and conclusion

The results must present clearly and objectively everything that has been observed and collected from studies throughout history on the research’s theme. In this step, you should show the comparisons between authors, like what was the view of the subject before and how it is currently, in an updated way.

You will also be able to show the developments within the theme and the progress of research and discoveries, as well as the conclusions on the issue so far. In the end, you will summarize everything you have read and discovered, and present your final view on the topic.

Also, it is important to demonstrate whether your project objectives have been met and how. The conclusion is the crucial point to convince your reader and examiner of the relevance and importance of all the work you have done for your area or branch, society, or the environment. Therefore, you must present everything clearly and concisely, closing your research paper with a flourish.

In all academic work, bibliographic references are essential. In the academic paper literature review, however, these references will be gathered at the end of the work and throughout the texts.

Citations during the development of the subject must be referenced in accordance with the guideline of your institutions and departments. For each type of reference, there is a rule that depends on the number of words or how you will make it.

Also, in the list of bibliographic references, where you will need to put all the content used, the rules change according to your search source. For internet sources, for example, the way of referencing is different than book sources.

A wrong quote throughout the text or a used work that you forget to put in the references can lead to your project being labeled a plagiarism work, which is a crime and can lead to several consequences. Therefore, studying these standards is essential and determinant for the success of your work’s literature review (Chapter Two).

By adequately studying the rules, dedicating yourself, and putting them into practice, not only will it be easy to develop a successful project, but achieving your dream grade will be closer than you think.

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How To Write A Research Paper

Step-By-Step Tutorial With Examples + FREE Template

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Expert Reviewer: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | March 2024

For many students, crafting a strong research paper from scratch can feel like a daunting task – and rightly so! In this post, we’ll unpack what a research paper is, what it needs to do , and how to write one – in three easy steps. 🙂 

Overview: Writing A Research Paper

What (exactly) is a research paper.

• How to write a research paper
• Stage 1 : Topic & literature search
• Stage 2 : Structure & outline
• Stage 3 : Iterative writing
• Key takeaways

Let’s start by asking the most important question, “ What is a research paper? ”.

Simply put, a research paper is a scholarly written work where the writer (that’s you!) answers a specific question (this is called a research question ) through evidence-based arguments . Evidence-based is the keyword here. In other words, a research paper is different from an essay or other writing assignments that draw from the writer’s personal opinions or experiences. With a research paper, it’s all about building your arguments based on evidence (we’ll talk more about that evidence a little later).

Now, it’s worth noting that there are many different types of research papers , including analytical papers (the type I just described), argumentative papers, and interpretative papers. Here, we’ll focus on analytical papers , as these are some of the most common – but if you’re keen to learn about other types of research papers, be sure to check out the rest of the blog .

With that basic foundation laid, let’s get down to business and look at how to write a research paper .

Overview: The 3-Stage Process

While there are, of course, many potential approaches you can take to write a research paper, there are typically three stages to the writing process. So, in this tutorial, we’ll present a straightforward three-step process that we use when working with students at Grad Coach.

These three steps are:

• Finding a research topic and reviewing the existing literature
• Developing a provisional structure and outline for your paper, and
• Writing up your initial draft and then refining it iteratively

Let’s dig into each of these.

Need a helping hand?

Step 1: Find a topic and review the literature

As we mentioned earlier, in a research paper, you, as the researcher, will try to answer a question . More specifically, that’s called a research question , and it sets the direction of your entire paper. What’s important to understand though is that you’ll need to answer that research question with the help of high-quality sources – for example, journal articles, government reports, case studies, and so on. We’ll circle back to this in a minute.

The first stage of the research process is deciding on what your research question will be and then reviewing the existing literature (in other words, past studies and papers) to see what they say about that specific research question. In some cases, your professor may provide you with a predetermined research question (or set of questions). However, in many cases, you’ll need to find your own research question within a certain topic area.

Finding a strong research question hinges on identifying a meaningful research gap – in other words, an area that’s lacking in existing research. There’s a lot to unpack here, so if you wanna learn more, check out the plain-language explainer video below.

Once you’ve figured out which question (or questions) you’ll attempt to answer in your research paper, you’ll need to do a deep dive into the existing literature – this is called a “ literature search ”. Again, there are many ways to go about this, but your most likely starting point will be Google Scholar .

If you’re new to Google Scholar, think of it as Google for the academic world. You can start by simply entering a few different keywords that are relevant to your research question and it will then present a host of articles for you to review. What you want to pay close attention to here is the number of citations for each paper – the more citations a paper has, the more credible it is (generally speaking – there are some exceptions, of course).

Ideally, what you’re looking for are well-cited papers that are highly relevant to your topic. That said, keep in mind that citations are a cumulative metric , so older papers will often have more citations than newer papers – just because they’ve been around for longer. So, don’t fixate on this metric in isolation – relevance and recency are also very important.

Beyond Google Scholar, you’ll also definitely want to check out academic databases and aggregators such as Science Direct, PubMed, JStor and so on. These will often overlap with the results that you find in Google Scholar, but they can also reveal some hidden gems – so, be sure to check them out.

Once you’ve worked your way through all the literature, you’ll want to catalogue all this information in some sort of spreadsheet so that you can easily recall who said what, when and within what context. If you’d like, we’ve got a free literature spreadsheet that helps you do exactly that.

Step 2: Develop a structure and outline

With your research question pinned down and your literature digested and catalogued, it’s time to move on to planning your actual research paper .

It might sound obvious, but it’s really important to have some sort of rough outline in place before you start writing your paper. So often, we see students eagerly rushing into the writing phase, only to land up with a disjointed research paper that rambles on in multiple

Now, the secret here is to not get caught up in the fine details . Realistically, all you need at this stage is a bullet-point list that describes (in broad strokes) what you’ll discuss and in what order. It’s also useful to remember that you’re not glued to this outline – in all likelihood, you’ll chop and change some sections once you start writing, and that’s perfectly okay. What’s important is that you have some sort of roadmap in place from the start.

At this stage you might be wondering, “ But how should I structure my research paper? ”. Well, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution here, but in general, a research paper will consist of a few relatively standardised components:

• Introduction
• Literature review
• Methodology

Let’s take a look at each of these.

First up is the introduction section . As the name suggests, the purpose of the introduction is to set the scene for your research paper. There are usually (at least) four ingredients that go into this section – these are the background to the topic, the research problem and resultant research question , and the justification or rationale. If you’re interested, the video below unpacks the introduction section in more detail. 

The next section of your research paper will typically be your literature review . Remember all that literature you worked through earlier? Well, this is where you’ll present your interpretation of all that content . You’ll do this by writing about recent trends, developments, and arguments within the literature – but more specifically, those that are relevant to your research question . The literature review can oftentimes seem a little daunting, even to seasoned researchers, so be sure to check out our extensive collection of literature review content here .

With the introduction and lit review out of the way, the next section of your paper is the research methodology . In a nutshell, the methodology section should describe to your reader what you did (beyond just reviewing the existing literature) to answer your research question. For example, what data did you collect, how did you collect that data, how did you analyse that data and so on? For each choice, you’ll also need to justify why you chose to do it that way, and what the strengths and weaknesses of your approach were.

Now, it’s worth mentioning that for some research papers, this aspect of the project may be a lot simpler . For example, you may only need to draw on secondary sources (in other words, existing data sets). In some cases, you may just be asked to draw your conclusions from the literature search itself (in other words, there may be no data analysis at all). But, if you are required to collect and analyse data, you’ll need to pay a lot of attention to the methodology section. The video below provides an example of what the methodology section might look like.

By this stage of your paper, you will have explained what your research question is, what the existing literature has to say about that question, and how you analysed additional data to try to answer your question. So, the natural next step is to present your analysis of that data . This section is usually called the “results” or “analysis” section and this is where you’ll showcase your findings.

Depending on your school’s requirements, you may need to present and interpret the data in one section – or you might split the presentation and the interpretation into two sections. In the latter case, your “results” section will just describe the data, and the “discussion” is where you’ll interpret that data and explicitly link your analysis back to your research question. If you’re not sure which approach to take, check in with your professor or take a look at past papers to see what the norms are for your programme.

Alright – once you’ve presented and discussed your results, it’s time to wrap it up . This usually takes the form of the “ conclusion ” section. In the conclusion, you’ll need to highlight the key takeaways from your study and close the loop by explicitly answering your research question. Again, the exact requirements here will vary depending on your programme (and you may not even need a conclusion section at all) – so be sure to check with your professor if you’re unsure.

Step 3: Write and refine

Finally, it’s time to get writing. All too often though, students hit a brick wall right about here… So, how do you avoid this happening to you?

Well, there’s a lot to be said when it comes to writing a research paper (or any sort of academic piece), but we’ll share three practical tips to help you get started.

First and foremost , it’s essential to approach your writing as an iterative process. In other words, you need to start with a really messy first draft and then polish it over multiple rounds of editing. Don’t waste your time trying to write a perfect research paper in one go. Instead, take the pressure off yourself by adopting an iterative approach.

Secondly , it’s important to always lean towards critical writing , rather than descriptive writing. What does this mean? Well, at the simplest level, descriptive writing focuses on the “ what ”, while critical writing digs into the “ so what ” – in other words, the implications . If you’re not familiar with these two types of writing, don’t worry! You can find a plain-language explanation here.

Last but not least, you’ll need to get your referencing right. Specifically, you’ll need to provide credible, correctly formatted citations for the statements you make. We see students making referencing mistakes all the time and it costs them dearly. The good news is that you can easily avoid this by using a simple reference manager . If you don’t have one, check out our video about Mendeley, an easy (and free) reference management tool that you can start using today.

Recap: Key Takeaways

We’ve covered a lot of ground here. To recap, the three steps to writing a high-quality research paper are:

• To choose a research question and review the literature
• To plan your paper structure and draft an outline
• To take an iterative approach to writing, focusing on critical writing and strong referencing

Remember, this is just a b ig-picture overview of the research paper development process and there’s a lot more nuance to unpack. So, be sure to grab a copy of our free research paper template to learn more about how to write a research paper.

Can you help me with a full paper template for this Abstract:

Background: Energy and sports drinks have gained popularity among diverse demographic groups, including adolescents, athletes, workers, and college students. While often used interchangeably, these beverages serve distinct purposes, with energy drinks aiming to boost energy and cognitive performance, and sports drinks designed to prevent dehydration and replenish electrolytes and carbohydrates lost during physical exertion.

Objective: To assess the nutritional quality of energy and sports drinks in Egypt.

Material and Methods: A cross-sectional study assessed the nutrient contents, including energy, sugar, electrolytes, vitamins, and caffeine, of sports and energy drinks available in major supermarkets in Cairo, Alexandria, and Giza, Egypt. Data collection involved photographing all relevant product labels and recording nutritional information. Descriptive statistics and appropriate statistical tests were employed to analyze and compare the nutritional values of energy and sports drinks.

Results: The study analyzed 38 sports drinks and 42 energy drinks. Sports drinks were significantly more expensive than energy drinks, with higher net content and elevated magnesium, potassium, and vitamin C. Energy drinks contained higher concentrations of caffeine, sugars, and vitamins B2, B3, and B6.

Conclusion: Significant nutritional differences exist between sports and energy drinks, reflecting their intended uses. However, these beverages’ high sugar content and calorie loads raise health concerns. Proper labeling, public awareness, and responsible marketing are essential to guide safe consumption practices in Egypt.

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Writing Research Papers: Part Two — Formatting Your Paper

Once you have decided on a topic for your paper and developed an outline and thesis statement ( get tips in Part One of our guide to writing research papers), you are ready to begin writing the paper itself. Here are some tips on structure and format.

Starting point: the introduction  

Introductions should get the attention of your reader, introduce your main idea, and capture your argument. This part of the paper sets up the remainder of the material.

A few elements you may want to include in an effective introduction:

• a hook to get readers’ attention
• background (if necessary) of the topic
• your main idea or thesis
• a preview of the body of your essay (often contained in or found near a thesis statement)

Most introductions present a paper’s main point, but the rest of the details may vary. The introductory paragraph of a sociology exam may not include a “hook” but get right to the main claim of your essay. A longer essay may contain a significant introduction. You will want to evaluate your situation and choose what works best.

Not sure where to begin? If you’re stuck, try these strategies:

• Start writing the body of your paper. If the first paragraph isn’t coming to mind easily, look at your outline and start writing a paragraph that you feel more confident about.
• Think about your audience. For example, pet owners may be more invested if you explain why your proposed dog park helps their pets stay healthy and happy.
• Use trial and error. Your first introduction may not be your best, and that’s fine. Try listing several ideas at once and see which one seems best.
• Talk it out. Have friends and family read your work. Email your instructor. Read your work out loud.
• Take a break. Try one of these de-stressing suggestions from World Campus students.

If you’re stuck on your introduction, reach out to your instructor, your classmates, and your tutors. They can provide feedback on what you have written and may help you improve your text.

Ending on a good note

Endings can also be tricky when writing a research paper. Many students struggle with figuring out how to wrap things up, especially because you may feel pressure to end with a memorable line or important takeaway. And it is true that this will be one of the most important parts of your paper.

Every paper needs a convincing and memorable ending. Like a great punchline caps off a good joke, your conclusion will be the last thing that your readers read and remember about your paper. You want it to reinforce your point and drive home  why  your argument matters. But how do you do that?

You may take several approaches to writing a conclusion. There is no single “right” way to end a paper. A lot will depend on the tone and style of your paper — just as there are different ways in which you would end a verbal conversation, depending on the situation. The point is the same for conversations and for papers: help your reader (or listener) remember  your main point and (hopefully) be persuaded by it.

When you draft your conclusion, try to ask yourself these questions about your paper. Your answers may help guide your conclusion.

• What should your reader remember? Summarize the most important information.
• What should your reader do in response to your paper? Call for that action.
• Why should they care about your main point? Appeal to your readers’ self-interest.

Depending on the goal of your paper, your conclusion may change its focus. If you’re writing a paper about recycling, you may want your reader to do something, such as call their city council members, write a letter to a center, or start recycling.

One final tip: Sometimes, less is more! If you get stuck with your conclusion, remember it doesn’t have to be long to be effective. You may be able to write a shorter conclusion and get the same effect.

For more on conclusions,  check out this video .

Rubrics and grading

Being truly successful in writing a college paper — and earning a good grade — requires more than just good writing and research skills. You also must be sure to meet all of the requirements specified by your instructor. These are often detailed in what is known as a rubric.

A rubric is a ranking system used by instructors to grade an assignment based on specific criteria. A rubric can also tell you what your instructor expects from a quality assignment and can guide you as you write a paper. Other times, the instructor will simply explain the guidelines or grading criteria via written instructions.

As you prepare for a paper or any assignment, read and reread the assignment description or rubric provided by your instructor. Check to make sure you have understood each piece and addressed it. All of these tools can help you understand your instructor’s expectations for the assignment.

Here are a few other ways that rubrics or assignment instructions can help you:

• Follow directions. Your instructor includes only important information in a rubric, and a rubric can remind you of important pieces of an assignment that you may have missed.
• Focus on significant areas of an assignment.
• Revise effectively. A rubric can remind you of an area for revision.

Penn State University Libraries has created a collection of Information Literacy Modules that provides helpful information that can guide you in writing papers and completing other assignments. Modules include:

• Sources of Information
• Searching for Information
• Presenting Research and Data
• Citations and Academic Integrity

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• How to write a research paper

Last updated

11 January 2024

Reviewed by

With proper planning, knowledge, and framework, completing a research paper can be a fulfilling and exciting experience. 

Though it might initially sound slightly intimidating, this guide will help you embrace the challenge. 

By documenting your findings, you can inspire others and make a difference in your field. Here's how you can make your research paper unique and comprehensive.

• What is a research paper?

Research papers allow you to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of a particular topic. These papers are usually lengthier and more detailed than typical essays, requiring deeper insight into the chosen topic.

To write a research paper, you must first choose a topic that interests you and is relevant to the field of study. Once you’ve selected your topic, gathering as many relevant resources as possible, including books, scholarly articles, credible websites, and other academic materials, is essential. You must then read and analyze these sources, summarizing their key points and identifying gaps in the current research.

You can formulate your ideas and opinions once you thoroughly understand the existing research. To get there might involve conducting original research, gathering data, or analyzing existing data sets. It could also involve presenting an original argument or interpretation of the existing research.

Writing a successful research paper involves presenting your findings clearly and engagingly, which might involve using charts, graphs, or other visual aids to present your data and using concise language to explain your findings. You must also ensure your paper adheres to relevant academic formatting guidelines, including proper citations and references.

Overall, writing a research paper requires a significant amount of time, effort, and attention to detail. However, it is also an enriching experience that allows you to delve deeply into a subject that interests you and contribute to the existing body of knowledge in your chosen field.

• How long should a research paper be?

Research papers are deep dives into a topic. Therefore, they tend to be longer pieces of work than essays or opinion pieces. 

However, a suitable length depends on the complexity of the topic and your level of expertise. For instance, are you a first-year college student or an experienced professional? 

Also, remember that the best research papers provide valuable information for the benefit of others. Therefore, the quality of information matters most, not necessarily the length. Being concise is valuable.

Following these best practice steps will help keep your process simple and productive:

1. Gaining a deep understanding of any expectations

Before diving into your intended topic or beginning the research phase, take some time to orient yourself. Suppose there’s a specific topic assigned to you. In that case, it’s essential to deeply understand the question and organize your planning and approach in response. Pay attention to the key requirements and ensure you align your writing accordingly. 

This preparation step entails

Deeply understanding the task or assignment

Being clear about the expected format and length

Familiarizing yourself with the citation and referencing requirements 

Understanding any defined limits for your research contribution

Where applicable, speaking to your professor or research supervisor for further clarification

2. Choose your research topic

Select a research topic that aligns with both your interests and available resources. Ideally, focus on a field where you possess significant experience and analytical skills. In crafting your research paper, it's crucial to go beyond summarizing existing data and contribute fresh insights to the chosen area.

Consider narrowing your focus to a specific aspect of the topic. For example, if exploring the link between technology and mental health, delve into how social media use during the pandemic impacts the well-being of college students. Conducting interviews and surveys with students could provide firsthand data and unique perspectives, adding substantial value to the existing knowledge.

When finalizing your topic, adhere to legal and ethical norms in the relevant area (this ensures the integrity of your research, protects participants' rights, upholds intellectual property standards, and ensures transparency and accountability). Following these principles not only maintains the credibility of your work but also builds trust within your academic or professional community.

For instance, in writing about medical research, consider legal and ethical norms , including patient confidentiality laws and informed consent requirements. Similarly, if analyzing user data on social media platforms, be mindful of data privacy regulations, ensuring compliance with laws governing personal information collection and use. Aligning with legal and ethical standards not only avoids potential issues but also underscores the responsible conduct of your research.

3. Gather preliminary research

Once you’ve landed on your topic, it’s time to explore it further. You’ll want to discover more about available resources and existing research relevant to your assignment at this stage. 

This exploratory phase is vital as you may discover issues with your original idea or realize you have insufficient resources to explore the topic effectively. This key bit of groundwork allows you to redirect your research topic in a different, more feasible, or more relevant direction if necessary. 

Spending ample time at this stage ensures you gather everything you need, learn as much as you can about the topic, and discover gaps where the topic has yet to be sufficiently covered, offering an opportunity to research it further. 

4. Define your research question

To produce a well-structured and focused paper, it is imperative to formulate a clear and precise research question that will guide your work. Your research question must be informed by the existing literature and tailored to the scope and objectives of your project. By refining your focus, you can produce a thoughtful and engaging paper that effectively communicates your ideas to your readers.

5. Write a thesis statement

A thesis statement is a one-to-two-sentence summary of your research paper's main argument or direction. It serves as an overall guide to summarize the overall intent of the research paper for you and anyone wanting to know more about the research.

A strong thesis statement is:

Concise and clear: Explain your case in simple sentences (avoid covering multiple ideas). It might help to think of this section as an elevator pitch.

Specific: Ensure that there is no ambiguity in your statement and that your summary covers the points argued in the paper.

Debatable: A thesis statement puts forward a specific argument––it is not merely a statement but a debatable point that can be analyzed and discussed.

Here are three thesis statement examples from different disciplines:

Psychology thesis example: "We're studying adults aged 25-40 to see if taking short breaks for mindfulness can help with stress. Our goal is to find practical ways to manage anxiety better."

Environmental science thesis example: "This research paper looks into how having more city parks might make the air cleaner and keep people healthier. I want to find out if more green spaces means breathing fewer carcinogens in big cities."

UX research thesis example: "This study focuses on improving mobile banking for older adults using ethnographic research, eye-tracking analysis, and interactive prototyping. We investigate the usefulness of eye-tracking analysis with older individuals, aiming to spark debate and offer fresh perspectives on UX design and digital inclusivity for the aging population."

6. Conduct in-depth research

A research paper doesn’t just include research that you’ve uncovered from other papers and studies but your fresh insights, too. You will seek to become an expert on your topic––understanding the nuances in the current leading theories. You will analyze existing research and add your thinking and discoveries.  It's crucial to conduct well-designed research that is rigorous, robust, and based on reliable sources. Suppose a research paper lacks evidence or is biased. In that case, it won't benefit the academic community or the general public. Therefore, examining the topic thoroughly and furthering its understanding through high-quality research is essential. That usually means conducting new research. Depending on the area under investigation, you may conduct surveys, interviews, diary studies , or observational research to uncover new insights or bolster current claims.

7. Determine supporting evidence

Not every piece of research you’ve discovered will be relevant to your research paper. It’s important to categorize the most meaningful evidence to include alongside your discoveries. It's important to include evidence that doesn't support your claims to avoid exclusion bias and ensure a fair research paper.

8. Write a research paper outline

Before diving in and writing the whole paper, start with an outline. It will help you to see if more research is needed, and it will provide a framework by which to write a more compelling paper. Your supervisor may even request an outline to approve before beginning to write the first draft of the full paper. An outline will include your topic, thesis statement, key headings, short summaries of the research, and your arguments.

9. Write your first draft

Once you feel confident about your outline and sources, it’s time to write your first draft. While penning a long piece of content can be intimidating, if you’ve laid the groundwork, you will have a structure to help you move steadily through each section. To keep up motivation and inspiration, it’s often best to keep the pace quick. Stopping for long periods can interrupt your flow and make jumping back in harder than writing when things are fresh in your mind.

10. Cite your sources correctly

It's always a good practice to give credit where it's due, and the same goes for citing any works that have influenced your paper. Building your arguments on credible references adds value and authenticity to your research. In the formatting guidelines section, you’ll find an overview of different citation styles (MLA, CMOS, or APA), which will help you meet any publishing or academic requirements and strengthen your paper's credibility. It is essential to follow the guidelines provided by your school or the publication you are submitting to ensure the accuracy and relevance of your citations.

11. Ensure your work is original

It is crucial to ensure the originality of your paper, as plagiarism can lead to serious consequences. To avoid plagiarism, you should use proper paraphrasing and quoting techniques. Paraphrasing is rewriting a text in your own words while maintaining the original meaning. Quoting involves directly citing the source. Giving credit to the original author or source is essential whenever you borrow their ideas or words. You can also use plagiarism detection tools such as Scribbr or Grammarly to check the originality of your paper. These tools compare your draft writing to a vast database of online sources. If you find any accidental plagiarism, you should correct it immediately by rephrasing or citing the source.

12. Revise, edit, and proofread

One of the essential qualities of excellent writers is their ability to understand the importance of editing and proofreading. Even though it's tempting to call it a day once you've finished your writing, editing your work can significantly improve its quality. It's natural to overlook the weaker areas when you've just finished writing a paper. Therefore, it's best to take a break of a day or two, or even up to a week, to refresh your mind. This way, you can return to your work with a new perspective. After some breathing room, you can spot any inconsistencies, spelling and grammar errors, typos, or missing citations and correct them. 

• The best research paper format 

The format of your research paper should align with the requirements set forth by your college, school, or target publication. 

There is no one “best” format, per se. Depending on the stated requirements, you may need to include the following elements:

Title page: The title page of a research paper typically includes the title, author's name, and institutional affiliation and may include additional information such as a course name or instructor's name. 

Table of contents: Include a table of contents to make it easy for readers to find specific sections of your paper.

Abstract: The abstract is a summary of the purpose of the paper.

Methods : In this section, describe the research methods used. This may include collecting data , conducting interviews, or doing field research .

Results: Summarize the conclusions you drew from your research in this section.

Discussion: In this section, discuss the implications of your research . Be sure to mention any significant limitations to your approach and suggest areas for further research.

Tables, charts, and illustrations: Use tables, charts, and illustrations to help convey your research findings and make them easier to understand.

Works cited or reference page: Include a works cited or reference page to give credit to the sources that you used to conduct your research.

Bibliography: Provide a list of all the sources you consulted while conducting your research.

Dedication and acknowledgments : Optionally, you may include a dedication and acknowledgments section to thank individuals who helped you with your research.

• General style and formatting guidelines

Formatting your research paper means you can submit it to your college, journal, or other publications in compliance with their criteria.

Research papers tend to follow the American Psychological Association (APA), Modern Language Association (MLA), or Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) guidelines.

Here’s how each style guide is typically used:

Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS):

CMOS is a versatile style guide used for various types of writing. It's known for its flexibility and use in the humanities. CMOS provides guidelines for citations, formatting, and overall writing style. It allows for both footnotes and in-text citations, giving writers options based on their preferences or publication requirements.

American Psychological Association (APA):

APA is common in the social sciences. It’s hailed for its clarity and emphasis on precision. It has specific rules for citing sources, creating references, and formatting papers. APA style uses in-text citations with an accompanying reference list. It's designed to convey information efficiently and is widely used in academic and scientific writing.

Modern Language Association (MLA):

MLA is widely used in the humanities, especially literature and language studies. It emphasizes the author-page format for in-text citations and provides guidelines for creating a "Works Cited" page. MLA is known for its focus on the author's name and the literary works cited. It’s frequently used in disciplines that prioritize literary analysis and critical thinking.

To confirm you're using the latest style guide, check the official website or publisher's site for updates, consult academic resources, and verify the guide's publication date. Online platforms and educational resources may also provide summaries and alerts about any revisions or additions to the style guide.

Citing sources

When working on your research paper, it's important to cite the sources you used properly. Your citation style will guide you through this process. Generally, there are three parts to citing sources in your research paper: 

First, provide a brief citation in the body of your essay. This is also known as a parenthetical or in-text citation. 

Second, include a full citation in the Reference list at the end of your paper. Different types of citations include in-text citations, footnotes, and reference lists. 

In-text citations include the author's surname and the date of the citation. 

Footnotes appear at the bottom of each page of your research paper. They may also be summarized within a reference list at the end of the paper. 

A reference list includes all of the research used within the paper at the end of the document. It should include the author, date, paper title, and publisher listed in the order that aligns with your citation style.

10 research paper writing tips:

Following some best practices is essential to writing a research paper that contributes to your field of study and creates a positive impact.

These tactics will help you structure your argument effectively and ensure your work benefits others:

Clear and precise language:  Ensure your language is unambiguous. Use academic language appropriately, but keep it simple. Also, provide clear takeaways for your audience.

Effective idea separation:  Organize the vast amount of information and sources in your paper with paragraphs and titles. Create easily digestible sections for your readers to navigate through.

Compelling intro:  Craft an engaging introduction that captures your reader's interest. Hook your audience and motivate them to continue reading.

Thorough revision and editing:  Take the time to review and edit your paper comprehensively. Use tools like Grammarly to detect and correct small, overlooked errors.

Thesis precision:  Develop a clear and concise thesis statement that guides your paper. Ensure that your thesis aligns with your research's overall purpose and contribution.

Logical flow of ideas:  Maintain a logical progression throughout the paper. Use transitions effectively to connect different sections and maintain coherence.

Critical evaluation of sources:  Evaluate and critically assess the relevance and reliability of your sources. Ensure that your research is based on credible and up-to-date information.

Thematic consistency:  Maintain a consistent theme throughout the paper. Ensure that all sections contribute cohesively to the overall argument.

Relevant supporting evidence:  Provide concise and relevant evidence to support your arguments. Avoid unnecessary details that may distract from the main points.

Embrace counterarguments:  Acknowledge and address opposing views to strengthen your position. Show that you have considered alternative arguments in your field.

7 research tips 

If you want your paper to not only be well-written but also contribute to the progress of human knowledge, consider these tips to take your paper to the next level:

Selecting the appropriate topic: The topic you select should align with your area of expertise, comply with the requirements of your project, and have sufficient resources for a comprehensive investigation.

Use academic databases: Academic databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and JSTOR offer a wealth of research papers that can help you discover everything you need to know about your chosen topic.

Critically evaluate sources: It is important not to accept research findings at face value. Instead, it is crucial to critically analyze the information to avoid jumping to conclusions or overlooking important details. A well-written research paper requires a critical analysis with thorough reasoning to support claims.

Diversify your sources: Expand your research horizons by exploring a variety of sources beyond the standard databases. Utilize books, conference proceedings, and interviews to gather diverse perspectives and enrich your understanding of the topic.

Take detailed notes: Detailed note-taking is crucial during research and can help you form the outline and body of your paper.

Stay up on trends: Keep abreast of the latest developments in your field by regularly checking for recent publications. Subscribe to newsletters, follow relevant journals, and attend conferences to stay informed about emerging trends and advancements. 

Engage in peer review: Seek feedback from peers or mentors to ensure the rigor and validity of your research . Peer review helps identify potential weaknesses in your methodology and strengthens the overall credibility of your findings.

• The real-world impact of research papers

Writing a research paper is more than an academic or business exercise. The experience provides an opportunity to explore a subject in-depth, broaden one's understanding, and arrive at meaningful conclusions. With careful planning, dedication, and hard work, writing a research paper can be a fulfilling and enriching experience contributing to advancing knowledge.

How do I publish my research paper? 

Many academics wish to publish their research papers. While challenging, your paper might get traction if it covers new and well-written information. To publish your research paper, find a target publication, thoroughly read their guidelines, format your paper accordingly, and send it to them per their instructions. You may need to include a cover letter, too. After submission, your paper may be peer-reviewed by experts to assess its legitimacy, quality, originality, and methodology. Following review, you will be informed by the publication whether they have accepted or rejected your paper. 

What is a good opening sentence for a research paper? 

Beginning your research paper with a compelling introduction can ensure readers are interested in going further. A relevant quote, a compelling statistic, or a bold argument can start the paper and hook your reader. Remember, though, that the most important aspect of a research paper is the quality of the information––not necessarily your ability to storytell, so ensure anything you write aligns with your goals.

Research paper vs. a research proposal—what’s the difference?

While some may confuse research papers and proposals, they are different documents. 

A research proposal comes before a research paper. It is a detailed document that outlines an intended area of exploration. It includes the research topic, methodology, timeline, sources, and potential conclusions. Research proposals are often required when seeking approval to conduct research. 

A research paper is a summary of research findings. A research paper follows a structured format to present those findings and construct an argument or conclusion.

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How to write a research paper: A step-by-step guide

Published July 20, 2020. Updated May 19, 2022.

Research Paper Definition

A research paper is an essay that evaluates or argues a perception or a point.

Overview of research paper

Research papers are papers written as in-depth analyses of the academic literature on a selected topic. A research paper outline consists of planning out the main sections of the paper, including the points and evidence, so that the drafting and editing processes are much easier. The research paper should have an introduction paragraph, at least three body paragraphs, a conclusion paragraph, and a Works Cited page. Some important steps should be followed while writing a research paper. The steps include understanding the instructor’s expectations for how to write a research paper, brainstorming research paper ideas, conducting research, defining the thesis statement, making a research paper outline, writing, editing again if required, creating a title page, and writing an abstract.

Key takeaways

• A research paper is an essay that analyzes or argues a perspective or a point.
• A research paper outline involves planning out the main sections of your paper, including your points and evidence, so that the drafting and editing processes go a lot smoother.
• Before you write your research paper outline, consult your instructor, research potential topics, and define your thesis statement.
• Your research paper should include an introduction paragraph, at least three body paragraphs, a conclusion paragraph, and a Works Cited page.

What are the steps to writing a research paper?

Here are 7 steps on how to write a research paper, plus two optional steps on creating a title page and an abstract:

Step 1: Understand your instructor’s expectations for how to write a research paper

Step 2: brainstorm research paper ideas, step 3: conduct research, step 4: define your thesis statement, step 5: make a research paper outline, step 6: write, step 7: edit, edit, and edit again, step 8 (optional): create a title page, step 9 (optional): write an abstract.

• Additional tips

Worried about your writing? Submit your paper for a Chegg Writing essay check , or for an Expert Check proofreading . Both can help you find and fix potential writing issues.

First, read and reread the rubric for the assignment. Depending on your field of study, the guidelines will vary. For instance, psychology, education, and the sciences tend to use APA research paper format, while the humanities, language, and the fine arts tend to use MLA or Chicago style.

Once you know which research paper format to use, take heed of any specific expectations your instructor has for this assignment. For example:

• When is it due?
• What is the expected page count?
• Will your instructor expect to see a research paper outline before the draft?
• Is there a set topic list or can you choose your own?
• Is there someplace to look at sample research papers that got A’s?

If anything isn’t clear about how to write a research paper, don’t hesitate to ask your instructor.

Being aware of the assignment’s details is a good start! However, even after reading them, you may still be asking some of the following questions:

• How do you think of topics for research papers?
• How do you think of interesting research paper topics?
• How do I structure an outline?
• Where can you find examples of research papers?

We’ll answer all of these questions (and more) in the steps below.

Some instructors offer a set of research paper topics to choose from. That makes it easy for you—just pick the research paper idea that intrigues you the most! Since all the topics have been approved by your instructor, you shouldn’t have to worry about any of them being too “broad” or “narrow.” (But remember, there are no easy research paper topics!)

On the other hand, many instructors expect students to brainstorm their own topics for research papers. In this case, you will need to ensure your topic is relevant as well as not too broad or narrow.

An example of a research paper topic that is too broad is “The History of Modernist Literature.” An expert would be hard-pressed to write a book on this topic, much less a school essay.

An example of a research paper topic that is too narrow is “Why the First Line of Ulysses Exemplifies Modernist Literature.” It may take a page or two to outline the ways in which the first line of Ulysses exemplifies traits of modernist literature, but there’s only so much you can write about one line!

Good research paper topics fall somewhere in the middle . An example of this would be “Why Ulysses ’ Stephen Exemplifies Modernist Literature.” Analyzing a character in a novel is broader than analyzing a single line, but it is narrower than examining an entire literary movement.

Next, conduct research and use an adequate number of reputable sources to back up your argument or analysis. This means that you need to evaluate the credibility of all your sources and probably include a few peer-reviewed journal articles (tip: use a database).

A lot of good sources can be found online or at your school’s library (in-person and online). If you’re stuck finding sources or would like to see a sample research paper, ask your librarian for help. If you’re having trouble finding useful sources, it may be a warning sign that your idea is too broad or narrow. For a more comprehensive look at research, check this out .

Your thesis statement is the most important line of your research paper! It encompasses in one sentence what your paper is all about. Having a concrete thesis statement will help you organize your thoughts around a defined point, and it will help your readers understand what they’re reading about.

If you could boil your paper down into a single line, what would that line be?

Here is an example of a working thesis:

In George Orwell’s  1984 , the Party manipulates citizens into total submission to the Party’s ideals through Newspeak, propaganda, and altered history.

For more information, see this guide on thesis statements .

Even if you think you chose an easy research paper topic, a structured, outlined research paper format is still necessary to help you stay organized and on-track while you draft. The traditional research paper outline example looks something like this:

Introduction

• Main point #1
• Main point #2
• Main point #3

Works cited

Let’s examine each section in detail.

Wondering how to start a research paper that gets an A? One good step is to have a strong introduction. Your research paper introduction will include the following elements:

• state your thesis (the one or two-line gist of your paper)
• explain the question you will answer or argument you will make
• outline your research methodology

1. Open with a hook

Keep your readers reading—hook them! A handy tip for writing a hook is to think about what made you choose this topic. What about your topic captured your interest enough to research it and write a paper about it?

A hook might sound something like the following examples:

Did you know that babies have around a hundred more bones than adults?

A language dies every fourteen days.

Of course, by no means does your opening line have to be so shocking. It could be as simple as you’d like, as long as it pulls your readers in and gives them an idea of what your paper is going to be about.

2.  Introduce relevant background context

After you’ve hooked your readers, introduce them to the topic at hand. What is already known about it? What is still a mystery? Why should we care? Finally, what work have you done to advance knowledge on this topic?

You can include a relevant quotation or paraphrase here, but keep it short and sweet. Your introduction should not be bogged down with anything less than essential.

3.  End on your thesis statement

Finally, end your introduction paragraph with your thesis statement, which is a concise sentence (just one, two max) summarizing the crux of your research paper.

Research paper introduction example

As John Wilkes Booth fled the scene of his assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, he yelled, “ Sic semper tyrannis ! The South is avenged!” Booth was an ardent supporter of the Southern cause during the Civil War era, but what made him passionate enough to assassinate a sitting president? Although Booth’s ire can be traced mostly to his backing of the South, there is more to the story than just that. John Wilkes Booth had three primary motives for assassinating Abraham Lincoln.

The body of your paper is not limited to three points, as shown below, but three is typically considered the minimum. A good rule of thumb is to back up each main point with three arguments or pieces of evidence. To present a cogent argument or make your analysis more compelling , present your points and arguments in a “strong, stronger, strongest” research paper format.

• Main point #1 – A strong point 
• Strong supporting argument or evidence #1
• Stronger supporting argument or evidence #2
• Strongest supporting argument or evidence #3
• Main point #2 – A stronger point
• Main point #3 – Your strongest point

The conclusion is crucial for helping your readers reflect on your main arguments or analyses and understand why what they just read was worthwhile.

• restate your topic
• synthesize your most important points
• restate your thesis statement
• tie it all into the bigger picture

1.  Restate your topic

Before you wrap up your paper, it helps to remind your readers of the main idea at hand. This is different than restating your thesis. While your thesis states the specific argument or analysis at hand, the main idea of your research paper might be much broader. For instance, your thesis statement might be “John Wilkes Booth had three primary motives for assassinating Abraham Lincoln.” The main idea of the paper is Booth’s assassination of Lincoln. Even broader, the research paper is about American history.

2.  Synthesize your most important points

The key here is to synthesize , not summarize . Many students don’t see the point of conclusions because they look at them as mere repetition of points that already have been made. They’re right—that’s not what a conclusion paragraph should do! To summarize is to objectively restate what you’ve already said in your paper. What you want to do instead is offer a new viewpoint. Take the points you’ve made and develop a unique understanding or perspective.

For example, assume the main points you made in your paper are the following:

John Wilkes Booth was loyal to the South and the Confederate States of America.

John Wilkes Booth strongly opposed the abolition of slavery.

John Wilkes Booth was vocal about his hatred of Abraham Lincoln.

Instead of simply restating those three points in your conclusion, you could synthesize the points:

John Wilkes Booth’s outspoken loyalty to the South and opposition to abolition motivated him to assassinate Lincoln, who was one of the most prominent proponents of the abolition of slavery and the Union side of the Civil War. If Lincoln’s cause succeeded, the economy and culture of the antebellum South that Booth advocated for would not survive. All of those reasons combined were why Booth saw it as imperative that Lincoln be killed.

3.  Restate your thesis statement

After you’ve synthesized the main points of your research paper, restate your thesis statement. This helps bring your paper full circle back to where you began.

4.  Tie it all into the bigger picture

Answer the “so what?” question of your argument or analysis in order to end your research paper by tying it into a bigger picture. What implications does your argument or analysis have on the research of others? Why does your discovery matter? If you’re not sure, ask a friend to ask you (or ask yourself) “so what?” until you’ve figured it out. Here’s how it might look:

Friend: What is your paper about?

You: John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln for three main reasons.

Friend: So what?

You: It’s important to know why he killed Lincoln.

Friend: Why is it important?

You: So we know what kind of things motivate assassins to kill presidents so we can avoid it happening in the future.

Just like that, you have tied your paper into the bigger picture. Your paper is more likely to have a strong impact on your readers (and receive a better grade) if you end it with a strong “take-home” message.

Tips for writing a great conclusion to your paper

• Link your conclusion to your introduction.
• Don’t give away all the answers. Remember, you don’t have to have all the answers. You can conclude your research paper with some questions for your readers to ponder.
• Propose a call to action. After conducting all this research and formulating some great arguments or analyses, you might believe something needs to be done. For example, if you wrote the aforementioned research paper about Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, you might suggest a call to action that we all keep an eye out for potential presidential assassins like John Wilkes Booth.

Mistakes to avoid when concluding your research paper

• Being too wordy. Keep the conclusion concise.
• Failure to relate it back to your intro.
• Failure to reflect on the bigger picture. Provide a compelling synthesis of what was just written.

Research paper conclusion example

Presidential assassinations are particularly sad and defining points in American history. They shake the country and make the people ask, “How could this happen to the most powerful figure in our nation?” In this paper, we explored some of the reasons why assassinations happen. John Wilkes Booth’s outspoken loyalty to the South and opposition to abolition motivated him to assassinate Lincoln, who was one of the most prominent proponents of the abolition of slavery and the Union side of the Civil War. If Lincoln’s cause succeeded, the economy and culture of the antebellum South that Booth advocated for would not survive. Those three motives combined were why Booth saw it as imperative that Lincoln be killed. As history scholars, we should remember why and how this happened so that we can avoid it happening in the future.

A works cited or bibliography page (or pages) should be the final section of your paper. This section includes a list of the resources you consulted, quoted, or cited within the body of your work, as well as those which influenced your ideas on the topic.

This is only a basic research paper outline template, which can be altered depending on the length and purpose of your paper. Argumentative papers aim to prove a point through well-researched, persuasive argument, while analytical papers posit a question and explore possible answers throughout the paper. Either way, your goal as a writer is to find and share the truth, whether you do so before you start writing a research paper or while you’re writing it.

Once you have an outline in the above research paper format, it’s a good idea to consult with your teacher or a writing tutor to find ways to strengthen it. They’ll also be able to give you good writing advice, from how to start a research paper to how to find research paper ideas conducive to strong arguments. As you write, you might find yourself tweaking (or overhauling) your outline. That’s okay!

You already have a rock-solid topic, credible sources, and intuitive outline. Now, you just have to flesh it out into pages of flowing, articulate prose. (Okay, it won’t exactly be easy.)

Before you begin writing, you might find it helpful to look at sample research papers in your school’s library or writing center (many research paper examples can also be found online). This will give you an idea of how to do a research paper outline, build a research paper outline template, as well as give you several research paper introduction examples. Here is one example research paper .

Examples of research papers you’ll see will look crazy long. But remember, those weren’t completed in one sitting! So, don’t wait until the last minute to get started. You’ll need to factor in time for breaks, writing tutor consultations, and the dreaded writer’s block.

You will probably write multiple drafts. Don’t expect your first draft to be perfect. You may even need to change your main argument halfway through your draft. That’s okay! Be ready to re-brainstorm, re-outline, and rewrite.

This might just be the most important step. Even if you brainstorm the perfect topic, create a brilliant research paper outline, and write a strong first draft. None of that brilliance will shine through if your paper is full of typos, grammar errors, and rambling tangents.

You’ll want to complete these kinds of editing, in this order:

• line editing
• spell-checking
• proofreading

Revision deals with broad issues, such as an argument that doesn’t make sense or a source that doesn’t support your thesis. Line editing, spell-checking, and proofreading are more to do with your writing itself—the flow of your sentences and the presence of any spelling or grammatical errors.

Paper formatting

The format of your paper will depend largely on what paper or citation style your instructor has told you to use (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, etc.). In general though, here are some good paper formatting guidelines to follow:

• Use 1-inch margins around your paper.
• Use a standard font like Times New Roman, Arial, etc.
• Use a standard font size between 10-12 points.
• Make sure that the title of your paper, date you turn it in, course name, and your name appear somewhere on the first page. If this is for APA, you’ll create a title page. If for MLA, you’ll create a header.

After you finish, it also doesn’t hurt to check your paper for plagiarism .

Before you turn in that paper, don’t forget to cite your sources in APA format , MLA format , or a style of your choice.

A title page is not always needed but is sometimes requested by an instructor or required by a paper format (example: APA style). It is always the first page of a paper and is the cover that communicates what’s in store for a reader. Let’s discuss what a title page is, why it’s important, how to create one, and tips on writing a good title.

What is a title page?

A title page is the first page of the paper that displays the title, the author’s name, and other required information such as thhe course number, the instructor’s name, or the date .

Why have a title page?

The main purpose of title page is like the purpose of a book cover or a news article headline. Its purpose is to allow the reader to easily understand what the paper is about .

This makes it especially important for you to have an effective and well-written title for your essay. You want to capture the reader’s attention, so they feel that your work is worth reading.

A title page can also indicate that the paper is academic in nature. The structured nature of a title page is an indicator that a paper has been created using certain academic guidelines or standards.

What is included on the title page besides the title?

There are two title page formats that you may be asked to use for academic papers. One is called American Psychological Association, which is commonly known as APA, and the second is called Modern Language Association, generally referred to as MLA. APA is typically used for research involving technical and scientific topics while MLA is more likely to be used for humanities or literature topics. Even though they are similar, each has a different set of requirements for the title page.

APA requirements:

• Research Paper Title
• Author’s full name (first name, middle initial, last name)
• Department and university name/Affiliation
• Course number and name
• Instructor’s/Professor’s name
• Assignment due date
• Page number
• All information is to be double spaced and centered
• Use Times New Roman font with 12 point size

MLA requirements:

It is important to note that usually a cover page is not required when using the MLA format. Instead, all the same points are found at the top of the first page of the research paper. However, if a title page is requested, it must meet the following requirements:

• Name of the school or university
• Title of the paper
• Subtitle of the paper (if necessary)
• Author’s/Student’s name
• Appropriate course number and name
• Use Times New Roman font with 12 as the font size
• Except for small words such as a, the, or, etc.
• The first letter of the first word should always be capitalized
• For BOTH formats, the first line should be spaced down three or four lines from the top margin.

Now, look at examples of both APA and MLA college research paper title page formats.

College research paper title page examples

Effects of Depression Symptoms on Quality of Sleep  

Jane A. Doe and John Z. Smith

Michigan State University

Jack Peterson, Instructor

March 11, 2021

Effects of Depression Symptoms on Quality of Sleep

Jane A. Doe and Joe Z. Smith

Professor Jack Peterson

Tips on writing a great title

There are few things to consider when creating the title of your research paper:

• Succinctly communicate what the topic of the paper is.
• Be concise.
• Give your reader a preview of your approach to the subject.
• Gain the reader’s interest in learning about your subject.

Below are two examples of titles. Think about which title is more effective and why.

• Student Loan Debt
• The Vanishing American Middle Class: How Student Loan Debt is Destroying the Next Generation and What Can Be Done About It

Hopefully, you noticed that while Title 1 is concise, it is not informative. It does not  give information on the writer’s approach to research on the topic. Title 2 is more interesting and precise than Title 1, and it communicates what problem the writer has researched. It is, however, very long.  An ideal title would be something in the middle like this:

Student Loan Debt and Its Impact on the Vanishing American Middle Class

Here are a few examples of bad titles:

• Television is Influential

(the title is very vague and doesn’t make the reader want to learn more)

• The Most Poisonous Snakes

(This title is too broad.)

• Outsourcing in the 21st Century

While this title is not terrible, it should include more detail. For example, what is being outsourced exactly?

A good paper title should convey your specific topic or argument and can hint at the conclusions. Here are some general guidelines to follow:

• Your title should be grammatically correct and in Title Case
• It should be formatted correctly
• It should not be a quote by someone else
• The title is not your thesis statement
• The title is not just rephrasing the topic or assignment
• Always follow your professor’s preferences
• Do not put your title in All CAPS or Italics

An abstract is a concise overview or summary of your research paper. The abstract is a paragraph that states the central question behind the research, describes the research methods, and summarizes the findings. After reading your abstract, readers should understand exactly what your paper is all about.

Abstracts are used in papers meant for publication in journals and are not typically required for student papers.

What’s the difference between an abstract and an introduction?

Many students have trouble understanding the difference between an abstract and an introduction. While it’s true that both may seem quite similar at first glance, an abstract is distinct from an introduction in several ways.

An abstract is a concise summary, whereas an introduction is much more detailed. When writing an introduction, you will provide an overview of the “why, what, when and how” of your study. On the other hand, an abstract provides readers with a quick overview of your paper without them having to read the entire paper. It will also provide a preview so they can better understand the paper when reading it or deciding whether or not they want to read it.

Why are abstracts necessary for research papers?

Abstracts help researchers to quickly identify studies relevant to subjects they need information on. If abstracts didn’t exist, people would have to sift through pages and pages of each study just to find this important information. In the modern era, abstracts are even more important because they contain keywords that make papers easier to find on the web. In addition, abstracts allow researchers to absorb key information without paying any money if the paper is not an open-source document.

Planning your abstract

Write the abstract after you have finished writing your paper.  You can’t summarize until you have written the paper.  The organization of an abstract is determined by the type of research paper.

Scientific abstracts include a concise summary of the following:

• OBJECTIVE: Clearly define the purpose of your research and the central question you aimed to answer.
• METHODS: Briefly explain research methods you used to answer your central question.
• RESULTS: Summarize the most important and relevant results of your study. Don’t include all of your results if there are too many to realistically fit.
• FINDINGS: Explain how your research answered your central problem or question. What the significance of your research? What kind of argument are you making in light of your results?  

Abstracts for research in humanities and the social sciences contain the following:

• The background and overview of your general topic
• A concise summary of your central argument and claims
• The rationale and purpose for your research in this specific area
• Your method and strategy for researching this topic and primary sources used to support your claims

There are different types of abstracts you may be asked to write, depending on the assignment. Common types of abstracts for the social sciences include the following:

• Critical Abstract: This type of abstract provides a judgment or comment on how reliable the study is. These types of abstracts are quite rare.
• Descriptive Abstract: A descriptive abstract simply summarizes the information found in a paper. There is no judgment involved, and these abstracts can be as short as 100 words.
• Informative Abstract: This is the most common type of abstract. It includes the main arguments,  the evidence presented and the most important findings. In most cases, this is the type of abstract you will be writing.
• Highlight Abstract: The purpose of a highlight abstract is to grab the reader’s attention. These are often incomplete, biased, and full of leading remarks intended only to attract readers. These are not used in academic writing.

Writing your abstract

Abstracts are usually between 150 and 300 words. An abstract for a research paper in the humanities or social sciences should be formatted as a single paragraph. For the sciences, you will need to clearly outline each section (Objective, Methods, Results, Conclusion). The abstract follows the title page.

When it comes to actually writing your abstract, you can simply copy and paste key sentences from your paper and place them in a sequence. This is a good way to organize and outline your ideas before writing the abstract. You may prefer to write it another way – just be sure to include your main objective, method, and overall conclusion.  Regardless, be sure to make your abstract a clear and concise explanation of your rationale for the essay and primary findings.

Below is a sample APA abstract that a freshman college student taking psychology and studying addictive disorders might provide for her research.

Sample Psychology Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to analyze the overall efficacy of Medicated Assisted Treatment (MAT) in individuals with opioid use disorder compared with those individuals who only receive treatment in the form of 12-step recovery style meetings and counseling. From 2017-present, most people who seek assistance for opiate addiction in the United States receive treatment in the form of MAT or 12-step (and related) forms of treatment. Some are provided with both. Using recent data from recognized and credible scientific and medical literature and peer-reviewed journals, I provide an analysis of current trends in how opioid-dependent individuals are likely to be treated and make an argument that MAT combined with counseling/therapy of any recovery model (not only 12-step type, e. g., Narcotics Anonymous or NA) is much more effective than recovery programs using 12-step meetings and fellowship as the primary method of treatment. Furthermore, I demonstrate that individuals with private insurance and access to private treatment (inpatient rehabilitation with medical detoxification and post-acute support) are more likely to receive MAT combined with therapy and, therefore, achieve long term success/ sobriety. Success is measured in the percentage of subjects who show long-term abstinence from opioids after 5 years compared to those who do not survive — or return to their opioid use disorder. The rationale for this research project is to find out how most Americans are treated for this debilitating health issue during the current “opioid epidemic” that resulted in 50,000 overdose-related deaths in 2019 alone. My hope is that my argument might increase awareness of the higher success rates of MAT compared to that of predominately 12-step only recovery as well as prompt discussion of making MAT more accessible to those without private medical insurance and the financial means to pay for it.

Sample Scientific Abstract

“The relationship between habitat use by voles (Rodentia: Microtus) and the density of vegetative cover was studied to determine if voles select forage areas at the microhabitat level.  Using live traps, I trapped, powdered, and released voles at 10 sites.  At each trap site I analyzed the type and height of the vegetation in the immediate area. Using a black light, I followed the trails left by powdered voles through the vegetation.  I mapped the trails using a compass to ascertain the tortuosity, or amount the trail twisted and turned, and visually checked the trails to determine obstruction of the movement path by vegetation.  I also checked vegetative obstruction on 4 random paths near the actual trail, to compare the cover on the trail with other nearby alternative pathways.  There was not a statistically significant difference between the amount of cover on a vole trail and the cover off to the sides of the trail when completely covered; there was a significant difference between on and off the trail when the path was completely open.  These results indicate that voles are selectively avoiding bare areas, while not choosing among dense patches at a fine microhabitat scale.”

Source: http://www.umt.edu/ugresearch/umcur/sample_abstracts.php

Additional tips for writing a research paper abstract

• Imagine you are another researcher looking at your abstract for the first time. Does it adequately summarize your research, or is essential information missing?
• Avoid redundancy.
• Do not use acronyms or abbreviations.
• Do not reference other literature.
• Do not use confusing terminology that new readers will not understand.
• Do not use images, graphs, or tables.
• Only describe the paper – do not defend your research in the abstract.
• No need to cite sources.
• Write in past tense, as the research is already complete.
• Use active tense when possible.

Example research paper on student stress

Why it’s worth learning how to write a research paper.

Learning how to write a research paper will allow you to strengthen your time management, communication, and analytical skills. What is a research paper for, after all, if not to help you grow as a student and a writer? Believe it or not, with enough practice, you’ll become a pro at finding interesting research paper topics, creating an organized research paper outline, and writing a clean draft that flows from introduction to conclusion.

Research paper template and example

• Research paper template
• Research paper example
• How to write a research paper
• Research paper topics
• Research paper outline

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How to Write a Research Paper

Use the links below to jump directly to any section of this guide:

Research Paper Fundamentals

How to choose a topic or question, how to create a working hypothesis or thesis, common research paper methodologies, how to gather and organize evidence , how to write an outline for your research paper, how to write a rough draft, how to revise your draft, how to produce a final draft, resources for teachers .

It is not fair to say that no one writes anymore. Just about everyone writes text messages, brief emails, or social media posts every single day. Yet, most people don't have a lot of practice with the formal, organized writing required for a good academic research paper. This guide contains links to a variety of resources that can help demystify the process. Some of these resources are intended for teachers; they contain exercises, activities, and teaching strategies. Other resources are intended for direct use by students who are struggling to write papers, or are looking for tips to make the process go more smoothly.

The resources in this section are designed to help students understand the different types of research papers, the general research process, and how to manage their time. Below, you'll find links from university writing centers, the trusted Purdue Online Writing Lab, and more.

What is an Academic Research Paper?

"Genre and the Research Paper" (Purdue OWL)

There are different types of research papers. Different types of scholarly questions will lend themselves to one format or another. This is a brief introduction to the two main genres of research paper: analytic and argumentative. 

"7 Most Popular Types of Research Papers" (Personal-writer.com)

This resource discusses formats that high school students commonly encounter, such as the compare and contrast essay and the definitional essay. Please note that the inclusion of this link is not an endorsement of this company's paid service.

How to Prepare and Plan Out Writing a Research Paper

Teachers can give their students a step-by-step guide like these to help them understand the different steps of the research paper process. These guides can be combined with the time management tools in the next subsection to help students come up with customized calendars for completing their papers.

"Ten Steps for Writing Research Papers" (American University)  

This resource from American University is a comprehensive guide to the research paper writing process, and includes examples of proper research questions and thesis topics.

"Steps in Writing a Research Paper" (SUNY Empire State College)

This guide breaks the research paper process into 11 steps. Each "step" links to a separate page, which describes the work entailed in completing it.

How to Manage Time Effectively

The links below will help students determine how much time is necessary to complete a paper. If your sources are not available online or at your local library, you'll need to leave extra time for the Interlibrary Loan process. Remember that, even if you do not need to consult secondary sources, you'll still need to leave yourself ample time to organize your thoughts.

"Research Paper Planner: Timeline" (Baylor University)

This interactive resource from Baylor University creates a suggested writing schedule based on how much time a student has to work on the assignment.

"Research Paper Planner" (UCLA)

UCLA's library offers this step-by-step guide to the research paper writing process, which also includes a suggested planning calendar.

There's a reason teachers spend a long time talking about choosing a good topic. Without a good topic and a well-formulated research question, it is almost impossible to write a clear and organized paper. The resources below will help you generate ideas and formulate precise questions.

"How to Select a Research Topic" (Univ. of Michigan-Flint)

This resource is designed for college students who are struggling to come up with an appropriate topic. A student who uses this resource and still feels unsure about his or her topic should consult the course instructor for further personalized assistance.

"25 Interesting Research Paper Topics to Get You Started" (Kibin)

This resource, which is probably most appropriate for high school students, provides a list of specific topics to help get students started. It is broken into subsections, such as "paper topics on local issues."

"Writing a Good Research Question" (Grand Canyon University)

This introduction to research questions includes some embedded videos, as well as links to scholarly articles on research questions. This resource would be most appropriate for teachers who are planning lessons on research paper fundamentals.

"How to Write a Research Question the Right Way" (Kibin)

This student-focused resource provides more detail on writing research questions. The language is accessible, and there are embedded videos and examples of good and bad questions.

It is important to have a rough hypothesis or thesis in mind at the beginning of the research process. People who have a sense of what they want to say will have an easier time sorting through scholarly sources and other information. The key, of course, is not to become too wedded to the draft hypothesis or thesis. Just about every working thesis gets changed during the research process.

CrashCourse Video: "Sociology Research Methods" (YouTube)

Although this video is tailored to sociology students, it is applicable to students in a variety of social science disciplines. This video does a good job demonstrating the connection between the brainstorming that goes into selecting a research question and the formulation of a working hypothesis.

"How to Write a Thesis Statement for an Analytical Essay" (YouTube)

Students writing analytical essays will not develop the same type of working hypothesis as students who are writing research papers in other disciplines. For these students, developing the working thesis may happen as a part of the rough draft (see the relevant section below). 

"Research Hypothesis" (Oakland Univ.)

This resource provides some examples of hypotheses in social science disciplines like Political Science and Criminal Justice. These sample hypotheses may also be useful for students in other soft social sciences and humanities disciplines like History.

When grading a research paper, instructors look for a consistent methodology. This section will help you understand different methodological approaches used in research papers. Students will get the most out of these resources if they use them to help prepare for conversations with teachers or discussions in class.

"Types of Research Designs" (USC)

A "research design," used for complex papers, is related to the paper's method. This resource contains introductions to a variety of popular research designs in the social sciences. Although it is not the most intuitive site to read, the information here is very valuable. 

"Major Research Methods" (YouTube)

Although this video is a bit on the dry side, it provides a comprehensive overview of the major research methodologies in a format that might be more accessible to students who have struggled with textbooks or other written resources.

"Humanities Research Strategies" (USC)

This is a portal where students can learn about four methodological approaches for humanities papers: Historical Methodologies, Textual Criticism, Conceptual Analysis, and the Synoptic method.

"Selected Major Social Science Research Methods: Overview" (National Academies Press)

This appendix from the book  Using Science as Evidence in Public Policy , printed by National Academies Press, introduces some methods used in social science papers.

"Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper: 6. The Methodology" (USC)

This resource from the University of Southern California's library contains tips for writing a methodology section in a research paper.

How to Determine the Best Methodology for You

Anyone who is new to writing research papers should be sure to select a method in consultation with their instructor. These resources can be used to help prepare for that discussion. They may also be used on their own by more advanced students.

"Choosing Appropriate Research Methodologies" (Palgrave Study Skills)

This friendly and approachable resource from Palgrave Macmillan can be used by students who are just starting to think about appropriate methodologies.

"How to Choose Your Research Methods" (NFER (UK))

This is another approachable resource students can use to help narrow down the most appropriate methods for their research projects.

The resources in this section introduce the process of gathering scholarly sources and collecting evidence. You'll find a range of material here, from introductory guides to advanced explications best suited to college students. Please consult the LitCharts  How to Do Academic Research guide for a more comprehensive list of resources devoted to finding scholarly literature.

Google Scholar

Students who have access to library websites with detailed research guides should start there, but people who do not have access to those resources can begin their search for secondary literature here.

"Gathering Appropriate Information" (Texas Gateway)

This resource from the Texas Gateway for online resources introduces students to the research process, and contains interactive exercises. The level of complexity is suitable for middle school, high school, and introductory college classrooms.

"An Overview of Quantitative and Qualitative Data Collection Methods" (NSF)

This PDF from the National Science Foundation goes into detail about best practices and pitfalls in data collection across multiple types of methodologies.

"Social Science Methods for Data Collection and Analysis" (Swiss FIT)

This resource is appropriate for advanced undergraduates or teachers looking to create lessons on research design and data collection. It covers techniques for gathering data via interviews, observations, and other methods.

"Collecting Data by In-depth Interviewing" (Leeds Univ.)

This resource contains enough information about conducting interviews to make it useful for teachers who want to create a lesson plan, but is also accessible enough for college juniors or seniors to make use of it on their own.

There is no "one size fits all" outlining technique. Some students might devote all their energy and attention to the outline in order to avoid the paper. Other students may benefit from being made to sit down and organize their thoughts into a lengthy sentence outline. The resources in this section include strategies and templates for multiple types of outlines. 

"Topic vs. Sentence Outlines" (UC Berkeley)

This resource introduces two basic approaches to outlining: the shorter topic-based approach, and the longer, more detailed sentence-based approach. This resource also contains videos on how to develop paper paragraphs from the sentence-based outline.

"Types of Outlines and Samples" (Purdue OWL)

The Purdue Online Writing Lab's guide is a slightly less detailed discussion of different types of outlines. It contains several sample outlines.

"Writing An Outline" (Austin C.C.)

This resource from a community college contains sample outlines from an American history class that students can use as models.

"How to Structure an Outline for a College Paper" (YouTube)

This brief (sub-2 minute) video from the ExpertVillage YouTube channel provides a model of outline writing for students who are struggling with the idea.

"Outlining" (Harvard)

This is a good resource to consult after completing a draft outline. It offers suggestions for making sure your outline avoids things like unnecessary repetition.

As with outlines, rough drafts can take on many different forms. These resources introduce teachers and students to the various approaches to writing a rough draft. This section also includes resources that will help you cite your sources appropriately according to the MLA, Chicago, and APA style manuals.

"Creating a Rough Draft for a Research Paper" (Univ. of Minnesota)

This resource is useful for teachers in particular, as it provides some suggested exercises to help students with writing a basic rough draft. 

Rough Draft Assignment (Duke of Definition)

This sample assignment, with a brief list of tips, was developed by a high school teacher who runs a very successful and well-reviewed page of educational resources.

"Creating the First Draft of Your Research Paper" (Concordia Univ.)

This resource will be helpful for perfectionists or procrastinators, as it opens by discussing the problem of avoiding writing. It also provides a short list of suggestions meant to get students writing.

Using Proper Citations

There is no such thing as a rough draft of a scholarly citation. These links to the three major citation guides will ensure that your citations follow the correct format. Please consult the LitCharts How to Cite Your Sources guide for more resources.

Chicago Manual of Style Citation Guide

Some call  The Chicago Manual of Style , which was first published in 1906, "the editors' Bible." The manual is now in its 17th edition, and is popular in the social sciences, historical journals, and some other fields in the humanities.

APA Citation Guide

According to the American Psychological Association, this guide was developed to aid reading comprehension, clarity of communication, and to reduce bias in language in the social and behavioral sciences. Its first full edition was published in 1952, and it is now in its sixth edition.

MLA Citation Guide

The Modern Language Association style is used most commonly within the liberal arts and humanities. The  MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing  was first published in 1985 and (as of 2008) is in its third edition.

Any professional scholar will tell you that the best research papers are made in the revision stage. No matter how strong your research question or working thesis, it is not possible to write a truly outstanding paper without devoting energy to revision. These resources provide examples of revision exercises for the classroom, as well as tips for students working independently.

"The Art of Revision" (Univ. of Arizona)

This resource provides a wealth of information and suggestions for both students and teachers. There is a list of suggested exercises that teachers might use in class, along with a revision checklist that is useful for teachers and students alike.

"Script for Workshop on Revision" (Vanderbilt University)

Vanderbilt's guide for leading a 50-minute revision workshop can serve as a model for teachers who wish to guide students through the revision process during classtime. 

"Revising Your Paper" (Univ. of Washington)

This detailed handout was designed for students who are beginning the revision process. It discusses different approaches and methods for revision, and also includes a detailed list of things students should look for while they revise.

"Revising Drafts" (UNC Writing Center)

This resource is designed for students and suggests things to look for during the revision process. It provides steps for the process and has a FAQ for students who have questions about why it is important to revise.

Conferencing with Writing Tutors and Instructors

No writer is so good that he or she can't benefit from meeting with instructors or peer tutors. These resources from university writing, learning, and communication centers provide suggestions for how to get the most out of these one-on-one meetings.

"Getting Feedback" (UNC Writing Center)

This very helpful resource talks about how to ask for feedback during the entire writing process. It contains possible questions that students might ask when developing an outline, during the revision process, and after the final draft has been graded.

"Prepare for Your Tutoring Session" (Otis College of Art and Design)

This guide from a university's student learning center contains a lot of helpful tips for getting the most out of working with a writing tutor.

"The Importance of Asking Your Professor" (Univ. of Waterloo)

This article from the university's Writing and Communication Centre's blog contains some suggestions for how and when to get help from professors and Teaching Assistants.

Once you've revised your first draft, you're well on your way to handing in a polished paper. These resources—each of them produced by writing professionals at colleges and universities—outline the steps required in order to produce a final draft. You'll find proofreading tips and checklists in text and video form.

"Developing a Final Draft of a Research Paper" (Univ. of Minnesota)

While this resource contains suggestions for revision, it also features a couple of helpful checklists for the last stages of completing a final draft.

Basic Final Draft Tips and Checklist (Univ. of Maryland-University College)

This short and accessible resource, part of UMUC's very thorough online guide to writing and research, contains a very basic checklist for students who are getting ready to turn in their final drafts.

Final Draft Checklist (Everett C.C.)

This is another accessible final draft checklist, appropriate for both high school and college students. It suggests reading your essay aloud at least once.

"How to Proofread Your Final Draft" (YouTube)

This video (approximately 5 minutes), produced by Eastern Washington University, gives students tips on proofreading final drafts.

"Proofreading Tips" (Georgia Southern-Armstrong)

This guide will help students learn how to spot common errors in their papers. It suggests focusing on content and editing for grammar and mechanics.

This final set of resources is intended specifically for high school and college instructors. It provides links to unit plans and classroom exercises that can help improve students' research and writing skills. You'll find resources that give an overview of the process, along with activities that focus on how to begin and how to carry out research. 

"Research Paper Complete Resources Pack" (Teachers Pay Teachers)

This packet of assignments, rubrics, and other resources is designed for high school students. The resources in this packet are aligned to Common Core standards.

"Research Paper—Complete Unit" (Teachers Pay Teachers)

This packet of assignments, notes, PowerPoints, and other resources has a 4/4 rating with over 700 ratings. It is designed for high school teachers, but might also be useful to college instructors who work with freshmen.

"Teaching Students to Write Good Papers" (Yale)

This resource from Yale's Center for Teaching and Learning is designed for college instructors, and it includes links to appropriate activities and exercises.

"Research Paper Writing: An Overview" (CUNY Brooklyn)

CUNY Brooklyn offers this complete lesson plan for introducing students to research papers. It includes an accompanying set of PowerPoint slides.

"Lesson Plan: How to Begin Writing a Research Paper" (San Jose State Univ.)

This lesson plan is designed for students in the health sciences, so teachers will have to modify it for their own needs. It includes a breakdown of the brainstorming, topic selection, and research question process. 

"Quantitative Techniques for Social Science Research" (Univ. of Pittsburgh)

This is a set of PowerPoint slides that can be used to introduce students to a variety of quantitative methods used in the social sciences.

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How to Write a Research Paper

If you already have a headache trying to understand what research paper is all about, we have created an ultimate guide for you on how to write a research paper. You will find all the answers to your questions regarding structure, planning, doing investigation, finding the topic that appeals to you. Plus, you will find out the secret to an excellent paper. Are you at the edge of your seat? Let us start with the basics then.

• What is a Research Paper
• Reasons for Writing a Research Paper
• Report Papers and Thesis Papers
• How to Start a Research Paper
• How to Choose a Topic for a Research Paper
• How to Write a Proposal for a Research Paper
• How to Write a Research Plan
• How to Do Research
• How to Write an Outline for a Research Paper
• How to Write a Thesis Statement for a Research Paper
• How to Write a Research Paper Rough Draft
• How to Write an Introduction for a Research Paper
• How to Write a Body of a Research Paper
• How to Write a Conclusion for a Research Paper
• How to Write an Abstract for a Research Paper
• How to Revise and Edit a Research Paper
• How to Write a Bibliography for a Research Paper
• What Makes a Good Research Paper

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What is a research paper.

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You probably know the saying ‘the devil is not as black as he is painted’. This particular saying is absolutely true when it comes to writing a research paper. Your feet are cold even with the thought of this assignment. You have heard terrifying stories from older students. You have never done this before, so certainly you are scared. What is a research paper? How should I start? What are all these requirements about?

Luckily, you have a friend in need. That is our writing service. First and foremost, let us clarify the definition. A research paper is a piece of academic writing that provides information about a particular topic that you’ve researched . In other words, you choose a topic: about historical events, the work of some artist, some social issues etc. Then you collect data on the given topic and analyze it. Finally, you put your analysis on paper. See, it is not as scary as it seems. If you are still having doubts, whether you can handle it yourself, we are here to help you. Our team of writers can help you choose the topic, or give you advice on how to plan your work, or how to start, or craft a paper for you. Just contact us 24/7 and see everything yourself.

5 Reasons for Writing a Research Paper

Why should I spend my time writing some academic paper? What is the use of it? Is not some practical knowledge more important? The list of questions is endless when it comes to a research paper. That is why we have outlined 5 main reasons why writing a research paper is a good thing.

• You will learn how to organize your time

If you want to write a research paper, you will have to learn how to manage your time. This type of assignment cannot be done overnight. It requires careful planning and you will need to learn how to do it. Later, you will be able to use these time-managing skills in your personal life, so why not developing them?

• You will discover your writing skills

You cannot know something before you try it. This rule relates to writing as well. You cannot claim that you cannot write until you try it yourself. It will be really difficult at the beginning, but then the words will come to your head themselves.

• You will improve your analytical skills

Writing a research paper is all about investigation and analysis. You will need to collect data, examine and classify it. These skills are needed in modern life more than anything else is.

• You will gain confidence

Once you do your own research, it gives you the feeling of confidence in yourself. The reason is simple human brain likes solving puzzles and your assignment is just another puzzle to be solved.

• You will learn how to persuade the reader

When you write your paper, you should always remember that you are writing it for someone to read. Moreover, you want this someone to believe in your ideas. For this reason, you will have to learn different convincing methods and techniques. You will learn how to make your writing persuasive. In turns, you will be able to use these methods in real life.

What is the Difference between Report and Thesis Papers?

A common question is ‘what is the difference between a report paper and a thesis paper?’ The difference lies in the aim of these two assignments. While the former aims at presenting the information, the latter aims at providing your opinion on the matter. In other words, in a report paper you have to summarize your findings. In a thesis paper, you choose some issue and defend your point of view by persuading the reader. It is that simple.

A thesis paper is a more common assignment than a report paper. This task will help a professor to evaluate your analytical skills and skills to present your ideas logically. These skills are more important than just the ability to collect and summarize data.

How to Write a Research Paper Step by Step

Research comes from the French word  rechercher , meaning “to seek out.” Writing a research paper requires you to seek out information about a subject, take a stand on it, and back it up with the opinions, ideas, and views of others. What results is a printed paper variously known as a term paper or library paper, usually between five and fifteen pages long—most instructors specify a minimum length—in which you present your views and findings on the chosen subject.

It is not a secret that the majority of students hate writing a research paper. The reason is simple it steals your time and energy. Not to mention, constant anxiety that you will not be able to meet the deadline or that you will forget about some academic requirement.

We will not lie to you; a research paper is a difficult assignment. You will have to spend a lot of time. You will need to read, to analyze, and to search for the material. You will probably be stuck sometimes. However, if you organize your work smart, you will gain something that is worth all the effort – knowledge, experience, and high grades.

The reason why many students fail writing a research paper is that nobody explained them how to start and how to plan their work. Luckily, you have found our writing service and we are ready to shed the light on this dark matter.

We have created a step by step guide for you on how to write a research paper. We will dwell upon the structure, the writing tips, the writing strategies as well as academic requirements. Read this whole article and you will see that you can handle writing this assignment and our team of writers is here to assist you.

How to Start a Research Paper?

It all starts with the assignment. Your professor gives you the task. It may be either some general issue or specific topic to write about. Your assignment is your first guide to success. If you understand what you need to do according to the assignment, you are on the road to high results. Do not be scared to clarify your task if you need to. There is nothing wrong in asking a question if you want to do something right. You can ask your professor or you can ask our writers who know a thing or two in academic writing.

It is essential to understand the assignment. A good beginning makes a good ending, so start smart.

Learn how to start a research paper .

Choosing a Topic for a Research Paper

We have already mentioned that it is not enough to do great research. You need to persuade the reader that you have made some great research. What convinces better that an eye-catching topic? That is why it is important to understand how to choose a topic for a research paper.

First, you need to delimit the general idea to a more specific one. Secondly, you need to find what makes this topic interesting for you and for the academia. Finally, you need to refine you topic. Remember, it is not something you will do in one day. You can be reshaping your topic throughout your whole writing process. Still, reshaping not changing it completely. That is why keep in your head one main idea: your topic should be precise and compelling .

Learn how to choose a topic for a research paper .

How to Write a Proposal for a Research Paper?

If you do not know what a proposal is, let us explain it to you. A proposal should answer three main questions:

• What is the main aim of your investigation?
• Why is your investigation important?
• How are you going to achieve the results?

In other words, proposal should show why your topic is interesting and how you are going to prove it. As to writing requirements, they may differ. That is why make sure you find out all the details at your department. You can ask your departmental administrator or find information online at department’s site. It is crucial to follow all the administrative requirements, as it will influence your grade.

Learn how to write a proposal for a research paper .

How to Write a Research Plan?

The next step is writing a plan. You have already decided on the main issues, you have chosen the bibliography, and you have clarified the methods. Here comes the planning. If you want to avoid writer’s block, you have to structure you work. Discuss your strategies and ideas with your instructor. Think thoroughly why you need to present some data and ideas first and others second. Remember that there are basic structure elements that your research paper should include:

• Thesis Statement
• Introduction
• Bibliography

You should keep in mind this skeleton when planning your work. This will keep your mind sharp and your ideas will flow logically.

Learn how to write a research plan .

How to Do Research?

Your research will include three stages: collecting data, reading and analyzing it, and writing itself.

First, you need to collect all the material that you will need for you investigation: films, documents, surveys, interviews, and others. Secondly, you will have to read and analyze. This step is tricky, as you need to do this part smart. It is not enough just to read, as you cannot keep in mind all the information. It is essential that you make notes and write down your ideas while analyzing some data. When you get down to the stage number three, writing itself, you will already have the main ideas written on your notes. Plus, remember to jot down the reference details. You will then appreciate this trick when you will have to write the bibliography.

If you do your research this way, it will be much easier for you to write the paper. You will already have blocks of your ideas written down and you will just need to add some material and refine your paper.

Learn how to do research .

How to Write an Outline for a Research Paper?

To make your paper well organized you need to write an outline. Your outline will serve as your guiding star through the writing process. With a great outline you will not get sidetracked, because you will have a structured plan to follow. Both you and the reader will benefit from your outline. You present your ideas logically and you make your writing coherent according to your plan. As a result, this outline guides the reader through your paper and the reader enjoys the way you demonstrate your ideas.

Learn how to write an outline for a research paper . See research paper outline examples .

How to Write a Thesis Statement for a Research Paper?

Briefly, the thesis is the main argument of your research paper. It should be precise, convincing and logical. Your thesis statement should include your point of view supported by evidence or logic. Still, remember it should be precise. You should not beat around the bush, or provide all the possible evidence you have found. It is usually a single sentence that shows your argument. In on sentence you should make a claim, explain why it significant and convince the reader that your point of view is important.

Learn how to write a thesis statement for a research paper . See research paper thesis statement examples .

Should I Write a Rough Draft for a Research Paper?

Do you know any writer who put their ideas on paper, then never edited them and just published? Probably, no writer did so. Writing a research paper is no exception. It is impossible to cope with this assignment without writing a rough draft.

Your draft will help you understand what you need to polish to make your paper perfect. All the requirements, academic standards make it difficult to do everything flawlessly at the first attempt. Make sure you know all the formatting requirements: margins, words quantity, reference requirements, formatting styles etc.

Learn how to write a rough draft for a research paper .

How to Write an Introduction for a Research Paper?

Let us make it more vivid for you. We have narrowed down the tips on writing an introduction to the three main ones:

• Include your thesis in your introduction

Remember to include the thesis statement in your introduction. Usually, it goes at the end of the first paragraph.

• Present the main ideas of the body

You should tell the main topics you are going to discuss in the main body. For this reason, before writing this part of introduction, make sure you know what is your main body is going to be about. It should include your main ideas.

• Polish your thesis and introduction

When you finish the main body of your paper, come back to the thesis statement and introduction. Restate something if needed. Just make it perfect; because introduction is like the trailer to your paper, it should make the reader want to read the whole piece.

Learn how to write an introduction for a research paper . See research paper introduction examples .

How to Write a Body of a Research Paper?

A body is the main part of your research paper. In this part, you will include all the needed evidence; you will provide the examples and support your argument.

It is important to structure your paragraphs thoroughly. That is to say, topic sentence and the evidence supporting the topic. Stay focused and do not be sidetracked. You have your outline, so follow it.

Here are the main tips to keep in head when writing a body of a research paper:

• Let the ideas flow logically
• Include only relevant information
• Provide the evidence
• Structure the paragraphs
• Make the coherent transition from one paragraph to another

See? When it is all structured, it is not as scary as it seemed at the beginning. Still, if you have doubts, you can always ask our writers for help.

Learn how to write a body of a research paper . See research paper transition examples .

How to Write a Conclusion for a Research Paper?

Writing a good conclusion is important as writing any other part of the paper. Remember that conclusion is not a summary of what you have mentioned before. A good conclusion should include your last strong statement.

If you have written everything according to the plan, the reader already knows why your investigation is important. The reader has already seen the evidence. The only thing left is a strong concluding thought that will organize all your findings.

Never include any new information in conclusion. You need to conclude, not to start a new discussion.

Learn how to write a conclusion for a research paper .

How to Write an Abstract for a Research Paper?

An abstract is a brief summary of your paper, usually 100-200 words. You should provide the main gist of your paper in this short summary. An abstract can be informative, descriptive or proposal. Depending on the type of abstract, you need to write, the requirements will differ.

To write an informative abstract you have to provide the summary of the whole paper. Informative summary. In other words, you need to tell about the main points of your work, the methods used, the results and the conclusion of your research.

To write a descriptive abstract you will not have to provide any summery. You should write a short teaser of your paper. That is to say, you need to write an overview of your paper. The aim of a descriptive abstract is to interest the reader.

Finally, to write a proposal abstract you will need to write the basic summary as for the informative abstract. However, the difference is the following: you aim at persuading someone to let you write on the topic. That is why, a proposal abstract should present your topic as the one worth investigating.

Learn how to write an abstract for a research paper .

Should I Revise and Edit a Research Paper?

Revising and editing your paper is essential if you want to get high grades. Let us help you revise your paper smart:

• Check your paper for spelling and grammar mistakes
• Sharpen the vocabulary
• Make sure there are no slang words in your paper
• Examine your paper in terms of structure
• Compare your topic, thesis statement to the whole piece
• Check your paper for plagiarism

If you need assistance with proofreading and editing your paper, you can turn to the professional editors at our service. They will help you polish your paper to perfection.

Learn how to revise and edit a research paper .

How to Write a Bibliography for a Research Paper?

First, let us make it clear that bibliography and works cited are two different things. Works cited are those that you cited in your paper. Bibliography should include all the materials you used to do your research. Still, remember that bibliography requirements differ depending on the formatting style of your paper. For this reason, make sure you ask you professor all the requirements you need to meet to avoid any misunderstanding.

Learn how to write a bibliography for a research paper .

The Key Secret to a Good Research Paper

Now when you know all the stages of writing a research paper, you are ready to find the key to a good research paper:

• Choose the topic that really interests you
• Make the topic interesting for you even if it is not at the beginning
• Follow the step by step guide and do not get sidetracked
• Be persistent and believe in yourself
• Really do research and write your paper from scratch
• Learn the convincing writing techniques and use them
• Follow the requirements of your assignment
• Ask for help if needed from real professionals

Feeling more confident about your paper now? We are sure you do. Still, if you need help, you can always rely on us 24/7.

We hope we have made writing a research paper much easier for you. We realize that it requires lots of time and energy. We believe when you say that you cannot handle it anymore. For this reason, we have been helping students like you for years. Our professional team of writers is ready to tackle any challenge.

All our authors are experienced writers crafting excellent academic papers. We help students meet the deadline and get the top grades they want. You can see everything yourself. All you need to do is to place your order online and we will contact you. Writing a research paper with us is truly easy, so why do not you check it yourself?

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13.1 Formatting a Research Paper

Learning objectives.

• Identify the major components of a research paper written using American Psychological Association (APA) style.
• Apply general APA style and formatting conventions in a research paper.

In this chapter, you will learn how to use APA style , the documentation and formatting style followed by the American Psychological Association, as well as MLA style , from the Modern Language Association. There are a few major formatting styles used in academic texts, including AMA, Chicago, and Turabian:

• AMA (American Medical Association) for medicine, health, and biological sciences
• APA (American Psychological Association) for education, psychology, and the social sciences
• Chicago—a common style used in everyday publications like magazines, newspapers, and books
• MLA (Modern Language Association) for English, literature, arts, and humanities
• Turabian—another common style designed for its universal application across all subjects and disciplines

While all the formatting and citation styles have their own use and applications, in this chapter we focus our attention on the two styles you are most likely to use in your academic studies: APA and MLA.

If you find that the rules of proper source documentation are difficult to keep straight, you are not alone. Writing a good research paper is, in and of itself, a major intellectual challenge. Having to follow detailed citation and formatting guidelines as well may seem like just one more task to add to an already-too-long list of requirements.

Following these guidelines, however, serves several important purposes. First, it signals to your readers that your paper should be taken seriously as a student’s contribution to a given academic or professional field; it is the literary equivalent of wearing a tailored suit to a job interview. Second, it shows that you respect other people’s work enough to give them proper credit for it. Finally, it helps your reader find additional materials if he or she wishes to learn more about your topic.

Furthermore, producing a letter-perfect APA-style paper need not be burdensome. Yes, it requires careful attention to detail. However, you can simplify the process if you keep these broad guidelines in mind:

• Work ahead whenever you can. Chapter 11 “Writing from Research: What Will I Learn?” includes tips for keeping track of your sources early in the research process, which will save time later on.
• Get it right the first time. Apply APA guidelines as you write, so you will not have much to correct during the editing stage. Again, putting in a little extra time early on can save time later.
• Use the resources available to you. In addition to the guidelines provided in this chapter, you may wish to consult the APA website at http://www.apa.org or the Purdue University Online Writing lab at http://owl.english.purdue.edu , which regularly updates its online style guidelines.

General Formatting Guidelines

This chapter provides detailed guidelines for using the citation and formatting conventions developed by the American Psychological Association, or APA. Writers in disciplines as diverse as astrophysics, biology, psychology, and education follow APA style. The major components of a paper written in APA style are listed in the following box.

These are the major components of an APA-style paper:

Body, which includes the following:

• Headings and, if necessary, subheadings to organize the content
• In-text citations of research sources
• References page

All these components must be saved in one document, not as separate documents.

The title page of your paper includes the following information:

• Title of the paper
• Author’s name
• Name of the institution with which the author is affiliated
• Header at the top of the page with the paper title (in capital letters) and the page number (If the title is lengthy, you may use a shortened form of it in the header.)

List the first three elements in the order given in the previous list, centered about one third of the way down from the top of the page. Use the headers and footers tool of your word-processing program to add the header, with the title text at the left and the page number in the upper-right corner. Your title page should look like the following example.

The next page of your paper provides an abstract , or brief summary of your findings. An abstract does not need to be provided in every paper, but an abstract should be used in papers that include a hypothesis. A good abstract is concise—about one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty words—and is written in an objective, impersonal style. Your writing voice will not be as apparent here as in the body of your paper. When writing the abstract, take a just-the-facts approach, and summarize your research question and your findings in a few sentences.

In Chapter 12 “Writing a Research Paper” , you read a paper written by a student named Jorge, who researched the effectiveness of low-carbohydrate diets. Read Jorge’s abstract. Note how it sums up the major ideas in his paper without going into excessive detail.

Write an abstract summarizing your paper. Briefly introduce the topic, state your findings, and sum up what conclusions you can draw from your research. Use the word count feature of your word-processing program to make sure your abstract does not exceed one hundred fifty words.

Depending on your field of study, you may sometimes write research papers that present extensive primary research, such as your own experiment or survey. In your abstract, summarize your research question and your findings, and briefly indicate how your study relates to prior research in the field.

Margins, Pagination, and Headings

APA style requirements also address specific formatting concerns, such as margins, pagination, and heading styles, within the body of the paper. Review the following APA guidelines.

Use these general guidelines to format the paper:

• Set the top, bottom, and side margins of your paper at 1 inch.
• Use double-spaced text throughout your paper.
• Use a standard font, such as Times New Roman or Arial, in a legible size (10- to 12-point).
• Use continuous pagination throughout the paper, including the title page and the references section. Page numbers appear flush right within your header.
• Section headings and subsection headings within the body of your paper use different types of formatting depending on the level of information you are presenting. Additional details from Jorge’s paper are provided.

Begin formatting the final draft of your paper according to APA guidelines. You may work with an existing document or set up a new document if you choose. Include the following:

• Your title page
• The abstract you created in Note 13.8 “Exercise 1”
• Correct headers and page numbers for your title page and abstract

APA style uses section headings to organize information, making it easy for the reader to follow the writer’s train of thought and to know immediately what major topics are covered. Depending on the length and complexity of the paper, its major sections may also be divided into subsections, sub-subsections, and so on. These smaller sections, in turn, use different heading styles to indicate different levels of information. In essence, you are using headings to create a hierarchy of information.

The following heading styles used in APA formatting are listed in order of greatest to least importance:

• Section headings use centered, boldface type. Headings use title case, with important words in the heading capitalized.
• Subsection headings use left-aligned, boldface type. Headings use title case.
• The third level uses left-aligned, indented, boldface type. Headings use a capital letter only for the first word, and they end in a period.
• The fourth level follows the same style used for the previous level, but the headings are boldfaced and italicized.
• The fifth level follows the same style used for the previous level, but the headings are italicized and not boldfaced.

Visually, the hierarchy of information is organized as indicated in Table 13.1 “Section Headings” .

Table 13.1 Section Headings

A college research paper may not use all the heading levels shown in Table 13.1 “Section Headings” , but you are likely to encounter them in academic journal articles that use APA style. For a brief paper, you may find that level 1 headings suffice. Longer or more complex papers may need level 2 headings or other lower-level headings to organize information clearly. Use your outline to craft your major section headings and determine whether any subtopics are substantial enough to require additional levels of headings.

Working with the document you developed in Note 13.11 “Exercise 2” , begin setting up the heading structure of the final draft of your research paper according to APA guidelines. Include your title and at least two to three major section headings, and follow the formatting guidelines provided above. If your major sections should be broken into subsections, add those headings as well. Use your outline to help you.

Because Jorge used only level 1 headings, his Exercise 3 would look like the following:

Citation Guidelines

In-text citations.

Throughout the body of your paper, include a citation whenever you quote or paraphrase material from your research sources. As you learned in Chapter 11 “Writing from Research: What Will I Learn?” , the purpose of citations is twofold: to give credit to others for their ideas and to allow your reader to follow up and learn more about the topic if desired. Your in-text citations provide basic information about your source; each source you cite will have a longer entry in the references section that provides more detailed information.

In-text citations must provide the name of the author or authors and the year the source was published. (When a given source does not list an individual author, you may provide the source title or the name of the organization that published the material instead.) When directly quoting a source, it is also required that you include the page number where the quote appears in your citation.

This information may be included within the sentence or in a parenthetical reference at the end of the sentence, as in these examples.

Epstein (2010) points out that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (p. 137).

Here, the writer names the source author when introducing the quote and provides the publication date in parentheses after the author’s name. The page number appears in parentheses after the closing quotation marks and before the period that ends the sentence.

Addiction researchers caution that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (Epstein, 2010, p. 137).

Here, the writer provides a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence that includes the author’s name, the year of publication, and the page number separated by commas. Again, the parenthetical citation is placed after the closing quotation marks and before the period at the end of the sentence.

As noted in the book Junk Food, Junk Science (Epstein, 2010, p. 137), “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive.”

Here, the writer chose to mention the source title in the sentence (an optional piece of information to include) and followed the title with a parenthetical citation. Note that the parenthetical citation is placed before the comma that signals the end of the introductory phrase.

David Epstein’s book Junk Food, Junk Science (2010) pointed out that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (p. 137).

Another variation is to introduce the author and the source title in your sentence and include the publication date and page number in parentheses within the sentence or at the end of the sentence. As long as you have included the essential information, you can choose the option that works best for that particular sentence and source.

Citing a book with a single author is usually a straightforward task. Of course, your research may require that you cite many other types of sources, such as books or articles with more than one author or sources with no individual author listed. You may also need to cite sources available in both print and online and nonprint sources, such as websites and personal interviews. Chapter 13 “APA and MLA Documentation and Formatting” , Section 13.2 “Citing and Referencing Techniques” and Section 13.3 “Creating a References Section” provide extensive guidelines for citing a variety of source types.

Writing at Work

APA is just one of several different styles with its own guidelines for documentation, formatting, and language usage. Depending on your field of interest, you may be exposed to additional styles, such as the following:

• MLA style. Determined by the Modern Languages Association and used for papers in literature, languages, and other disciplines in the humanities.
• Chicago style. Outlined in the Chicago Manual of Style and sometimes used for papers in the humanities and the sciences; many professional organizations use this style for publications as well.
• Associated Press (AP) style. Used by professional journalists.

References List

The brief citations included in the body of your paper correspond to the more detailed citations provided at the end of the paper in the references section. In-text citations provide basic information—the author’s name, the publication date, and the page number if necessary—while the references section provides more extensive bibliographical information. Again, this information allows your reader to follow up on the sources you cited and do additional reading about the topic if desired.

The specific format of entries in the list of references varies slightly for different source types, but the entries generally include the following information:

• The name(s) of the author(s) or institution that wrote the source
• The year of publication and, where applicable, the exact date of publication
• The full title of the source
• For books, the city of publication
• For articles or essays, the name of the periodical or book in which the article or essay appears
• For magazine and journal articles, the volume number, issue number, and pages where the article appears
• For sources on the web, the URL where the source is located

The references page is double spaced and lists entries in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. If an entry continues for more than one line, the second line and each subsequent line are indented five spaces. Review the following example. ( Chapter 13 “APA and MLA Documentation and Formatting” , Section 13.3 “Creating a References Section” provides extensive guidelines for formatting reference entries for different types of sources.)

In APA style, book and article titles are formatted in sentence case, not title case. Sentence case means that only the first word is capitalized, along with any proper nouns.

Key Takeaways

• Following proper citation and formatting guidelines helps writers ensure that their work will be taken seriously, give proper credit to other authors for their work, and provide valuable information to readers.
• Working ahead and taking care to cite sources correctly the first time are ways writers can save time during the editing stage of writing a research paper.
• APA papers usually include an abstract that concisely summarizes the paper.
• APA papers use a specific headings structure to provide a clear hierarchy of information.
• In APA papers, in-text citations usually include the name(s) of the author(s) and the year of publication.
• In-text citations correspond to entries in the references section, which provide detailed bibliographical information about a source.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Training videos   |   Faqs

Research Paper Structure – Main Sections and Parts of a Research Paper

PhD students are expected to write and publish research papers to validate their research work and findings. Writing your first research paper  can seem like a daunting task at the start but must be done to validate your work. If you are a beginner writer new to academic writing or a non-native English speaker then it might seem like a daunting process at inception. The best way to begin writing a research paper is to learn about the research paper structure needed in your field, as this may vary between fields. Producing a research paper structure first with various headings and subheadings will significantly simplify the writing process. In this blog, we explain the basic structure of a research paper and explain its various components. We elaborate on various parts and sections of a research paper. We also provide guidance to produce a research paper structure for your work through word cloud diagrams that illustrate various topics and sub-topics to be included under each section. We recommend you to refer to our other blogs on  academic writing tools ,   academic writing resources , and  academic phrase-bank , which are relevant to the topic discussed in this blog. 

1. Introduction

The Introduction section is one of the most important sections of a research paper. The introduction section should start with a brief outline of the topic and then explain the nature of the problem at hand and why it is crucial to resolve this issue. This section should contain a literature review that provides relevant background information about the topic. The literature review should touch upon seminal and pioneering works in the field and the most recent studies pertinent to your work. 

The  literature review  should end with a few lines about the research gap in the chosen domain. This is where you explain the lack of adequate research about your chosen topic and make a case for the need for more research. This is an excellent place to define the research question or hypothesis. The last part of the introduction should be about your work. Having established the research gap now, you have to explain how you intend to solve the problem and subsequently introduce your approach. You should provide a clear outline that includes both the primary and secondary aims/objectives of your work. You can end the section by providing how the rest of the paper is organized.  When you are working on the research paper structure use the word cloud diagrams as a guidance.

2. Material and Methods

The Materials and methods section of the research paper should include detailed information about the implementation details of your method. This should be written in such a way that it is reproducible by any person conducting research in the same field. This section should include all the technical details of the experimental setup, measurement procedure, and parameters of interest. It should also include details of how the methods were validated and tested prior to their use. It is recommended to use equations, figures, and tables to explain the workings of the method proposed. Add placeholders for figures and tables with dummy titles while working on the research paper structure.

Suppose your methodology involves data collection and recruitment. In that case, you should provide information about the sample size, population characteristics, interview process, and recruitment methods. It should also include the details of the consenting procedure and inclusion and exclusion criteria. This section can end with various statistical methods used for data analysis and significance testing.

3. Results and Discussion

Results and Discussion section of the research paper should be the concluding part of your research paper. In the results section, you can explain your experiments’ outcome by presenting adequate scientific data to back up your conclusions. You must interpret the scientific data to your readers by highlighting the key findings of your work. You also provide information on any negative and unexpected findings that came out of your work. It is vital to present the data in an unbiased manner. You should also explain how the current results compare with previously published data from similar works in the literature. 

In the discussion section, you should summarize your work and explain how the research work objectives were achieved. You can highlight the benefits your work will bring to the overall scientific community and potential practical applications. You must not introduce any new information in this section; you can only discuss things that have already been mentioned in the paper. The discussion section must talk about your work’s limitations; no scientific work is perfect, and some drawbacks are expected. If there are any inconclusive results in your work, you can present your theories about what might have caused it. You have to end your paper with conclusions and future work . In conclusion, you can restate your aims and objectives and summarize your main findings, preferably in two or three lines. You should also lay out your plans for future work and explain how further research will benefit the research domain. Finally, you can also add ‘Acknowledgments’ and ‘References’ sections to the research paper structure for completion.

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Writing a Research Paper

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The Research Paper

There will come a time in most students' careers when they are assigned a research paper. Such an assignment often creates a great deal of unneeded anxiety in the student, which may result in procrastination and a feeling of confusion and inadequacy. This anxiety frequently stems from the fact that many students are unfamiliar and inexperienced with this genre of writing. Never fear—inexperience and unfamiliarity are situations you can change through practice! Writing a research paper is an essential aspect of academics and should not be avoided on account of one's anxiety. In fact, the process of writing a research paper can be one of the more rewarding experiences one may encounter in academics. What is more, many students will continue to do research throughout their careers, which is one of the reasons this topic is so important.

Becoming an experienced researcher and writer in any field or discipline takes a great deal of practice. There are few individuals for whom this process comes naturally. Remember, even the most seasoned academic veterans have had to learn how to write a research paper at some point in their career. Therefore, with diligence, organization, practice, a willingness to learn (and to make mistakes!), and, perhaps most important of all, patience, students will find that they can achieve great things through their research and writing.

The pages in this section cover the following topic areas related to the process of writing a research paper:

• Genre - This section will provide an overview for understanding the difference between an analytical and argumentative research paper.
• Choosing a Topic - This section will guide the student through the process of choosing topics, whether the topic be one that is assigned or one that the student chooses themselves.
• Identifying an Audience - This section will help the student understand the often times confusing topic of audience by offering some basic guidelines for the process.
• Where Do I Begin - This section concludes the handout by offering several links to resources at Purdue, and also provides an overview of the final stages of writing a research paper.

Writing a Research Paper: From the Parts to the Whole

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Chapter 2 Research Papers: Introduction and Literature Review

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Wallwork, A., Southern, A. (2020). Chapter 2 Research Papers: Introduction and Literature Review. In: 100 Tips to Avoid Mistakes in Academic Writing and Presenting. English for Academic Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44214-9_2

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• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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See an example

Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

Open Google Slides Download PowerPoint

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

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McCombes, S. (2023, September 11). How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved July 12, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/literature-review/

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• As Ozempic’s Popularity Soars, Here’s What to Know About Semaglutide and Weight Loss JAMA Medical News & Perspectives May 16, 2023 This Medical News article discusses chronic weight management with semaglutide, sold under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy. Melissa Suran, PhD, MSJ
• Patents and Regulatory Exclusivities on GLP-1 Receptor Agonists JAMA Special Communication August 15, 2023 This Special Communication used data from the US Food and Drug Administration to analyze how manufacturers of brand-name glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists have used patent and regulatory systems to extend periods of market exclusivity. Rasha Alhiary, PharmD; Aaron S. Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH; Sarah Gabriele, LLM, MBE; Reed F. Beall, PhD; S. Sean Tu, JD, PhD; William B. Feldman, MD, DPhil, MPH
• What to Know About Wegovy’s Rare but Serious Adverse Effects JAMA Medical News & Perspectives December 12, 2023 This Medical News article discusses Wegovy, Ozempic, and other GLP-1 receptor agonists used for weight management and type 2 diabetes. Kate Ruder, MSJ
• GLP-1 Receptor Agonists and Gastrointestinal Adverse Events—Reply JAMA Comment & Response March 12, 2024 Ramin Rezaeianzadeh, BSc; Mohit Sodhi, MSc; Mahyar Etminan, PharmD, MSc
• GLP-1 Receptor Agonists and Gastrointestinal Adverse Events JAMA Comment & Response March 12, 2024 Karine Suissa, PhD; Sara J. Cromer, MD; Elisabetta Patorno, MD, DrPH
• GLP-1 Receptor Agonist Use and Risk of Postoperative Complications JAMA Research Letter May 21, 2024 This cohort study evaluates the risk of postoperative respiratory complications among patients with diabetes undergoing surgery who had vs those who had not a prescription fill for glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists. Anjali A. Dixit, MD, MPH; Brian T. Bateman, MD, MS; Mary T. Hawn, MD, MPH; Michelle C. Odden, PhD; Eric C. Sun, MD, PhD
• Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonist Use and Risk of Gallbladder and Biliary Diseases JAMA Internal Medicine Original Investigation May 1, 2022 This systematic review and meta-analysis of 76 randomized clinical trials examines the effects of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist use on the risk of gallbladder and biliary diseases. Liyun He, MM; Jialu Wang, MM; Fan Ping, MD; Na Yang, MM; Jingyue Huang, MM; Yuxiu Li, MD; Lingling Xu, MD; Wei Li, MD; Huabing Zhang, MD
• Cholecystitis Associated With the Use of Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists JAMA Internal Medicine Research Letter October 1, 2022 This case series identifies cases reported in the US Food and Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System of acute cholecystitis associated with use of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists that did not have gallbladder disease warnings in their labeling. Daniel Woronow, MD; Christine Chamberlain, PharmD; Ali Niak, MD; Mark Avigan, MDCM; Monika Houstoun, PharmD, MPH; Cindy Kortepeter, PharmD

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Sodhi M , Rezaeianzadeh R , Kezouh A , Etminan M. Risk of Gastrointestinal Adverse Events Associated With Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists for Weight Loss. JAMA. 2023;330(18):1795–1797. doi:10.1001/jama.2023.19574

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Risk of Gastrointestinal Adverse Events Associated With Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists for Weight Loss

• 1 Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• 2 StatExpert Ltd, Laval, Quebec, Canada
• 3 Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
• Medical News & Perspectives As Ozempic’s Popularity Soars, Here’s What to Know About Semaglutide and Weight Loss Melissa Suran, PhD, MSJ JAMA
• Special Communication Patents and Regulatory Exclusivities on GLP-1 Receptor Agonists Rasha Alhiary, PharmD; Aaron S. Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH; Sarah Gabriele, LLM, MBE; Reed F. Beall, PhD; S. Sean Tu, JD, PhD; William B. Feldman, MD, DPhil, MPH JAMA
• Medical News & Perspectives What to Know About Wegovy’s Rare but Serious Adverse Effects Kate Ruder, MSJ JAMA
• Comment & Response GLP-1 Receptor Agonists and Gastrointestinal Adverse Events—Reply Ramin Rezaeianzadeh, BSc; Mohit Sodhi, MSc; Mahyar Etminan, PharmD, MSc JAMA
• Comment & Response GLP-1 Receptor Agonists and Gastrointestinal Adverse Events Karine Suissa, PhD; Sara J. Cromer, MD; Elisabetta Patorno, MD, DrPH JAMA
• Research Letter GLP-1 Receptor Agonist Use and Risk of Postoperative Complications Anjali A. Dixit, MD, MPH; Brian T. Bateman, MD, MS; Mary T. Hawn, MD, MPH; Michelle C. Odden, PhD; Eric C. Sun, MD, PhD JAMA
• Original Investigation Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonist Use and Risk of Gallbladder and Biliary Diseases Liyun He, MM; Jialu Wang, MM; Fan Ping, MD; Na Yang, MM; Jingyue Huang, MM; Yuxiu Li, MD; Lingling Xu, MD; Wei Li, MD; Huabing Zhang, MD JAMA Internal Medicine
• Research Letter Cholecystitis Associated With the Use of Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists Daniel Woronow, MD; Christine Chamberlain, PharmD; Ali Niak, MD; Mark Avigan, MDCM; Monika Houstoun, PharmD, MPH; Cindy Kortepeter, PharmD JAMA Internal Medicine

Glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) agonists are medications approved for treatment of diabetes that recently have also been used off label for weight loss. 1 Studies have found increased risks of gastrointestinal adverse events (biliary disease, 2 pancreatitis, 3 bowel obstruction, 4 and gastroparesis 5 ) in patients with diabetes. 2 - 5 Because such patients have higher baseline risk for gastrointestinal adverse events, risk in patients taking these drugs for other indications may differ. Randomized trials examining efficacy of GLP-1 agonists for weight loss were not designed to capture these events 2 due to small sample sizes and short follow-up. We examined gastrointestinal adverse events associated with GLP-1 agonists used for weight loss in a clinical setting.

We used a random sample of 16 million patients (2006-2020) from the PharMetrics Plus for Academics database (IQVIA), a large health claims database that captures 93% of all outpatient prescriptions and physician diagnoses in the US through the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) or ICD-10. In our cohort study, we included new users of semaglutide or liraglutide, 2 main GLP-1 agonists, and the active comparator bupropion-naltrexone, a weight loss agent unrelated to GLP-1 agonists. Because semaglutide was marketed for weight loss after the study period (2021), we ensured all GLP-1 agonist and bupropion-naltrexone users had an obesity code in the 90 days prior or up to 30 days after cohort entry, excluding those with a diabetes or antidiabetic drug code.

Patients were observed from first prescription of a study drug to first mutually exclusive incidence (defined as first ICD-9 or ICD-10 code) of biliary disease (including cholecystitis, cholelithiasis, and choledocholithiasis), pancreatitis (including gallstone pancreatitis), bowel obstruction, or gastroparesis (defined as use of a code or a promotility agent). They were followed up to the end of the study period (June 2020) or censored during a switch. Hazard ratios (HRs) from a Cox model were adjusted for age, sex, alcohol use, smoking, hyperlipidemia, abdominal surgery in the previous 30 days, and geographic location, which were identified as common cause variables or risk factors. 6 Two sensitivity analyses were undertaken, one excluding hyperlipidemia (because more semaglutide users had hyperlipidemia) and another including patients without diabetes regardless of having an obesity code. Due to absence of data on body mass index (BMI), the E-value was used to examine how strong unmeasured confounding would need to be to negate observed results, with E-value HRs of at least 2 indicating BMI is unlikely to change study results. Statistical significance was defined as 2-sided 95% CI that did not cross 1. Analyses were performed using SAS version 9.4. Ethics approval was obtained by the University of British Columbia’s clinical research ethics board with a waiver of informed consent.

Our cohort included 4144 liraglutide, 613 semaglutide, and 654 bupropion-naltrexone users. Incidence rates for the 4 outcomes were elevated among GLP-1 agonists compared with bupropion-naltrexone users ( Table 1 ). For example, incidence of biliary disease (per 1000 person-years) was 11.7 for semaglutide, 18.6 for liraglutide, and 12.6 for bupropion-naltrexone and 4.6, 7.9, and 1.0, respectively, for pancreatitis.

Use of GLP-1 agonists compared with bupropion-naltrexone was associated with increased risk of pancreatitis (adjusted HR, 9.09 [95% CI, 1.25-66.00]), bowel obstruction (HR, 4.22 [95% CI, 1.02-17.40]), and gastroparesis (HR, 3.67 [95% CI, 1.15-11.90) but not biliary disease (HR, 1.50 [95% CI, 0.89-2.53]). Exclusion of hyperlipidemia from the analysis did not change the results ( Table 2 ). Inclusion of GLP-1 agonists regardless of history of obesity reduced HRs and narrowed CIs but did not change the significance of the results ( Table 2 ). E-value HRs did not suggest potential confounding by BMI.

This study found that use of GLP-1 agonists for weight loss compared with use of bupropion-naltrexone was associated with increased risk of pancreatitis, gastroparesis, and bowel obstruction but not biliary disease.

Given the wide use of these drugs, these adverse events, although rare, must be considered by patients who are contemplating using the drugs for weight loss because the risk-benefit calculus for this group might differ from that of those who use them for diabetes. Limitations include that although all GLP-1 agonist users had a record for obesity without diabetes, whether GLP-1 agonists were all used for weight loss is uncertain.

Accepted for Publication: September 11, 2023.

Published Online: October 5, 2023. doi:10.1001/jama.2023.19574

Correction: This article was corrected on December 21, 2023, to update the full name of the database used.

Corresponding Author: Mahyar Etminan, PharmD, MSc, Faculty of Medicine, Departments of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and Medicine, The Eye Care Center, University of British Columbia, 2550 Willow St, Room 323, Vancouver, BC V5Z 3N9, Canada ( [email protected] ).

Author Contributions: Dr Etminan had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Concept and design: Sodhi, Rezaeianzadeh, Etminan.

Acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data: All authors.

Drafting of the manuscript: Sodhi, Rezaeianzadeh, Etminan.

Critical review of the manuscript for important intellectual content: All authors.

Statistical analysis: Kezouh.

Obtained funding: Etminan.

Administrative, technical, or material support: Sodhi.

Supervision: Etminan.

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.

Funding/Support: This study was funded by internal research funds from the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of British Columbia.

Role of the Funder/Sponsor: The funder had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Data Sharing Statement: See Supplement .

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• Annabel Locke   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0007-9885-191X 1 ,
• Virgílio Manjate 8 ,
• Francisco Mapanga 9 ,
• Hamidreza Omidvar   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8124-7264 1 ,
• Ashleigh Parsons 1 ,
• Elitsa Peneva-Reed   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4570-4701 2 ,
• Thomas Perry   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0003-9506-4225 1 ,
• Beisit L. Puma Vilca   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2169-9108 1 ,
• Pedro Rodríguez-Veiga   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4845-4215 1 , 10 ,
• Chloe Sutcliffe 1 ,
• Robin Upham   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4172-3358 1 ,
• Benoît de Walque   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0000-2738-556X 1 &
• Andrew Burt   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4209-8101 1  

Communications Earth & Environment volume  5 , Article number:  366 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Climate-change ecology
• Climate sciences
• Forest ecology

Miombo woodlands are integral to livelihoods across southern Africa, biodiversity in the region, and the global carbon cycle, making accurate and precise monitoring of their state and change essential. Here, we assembled a terrestrial and airborne lidar dataset covering 50 kha of intact and degraded miombo woodlands, and generated aboveground biomass estimates with low uncertainty via direct 3D measurements of forest structure. We found 1.71 ± 0.09 TgC was stored in aboveground biomass across this landscape, between 1.5 and 2.2 times more than the 0.79–1.14 TgC estimated by conventional methods. This difference is in part owing to the systematic underestimation of large trees by allometry. If these results were extrapolated across Africa’s miombo woodlands, their carbon stock would potentially require an upward revision of approximately 3.7 PgC, implying we currently underestimate their carbon sequestration and emissions potential, and disincentivise their protection and restoration.

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Introduction.

Miombo woodlands, the dry tropical forests spanning large areas of southern Africa, directly support many millions of livelihoods in various ways including supply of plant-based materials, fertile soils for agriculture, and grazing lands 1 . These ecosystems also hold cultural and spiritual significance, provide habitat for substantial plant and animal biodiversity, and regulate both the climate and water resources 2 . These landscapes, however, are changing because of human activities, with cover reducing from approximately 2.7 to 1.9 million km 2 between 1980 and 2020 3 . Owing to both their importance and dynamic nature, it is therefore crucial to monitor how the world’s miombo woodlands are changing.

One essential climate variable that requires accurate and precise monitoring is the aboveground biomass (AGB) and carbon stored in these woodlands 4 . Any uncertainty that exists in the quantification of these stocks has consequences, particularly regarding misinformed policy and decision making towards them, as well as the misallocation of funding and resources 5 , 6 . Carbon markets for example, through programmes such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) 7 , require low uncertainty in estimates of carbon stocks if they are to properly incentivise direct climate benefits, and co-benefits including biodiversity and ecosystem services, by safeguarding these woodlands. Further, intended outcomes from international climate agreements towards greenhouse gas emissions reductions, such as the Paris Agreement including individual countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions, are premised on forest carbon accounting with low uncertainty 8 . That is, both high accuracy and precision, quantitatively expressed as a bias and variance, respectively, are usually important for any estimate of forest AGB stocks in these contexts. Whilst accuracy is the principal concern in accounting (systematic over- or under-estimation commensurately misleads understanding of forest carbon sequestration and emissions potential) 9 , precise estimates are also important, including from the requirement to detect change over time (it can be problematic to interpret differences between observations with low precision) 10 . This is particularly the case for miombo woodlands given the aforementioned pace of their anthropogenic change.

The conventional approach to quantifying region-scale forest AGB stocks across miombo woodlands, and forests generally, within the context of UNFCCC- and IPCC-compliant greenhouse gas inventories, sees the combination of activity data and emissions factors (EF): remotely sensed estimates of forest area are multiplied by values of expected AGB per unit area of forest 11 . These expected values, based on in-situ measurements, might be generated from National Forest Inventories (NFI), or alternatively, where such data are unavailable, taken from the literature, such as IPCC defaults 12 . While this overall approach can be readily implemented it does have limitations, including: (i) restricted ability to describe AGB variations within forest types; (ii) EFs not being representative of the forest in question; and (iii) failing to detect change beyond binary transition between forest and non-forest (e.g. degradation).

For example, when focusing solely on the EF, and ignoring immediate questions surrounding the representativeness of applying a single value to any particular region of miombo woodland, uncertainties arise from the methods used to gather the in-situ data from the forest plots underlying the EFs themselves 13 . A ubiquitous feature of such measurements is the application of allometric models to estimate individual tree AGB. These models characterise the correlations that exist between tree shape and mass, enabling AGB estimation from more readily-measurable predictor variables such as stem diameter and tree height 14 . Such allometrics are themselves calibrated using hard-won destructive weighing measurements collected from a limited number of harvested trees that then must represent the entire variability of the specific taxa or region where that model is subsequently applied.

Uncertainties in allometric-derived AGB predictions therefore arise from the selection, measurement and modelling of these calibration trees, and the measurement of the predictor variables of any out-of-sample tree 15 . Several studies have explored the precision of allometric predictions of tropical and subtropical forests, where the expectation is that uncertainties range from 10 to 40% of the estimate itself at the hectare-scale 16 , 17 . Research has also explored their accuracy, with a particular focus on the selection and modelling of allometric calibration data 18 , which are routinely heavily skewed towards small trees owing to their relative ease of harvesting. It has been hypothesised that this, combined with inadequate statistical methods, might cause biased AGB predictions for underrepresented larger trees 19 . Concurrently, independent lidar-based methods for AGB estimation have shown large differences versus allometry, estimating up to 1.77 times greater stocks at the plot-scale 20 . These potential uncertainties in allometric predictions are problematic as they would propagate directly into derived EFs and their aforementioned applications.

Here, we present the first (to our knowledge) mapping of region-scale AGB stocks generated entirely independent of the above conventional methods, including activity data, EFs and allometrics, using 3D multi-scale lidar (MSL) data acquired across 50 kha of forests in and around Gilé National Park, Mozambique (Fig.  1 ). The continuous region of interest (ROI) where these data were collected was selected such that it ranged from intact forests, secondary forests in various states of degradation, through to clearland, resulting in data that could reasonably be considered representative of miombo woodland landscapes more widely. Across the ROI, the MSL dataset (approximately 450 billion measurements) comprised helicopter-based airborne laser scanning (ALS) across its entirety, unoccupied aerial vehicle laser scanning (UAV-LS) from six 300 ha sections, and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and conventional forest inventory measurements from six coincident 1 ha plots.

a Approximately 450 billion laser scanning measurements were acquired in a 50 kha region of interest (ROI) located across the southeast corner of the park, capturing core area, buffer zone and beyond, such that the ROI encompassed intact miombo woodlands through to clearland (CRS is EPSG:32737). Helicopter-based airborne laser scanning (ALS) data were collected across its entirety, whilst slow-flying unoccupied aerial vehicle laser scanning (UAV-LS) data were acquired across six 300 ha sections. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and conventional inventory data were collected in six 1 ha plots coinciding with these sections. b Location of Gilé National Park in wider Mozambique. c Example of coincident TLS, UAV-LS and ALS point clouds from a 10 m 2 section of forest (coloured by reflectance). Map data © 2024 Microsoft.

An inverted pyramid approach was used to estimate AGB stocks and uncertainties across the ROI from these MSL data (Fig.  2 ), whereby each layer calibrated the next, commencing with the TLS point clouds that estimated individual tree AGB via both quantitative structural models (QSMs) explicitly reconstructing whole-tree woody architecture and volume 21 (Fig.  3 ), and estimates of basic woody tissue density 22 . These estimates were themselves calibrated and validated using a literature sample of destructive measurements 23 . TLS-derived AGB was gridded and used to train extreme gradient boosting machine learning models 24 using predictor variables retrieved from the UAV-LS point clouds that describe forest structure 25 , 26 (e.g., canopy height, tree fractional cover, and voxel occupancy rates describing the 3D distribution of woody plant material), with the step repeated to upscale to the ALS. The optimisation and performance of these models was evaluated using spatial cross-validation methods 27 , with meaningful confidence intervals capturing uncertainties arising from both the QSM-derived training data and the upscaling itself, providing a robust understanding of the uncertainty in AGB predictions.

a TLS-derived estimates of gridded AGB (10 m resolution) were generated for the six 1 ha plots (Fig.  1a ) via quantitative structural models describing the woody architecture and volume of individual trees (Fig.  3a ). b Upscaled AGB across the six 300 ha sections was estimated through gradient boosting machine learning, using TLS estimates as training data, and metrics of forest structure retrieved from the UAV-LS data as predictor variables. c This upscaling step was repeated to produce AGB estimates across the ROI, and also shown here are the uncertainties associated with each pixel prediction. Models were evaluated using spatial cross-validation methods, and uncertainty quantification captured components arising from both the upscaling and the underlying TLS training data. d , e Examples of the predictor variables generated from the UAV-LS and ALS point clouds including but not limited to canopy height, tree fractional cover and voxel occupancy rates (a proxy for the 3D distribution of woody volume).

a Illustration of one quantitative structural model derived from the TLS point clouds (here of a Pterocarpus angolensis ) that, coupled with species-specific basic woody tissue density, enables estimation of tree-scale AGB. b The cumulative distribution of TLS- and allometric-derived AGB across the 1,071 trees matched in both the TLS and inventory data across the six 1 ha plots (Fig.  1 ), ordered by decreasing stem diameter. Allometric estimates were generated from three appropriate models: two miombo woodland specific models 29 (predictor variables: stem diameter only [red], and stem diameter and tree height [orange]) and a pan-tropical allometry 30 (predictor variables: stem diameter, tree height and basic woody tissue density [purple]). c Summed AGB estimates across these trees, whereby the percentage decrease between TLS- and allometric estimates is shown. The dotted lines show the contribution to AGB from the 115 largest trees (by stem diameter), where it can be seen that: (i) these ~11% of trees contributed ~50% of summed AGB, and (ii) allometric estimates were systematically smaller than TLS counterparts.

These new MSL-derived AGB estimates provide insights into the accuracy and precision of current best practices, and show that between 51 and 118% more AGB is stored across these miombo woodlands than conventional methods suggest. This is first demonstrated at the tree-scale by directly comparing TLS and allometric estimates for 1000+ trees (Fig.  3 ). We then show how these tree-level discrepancies, in part, translate into large differences at the region-scale, by comparing MSL-derived AGB stocks across the 50 kha ROI with counterparts estimated from both activity data and EFs (Fig.  4 ), and more direct mapping methods, using AGB products from the NASA GEDI spaceborne lidar mission 28 (Fig.  5 ). In the discussion, we explore the likely drivers of these differences, and examine these results in the context of miombo woodlands and global change more widely, particularly the consequences for their protection and restoration.

a MSL-derived forest/non-forest map across the 50 kha region of interest, overlaid on the boundaries of Gilé National Park, generated by thresholding tree fractional cover greater than or equal to 30% using a canopy threshold of 5 m at 10 m resolution. b Distribution and mean (green) of MSL-derived aboveground biomass density predictions (Fig.  2 ) for pixels considered forested, versus a representative selection of four EFs (red, orange, purple and blue) taken from IPCC defaults, Mozambique’s Forest Reference Emission Levels, and literature on miombo woodlands 12 , 31 , 32 , 33 . c Summed AGB stocks across the ROI (including uncertainty in the MSL-derived estimate), whereby these EFs were combined with the FNF map. It is observed that the MSL approach estimated AGB stocks between 51 and 118% larger than these conventional methods, with a mean increase of 74%. Map data © 2024 Microsoft.

a Illustration of the 18,611 GEDI footprints available across the ROI overlaid on the MSL-derived predictions (Fig.  2 ). b Comparison between AGB density estimated via MSL and GEDI methods for these footprints. GEDI estimates are derived from a model for deciduous broadleaved trees in Africa (DBT.Af) using aboveground relative heights as predictor variables 34 . It is observed that MSL predictions are generally larger for densities greater than 50 Mg/ha. c This difference was examined by simulating GEDI waveforms and retrieving GEDI-perceived relative height metrics from the ALS data 35 , that were subsequently used to generate estimates of AGB density from the DBT.Af model. This subplot compares these estimates with MSL-derived AGB, whereby they are typically larger for lower densities and smaller for higher densities. That is, the agreement between MSL- and GEDI-derived AGB is part owing to these differences offsetting one another. Both scatter plots comprise an identity line (green), linear regression with free intercept (black) and statistics including concordance correlation coefficient (CCC), and root mean square difference (RMSD).

Divergence between small and large trees

A total of 1071 individual trees were explicitly matched in both the TLS and inventory data, with their TLS-derived AGB summing to 462.0 Mg, compared with 450.8, 421.9, and 414.0 Mg (2.5%, 9.5%, and 11.6% smaller, respectively) predicted from two miombo woodland-specific and one widely-used pan-tropical allometric models, respectively 29 , 30 (Fig.  3b, c ). Approximately 50% of AGB was stored in the largest 115 trees by stem diameter (i.e., 11% of trees). Here, the differences in AGB predictions between both methods were more marked, summing to 232.0 Mg vs. 215.0, 198.6 Mg, and 197.8 Mg (7.9%, 16.9% and 17.3% smaller, respectively). That is, a systematic trend was observed whereby allometric predictions produced similar estimates for small trees, but smaller estimates for large trees.

Region-scale differences

MSL-derived AGB (Fig.  2c ) across the ROI summed to 3.85 Tg ± 11.0% (uncertainty expressed as 90% confidence intervals), with uncertainty at individual pixel-level (10 m resolution) averaging 60.4%. This AGB estimate reduced to 3.65 Tg, with average AGB density of 98.4 Mg/ha when considering forested area only (37 kha, derived via a MSL-based forest/non-forest mask defined as tree fractional cover greater than or equal to 30% using a canopy threshold of 5 m at 10 m resolution 31 ). Estimated AGB densities were 99.2, 100.3, and 86.5 Mg/ha for core park, buffer zone and beyond, respectively. Conventional AGB estimates via activity data and EFs ranged from 1.67 to 2.42 Tg (mean: 2.10 Tg) across the ROI (Fig.  4c ), generated using the same mask, and four representative EF values of 65.2, 62.2, 45.1, and 54.0 Mg/ha (IPCC default for African subtropical dry forests, Mozambique’s Forest Reference Emission Levels, and literature on miombo woodlands, respectively 12 , 31 , 32 , 33 ).

Comparison with GEDI

Overall, there was some agreement between MSL- and GEDI-derived AGB, with mean densities of 78.1 and 68.5 Mg/ha, respectively, for the 18,611 GEDI footprints available across the ROI, although it was observed that MSL estimates were generally larger for densities greater than 50 Mg/ha (Fig.  5b ). These differences were explored by considering the African deciduous broadleaf forests model underlying GEDI-derived AGB (predictor variables: aboveground relative heights) 34 , and simulating GEDI-perceived waveforms and metrics from the ALS data 35 . This provided insight into the performance of this model, whose predictions were typically larger for lower densities ( < 50 Mg/ha) and vice versa for higher densities (Fig.  5c ) compared to MSL counterparts. That is, the overall agreement was in part owing to differences at high and low densities offsetting one another.

Here, we presented the first region-scale mapping of forest AGB stocks driven by direct 3D measurements of forest structure, independent of conventional methods, including allometrics. Importantly, these estimates have a credible estimate of uncertainty being 11.0% of the region-scale AGB estimate itself. We note that even with these first-of-their-kind MSL measurements capturing samples of the structure of each individual tree across the 50 kha region, pixel-level (10 m resolution) uncertainty frequently exceeded 60% (averaging out to approximately 36% and 27% when aggregating to 30 and 100 m resolution, respectively). That is, these miombo woodlands exhibit pronounced structural and woody tissue density variation, part of which remained uncaptured by either the MSL data themselves, or more likely, the developed processing methods. These maps then, are likely inappropriate for small-scale applications such as individual tree AGB estimation 36 , but suitable for enabling accurate local and regional carbon accounting through calibration and validation of Earth observation instrumentation such as GEDI, and the upcoming ESA BIOMASS mission 37 .

The principal insight from these MSL methods is that 51–118% more AGB is stored across the ROI than predicted by conventional methods. A key driver of these differences was observed at the tree-level, where TLS-derived AGB estimates were systematically greater than allometric counterparts for large trees. This was also reflected in the GEDI analysis, where the AGB model for African deciduous broadleaf forests 34 , itself underpinned by allometry, generally predicted lower values than MSL-derived methods for higher densities ( > 50 Mg/ha). The importance of this point is magnified when considering the disproportionate contribution of large trees to upscaled AGB, as observed here (i.e., 11% of trees contributed greater than 50% of AGB across the six 1 ha stands) and described in literature 38 . We cannot definitively state whether this is due to over- or under-estimation of either method, or some mixture thereof, as accompanying destructive harvest data were not acquired. However, our TLS-derived estimates were calibrated using a representative sample of destructive measurements from the literature 23 . The trend for allometric and TLS methods to produce biased and unbiased estimates for large trees, respectively, is consistent with studies where estimates from both methods were coincident with destructive measurements across various forests 39 , 40 .

The cause of this potential systematic underestimation remains an open question. One possibility however, is that all widely-used allometrics are modelled via log-transformed linear regression 41 , and then applied to trees of all sizes (oftentimes caveated that any given model should not be used to predict an out-of-sample tree if its size falls outside the range of the calibration data 42 ). It is implicitly assumed then, that model parameters are as equally suitable for large trees, as they are for small trees, within the context of the accuracy of predictions. However, the underlying calibration data are, as a rule, skewed towards smaller trees, often necessarily because of the increasing difficulty of harvesting larger trees 43 . For example, for the miombo woodland specific and pan-tropical models considered here 29 , 30 , the median stem diameter of the 167 and 4004 trees comprising the calibration data was 30 and 15 cm (mean: 35 and 24 cm), respectively. This compares with a median and mean stem diameter of 48 and 50 cm for the largest 10% of trees across the six 1 ha stands. The nature of linear regression whereby each observation is usually assigned equal weight 44 , therefore suggests these aggregate models are unlikely to be representative of large trees, thus leading to biased predictions if this parameter invariance assumption is invalid 19 . Owing to the aforementioned context of large trees driving AGB distributions, and limited study on this subject 15 , 18 , 20 , an argument from parsimony would be that large tree allometric predictions are less certain than small tree estimates, unless proven otherwise.

The MSL methods used here provide capabilities to resolve this issue and further enhance conventional methods. Whilst the airborne components presented here are at a more experimental stage, TLS methods are closer to operational readiness and less cost prohibitive. These data can be collected from 1 ha plots, within days, using sampling protocols complying with adopted good practices 45 . Data processing methods including segmentation and structural modelling are complex, but substantial progress has been made in recent years, particularly on both automation 46 , and the avoidance of overestimating the volume of smaller trees and high-order branches 47 . TLS methods can be deployed in two ways: first, and most direct, estimating plot-scale AGB by summing contributions from individually modelled trees. This, applied across NFI networks for example, would enable updated EFs to be generated. Second, improving existing allometric models by augmenting their calibration datasets 48 . The key here would be generating uniform datasets (i.e., across tree size) through the addition of larger trees. This is appealing as it would both reduce the uncertainty in highly-practicable allometric methods, and leverage the value of historic datasets. However, appending calibration datasets with TLS-derived AGB observations is non-trivial. Assumptions in linear regression include that the mean of the distribution of error in the dependent variable (i.e., AGB) is zero, and ideally errors are not autocorrelated or heteroscedastic 44 . Therefore, such efforts require thoughtful undertaking.

Returning then to the region-scale predictions, while the divergence between TLS- and allometric-derived AGB explains part of the overall difference, they are also driven by the selected EFs. That is, these values are not only underpinned by allometrics, but also the sampling pattern of their underlying field plots, and how that differs from the composition of the ROI considered here. This was partially unpicked by stratifying the ROI into core park, buffer zone and beyond, where it was observed that AGB densities were still an increase of 75%, 77%, and 53% more than the mean of the selected EFs. An important contributor here is the long-tail of large MSL-derived AGB observations driven by aforementioned large trees (e.g., predictions greater than 150 Mg/ha contributed 36% to the total 3.65 Tg), and the statistical likelihood these would be undersampled by randomly distributed field plots.

The question remains then: what are the implications of these observed differences in AGB stocks for our understanding of miombo woodlands? That largely depends on the transferability of our results to the world’s 1.9 million km 2 of these forests 3 . The ROI where data were collected was deliberately positioned to capture as much of the range of states and successions, and therefore variance in AGB, across the wider region as possible. This capture of structural and taxonomic variation is illustrated by the inventory measurements across the six 1 ha plots (Table  S1 ), where stem count, stem diameter and basal area ranged from 56 to 349, 10 to 75 cm and 1.9 to 20.9 m 2 /ha, respectively, and that 81 of the estimated 334 unique species across miombo woodlands were observed, including from the dominant Brachystegia and Julbernardia genera 1 . Further, tree fractional cover across the 50 kha ranged from 0 to 1 with a mean of 0.59. These traits coincide with the ranges observed more widely across the continent 49 , so we therefore suggest it is not unreasonable to consider these sampled forests as being at least somewhat representative of miombo woodlands more broadly.

Speculatively then, if we were to extrapolate our results across the world’s miombo woodlands, they potentially store in the region of 3.7 PgC more carbon in their AGB than currently estimated, assuming the mean of the considered EFs (56.6 Mg/ha) is uplifted by 74% (assuming 47% carbon content). It is also noteworthy that MSL methods detected an additional 0.20 Tg AGB stored across the ROI in land classified as non-forest, potentially increasing this delta still further, and emphasising that fragments of miombo woodlands have the potential to store significant quantities of carbon 50 .

Whilst such extrapolation requires additional data for confirmation, the magnitude of this difference suggests our understanding of the role these forests play in global change requires a rethink, considering this overall increase is approaching the current annual global atmospheric increase (5.1 PgC/yr) 51 . That is, these forests could have a more potent ability to sequester carbon from afforestation and reforestation efforts, albeit equally the reverse, that their loss leads to increased emissions. Finally, an uplift in the carbon density of these forests per unit area could correspond to a proportional factor increase of 1.5 to 2.2 in their value on carbon markets, thus better incentivising their protection and restoration, and disincentivizing the value extracted from their deforestation 52 .

Materials and methods

Site description.

The 50 kha region of interest (ROI) where data were collected (Fig.  1a ) was located on the southeastern border of Gilé National Park, Zambezia Province, Mozambique. The forests here feature woodlands, riverine forests, and wooded savannas, dominated by trees from the Brachystegia and Julbernardia genera, characteristic of the more broad classification of miombo woodland 1 . Mean annual precipitation is between 800 and 1000 mm, with a dry season May–October 53 . Mean monthly temperature varies from low teens to high thirties, the terrain is largely flat, and soils comprise sandy loam and sandy clay 54 .

Study design

The ROI was positioned such that it covered core park, buffer zone and beyond (Fig.  4a ). The dataset (Fig.  1a ) comprised airborne laser scanning (ALS) data across the entirety of the ROI (designation: GIL), unoccupied aerial vehicle laser scanning (UAV-LS) data from six 300 ha sections (designation: GIL01 to GIL06), and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) measurements and inventory data from six 1 ha plots coincident with these sections (designation: GIL01-01 to GIL06-01). These sections and plots were strategically located to capture variations in forest state, succession, structure, and taxonomy across the ROI.

Data collection

Data were acquired between June-November 2022. The six 100 × 100 m planimetric plots were established and inventoried using RAINFOR protocol 55 . Measurements of each tree inside these plots with stem diameter ≥ 10 cm included: (i) stem diameter via a circumference/diameter tape, (ii) point of measurement of the stem diameter (either 1.3 m above ground or 0.5 m above-buttress), (iii) taxonomic identity determined by a single trained botanist, and (iv) x-y coordinates using eye-estimation.

TLS data were collected in GIL01-01 through GIL06-01 using a RIEGL VZ-400i laser scanner. Sampling followed established protocol 56 . That is, in accordance with the CEOS Aboveground Woody Biomass Product Validation Good Practices Protocol 45 . In particular, scans were acquired from 121 locations at 10 m intervals across each plot, with upright and tilt scans acquired at each location to capture a complete sample of the scene. The instrument pulse repetition rate was 300 kHz and the angular step between sequentially fired pulses was 0.04 degrees. The laser pulse had a wavelength, pulse width, beam divergence and exit footprint diameter of 1550 nm, 3.0 ns, 0.30 mrad, and 7.0 mm, respectively. Coarse georeferencing of scans was generated from an onboard GNSS receiver obtaining real-time differential corrections from a nearby static Emlid Reach RS2 GNSS receiver.

UAV-LS data were acquired across GIL01 through GIL06 using a RIEGL VUX-120 and Trimble Applanix APX-20 GNSS/INS kinematic laser scanning system mounted on a hybrid-electric drone, in a 50 m double-gridded configuration at 5.0 m/s velocity with an aboveground level of 100 m. The instrument pulse repetition rate, field of view and scan rate were 1800 kHz, 90 degrees and 315 lines per second, respectively. The laser pulse had a wavelength, pulse width, beam divergence and exit footprint diameter of 1550 nm, 3.0 ns, 0.38 mrad and 5.7 mm, respectively.

ALS data were acquired across GIL using the same kinematic laser scanning system mounted on a helicopter, in a 127 m spaced parallel line configuration at 41.2 m/s velocity with an aboveground level of 160 m. In this configuration, the pulse repetition rate, field of view and scan rate were 1200 kHz, 100 degrees and 396 lines per second, respectively. A nearby static Stonex S900A GNSS receiver collected observables throughout UAV-LS and ALS data acquisition for georeferencing purposes.

Data preprocessing

Inventory data (1406 trees) were manually digitised from field sheets, with accuracy assessed via a second operator digitising a randomly selected 5% subset. Errors in taxonomic identity were resolved using the Taxonomic Name Resolution Service 57 . Estimates of basic woody tissue density were derived from the mean of entries available in the Global Wood Density Database 58 , whereby attribution was made if possible at the species-, or else genus-level (84.4 and 14.2% of the trees, respectively). If no taxonomic attribution could be made, basal area-weighted plot average wood densities were used (1.4%).

TLS data were co-registered into georeferenced (EPSG: 32737) tiled point clouds (Fig.  1c ) using RIEGL RiSCAN Pro (v2.15) via its Automatic Registration 2 and Multi Station Adjustment 2 modules. Airborne mission trajectories were refined to survey-grade accuracy and precision via Applanix POSPac UAV (v8.8) using GNSS observables from the base station, whose absolute positioning was refined using the AUSPOS service 59 . Lidar data were united with these trajectories and merged into georeferenced tiled point clouds (Fig.  1c ) using RIEGL RiPROCESS (v1.9.2.2) including its RiUNITE (v1.0.3.3) and RiPRECISION (v1.4.2) modules. TLS point cloud georeferencing was refined by aligning with the UAV-LS data using an iterative closest point algorithm implemented in CloudCompare (v2.12.4). Noise in TLS, UAV-LS and ALS point clouds was labelled using reflectance and deviation thresholding 60 , and statistical outlier filtering. Incompletely sampled tiles were discarded based on point density and morphological erosion.

Data processing

TLS-derived tree-scale aboveground biomass (AGB) estimates were generated in six steps. First, point clouds representing individual trees either inside, or part of whose AGB fell inside the plot, were segmented from the tiled point clouds (1,339 trees). This was undertaken both manually in CloudCompare (v2.12.4) and using the Forest Structural Complexity Tool 46 . Second, point clouds were manually linked with inventory data via stem maps, whereby due to edge effects around the plot (i.e. trees with stem base inside but crown partly growing outside the plot, and vice versa) and multi-stemmed trees, there were somewhat fewer point clouds than census entries (1339 vs 1406 respectively). Third, leafy material, which had distinctively lower apparent reflectance than the woody material, was segmented from point clouds via thresholding based on evaluating single-tree reflectance histograms. Fourth, quantitative structural models (QSMs) (Fig.  3a ) were constructed for woody point clouds using TreeQSM 21 (v2.4.1). QSMs were inspected by eye, and validated via comparison to the input point clouds (i.e., point-to-cylinder distances). Fifth, potential overestimations of small branch volume arising from wind, co-registration error, properties of the laser pulse itself, or some mixture thereof, were negated using a post-processing step based on metabolic scaling theory 61 . This limited the maximum diameter of third order and above branches to half the diameter of their parent, and the diameter of cylinders intra-branch to no more than their parent. This was validated by comparing open-access data from previous studies where destructive data were available 23 . Sixth, AGB was estimated from QSM-derived volume and basic woody tissue density, the latter obtained from the established link between point clouds and inventory data.

Metrics describing forest structure (Fig.  2d, e ) were generated from the UAV-LS and ALS point clouds at 10 m resolution unless stated otherwise. The metrics, described in 25 , and retrieved using methods similar to those implemented in lidR 62 , comprised: digital terrain and canopy height models (1 m), relative height, tree fractional cover, canopy height rugosity, fixed and variable gap fraction, canopy closure, canopy ratio, z-entropy, skewness and kurtosis. Additionally, voxel-based metrics describing the 3D distribution of woody plant material were also retrieved 26 . This was undertaken by segmenting leafy material via reflectance thresholding, and partitioning the UAV-LS and ALS point clouds into voxels with 0.1 and 0.5 m edge length, respectively. Volumes of each voxel comprising at least one point were then aggregated in 3D grids of 1 m and 5 m resolution, respectively.

Aboveground biomass modelling

TLS-derived gridded estimates of AGB across GIL01-01 through GIL06-01 (Fig.  2a ) were estimated by constructing a georeferenced 10mgrid across each plot, decomposing each QSM into its constituent cylinders, and allocating volume to respective cells. Numerical approximation estimated the quantity of intra-cylinder volume assigned to multiple cells. Cells were considered valid only when all AGB from trees with stem diameter ≥10 cm was captured. This included contributions from trees outside the plot whose stem or crown only partially fell inside the cell in question. For such trees, QSMs were produced with the encroaching cylinder volumes attributed to the relevant cell, assuming a wood density equal to the plot basal area-weighted wood density. In total, 568 cells, of which 473 were non-zero, were created with biomass contributions from 1,259 QSMs.

Gridded estimates of AGB (10 m resolution) across GIL01 through GIL06 (Fig.  2b ) were retrieved using extreme gradient boosting machine learning via XGBoost 63 (v1.6.2), which has previously been applied to AGB modelling 24 . The TLS-derived gridded estimates of AGB were used as training data, and the spatially coincident UAV-LS-derived forest structure metrics were used as predictor variables. The choice of metric and the produced biomass map resolution (10 m) was informed by balancing having plentiful training pixels (i.e. higher resolution) versus the information contained within each pixel to predict biomass, using a rule of thumb that there be at least ten times more training pixels than features. Optimised hyperparameters and feature selection were found by minimising the root mean square error of validation folds within a spatial cross-validation framework 27 using GIL01-01 through GIL06-01 as separate folds. For this, a random grid search of the following six hyperparameters was undertaken: (i) learning rate (a step shrinkage weight; used to make the boosting process more conservative and reduce the risk of overfitting); (ii) minimum loss reduction (a decision parameter to make a partition on a leaf node of the tree); (iii) maximum depth of a tree (a proxy for the complexity, and hence overfitting risk, of the model); (iv) minimum child weight (minimum sum of the hessian required in each child, with higher values again resulting in more conservative models); (v) subsample of the training instances (fraction sampled from the training data prior to tree growing); and (vi) column sampling ratio (fraction of the features to be subsampled). Further performance metrics were also generated, including bias, and two based on the log of the accuracy ratio: (i) median symmetric accuracy, and (ii) symmetric signed percentage bias. These two metrics are well-suited to assessing predictions potentially spanning several orders of magnitude 64 .

Gridded estimates of AGB (10 m resolution) across GIL (Fig.  2c ) were retrieved by repeating this step, where the UAV-LS-derived gridded estimates of AGB were the training data, and the spatially coincident ALS-derived forest structure metrics were the predictor variables. Fig. S 1 and Fig. S 2 present cross-validation statistics, the weight and gain assigned to each predictor variable, and scatter plots illustrating predicted versus reference AGB, for the UAV-LS and ALS models, respectively.

A direct TLS-to-ALS upscaling model was also tested (i.e., skipping the intermediate UAV-LS layer). The direct model was slightly more biased (cross-validation bias with TLS labels: −3.63%) and less accurate (cross-validation RMSE with TLS labels: 62.6 Mg/ha), thus not considered further in this study. Further methodological improvements to the MSL workflow could encompass more sophisticated lidar features, perhaps tailored to the extreme high point density of UAV-LS, that are likely to correlate more with AGB than the ones used in our study. Additionally, spatially explicit models, such as convolutional neural networks, can take into account spatial context rather than only the pixel values themselves. Here, spatial information is only used in the cross-validation of the XGBoost models.

Uncertainty quantification

Uncertainty in TLS-derived tree-scale AGB arises from the underlying point cloud itself, quantitative structural modelling and basic woody tissue density estimation 43 . Uncertainty from these sources was implicitly captured by modelling the expected distribution of error using existing data where TLS-derived AGB estimates were available alongside reference measurements derived from destructive harvesting and weighing (391 trees from 111 species) 23 . To increase the representativity of these harvested trees to the ROI, the dataset was subsetted to contain only trees with stem diameter <75 cm, scanned in leaf-on conditions, and to exclude trees from boreal and temperate regions ( n  = 174). The error distribution was modelled via the mean and variance of residuals, as a function of stem diameter, using linear and non-linear quantile regression, respectively. The appropriate mean residual was subtracted from the raw AGB estimate for each tree to remove bias known to arise in TLS-derived volume estimates, especially in smaller branches 47 , complementing the QSM postprocessing based on metabolic scaling. Uncertainty in TLS-derived gridded AGB was derived as a volume-weighted combination of tree-scale AGB uncertainty, by modelling the true AGB of each tree as following a Gaussian distribution dependent on its TLS-estimated AGB, and independent of all other trees. This assumption of independence refers only to effects causing a discrepancy between TLS-estimated AGB and true AGB (i.e., imperfections in lidar scanning, QSM reconstruction and wood density assignment) and does not neglect spatial correlation of true AGB (e.g., arising from the effect of trees on each other), which is inherited by TLS-estimated AGB, but remains an approximation since spatial correlation may exist in some residual effects such as wind noise. Consequently, the only modelled source of covariance is due to a given tree spanning more than one pixel. This enabled calculation of the full pixel covariance matrix, capturing both the marginal uncertainty in each pixel and the correlation between pixels.

Uncertainty in UAV-LS-derived gridded estimates of AGB was modelled as the sum of two independent components: measurement variance and model variance. Measurement variance was estimated using a Monte Carlo random sampling approach. 100 samples of each of the six TLS-derived gridded AGB estimates were generated from their underlying multivariate Gaussian distribution, described above. Each set of six gridded AGB estimates was used to train a separate XGBoost model, producing 100 gridded predictions of AGB for each UAV-LS section, the sample variance across which was taken as the measurement variance, per pixel. Model variance was estimated as a zero-intercept linear function of predicted pixel AGB, with slope calibrated from the cross-validation data described in the previous section. Uncertainty in ALS-derived gridded estimates of AGB (Fig. 2c ) was estimated by repeating this process, using the 100 UAV-LS-derived gridded AGB estimates as training data to a further ensemble of 100 XGBoost models. Uncertainty is expressed as 90% confidence intervals throughout.

Conventional methods

Allometric-derived tree-scale AGB estimates were produced by three allometric models. These models are widely used for carbon stock estimation in the region. First, the pan-tropical allometry described in 30 that considers the predictor variables stem diameter, tree height and basic woody tissue density, itself calibrated from the harvest of 4,004 trees across the tropics and subtropics. Second, two miombo woodland specific allometries described in 29 , themselves calibrated from the harvest of 167 trees in Tanzania, that consider: (i) stem diameter only, and (ii) stem diameter and tree height. Tree height was derived from TLS data. Individual trees with non-matching stem diameters between the inventory and TLS were excluded from the tree-level AGB comparison (i.e., stem diameters with >5 cm difference; n  = 188) to ensure potential errors in linking both data sets were omitted.

A selection of four representative emission factors (EFs) were gathered to enable conventional region-scale estimation of AGB. We used values from: (i) the IPCC default for African subtropical dry forest described in 12 (using a combination of L- and C-band radar); (ii) Mozambique’s Forest Reference Emission Levels 31 for semi-deciduous forest including Miombo (based on the country’s National Forest Inventory and the allometrics described in 29 ); (iii) specific to Zambezia province described in 32 (obtained from L-band radar and a network of forest plots using the allometrics of 30 ); and (iv) Mozambique-wide described in 33 (destructive harvesting coupled to 27 ha forest inventory).

GEDI L2A (version 2) and L4A (version 2.1) products (i.e., relative height metrics and AGB density, respectively) were downloaded from NASA’s Earthdata 65 . These data were filtered to only include observations between day-of-year 275 and 365 (to match seasonality) from the years 2018–2022, with a sensitivity greater than 90%, spatially overlapping with the ALS data, and with 98% relative heights under 35 m. This resulted in 18,611 GEDI observations (Fig.  5a ) from the available 72,101. Coincident MSL-derived AGBD was retrieved by simulating a circle at the GEDI footprint coordinates (12.5 m radius), and performing a weighted average extraction from the gridded 10 m resolution lidar-derived AGB predictions. No geospatial aligning of GEDI footprints with the ALS data was applied.

Additionally, we tested the influence of the AGB model underpinning GEDI’s L4 product in the region (i.e. the African dry broadleaf forest model (DBT.Af) 34 ). Since relative heights retrieved from the ALS data (calculated from the height distributions within a point cloud) are not comparable to GEDI-derived relative height (derived from a waveform from a single laser pulse), we simulated the ALS data into GEDI-perceived waveforms for 10,000 randomly distributed 25 m diameter point cloud sections within the ROI using gediRat 35 . These resulting simulated waveforms were directly comparable with GEDI’s waveforms and thus were used as input to GEDI’s DBT.Af model, to predict AGBD.

Data availability

Gridded estimates of AGB and its uncertainty (10 m resolution) from the TLS, UAV-LS and ALS data, and gridded metrics of forest structure (10 m resolution) from the UAV-LS and ALS data, for the section GIL04, and the data to produce the graphs and charts, are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11072918 . These data are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Code availability

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the following people and institutions for enabling and assisting with data collection: Aristides Muhate, Muri Soares, Alismo Herculano, and Délfio Mapsanganhe from the Monitoring, Reporting and Verification Unit of the National Fund for Sustainable Development; João Juvencio Muchanga, Thomas Buruwate, and Jose Zavale from Gilé National Park; Theo Kerr and Veronica Leitold from the University of Maryland; Selemane Momade Sualei and Elsa Carlos Jahar, chiefs of Namahipi and Malema village, respectively, and Edimur Alfonso Chambuca, Angel Musseia, João Wate, Alexandre Francisco Mulualua, Magido Martinho Uatelauane, Ali Fereira Marques, Artur Bernaldo Camoeis, Francisco Simão Waite, and Samuel Jaime Maqueia. We thank Gilé National Park and the villages of Malema and Namahipi for permission to acquire data on their land. We acknowledge funding from the World Bank through the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. We acknowledge funding from the Government of Mozambique through the Monitoring, Reporting and Verification Unit of the National Fund for Sustainable Development. This work was supported by Innovate UK (project number 10004871).

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Study design: M. Demol, A.E., A.F., H.O., A.P., E.P.-R., A.B. Data acquisition: E.E., H.H., S.L., M.L., V.M., F.M., B.L.P.V., C.S., B.W. Data analysis: M. Demol, G.B., E.E., H.H., A.L., A.P., T.P., B.L.P.V., C.S., R.U., B.W., A.B. Interpretation of results: M. Demol, N.A.-A., G.B., M. Disney, L.D., S.H., J.H., M.L., P.R.-V., R.U., A.B. Writing—original draft: M. Demol, A.B. Writing—review & editing: all authors.

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M. Demol, G.B., E.E., A.F., J.H., H.H., A.L., H.O., A.P., T.P., B.L.P.V., P.R.-V., C.S., R.U., B.W., and A.B. are employees and/or shareowners of Sylvera Ltd. N.A.-A., A.E., and E.P.-R. are employees of the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. The interpretation of the results reflects the position of the authors and has not been endorsed by the World Bank. All other authors have no competing interests to declare.

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Demol, M., Aguilar-Amuchastegui, N., Bernotaite, G. et al. Multi-scale lidar measurements suggest miombo woodlands contain substantially more carbon than thought. Commun Earth Environ 5 , 366 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01448-x

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Consistency, completeness and external validity of ethnicity recording in NHS primary care records: a cohort study in 25 million patients’ records at source using OpenSAFELY

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Ethnicity is known to be an important correlate of health outcomes, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, where some ethnic groups were shown to be at higher risk of infection and adverse outcomes. The recording of patients’ ethnic groups in primary care can support research and efforts to achieve equity in service provision and outcomes; however, the coding of ethnicity is known to present complex challenges. We therefore set out to describe ethnicity coding in detail with a view to supporting the use of this data in a wide range of settings, as part of wider efforts to robustly describe and define methods of using administrative data.

We describe the completeness and consistency of primary care ethnicity recording in the OpenSAFELY-TPP database, containing linked primary care and hospital records in > 25 million patients in England. We also compared the ethnic breakdown in OpenSAFELY-TPP with that of the 2021 UK census.

78.2% of patients registered in OpenSAFELY-TPP on 1 January 2022 had their ethnicity recorded in primary care records, rising to 92.5% when supplemented with hospital data. The completeness of ethnicity recording was higher for women than for men. The rate of primary care ethnicity recording ranged from 77% in the South East of England to 82.2% in the West Midlands. Ethnicity recording rates were higher in patients with chronic or other serious health conditions. For each of the five broad ethnicity groups, primary care recorded ethnicity was within 2.9 percentage points of the population rate as recorded in the 2021 Census for England as a whole. For patients with multiple ethnicity records, 98.7% of the latest recorded ethnicities matched the most frequently coded ethnicity. Patients whose latest recorded ethnicity was categorised as Other were most likely to have a discordant ethnicity recording (32.2%).

Conclusions

Primary care ethnicity data in OpenSAFELY is present for over three quarters of all patients, and combined with data from other sources can achieve a high level of completeness. The overall distribution of ethnicities across all English OpenSAFELY-TPP practices was similar to the 2021 Census, with some regional variation. This report identifies the best available codelist for use in OpenSAFELY and similar electronic health record data.

Peer Review reports

Ethnicity is known to be an important determinant of health inequalities, particularly during the COVID-19 outbreak where a complex interplay of social and biological factors resulted in increased exposure, reduced protection and increased severity of illness in particular ethnic groups [ 1 , 2 ]. The UK has a diverse ethnic population (The 2021 Office for National Statistics (ONS) Census estimated 9.6% Asian, 4.2% Black, 3.0% Mixed, 81.0% White, 2.2% Other [ 3 ]), which can make health research conducted in the UK generalisable to countries. Complete and consistent recording of patients’ ethnic group in primary care can support efforts to achieve equity in service provision and reduces bias in research [ 4 , 5 ]. Ethnicity recording for new patients registering with general practice across the UK has improved following Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) financial incentivisation between 2006/07 and 2011/12 [ 6 , 7 ]. As a result, ethnicity is now being captured for the majority of the population in routine electronic healthcare records and is comparable to the general population [ 6 ]. The uptake and utilisation of healthcare services still varies across ethnic groups, and the recently established NHS Race and Health Observatory have led calls for a dedicated drive by NHS England and NHS Digital to emphasise the importance of collecting and reporting ethnicity data [ 8 ].

OpenSAFELY is a secure health analytics platform created by our team on behalf of NHS England. OpenSAFELY provides a secure software interface allowing analysis of pseudonymised primary care patient records from England in near real-time within highly secure data environments.

In primary care data, patient ethnicity is recorded via clinical codes, similar to how any other clinical condition or event is recorded. In OpenSAFELY-TPP, both Clinical Terms Version 3 (CTV3 (Read)) codes and Systematised Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT) codes are used. SNOMED CT is an NHS standard, widely used across England.

Ethnicity is also recorded in secondary care, when patients attend emergency care, inpatient or outpatient services, independently of ethnicity in the primary care record. This is available via NHS England’s Secondary Uses Service (SUS) [ 9 ]. It is common practice in OpenSAFELY to supplement primary care ethnicity, where missing, with ethnicity data from SUS [ 10 , 11 ]. Throughout this paper, we refer to ethnicity rather than race as recommended by the ONS: ‘The word “race” places people into categories based on physical characteristics, whilst ethnicity is self-defined and includes aspects such as culture, heritage, religion and identity’. However, we recognise that the distinction between and use of these terms may differ in different settings.

In this paper, we study the completeness, consistency and representativeness of routinely collected ethnicity data in primary care.

Study design

Retrospective cohort study across 25 million patients registered with English general practices in OpenSAFELY-TPP.

Data sources

This study uses data from the OpenSAFELY-TPP database, covering around 40% of the English population. The database includes primary care records of patients in practices using the TPP SystmOne patient information system and is linked to other NHS data sources, including in-patient hospital records from NHS England’s Secondary Use Service (SUS), where ethnicity is also recorded independently of ethnicity in the primary care record.

All data were linked, stored and analysed securely within the OpenSAFELY platform https://opensafely.org/ . Data include pseudonymized data such as coded diagnoses, medications and physiological parameters. No free text data are included. All code is shared openly for review and re-use under MIT open licence (opensafely/ethnicity-short-data-report at notebook). Detailed pseudonymised patient data is potentially re-identifiable and therefore not shared.

Study population

Patients were included in the study if they were registered at an English general practice using TPP on 1 January 2022.

Ethnicity ascertainment

In primary care data, there is no categorical ‘ethnicity’ variable to record this information. Rather, ethnicity is recorded using clinical codes—entered by a clinician or administrator with a location and date—like any other clinical or administrative event, with specific codes relating to each ethnic group [ 12 , 13 , 14 ]. This means ethnicity can be recorded by the practice in multiple, potentially conflicting, ways over time.

We created a new codelist, SNOMED:2022 [ 13 ], by identifying relevant ethnicity SNOMED CT codes and ensuring completeness by comparing the codelist to the following: another OpenSAFELY created codelist (CTV3:2020) [ 13 ], a combined ethnicity codelist from SARS-CoV2 COVID19 Vaccination Uptake Reporting Codes published by Primary Care Information Services (PRIMIS) [ 12 , 15 ] and a codelist from General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) Data for Pandemic Planning and Research (GDPPR) [ 16 ]. Codes which relate to religion rather than ethnicity (e.g. ‘Muslim—ethnic category 2001 census’) and codes which do not specify a specific ethnicity (e.g. ‘Ethnic group not recorded’) were excluded. In total, 258 relevant ethnicity codes were identified. We then created a codelist categorisation based on the 2001 UK Census categories, which are the NHS standard for ethnicity [ 17 ], and cross referenced it against the CTV3, PRIMIS and GDPPR codelists. The ‘Gypsy or Irish Traveller’ and ‘Arab’ groups were not specifically listed in 2001 however we categorised them as `White` and `Other` respectively as per the 2011 Census grouping [ 18 ]).

The codelist categorisation consists of two ethnicity groupings based on the 2001 census (Table  1 ): all analyses used the 5-group categorisation unless otherwise stated.

If a SNOMED:2022 ethnicity code appeared in the primary care record on multiple dates, the latest entry was used unless otherwise stated.

In OpenSAFELY, the function ethnicity_from_sus combines SUS ethnicity data from admitted patient care statistics (APCS), emergency care (EC) and outpatient attendance (OPA) and selects the most frequently used ethnicity code for each patient. In hospital records from SUS, recorded ethnicity is categorised as one of the 16 categories on the 2001 UK census. This accords with the 16-level grouping described above.

We looked at the completeness of ethnicity coding in the whole population and across each of the following demographic and clinical subgroups:

Patient age was calculated as of 1 January 2022 and grouped into 5-year bands, to match the ONS age bands.

We used categories ‘male’ and ‘female’, matching the ONS recorded categories; patients with any other/unknown sex were excluded.

Deprivation

Overall deprivation was measured by the 2019 Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) [ 19 ] derived from the patient’s postcode at lower super output area level. IMD was divided by quintile, with 1 representing the most deprived areas and 5 representing least deprived areas. Where a patient’s postcode cannot be determined the IMD is recorded as unknown.

Region was defined as the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS 1) region derived from the patient’s practice postcode.

As the rate of ethnicity recording would be expected to be lower in patients with fewer clinical interactions, and therefore fewer opportunities for ethnicity to be recorded, completeness was also compared in the clinical subgroups of dementia, diabetes, hypertension and learning disability which are more likely to require additional clinical interactions. Clinical subgroups were defined as the presence or absence of relevant SNOMED CT codes in the GP records for dementia [ 20 ], diabetes [ 21 ], hypertension [ 22 ] and learning disabilities [ 23 ] as of 1 January 2022.

Statistical methods

Completeness and distribution of ethnicity recording.

The proportion of patients with either (i) primary care ethnicity recorded (that is, the presence of any code in the SNOMED:2022 codelist in the patient record) or (ii) primary care ethnicity supplemented, where missing, with ethnicity data from secondary care [ 24 ] was calculated. Completeness was reported overall and within clinical and demographic subgroups.

Amongst those patients where ethnicity was recorded, the proportion of patients within each of the 5 groups was calculated, within each clinical and demographic subgroup. We also calculated the distribution of complete ethnicity recording across practices with at least 1000 registered patients.

Consistency of ethnicity recording within patients over time

Discrepancies may arise due to errors whilst entering the data or if a patient self-reports a different ethnic group from their previously recorded ethnic group. We calculated the proportion of patients with any ethnicity recorded which did not match their ‘latest’ recorded grouped ethnicity for each of the five ethnic groups.

We also calculated the proportion of patients whose latest recorded ethnicity did not match their most frequently recorded ethnicity for each of the five ethnic groups.

Consistency of ethnicity recording across data sources (primary care versus secondary care)

We calculated the proportion of patients whose latest recorded ethnicity in primary care matched their ethnicity as recorded in secondary care for each of the five ethnic groups, where both primary and secondary care are recorded.

External validation against the 2021 UK census population

The UK Census collects individual and household-level demographic data every 10 years for the whole UK population. Data on ethnicity were obtained from the 2021 UK Census for England. The most recent census across the UK was undertaken on 27 March 2021. Ethnic breakdowns for the population of England were obtained via NOMIS [ 25 ].

The ethnic breakdown of the census population was compared with our OpenSAFELY-TPP population and the relative difference was calculated using the ONS value as the baseline proportion and OpenSAFELY as the comparator. In the 2021 UK Census, the Chinese ethnic group was included in the Asian ethnic group, whereas in the 2001 census, it was included in the Other ethnic group [ 26 ]. In order to provide a suitable comparison with primary care data, we regrouped the 2021 census data as per the 2001 groups. As an additional analysis, we also compared the primary care data with the census data using the 2021 census categories.

Completeness of ethnicity data

19,618,135 of the 25,102,210 patients (78.2%) registered in OpenSAFELY-TPP on 1 January 2022 had a recorded ethnicity, rising to 92.5% when supplemented with secondary care data (Fig.  1 , Additional file 1: Table S1).

Bar plot showing proportion of registered TPP population with a recorded ethnicity by clinical and demographic subgroups, based on primary care records (solid bars) and when supplemented with secondary care data (pale bars)

Primary care ethnicity recording completeness was lowest for patients aged over 80 years (80.1%) and under 30, whereas ethnicity recording was highest in those over 80 when supplemented with secondary care data (97.1%). Women had a higher proportion of recorded ethnicities than men (79.8% and 76.5% respectively, 94% and 91.1% when supplemented with secondary care data). The completeness of primary care ethnicity recording ranged from 77% in the South East of England to 82.2% in the West Midlands. IMD was within 1.2 percentage points for known values (77.7% in the least deprived group 5 to 78.9% in group 3) and was lowest for the unknown group (71.6%). Primary care ethnicity recording was at least 4 percentage points higher in all of the clinical subgroups compared to the general population.

Distribution of ethnicity

Using ethnicity recorded in primary care only, 6.8% of the population were recorded as Asian, 2.3% Black, 1.5% Mixed, 65.6% White and 1.9% Other, and ethnicity was not recorded for 21.8%. When supplementing with hospital-recorded ethnicity data, corresponding percentages were 7.8% Asian, 2.6% Black, 1.9% Mixed, 77.9% White, 2.3% Other and 7.5% not recorded, representing a percentage point increase ranging from 0.3% in the Black group to 12.3% in the White group.

Older patients tended to have a higher rate of recorded White ethnicity (e.g. 76.3% in the 80 + group vs 50.0% in the 0–19 group), whereas younger patients had a higher rate of recording for Asian, Black, Mixed and Other groups. The higher proportion of women with recorded ethnicity was reversed in the Asian group where men (7.0% and 8.0% with secondary care data) had a higher proportion of recording than women (6.6% and 7.6% with secondary care data). The proportion of ethnicity reporting was lower for patients with dementia, hypertension or learning disabilities in every ethnic group other than White (Fig.  2 /Additional file 1: Table S2). The breakdown by 16 group ethnicity is shown in Additional file 1: Table S3. There was considerable variation in the completeness of ethnicity recording across practices with at least 1000 registered patients (Fig.  3 ).

Boxplot showing the 5th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 95th percentiles of completeness of ethnicity recording across practices with at least 1000 registered patients

Consistency of ethnicity recording within patients

3.1% [260, 611] of the 19,618,135 patients with a recorded ethnicity had at least one ethnicity record that was discordant with the latest recorded ethnicity (Table 3 ). Patients whose latest recorded ethnicity was categorised as Mixed were most likely to have a discordant ethnicity recording (32.2%, 118,560), of whom 17.0% (62,565) also had a recorded ethnicity of White. 5.7% (33,205) of the 583,770 patients with the latest recorded ethnicity of Black also had a recorded ethnicity of White (Table 2 ).

Overall, for 19,364,120 (98.7%) of patients, their latest recorded ethnicity in primary care matched their most frequently recorded ethnicity in primary care (Table  3 ). 16,390,425 (99.5%) patients with the most recent ethnicity ‘White’ had matching most frequently recorded ethnicity. Other was the least concordant group, just 81.6% (399,440) of patients with the most recent ethnicity ‘Mixed’ had matching most frequently recorded ethnicity. 0.9% (5450) of patients with latest ethnicity ‘Black’ had the most frequently recorded ethnicity ‘White’ (Additional file 1: Table S4).

Of the 19.6 million total patients with a primary care ethnicity record, 12.9 million (66.0%) also had a secondary care ethnicity record. The proportion of patients with no secondary care coded ethnicity ranged from 31.9% in the White group to 58.6% in the Other group (Additional file 1: Table S5). SNOMED:2022 and secondary care coded ethnicity matched for 93.5% of patients with both coded ethnicities, ranging from 34.8% in the Mixed group to 96.9% in the White group (Fig.  4 , Additional file 1: Table S6).

Sankey plot comparing the categorisation of ethnicity in primary care and secondary care

Comparison with the 2021 UK census population

The proportion of patients in each ethnicity group based on primary care records as of January 2022 was within 2.9 percentage points of the 2021 Census estimate (amended to the 2001 grouping) for the same ethnicity group across England as a whole (Asian: 8.7% primary care, 8.8% Census, relative difference (RD) − 1.5; Black: 3.0%, 4.2%, RD − 29.4; Mixed: 1.9%, 3.0% RD − 36.5; White: 84.0%, 81.0% RD 3.6; Other: 2.5%, 2.9%, RD − 15.1). When supplemented secondary care data, this increased to 3.2% (Fig.  5 , Additional file 1: Table S7). In primary care records, the White population was underrepresented in all regions other than the North West (7.1% percentage points higher than Census estimates), South East (2.8%) and South West (0.6%) and was most severely underestimated in the West Midlands (− 12.5%). The Asian population was overrepresented in all regions other than the North West (− 3.6%) and South East (− 1.6%) (Fig.  6 , Additional file 1: Table S8). We also compared the primary care data to the 2021 Census estimates using 2021 rather than 2001 ethnicity groups (Additional file 1: Figs. S1 and S2 and Additional file 1: Table S9).

Bar plot showing the proportion of 2021 Census and primary care populations per ethnicity grouped into 5 groups (excluding those without a recorded ethnicity (21.8% SNOMED:2020 and 7.5% supplemented with ethnicity data from secondary care)). Data labels indicate the percentage point difference between 2021 Census and TPP populations

Bar plot showing the proportion of 2021 Census and TPP populations in each ethnicity group by region (excluding those without a recorded ethnicity (21.8% in primary care and 7.5% supplemented with ethnicity data from secondary care)). Data labels indicate percentage point difference between 2021 Census and TPP populations

This study reported ethnicity recording quality in around 25 million patients registered with a general practice in England and available for analysis in the OpenSAFELY-TPP database. Over three quarters of all patients had at least one ethnicity record in primary care data. When supplemented with hospital records, ethnicity recording was 92.5% complete, which is consistent with previously reported England-wide primary care data sources [ 27 , 28 ]. 98.7% of patients’ latest and most frequently recorded ethnicity matched. As the latest recorded ethnicity is computationally more efficient within OpenSAFELY, we recommend the use of the latest recorded ethnicity. The reported concordance of primary and secondary care records of 93.5% is consistent with those previously reported [ 29 ]. Despite regional variations, the overall ethnicity breakdown across all English OpenSAFELY-TPP practices was similar to the 2021 Census; however, larger relative differences were observed, in particular for the Mixed and Black groups. Therefore, relative to the size of certain ethnic groups, discrepant ethnicity recording practices may be a concern.

Strengths and weaknesses

This study provides a breakdown of primary care coding in OpenSAFELY-TPP by key clinical and demographic characteristics. The key strengths of this study are the use of large Electronic Health Record (EHR) datasets representing roughly 40% of the population of England registered with a GP, which enabled us to assess the quality of ethnicity data against a variety of important clinical characteristics.

Practices may utilise differing strategies for collecting ethnicity information from patients. Typically ethnicity is self-reported by the patient at registration or during consultation [ 30 ] but may not always be self-reported and may reflect an assumption made by the person entering the data. OpenSAFELY-TPP was missing ethnicity for 21.8% of patients, and the missingness of ethnicity data in EHRs may not be random [ 6 ].

This study focussed on the 5 Group ethnicity of the SNOMED:2022 codelists categorisation. However, there can be important variations in clinical care within these broad categories, as seen in COVID vaccine uptake [ 31 , 32 ]. More detailed categorisations, alternative coding systems and codelists have been further explored in the OpenSAFELY-TPP Ethnicity short data report.

It is common for OpenSAFELY-TPP studies to supplement the primary care recorded ethnicity, where missing, with ethnicity data from secondary care [ 10 , 11 , 33 ]. The representativeness of the CTV3:2020 coded ethnicity supplemented with SUS data has been reported previously [ 33 ]. However, secondary care data is only available for people attending hospital within the time period that data were available (currently April 2019 onwards in OpenSAFELY). The population who still have no ethnicity record after supplementation are likely very different to the wider population, for example having a much lower chance of having been admitted to hospital, or interacting with healthcare services generally.

This study represents a snapshot of ethnicity recording as of 1 January 2022 and does not provide insights into temporal trends in ethnicity recording. Trends in ethnicity recording over time are difficult to investigate due to loss of record date during transfer of clinical records when patients register with a new practice (Additional file 1: Fig. S4). Therefore, we are unable to assess the impact of QOF financial incentives being rescinded in 2011/12.

The most up-to-date formal estimates of England’s population by ethnic group currently available are from the 2021 Census. Accuracy of the 2021 Census ethnicity estimates may vary by region. The 2021 census response rate was not even between regions, ranging from 95% in London to 98% in the South East, South West and East of England [ 34 ]. The 2021 census used multiple imputation to account for missing ethnicity [ 35 ]; the percentage of eligible persons who had an ethnicity value imputed or edited was not even between regions. Imputation rate was highest in London (2.0%) and lowest in the North East (1.0%) [ 34 ].

There are limitations in comparing the GP-registered population with the census population as differences naturally arise. For example, patients registered with a GP may have left the country some years ago and hence not be counted in the census; certain populations are less likely to be registered with a GP (such as Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities [ 36 ] and migrants [ 37 , 38 ]); not everyone responds to the census but some may be registered with a GP; and regional differences occur, for example due to students moving to cities during term-time. We looked at the GP-registered population in January 2022, whereas the census was taken in March 2021; therefore, some small changes in population also may have occurred during this time.

Findings in context

Over 20 studies have been conducted using the OpenSAFELY framework. It is important to understand the data issues with using ethnicity in OpenSAFELY. Whilst ethnicity data has been shown to be more complete for the CTV3:2020 codelist than the SNOMED:2022 codelist [ 13 ], the CTV3:2020 codelist included codes such as ‘XaJSe: Muslim—ethnic category 2001 census’ which relate to religion rather than ethnicity and were, therefore, excluded from the SNOMED:2022 codelist. The common practice of supplementing CTV3:2020 coded ethnicity with either secondary care data or the PRIMIS codelists could lead to inconsistent classification as both secondary care data and PRIMIS codelists follow the 2001 census categories.

Recording ethnicity is not straightforward. Indeed, despite often being used as a key variable to describe health, the idea of ‘ethnicity’ has been disputed [ 39 ]. Ethnicity is a complex mixture of social constructs, genetic make-up and cultural identity [ 40 ]. Self-identified ethnicity is not a fixed concept and evolving socio-cultural trends could contribute to changes in a person’s self-identified ethnic group, particularly for those with mixed heritage [ 41 ]. It is therefore perhaps not surprising to see lower levels of concordance between latest ethnicity and most common ethnicity in those with latest ethnicity coded as ‘mixed’. It is not clear to what extent this would explain all the discordance we identified or whether other factors such as data error are involved. Our findings agree with previous literature, both from the US and UK [ 5 , 41 ], which suggest that the consistency of ethnicity information tends to be highest for white populations, and lowest for Mixed or Other racial/ethnic groups [ 42 ].

The 2001 census categories are the NHS standard for ethnicity [ 17 ], but we have not been able to find any explanation for the continued use of the 2001 census categories as the standard.

Due to the significant differences experienced by ethnic groups in terms of health outcomes, accurate ethnicity coding to the most granular code possible is crucial. Although we have focussed on codelist categorisations based on the 2001 census categories, ethnicity can be extracted for each of the component codes (Additional file 1: Table S8), so researchers have the option to use custom categorisations as required.

We believe that the SNOMED:2022 codelist and codelist categorisation provides a more consistent representation of ethnicity as defined by the 2001 census categories than the CTV3:2020 codelist and should be the preferred codelist and categorisation for primary care ethnicity.

Policy implications and interpretation

This paper is principally to inform interpretation of the numerous current and future analyses completed and published using OpenSAFELY-TPP and similar UK electronic healthcare databases. The practice of supplementing primary care ethnicity with secondary care ethnicity from SUS can, depending on the study design, introduce bias and should be used with caution. For example, patients who have more clinical interactions are more likely to have a recorded ethnicity and therefore patients with a recorded ethnicity in secondary care data may tend to be sicker than the general population. Ethnicity recording has been found to be more complete for patients who died in hospital compared with those discharged [ 5 ].

This report describes the completeness and consistency of primary care ethnicity in OpenSAFELY-TPP and suggests the adoption of the SNOMED:2022 codelist and codelist categorisation as the best standard method.

Availability of data and materials

Access to the underlying identifiable and potentially re-identifiable pseudonymised electronic health record data is tightly governed by various legislative and regulatory frameworks, and restricted by best practice. The data in OpenSAFELY is drawn from General Practice data across England where TPP is the Data Processor. TPP developers (CB, JC, JP, FH and SH) initiate an automated process to create pseudonymised records in the core OpenSAFELY database, which are copies of key structured data tables in the identifiable records. These are linked onto key external data resources that have also been pseudonymised via SHA-512 one-way hashing of NHS numbers using a shared salt. Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science developers and PIs (BG, CEM, SB, AJW, KW, WJH, HJC, DE, PI, SD, GH, BBC, RMS, ID, KB, EJW and CTR) holding contracts with NHS England have access to the OpenSAFELY pseudonymised data tables as needed to develop the OpenSAFELY tools. These tools in turn enable researchers with OpenSAFELY Data Access Agreements to write and execute code for data management and data analysis without direct access to the underlying raw pseudonymised patient data and to review the outputs of this code. All code for the full data management pipeline—from raw data to completed results for this analysis—and for the OpenSAFELY platform as a whole is available for review at github.com/OpenSAFELY.

Abbreviations

Admitted patient care statistics

Clinical Terms Version 3

Emergency care

Electronic health record

General Practice Extraction Service Data for Pandemic Planning and Research

General practitioner

General Practice Extraction Service

Index of Multiple Deprivation

Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics

Office for National Statistics

Outpatient attendance

Primary Care Information Services

Quality and Outcomes Framework

Systematised Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms

Secondary Uses Service

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Acknowledgements

We are very grateful for all the support received from the TPP Technical Operations team throughout this work and for generous assistance from the information governance and database teams at NHS England and the NHS England Transformation Directorate.

BG is guarantor.

Software and reproducibility

Data management was performed using Python 3.8, with analysis carried out using Python and R. Code for data management and analysis, as well as codelists are archived online https://github.com/opensafely/ethnicity-short-data-report/ .

Patient and public involvement

This analysis relies on the use of large volumes of patient data. Ensuring patient, professional and public trust is therefore of critical importance. Maintaining trust requires being transparent about the way OpenSAFELY works, and ensuring patient and public voices are represented in the design and use of the platform. Between February and July 2022, we ran a 6-month pilot of Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement activity designed to be aligned with the principles set out in the Consensus Statement on Public Involvement and Engagement with Data-Intensive Health Research [ 43 ]. Our engagement focused on the broader OpenSAFELY platform and comprised three sets of activities: explain and engage, involve and iterate and participate and promote. To engage and explain, we have developed a public website at opensafely.org that provides a detailed description of the OpenSAFELY platform in language suitable for a lay audience and are co-developing an accompanying explainer video. To involve and iterate, we have created the OpenSAFELY ‘Digital Critical Friends’ Group, comprised of approximately 12 members representative in terms of ethnicity, gender and educational background; this group has met every 2 weeks to engage with and review the OpenSAFELY website, governance process, principles for researchers and FAQs. To participate and promote, we are conducting a systematic review of the key enablers of public trust in data-intensive research and have participated in the stakeholder group overseeing NHS England’s ‘data stewardship public dialogue’.

The OpenSAFELY platform is principally funded by grants from:

NHS England [2023–2025];

The Wellcome Trust (222,097/Z/20/Z) [2020–2024];

MRC (MR/V015737/1) [2020–2021].

Additional contributions to OpenSAFELY have been funded by grants from:

MRC via the National Core Study programme, Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing strand (MC_PC_20030, MC_PC_20059) [2020–2022] and the Data and Connectivity strand (MC_PC_20029, MC_PC_20058) [2020–2022];

NIHR and MRC via the CONVALESCENCE programme (COV-LT-0009, MC_PC_20051) [2021–2024];

NHS England via the Primary Care Medicines Analytics Unit [2021–2024].

The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR, NHS England, UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the Department of Health and Social Care or other funders. Funders had no role in the study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report and in the decision to submit the article for publication.

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Colm D. Andrews, Jon Massey, Robin Park, Helen J. Curtis, Lisa Hopcroft, Amir Mehrkar, Seb Bacon, George Hickman, Rebecca Smith, David Evans, Tom Ward, Simon Davy, Peter Inglesby, Iain Dillingham, Steven Maude, Thomas O’Dwyer, Ben F. C. Butler-Cole, Lucy Bridges, Ben Goldacre, Brian MacKenna, Alex J. Walker & William J. Hulme

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Contributions.

Conceptualisation: CDA, BM, RP, RM, JM and WJH. Data curation: CDA, RP, RM and JM. Formal analysis: CDA, RP, RM, JM and WJH. Funding acquisition: BG. Methodology: CDA, BM, RP, RM, JM and WJH. Project administration: CDA, RP, RM and JM. Resources: CDA, RM, JM, RP, HJC, LH, LAT and BG. Software: CDA, RM, JM, RP, HJC, LH, AM, SB, GH, RS, DE, TW, SD, PI, ID, SM, TO’D, BFCBC, LB, CB, JP, FH, SH, JC, BG, BM, AJW and WJH. Supervision: AJW, LAT and WJH. Validation: CDA, BM, RP, RM, JM and WJH. Visualisation: CDA, RP, BM, BG, AJW and WJH. Writing—original draft: CDA. Writing—review and editing: CDA, AJW, BM, HJC and WJH.

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Ethics approval and consent to participate.

NHS England is the data controller; TPP is the data processor; and the researchers on OpenSAFELY are acting with the approval of NHS England. This implementation of OpenSAFELY is hosted within the TPP environment which is accredited to the ISO 27001 information security standard and is NHS IG Toolkit compliant [ 44 , 45 ]; patient data has been pseudonymised for analysis and linkage using industry standard cryptographic hashing techniques; all pseudonymised datasets transmitted for linkage onto OpenSAFELY are encrypted; access to the platform is via a virtual private network (VPN) connection, restricted to a small group of researchers; the researchers hold contracts with NHS England and only access the platform to initiate database queries and statistical models; all database activity is logged; only aggregate statistical outputs leave the platform environment following best practice for anonymisation of results such as statistical disclosure control for low cell counts [ 46 ]. The OpenSAFELY research platform adheres to the obligations of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. In March 2020, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care used powers under the UK Health Service (Control of Patient Information) Regulations 2002 (COPI) to require organisations to process confidential patient information for the purposes of protecting public health, providing healthcare services to the public and monitoring and managing the COVID-19 outbreak and incidents of exposure; this sets aside the requirement for patient consent [ 47 ]. Taken together, these provide the legal bases to link patient datasets on the OpenSAFELY platform. GP practices, from which the primary care data are obtained, are required to share relevant health information to support the public health response to the pandemic and have been informed of the OpenSAFELY analytics platform.

This study was approved by the Health Research Authority (REC reference 20/LO/0651) and by the LSHTM Ethics Board (reference 21863).

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Not applicable.

Competing interests

All authors declare the following: BG has received research funding from the Bennett Foundation, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the NHS National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), the NIHR School of Primary Care Research, NHS England, the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre, the Mohn-Westlake Foundation, NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Oxford and Thames Valley, the Wellcome Trust, the Good Thinking Foundation, Health Data Research UK, the Health Foundation, the World Health Organisation, UKRI MRC, Asthma UK, the British Lung Foundation, and the Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing strand of the National Core Studies programme; he is a Non-Executive Director at NHS Digital; he also receives personal income from speaking and writing for lay audiences on the misuse of science. BMK is also employed by NHS England working on medicines policy and clinical lead for primary care medicines data.

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12916_2024_3499_moesm1_esm.pdf.

Additional file 1: Fig. S1. Bar plot showing the proportion of 2021 Census and TPP populations (amended to 2021 grouping) per ethnicity grouped into 5 groups (excluding those without a recorded ethnicity). Annotated with percentage point difference between 2021 Census and TPP populations. Fig S2. Bar plot showing the proportion of 2021 Census and TPP populations (amended to 2021 grouping) per ethnicity grouped into 5 groups per NUTS − 1 region (excluding those without a recorded ethnicity). Annotated with percentage point difference between 2021 Census and TPP populations. Fig. S3. Recording of ethnicity over time for latest and first recorded ethnicity. Unknown dates of recording may be stored as ‘1900 − 01 − 01’. Table S1. Count of patients with a recorded ethnicity in OpenSAFELY-TPP (proportion of registered TPP population) by clinical and demographic subgroups. All counts are rounded to the nearest 5. Table S2. Count of patients with a recorded ethnicity in OpenSAFELY TPP by ethnicity group (proportion of registered TPP population) and clinical and demographic subgroups. All counts are rounded to the nearest 5. Table S3. Count of patients with a recorded ethnicity in OpenSAFELY TPP by ethnicity group (proportion of registered TPP population) and clinical and demographic subgroups. All counts are rounded to the nearest 5. Table S4. Count of patients’ most frequently recorded ethnicity (proportion of latest ethnicity). Table S6. Count of patients with a recorded ethnicity in Secondary Care by ethnicity group excluding Unknown ethnicites (proportion of Primary Care population). All counts are rounded to the nearest 5. Table S7. Count of patients with a recorded ethnicity in OpenSAFELY TPP by ethnicity group (proportion of registered TPP population) and 2021 ONS Census counts [amended to 2001 grouping] (proportion of 2021 ONS Census population). All counts are rounded to the nearest 5. Table S8. Count of patients with a recorded ethnicity in OpenSAFELY TPP [amended to the 2021 ethnicity grouping] (proportion of registered TPP population) and 2021 ONS Census counts (proportion of 2021 ONS Census population). All counts are rounded to the nearest 5. Table S9. Count of individual ethnicity code use.

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The OpenSAFELY Collaborative., Andrews, C.D., Mathur, R. et al. Consistency, completeness and external validity of ethnicity recording in NHS primary care records: a cohort study in 25 million patients’ records at source using OpenSAFELY. BMC Med 22 , 288 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-024-03499-5

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The trends defining the $1.8 trillion global wellness market in 2024

From cold plunges to collagen to celery juice, the $1.8 trillion global consumer wellness market is no stranger to fads, which can sometimes surface with limited clinical research or credibility. Today, consumers are no longer simply trying out these wellness trends and hoping for the best, but rather asking, “What does the science say?”

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Shaun Callaghan , Hayley Doner, Jonathan Medalsy, Anna Pione , and Warren Teichner , representing views from McKinsey’s Consumer Packaged Goods and Private Equity & Principal Investors Practices.

McKinsey’s latest Future of Wellness research—which surveyed more than 5,000 consumers across China, the United Kingdom, and the United States—examines the trends shaping the consumer wellness landscape. In this article, we pair these findings with a look at seven wellness subsets—including women’s health, weight management, and in-person fitness—that our research suggests are especially ripe areas for innovation and investment activity.

The science- and data-backed future of wellness

In the United States alone, we estimate that the wellness market has reached $480 billion, growing at 5 to 10 percent per year. Eighty-two percent of US consumers now consider wellness a top or important priority in their everyday lives, which is similar to what consumers in the United Kingdom and China report (73 percent and 87 percent, respectively).

This is especially true among Gen Z and millennial consumers, who are now purchasing more wellness products and services than older generations, across the same dimensions we outlined in our previous research : health, sleep, nutrition, fitness, appearance, and mindfulness (Exhibit 1). 1 “ Still feeling good: The US wellness market continues to boom ,” McKinsey, September 19, 2022.

Across the globe, responses to our survey questions revealed a common theme about consumer expectations: consumers want effective, data-driven, science-backed health and wellness solutions (Exhibit 2).

Five trends shaping the consumer health and wellness space in 2024

Fifty-eight percent of US respondents to our survey said they are prioritizing wellness more now than they did a year ago. The following five trends encompass their newly emerging priorities, as well as those that are consistent with our earlier research.

Trend one: Health at home

The COVID-19 pandemic made at-home testing kits a household item. As the pandemic has moved into its endemic phase, consumers are expressing greater interest in other kinds of at-home kits: 26 percent of US consumers are interested in testing for vitamin and mineral deficiencies at home, 24 percent for cold and flu symptoms, and 23 percent for cholesterol levels.

At-home diagnostic tests are appealing to consumers because they offer greater convenience than going to a doctor’s office, quick results, and the ability to test frequently. In China, 35 percent of consumers reported that they had even replaced some in-person healthcare appointments with at-home diagnostic tests—a higher share than in the United States or the United Kingdom.

Although there is growing interest in the space, some consumers express hesitancy. In the United States and the United Kingdom, top barriers to adoption include the preference to see a doctor in person, a perceived lack of need, and price; in China, test accuracy is a concern for approximately 30 percent of consumers.

Implications for companies: Companies can address three critical considerations to help ensure success in this category. First, companies will want to determine the right price value equation for at-home diagnostic kits since cost still presents a major barrier for many consumers today. Second, companies should consider creating consumer feedback loops, encouraging users to take action based on their test results and then test again to assess the impact of those interventions. Third, companies that help consumers understand their test results—either through the use of generative AI to help analyze and deliver personalized results, or through integration with telehealth services—could develop a competitive advantage.

Trend two: A new era for biomonitoring and wearables

Roughly half of all consumers we surveyed have purchased a fitness wearable at some point in time. While wearable devices such as watches have been popular for years, new modalities powered by breakthrough technologies have ushered in a new era for biomonitoring and wearable devices.

Wearable biometric rings, for example, are now equipped with sensors that provide consumers with insights about their sleep quality through paired mobile apps. Continuous glucose monitors, which can be applied to the back of the user’s arm, provide insights about the user’s blood sugar levels, which may then be interpreted by a nutritionist who can offer personalized health guidance.

Roughly one-third of surveyed wearable users said they use their devices more often than they did last year, and more than 75 percent of all surveyed consumers indicated an openness to using a wearable in the future. We expect the use of wearable devices to continue to grow, particularly as companies track a wider range of health indicators.

Implications for companies: While there is a range of effective wearable solutions on the market today for fitness and sleep, there are fewer for nutrition, weight management, and mindfulness, presenting an opportunity for companies to fill these gaps.

Wearables makers and health product and services providers in areas such as nutrition, fitness, and sleep can explore partnerships that try to make the data collected through wearable devices actionable, which could drive greater behavioral change among consumers. One example: a consumer interested in managing stress levels might wear a device that tracks spikes in cortisol. Companies could then use this data to make personalized recommendations for products related to wellness, fitness, and mindfulness exercises.

Businesses must keep data privacy and clarity of insights top of mind. Roughly 30 percent of China, UK, and US consumers are open to using a wearable device only if the data is shared exclusively with them. Additionally, requiring too much manual data input or sharing overly complicated insights could diminish the user experience. Ensuring that data collection is transparent and that insights are simple to understand and targeted to consumers’ specific health goals or risk factors will be crucial to attracting potential consumers.

Trend three: Personalization’s gen AI boost

Nearly one in five US consumers and one in three US millennials prefer personalized products and services. While the preference for personalized wellness products was lower than in years prior, we believe this is likely due to consumers becoming more selective about which personalized products and services they use.

Technological advancements and the rise of first-party data are giving personalization a new edge. Approximately 20 percent of consumers in the United Kingdom and the United States and 30 percent in China look for personalized products and services that use biometric data to provide recommendations. There is an opportunity to pair these tools with gen AI to unlock greater precision and customization. In fact, gen AI has already made its way to the wearables and app space: some wearables use gen AI to design customized workouts for users based on their fitness data.

Implications for companies: Companies that offer software-based health and wellness services to consumers are uniquely positioned to incorporate gen AI into their personalization offerings. Other businesses could explore partnerships with companies that use gen AI to create personalized wellness recommendations.

Trend four: Clinical over clean

Last year, we saw consumers begin to shift away from wellness products with clean or natural ingredients to those with clinically proven ingredients. Today, that shift is even more evident. Roughly half of UK and US consumers reported clinical effectiveness as a top purchasing factor, while only about 20 percent reported the same for natural or clean ingredients. This trend is most pronounced in categories such as over-the-counter medications and vitamins and supplements (Exhibit 3).

In China, consumers expressed roughly equal overall preference for clinical and clean products, although there were some variations between categories. They prioritized clinical efficacy for digestive medication, topical treatments, and eye care products, while they preferred natural and clean ingredients for supplements, superfoods, and personal-care products.

Implications for companies: To meet consumer demand for clinically proven products, some brands will be able to emphasize existing products in their portfolios, while other businesses may have to rethink product formulations and strategy. While wellness companies that have built a brand around clean or natural products—particularly those with a dedicated customer base—may not want to pivot away from their existing value proposition, they can seek out third-party certifications to help substantiate their claims and reach more consumers.

Companies can boost the clinical credibility of their products by using clinically tested ingredients, running third-party research studies on their products, securing recommendations from healthcare providers and scientists, and building a medical board that weighs in on product development.

Trend five: The rise of the doctor recommendation

The proliferation of influencer marketing in the consumer space has created new sources of wellness information—with varying degrees of credibility. As consumers look to avoid “healthwashing” (that is, deceptive marketing that positions a product as healthier than it really is), healthcare provider recommendations are important once again.

Doctor recommendations are the third-highest-ranked source of influence on consumer health and wellness purchase decisions in the United States (Exhibit 4). Consumers said they are most influenced by doctors’ recommendations when seeking care related to mindfulness, sleep, and overall health (which includes the use of vitamins, over-the-counter medications, and personal- and home-care products).

Implications for companies: Brands need to consider which messages and which messengers are most likely to resonate with their consumers. We have found that a company selling products related to mindfulness may want to use predominately doctor recommendations and social media advertising, whereas a company selling fitness products may want to leverage recommendations from friends and family, as well as endorsements from personal trainers.

Seven areas of growth in the wellness space

Building upon last year’s research, several pockets of growth in the wellness space are emerging. Increasing consumer interest, technological breakthroughs, product innovation, and an increase in chronic illnesses have catalyzed growth in these areas.

Women’s health

Historically, women’s health has been underserved and underfunded . Today, purchases of women’s health products are on the rise across a range of care needs (Exhibit 5). While the highest percentage of respondents said they purchased menstrual-care and sexual-health products, consumers said they spent the most on menopause and pregnancy-related products in the past year.

Digital tools are also becoming more prevalent in the women’s health landscape. For example, wearable devices can track a user’s physiological signals to identify peak fertility windows.

Despite recent growth in the women’s health space, there is still unmet demand for products and services. Menopause has been a particularly overlooked segment of the market: only 5 percent of FemTech  start-ups address menopause needs. 2 Christine Hall, “Why more startups and VCs are finally pursuing the menopause market: ‘$600B is not “niche,”’” Crunchbase, January 21, 2021.   Consumers also continue to engage with offerings across the women’s health space, including menstrual and intimate care, fertility support, pregnancy and motherhood products, and women-focused healthcare centers, presenting opportunities for companies to expand products and services in these areas.

Healthy aging

Demand for products and services that support healthy aging and longevity is on the rise, propelled by a shift toward preventive medicine, the growth of health technology (such as telemedicine and digital-health monitoring), and advances in research on antiaging products.

Roughly 70 percent of consumers in the United Kingdom and the United States and 85 percent in China indicated that they have purchased more in this category in the past year than in prior years.

More than 60 percent of consumers surveyed considered it “very” or “extremely” important to purchase products or services that help with healthy aging and longevity. Roughly 70 percent of consumers in the United Kingdom and the United States and 85 percent in China indicated that they have purchased more in this category in the past year than in prior years. These results were similar across age groups, suggesting that the push toward healthy aging is spurred both by younger generations seeking preventive solutions and older generations seeking to improve their longevity. As populations across developed economies continue to age (one in six people in the world will be aged 60 or older by 2030 3 “Ageing and health,” World Health Organization, October 1, 2022. ), we expect there to be an even greater focus globally on healthy aging.

To succeed in this market, companies can take a holistic approach to healthy-aging solutions , which includes considerations about mental health and social factors. Bringing products and services to market that anticipate the needs of aging consumers—instead of emphasizing the aging process to sell these products—will be particularly important. For example, a service that addresses aging in older adults might focus on one aspect of longevity, such as fitness or nutrition, rather than the process of aging itself.

Weight management

Weight management is top of mind for consumers in the United States, where nearly one in three adults struggles with obesity 4 Obesity fact sheet 508 , US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, July 2022. ; 60 percent of US consumers in our survey said they are currently trying to lose weight.

While exercise is by far the most reported weight management intervention in our survey, more than 50 percent of US consumers considered prescription medication, including glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) drugs, to be a “very effective” intervention. Prescription medication is perceived differently elsewhere: less than 30 percent of UK and China consumers considered weight loss drugs to be very effective.

Given the recency of the GLP-1 weight loss trend, it is too early to understand how it will affect the broader consumer health and wellness market. Companies should continue to monitor the space as further data emerges on adoption rates and impact across categories.

In-person fitness

Fitness has shifted from a casual interest to a priority for many consumers: around 50 percent of US gym-goers said that fitness is a core part of their identity (Exhibit 6). This trend is even stronger among younger consumers—56 percent of US Gen Z consumers surveyed considered fitness a “very high priority” (compared with 40 percent of overall US consumers).

In-person fitness classes and personal training are the top two areas where consumers expect to spend more on fitness. Consumers expect to maintain their spending on fitness club memberships and fitness apps.

The challenge for fitness businesses will be to retain consumers among an ever-increasing suite of choices. Offering best-in-class facilities, convenient locations and hours, and loyalty and referral programs are table stakes. Building strong communities and offering experiences such as retreats, as well as services such as nutritional coaching and personalized workout plans (potentially enabled by gen AI), can help top players evolve their value proposition and manage customer acquisition costs.

More than 80 percent of consumers in China, the United Kingdom, and the United States consider gut health to be important, and over 50 percent anticipate making it a higher priority in the next two to three years.

One-third of US consumers, one-third of UK consumers, and half of Chinese consumers said they wish there were more products in the market to support their gut health.

While probiotic supplements are the most frequently used gut health products in China and the United States, UK consumers opt for probiotic-rich foods such as kimchi, kombucha, or yogurt, as well as over-the-counter medications. About one-third of US consumers, one-third of UK consumers, and half of Chinese consumers said they wish there were more products in the market to support their gut health. At-home microbiome testing and personalized nutrition are two areas where companies can build on the growing interest in this segment.

Sexual health

The expanded cultural conversation about sexuality, improvements in sexual education, and growing support for female sexual-health challenges (such as low libido, vaginal dryness, and pain during intercourse) have all contributed to the growth in demand for sexual-health products.

Eighty-seven percent of US consumers reported having spent the same or more on sexual-health products in the past year than in the year prior, and they said they purchased personal lubricants, contraceptives, and adult toys most frequently.

While more businesses began to sell sexual-health products online during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a range of retailers—from traditional pharmacies to beauty retailers to department stores—are now adding more sexual-health brands and items to their store shelves. 5 Keerthi Vedantam, “Why more sexual wellness startups are turned on by retail,” Crunchbase, November 15, 2022.   This creates marketing and distribution opportunities for disruptor brands to reach new audiences and increase scale.

Despite consistently ranking as the second-highest health and wellness priority for consumers, sleep is also the area where consumers said they have the most unmet needs. In our previous report, 37 percent of US consumers expressed a desire for additional sleep and mindfulness products and services, such as those that address cognitive functioning, stress, and anxiety management. In the year since, little has changed. One of the major challenges in improving sleep is the sheer number of factors that can affect a good night’s sleep, including diet, exercise, caffeination, screen time, stress, and other lifestyle factors. As a result, few, if any, tech players and emerging brands in the sleep space have been able to create a compelling ecosystem to improve consumer sleep holistically. Leveraging consumer data to address specific pain points more effectively—including inducing sleep, minimizing sleep interruptions, easing wakefulness, and improving sleep quality—presents an opportunity for companies.

As consumers take more control over their health outcomes, they are looking for data-backed, accessible products and services that empower them to do so. Companies that can help consumers make sense of this data and deliver solutions that are personalized, relevant, and rooted in science will be best positioned to succeed.

Shaun Callaghan is a partner in McKinsey’s New Jersey office; Hayley Doner is a consultant in the Paris office; and Jonathan Medalsy is an associate partner in the New York office, where Anna Pione is a partner and Warren Teichner is a senior partner.

The authors wish to thank Celina Bade, Cherry Chen, Eric Falardeau, Lily Fu, Eric He, Sara Hudson, Charlotte Lucas, Maria Neely, Olga Ostromecka, Akshay Rao, Michael Rix, and Alex Sanford for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Alexandra Mondalek, an editor in the New York office.

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