Research paper

A problem and solving paper.

1) All must be at least 6 full pages long.

2) All must cite at least 5 credible sources.

3) All must cite at least 1 source that is a book or a chapter or essay take from a book.

4) All must cite at least 1 source that is an article from a magazine, a newspaper, or an academic journal.

A problem-solving essay has two main parts:

1) In the first half of the paper, you show that you understand the current situation. You show what is causing the problem.

2) In the second half of the paper, you present a solution to the problem that will specifically address the cause or causes you identified in the first half of the paper.

The first half of your paper will present your argument identifying the 1, 2, or 3 main reasons school shootings either happen or aren’t stopped.

Any problem that you pick to solve in this paper should have a variety of potential causes that reasonable people disagree about.

This should sound familiar – you are effectively writing a cause and effect paper for the first half of this assignment.

You will want to select 1, 2, or 3 causes from your list. You don’t want to pick causes that contradict each other – from the previous list, for example, I couldn’t pick both “Parents not involved” and “Overly strict parents.”

Pick the causes that are most strongly supported by your research.

After finding some more research backing them up, I’m going to pick bullying at school and mental illness off of my list.

The first half of the body of the paper should demonstrate strong connections between each of your selected causes and the problem you are ultimately trying to understand and solve.

Dedicate at least one full body paragraph, maybe more, to supporting each of your selected causes.

Use at least one piece of strong, reliable research to prove the viability of each of your causes.

Your goal is to convince your reader to see the problem your way, setting them up to accept your solution that you’ll be presenting later.

For my paper, I want to show how a combination of bullying and mental illness can drive students to violence.

Since my readers might be more interested in how easy availability of guns, media violence or negligent parents might create school shootings, I want to focus their attention on my two causes and exclude everything else.

The next step, and arguably the most important step in the paper process, is to determine what should be done about the causes of the problem you’ve just identified.

The question you must answer in as much detail as you can is:

WHO needs to do WHAT?

As you’ll recall, my two causes of school shootings were bullying and mental illness.

I want my solutions to the problem to directly address both of these issues.

Bullying can be countered by aggressive antibullying programs in schools. I will want to call for nationwide creation of these programs by the Department of Education, and I’ll use an example of a currently existing effective program as a model for what all should look like.

Mental illness can be addressed through more state funding for counseling programs in schools. I can find a state (or maybe a foreign country) with good counseling programs and use it as a model.

You will notice that both of my solutions clearly identify who is responsible for acting and what specific actions need to be taken by these parties.

I also have evidence showing the potential effectiveness of each of my solutions.

This is important – you want to convince your reader that your plan will actually work.

When you are coming up with solutions, be as specific as you can. If you find yourself saying things like “They need to pass laws to fix this problem,” that is a big warning sign that you haven’t done enough research. Who is “they”? What laws or changes to the law need to be passed?

When thinking of your solutions, you will want to find out who is currently responsible for this area of American life or law.

For example, if you are writing about controlling illegal immigration, immigration policy is controlled by the federal government. Laws about immigration are created by the House of Representatives and the Senate, and they are enforced by Immigration, Customs, and Exports (ICE) or the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

Avoid coming up with solutions that don’t match up with the causes of the problem you focused on in the first half of the paper.

For example, since I’m focusing on bullying and mental illness, it wouldn’t make any sense to call for stricter gun control or restrictions on violent video games as part of my solution.

“Education” is often put forward as a solution, but this is also a solution that needs to be much more specific. Who is going to do the educating? Who is going to get educated? What is going to be taught? In some cases, you might also need to consider who is going to pay for it.

In all cases, your solution needs to be different from what is currently being done. If your solution already exists and is being implemented, then why do you have a problem worthy of a research paper?

I once had a student who suggested that, in order to address the problem of illegal immigration, we needed to create a federal agency to oversee immigration. I had to inform this unfortunate student that not only do we have one of these already, we have two of them – the INS and ICE. The student obviously hadn’t done enough research to fully understand the topic.

Writing a paper in defense of the current situation isn’t really a problem-solving paper. For example, if you think the Ohio smoking ban is a great idea and don’t really think anything needs to be changed or expanded, you don’t have a paper.

However, if you think similar bans should be adopted by other states and have a plan to encourage this (or if you think we need a federal ban), then you have a valid approach to this assignment.

Research paper

A problem and solving paper.

1) All must be at least 6 full pages long.

2) All must cite at least 5 credible sources.

3) All must cite at least 1 source that is a book or a chapter or essay take from a book.

4) All must cite at least 1 source that is an article from a magazine, a newspaper, or an academic journal.

A problem-solving essay has two main parts:

1) In the first half of the paper, you show that you understand the current situation. You show what is causing the problem.

2) In the second half of the paper, you present a solution to the problem that will specifically address the cause or causes you identified in the first half of the paper.

The first half of your paper will present your argument identifying the 1, 2, or 3 main reasons school shootings either happen or aren’t stopped.

Any problem that you pick to solve in this paper should have a variety of potential causes that reasonable people disagree about.

This should sound familiar – you are effectively writing a cause and effect paper for the first half of this assignment.

You will want to select 1, 2, or 3 causes from your list. You don’t want to pick causes that contradict each other – from the previous list, for example, I couldn’t pick both “Parents not involved” and “Overly strict parents.”

Pick the causes that are most strongly supported by your research.

After finding some more research backing them up, I’m going to pick bullying at school and mental illness off of my list.

The first half of the body of the paper should demonstrate strong connections between each of your selected causes and the problem you are ultimately trying to understand and solve.

Dedicate at least one full body paragraph, maybe more, to supporting each of your selected causes.

Use at least one piece of strong, reliable research to prove the viability of each of your causes.

Your goal is to convince your reader to see the problem your way, setting them up to accept your solution that you’ll be presenting later.

For my paper, I want to show how a combination of bullying and mental illness can drive students to violence.

Since my readers might be more interested in how easy availability of guns, media violence or negligent parents might create school shootings, I want to focus their attention on my two causes and exclude everything else.

The next step, and arguably the most important step in the paper process, is to determine what should be done about the causes of the problem you’ve just identified.

The question you must answer in as much detail as you can is:

WHO needs to do WHAT?

As you’ll recall, my two causes of school shootings were bullying and mental illness.

I want my solutions to the problem to directly address both of these issues.

Bullying can be countered by aggressive antibullying programs in schools. I will want to call for nationwide creation of these programs by the Department of Education, and I’ll use an example of a currently existing effective program as a model for what all should look like.

Mental illness can be addressed through more state funding for counseling programs in schools. I can find a state (or maybe a foreign country) with good counseling programs and use it as a model.

You will notice that both of my solutions clearly identify who is responsible for acting and what specific actions need to be taken by these parties.

I also have evidence showing the potential effectiveness of each of my solutions.

This is important – you want to convince your reader that your plan will actually work.

When you are coming up with solutions, be as specific as you can. If you find yourself saying things like “They need to pass laws to fix this problem,” that is a big warning sign that you haven’t done enough research. Who is “they”? What laws or changes to the law need to be passed?

When thinking of your solutions, you will want to find out who is currently responsible for this area of American life or law.

For example, if you are writing about controlling illegal immigration, immigration policy is controlled by the federal government. Laws about immigration are created by the House of Representatives and the Senate, and they are enforced by Immigration, Customs, and Exports (ICE) or the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

Avoid coming up with solutions that don’t match up with the causes of the problem you focused on in the first half of the paper.

For example, since I’m focusing on bullying and mental illness, it wouldn’t make any sense to call for stricter gun control or restrictions on violent video games as part of my solution.

“Education” is often put forward as a solution, but this is also a solution that needs to be much more specific. Who is going to do the educating? Who is going to get educated? What is going to be taught? In some cases, you might also need to consider who is going to pay for it.

In all cases, your solution needs to be different from what is currently being done. If your solution already exists and is being implemented, then why do you have a problem worthy of a research paper?

I once had a student who suggested that, in order to address the problem of illegal immigration, we needed to create a federal agency to oversee immigration. I had to inform this unfortunate student that not only do we have one of these already, we have two of them – the INS and ICE. The student obviously hadn’t done enough research to fully understand the topic.

Writing a paper in defense of the current situation isn’t really a problem-solving paper. For example, if you think the Ohio smoking ban is a great idea and don’t really think anything needs to be changed or expanded, you don’t have a paper.

However, if you think similar bans should be adopted by other states and have a plan to encourage this (or if you think we need a federal ban), then you have a valid approach to this assignment.