A research paper presents an original thesis, or purpose statement, about a topic and develops that thesis with information gathered from a variety of sources. If you are curious about the possibility of life on Mars, for example, you might choose to research the topic.
Consequently, what are the 4 goals of research?
Think of the scientific method as having four goals (description, prediction, explanation and control). It is important to remember that these goals are the same for anything that can be studied via the scientific method (a chemical compound, a biological organism, or in the case of psychology, behavior).
Beside this, what is the focus of a research paper?
The focus of your paper is how you will go about tackling it. For example, will your paper be argumentative in nature or will it simply present research and statistics surrounding a specific topic? These are what you need to determine before you even dive into your research.