In Learning Module 5 and on Monday (3/15) we talked a bit more about the white paper as a genre (unless we ran out of time on Monday–I’m writing from the past here, so not sure how that went!).
Here are the three examples we looked at:
American Legion: Veteran Suicides
US Department of Agriculture: Climate Change Science
Christian Community Development Association: Immigration
Review these examples again to think about general conventions you start to notice in terms of words, sentences, formatting, and organization.
As you will notice, there is no 1-to-1 correlation between these examples and exactly how a white paper should be organized. This is true of nearly any genre, but sometimes there are genres that are more rigid (e.g., a business letter).
However, I hope you notice even in the differences there is a general strategy for how to organize a white paper:
- some sort of introduction that explains the purpose of writing it and/or the perspective of the organization for why it is involved in the subject
- some organizing scheme for presenting background information. Perhaps it is one section, a section with subsections, or multiple sections. Depending on your topic, it might make sense to do any one of those options.
- some sort of section that focuses on possible solutions, actions to take, or actions already taken in response to the background information provided. Sometimes this is in the conclusion or sometimes it is its own section (or section with subsections).
Task
Based on these conventions for organization, in a comment below, start to brainstorm how your Data-Driven White Paper could be organized and explain why you want to organize it that way.
Think back to your proposal (and, if you have feedback yet, the feedback I gave you on your proposal) and also any work you have started on your Data-Driven White Paper.
After commenting below with some initial thoughts on how you will structure your Data-Driven White Paper, click the button below to continue.
I think providing the disparities in the allocation of resources with numbers and potentially visuals that are shown in the data would be effective in getting the message across which is that this financial system in place is flawed. That could be a good first or second paragraph after the introduction.
I think visually showing the cost of student loan debt and the adverse effects on society as a whole but more importantly people of color. I love Mona Chalabi’s use of data visualizations in showing the disparities that still plague the world.
I would like to make it simple, but strategically easy to understand and read it. I will divide the information into sections, for instance what terms were searched, what it means, the frequency that the terms were searched. I will do a section that goes from the most and the least searched term
I will organize the white paper by having subheading to make my white paper more organized and help the audience understand it without being confused. I will organize it by simply making sure my ideas are structured in order in which they occurred, and also make it all connected.
As explained before, I would like to find more of a correlation between income and stress leading to heart disease. The initial data set highlights values of clinical data for these patients that are at a high risk but I would be interested to see what got them there. The point of using data to see who is at risk of something is to prevent it usually in my opinion. I do need better secondary data for this white paper.
I would like to have an introduction, body, examples or cases related to my data set and a conclusion offering recommendations. I want to create impact on the reader so I would want to incorporate some creative graphs, or anything that could catch the reader attention as well as a better understanding of the data set. At the end, I would want to add my sources of information so readers can do their own research and get to understand more about my white paper.
I haven’t started working on the paper but I have a plan on how it will be structured. First of all, will be an introduction giving some background info, the purpose of the paper, some main points. Next, maybe a summary page of content if necessarily. I plan to divide the paper into some small, detailed paragraphs for the body part (adding some figures if that help). And finally will be a conclusion.
I think I will structure my paper with an introduction to explain why I am writing on the issue. Then I will provide the history of the issue in the United States. The next section will be example of this issue. Following this would be potential causes of the issue. Lastly, I will conclude and leave the reader with possible solutions. I think this is a good way to organize my paper because it gives you the history, so you know how long the issue has been going for. It provides evidence that the issue exists and why it even came about. Lastly, it leaves the reader with ways to help resolve the issue.
I will likely structure my paper by discussing/addressing the cost of education and the unequal distribution of aid.
I will follow this up with a few cited examples from sources I have been collecting. Most of these sources will serve as support towards my original thesis.
Finally, I will conclude with a few recommendations of ways to more equally distribute student aid and help lower the cost of education.
I would organize this white paper with an introduction on the social issue of gender gap income inequality; I would then review/outline the major impacts of this issue throughout society globally, I would provide data sets/statistics on how its measured/reported the differences of pay amongst men and women throughout the years with descriptions/visuals and real examples. I would then speak on the causes of this social issue and the disadvantages, discrimination, inequality it has created, I would then map out solutions towards the income inequality gender gap that could help tackle this issue and create change to close the gap, I would then end the white paper with an overall conclusion summarizing everything that has been discussed and the social issue I am advocating towards.
Based on the recommendations, I would make the following changes to my proposal. Firstly, having understood how investigators undertake primary and secondary research, I would consider using data from such sources. Primary resources arise when researchers conduct analyses on data collected by themselves while secondary information emerges from studies done by other investigators. Secondly, I will ensure I include the politicians who champion equal pay, including Democratic Representative Rosa DeLauro and the former president, Barack Obama. Next, I will explore my creativity through various ideas, brainstorm more, and present my work better. Moreover, I will cite my work from sources that give me more information about the gender disparity. Therefore, integrating all the recommendations will guide me in the delivery of a quality paper.
Based on the readings above, I will organize my paper with a title, an introduction about NYC high school graduates, an abstract, a problem statement background. The solution will include all the data analytics, recommendation, conclusion, and I will end with references. To successfully undertake the research, the measure of central tendency will be the way forward. Accordingly, the data analysis process is essential for identifying the central position within the data set. The use of mean, skewness, standard deviation, and variance will be crucial to understand the level of dropout rates. Equally, working with the data set, calculation of the underlying factors that impact education is bound to prevail.
Based on the lovely recommendations provided, I think I would kind of like to organize my paper like the climate change one. My topic is also on climate change and the way the example has the paper set up is nice. I feel like I can write my paper like that too and since I’m doing climate change as well, it really helps me out a lot in terms of how to get my points/ideas across throughout the paper, where to place them in certain paragraphs, and overall the whole structure of the paper. After looking at that example. I have a way better idea on how to write my paper so thank you so much professor for providing that example!
In the introduction paragraph, I would like to briefly introduce factors in later sections, and more importantly, I should define the term police misconduct at an early stage of the paper so that my audiences would not be confused by the terminology. Following the introduction and definition, I should bring in references and visualizations that support my idea and add a real-world example to make the idea more concrete.
I have already structured my white paper so this is irrelevant.