Draft your research report

Step 5 of the capstone turns your notes, timeline, and cause-effect analysis into a written report. A research report is not a creative essay — it is a structured argument that takes the reader from your research question to your evidence-backed answer.

The five standard sections

1. Title page — title of the project, your name, the date.
2. Introduction — name your topic, state your research question, give the reader the thesis (your one-sentence answer).
3. Body — the main argument, organized into paragraphs. Each paragraph covers ONE point.
4. Conclusion — return to your question, summarize your answer, reflect on what you learned and what new questions emerged.
5. Bibliography — a numbered or alphabetical list of every source you cited.

The thesis

Your thesis is a single sentence that gives your reader your answer to the research question. If the question is "Why did the Roman Republic collapse into an empire by 27 BCE?", a possible thesis is: "The Roman Republic collapsed because military leaders gained personal armies, civil wars destroyed the Senate's authority, and ordinary citizens preferred a strong emperor over a broken system." A thesis is your destination — everything in the body should lead the reader there.

Building a body paragraph

Each body paragraph follows the same shape. Start with a topic sentence — a clear claim about ONE part of your answer. Add two or three pieces of specific evidence (dates, names, numbers, short quotations). After each piece of evidence, write one sentence of explanation: WHY this evidence supports the claim. End with a transition sentence that points the reader forward to the next paragraph.

Topic sentence vs thesis

A thesis is the WHOLE answer to your research question — it appears once, at the end of the introduction. A topic sentence is the answer for ONE paragraph — every body paragraph has its own. If you summarize your topic sentences in order, you should get something close to your thesis.

Citations in the body

Whenever you use specific information from a source, add a short citation right there in the text — usually the author's last name and year in brackets, like (Smith, 2019). At the end of the report, the bibliography gives the full details: author, title, year, publisher. Every in-text citation should have a matching bibliography entry, and vice versa.