4.1 Formulating a well-reasoned argument
17 min read•june 18, 2024
Minna Chow
AP Research 🔍
28 resourcesSee Units
In this guide, we’ll be discussing how to create a good argument. Once again, keep in mind that this is a complex topic, and these are only some broad guidelines for how to argue well.
How do we begin? Let’s take a look at the AP Research Rubric to see what College Board’s looking for in your research paper. Note that not every good argument needs everything that the College Board wants to see in your specific AP Research paper, but it’s a good place to begin to discuss helpful components of a strong argument. (Plus, it’ll help you on your paper directly.)
AP Research Rubric Guidelines
Here are the things your paper needs to do to get a 5:
- Focuses a topic of inquiry with clear and narrow parameters, which are addressed through the method and the conclusion.
- Explicitly connects a topic of inquiry to relevant scholarly works of varying perspectives.
- Logically explains how the topic of inquiry addresses a gap.
- Logically defends the alignment of a detailed, replicable research method to the purpose of the inquiry.
- Justifies a new understanding or conclusion through a logical progression of inquiry choices, sufficient evidence, explanation of the limitations of the conclusion, and an explanation of the implications to the community of practice.
- Enhances the communication of the student’s ideas through organization, use of design elements, conventions of grammar, style, mechanics, and word precision, with few to no errors.
- Cites AND attributes sources, with a consistent use of an appropriate discipline-specific style (in both bibliography/works cited AND intext), with few to no errors.
Let’s go down this checklist, step by step.
Guideline 1: Topic Focus
Focuses a topic of inquiry with clear and narrow parameters, which are addressed through the method and the conclusion.
This guideline addresses a very important aspect of making a successful argument: narrowing your parameters.
In AP Research, your topic of inquiry needs to be something you can realistically cover in the amount of time and resources you have to do research.
This means that if you’re interested in, say, researching dark matter, you might be setting yourself up for failure if you intend to research dark matter over the course of a year at your high school, without the lab equipment or expertise or assistance you might need. Even if your research project is doable with the equipment and expertise you have now, taking on too much work will make your research process difficult and not fun.
Narrowing Your Topic
There are ways to narrow your research topic so that you can research something you’re interested in while setting yourself up for success.
Let’s say your topic is the effects of sleep deprivation on academic achievement in teens (a topic studied before, according to College Board.) This topic is already narrowed in two ways: it focuses on academic achievement (instead of the effect of sleep deprivation in general) and it focuses on teens (instead of children or graduate students).
What are some further ways we can narrow this topic?
- Representative Data: The need for representative data may naturally lead to narrowing. It’s important to know what your potential data is representative of. For example, let’s say your method of researching the effects of sleep deprivation on academic achievement in teens is by conducting an experiment and asking your classmates to volunteer. Your classmates might not represent all teens in the world or even all teens in the United States. There’s nothing wrong with tailoring your research question to fit the potential data you have, as long as you don’t tailor the data to fit your answer.
- Location: Instead of looking at all teens, you could look at teens in the United States or in a suburban high school.
- Timeframe: If timeframe is a concern in your topic, narrowing that can be very helpful. For example, you might be looking at the growth of plants over three weeks instead of three months
Your end research question may end up being quite long as a result of all this narrowing. Instead of asking “What is the effect of sleep deprivation on academic achievement in teens?” you would ask “What is the effect of sleep deprivation on academic achievement in high school juniors at a suburban high school in the year 2023?” The second question is much easier to fully answer than the first.
Argument Tip: Narrowing the scope of your argument is necessary. If your scope is too large, you’ll have too many implications and counter-arguments to deal with, and it will be hard to speak accurately.
Guideline 2: Literature Review
Explicitly connects a topic of inquiry to relevant scholarly works of varying perspectives.
Guideline 2 is about giving your argument context and rooting it in a larger academic conversation. This will require many of the skills you can find in Big Ideas 2 and 3.
Argument Tip: Rooting your argument in a wider conversation shows that you understand the topic you’re researching, bolstering your credibility as well as informing your research skills and process. You know what people have already done and the questions they’re interested in, and can use that information as a starting point for your own research.
Guideline 3: Identifying a Gap
Logically explains how the topic of inquiry addresses a gap.
Guideline 3 is about identifying a gap in the research that your work can fit into. This is important because you don’t want to be repeating work someone else has already done. For more information about identifying a gap, go here.
Argument Tip: As before, good arguments understand the context they’re being made in.
Guideline 4: Research Method
Logically defends the alignment of a detailed, replicable research method to the purpose of the inquiry.
Guideline 4 covers, primarily, your research method. This is the way in which you conduct your research.
Types of Research Methods
There are many different ways one can go about doing research. Generally speaking, research methods are either qualitative or quantitative.
Quantitative: Quantitative research methods revolve around numbers. Are you counting something? Are you doing math to get your results? Are you taking percentages? Quantitative research can be more straightforward than qualitative research. Quantitative research is most commonly done in the STEM fields, although you can make a humanities research project quantitative.
Qualitative: Qualitative research methods cover data that can’t be counted. Are you interviewing people? Are you getting written responses in your surveys? You could code your interview responses, or systemically categorize them based on some quality. This sort of research is commonly done in the Humanities, although again you can make a STEM project qualitative if you need to.
Research Tip: My biggest research tip for coming up with a research method is to get the help of others. If you have access to a mentor in your field, they can help explain what research is like in your field. If you don’t have that sort of access, look at the research methods of other research papers for advice and models. (Make sure to, as always, cite your sources.)
When you create a research question, you want your research method to be able to answer that question. It sounds pretty obvious, but it can be harder than it sounds. If you’re dead-set on doing a certain type of research or using a certain research method (ex: surveys over experiments), make sure your research question aligns with that. Conversely, if you’re certain your research question is what you want to study, make sure you can explain why your research method answers it.
Research Method Requirements
Furthermore, your research method needs to be detailed and replicable.
Detailed means that you describe your research method carefully. You want to be so detailed that someone else could replicate your experiment. (More on that below.) Furthermore, every decision you make is explained. Did you decide to do a survey instead of an experiment? If so, why? Did you decide to check results every two days instead of every day? Why?
It’s okay if the answer to this question is “I only had time/the resources to conduct my research this way.” All researchers have limitations; the important thing is acknowledging them. While not ideal, it’s also okay to make choices that make your results ambiguous, accidentally or otherwise, as long as you acknowledge them.
Replicable means that another person could replicate, or duplicate, your same experiment with the information you give them in your paper. This means making very clear details such as what equipment you used, what your set-up is like, what software you used, etc. Of course, they don’t need to get the same results as you do, just be able to duplicate your setup.
Argument Tip: Good arguments explain the method they took to get to their conclusion from their research question/inquiry question.
Guideline 5: New Understanding or Conclusion
Justifies a new understanding or conclusion through a logical progression of inquiry choices, sufficient evidence, explanation of the limitations of the conclusion, and an explanation of the implications to the community of practice.
Guideline 5 is a big one! This guideline basically says your research paper needs…
- A Line of Reasoning: What are your claims and how do they work together with your evidence and with each other?
- Evidence Use: Do you use evidence?
- An explanation of your Limitations: What can’t your research method or question discover? Why?
- An explanation of your Implications: What does your work suggest?
- For all of the above to logically align with your conclusion: Your conclusion needs to go with all of the above, and shouldn’t seem surprising given the rest of the research you’ve done.
We’ve discussed these categories in previous Big Ideas, and we’ll discuss them more in the next guides.
Argument Tip: Good arguments are methodical and make sense all throughout.
Guideline 6: Writing Conventions
Enhances the communication of the student’s ideas through organization, use of design elements, conventions of grammar, style, mechanics, and word precision, with few to no errors.
Guideline 6 is checking for your writing conventions. While you don’t need to be perfect, you want to make sure your spelling, punctuation and grammar are as accurate as possible. Furthermore, it’s important to understand your audience when it comes to writing your research paper, and as a result to write in a scholarly manner all throughout. This doesn’t mean your writing needs to be dry or lifeless, but it should be professional. Imagine you’re talking to a college professor!
Guideline 6 is also checking that your design choices and communication style helps, rather than hinders, your communication of ideas. For instance, it would be a hindrance to the communication of your ideas if your research paper was in an unreadable font.
A style tip I have that works for almost all research paper is the use of section headers. This will help organize your paper.
Argument Tip: Good arguments understand their audience and communicate in a style appropriate to that audience.
Guideline 7: Plagiarism Prevention
Cites AND attributes sources, with a consistent use of an appropriate discipline-specific style (in both bibliography/works cited AND intext), with few to no errors.
Guideline 7 is dedicated to making sure you cite your sources and use a consistent citation style to do so. This citation style should align with the discipline you’re working in — for example, English papers tend to be written in MLA format while History papers are in Chicago style. Furthermore, you should maintain this style in both the bibliography and in-text.
Research Tip: Don’t wait until the last minute to figure out your sources and citation style! Citing as you write will prevent you from forgetting to cite something and accidentally plagiarizing. Citation styles can be difficult to learn, as well, and you’ll want ample time to figure them out.
Argument Tip: Academic arguments follow the conventions of their discipline for sourcing and citations to make communication with other scholars as smooth as possible.
How do we begin? Let’s take a look at the AP Research Rubric to see what College Board’s looking for in your research paper. Note that not every good argument needs everything that the College Board wants to see in your specific AP Research paper, but it’s a good place to begin to discuss helpful components of a strong argument. (Plus, it’ll help you on your paper directly.)
Here are the things your paper needs to do to get a 5:
- Focuses a topic of inquiry with clear and narrow parameters, which are addressed through the method and the conclusion.
- Explicitly connects a topic of inquiry to relevant scholarly works of varying perspectives.
- Logically explains how the topic of inquiry addresses a gap.
- Logically defends the alignment of a detailed, replicable research method to the purpose of the inquiry.
- Justifies a new understanding or conclusion through a logical progression of inquiry choices, sufficient evidence, explanation of the limitations of the conclusion, and an explanation of the implications to the community of practice.
- Enhances the communication of the student’s ideas through organization, use of design elements, conventions of grammar, style, mechanics, and word precision, with few to no errors.
- Cites AND attributes sources, with a consistent use of an appropriate discipline-specific style (in both bibliography/works cited AND intext), with few to no errors.
Source: College Board’s AP Rubric
Let’s go down this checklist, step by step.
Guideline 1: Topic Focus
Focuses a topic of inquiry with clear and narrow parameters, which are addressed through the method and the conclusion.
This guideline addresses a very important aspect of making a successful argument: narrowing your parameters.
In AP Research, your topic of inquiry needs to be something you can realistically cover in the amount of time and resources you have to do research.
This means that if you’re interested in, say, researching dark matter, you might be setting yourself up for failure if you intend to research dark matter over the course of a year at your high school, without the lab equipment or expertise or assistance you might need. Even if your research project is doable with the equipment and expertise you have now, taking on too much work will make your research process difficult and not fun.
There are ways to narrow your research topic so that you can research something you’re interested in while setting yourself up for success.
Let’s say your topic is the effects of sleep deprivation on academic achievement in teens (a topic studied before, according to College Board.) This topic is already narrowed in two ways: it focuses on academic achievement (instead of the effect of sleep deprivation in general) and it focuses on teens (instead of children or graduate students).
What are some further ways we can narrow this topic?
- Representation: The need for representative data may naturally lead to narrowing. It’s important to know what your potential data is representative of. For example, let’s say your method of researching the effects of sleep deprivation on academic achievement in teens is by conducting an experiment and asking your classmates to volunteer. Your classmates might not represent all teens in the world or even all teens in the United States. There’s nothing wrong with tailoring your research question to fit the potential data you have, as long as you don’t tailor the data to fit your answer.
- Location: Instead of looking at all teens, you could look at teens in the United States or in a suburban high school.
- Timeframe: If timeframe is a concern in your topic, narrowing that can be very helpful. For example, you might be looking at the growth of plants over three weeks instead of three months
Your end research question may end up being quite long as a result of all this narrowing. Instead of asking “What is the effect of sleep deprivation on academic achievement in teens?” you would ask “What is the effect of sleep deprivation on academic achievement in high school juniors at a suburban high school in the year 2023?” The second question is much easier to fully answer than the first.
Argument Tip: Narrowing the scope of your argument is necessary. If your scope is too large, you’ll have too many implications and counter-arguments to deal with, and it will be hard to speak accurately.
Guideline 2: Literature Review
Explicitly connects a topic of inquiry to relevant scholarly works of varying perspectives.
Guideline 2 is about giving your argument context and rooting it in a larger academic conversation. This will require many of the skills you can find in Big Ideas 2 and 3.
Argument Tip: Rooting your argument in a wider conversation shows that you understand the topic you’re researching, bolstering your credibility as well as informing your research skills and process. You know what people have already done and the questions they’re interested in, and can use that information as a starting point for your own research.
Guideline 3: Identifying a Gap
Guideline 3 is about identifying a gap in the research that your work can fit into. This is important because you don’t want to be repeating work someone else has already done. For more information about identifying a gap, go here.
Argument Tip: As before, good arguments understand the context they’re being made in.
Guideline 4: Research Method
Logically defends the alignment of a detailed, replicable research method to the purpose of the inquiry.
Guideline 4 covers, primarily, your research method. This is the way in which you conduct your research.
Types of Research Methods:
There are many different ways one can go about doing research. Generally speaking, research methods are either qualitative or quantitative.
Quantitative: Quantitative research methods revolve around numbers. Are you counting something? Are you doing math to get your results? Are you taking percentages? Quantitative research can be more straightforward than qualitative research. Quantitative research is most commonly done in the STEM fields, although you can make a humanities research project quantitative.
Qualitative: Qualitative research methods cover data that can’t be counted. Are you interviewing people? Are you getting written responses in your surveys? You could code your interview responses, or systemically categorize them based on some quality. This sort of research is commonly done in the Humanities, although again you can make a STEM project qualitative if you need to.
Research Tip: My biggest research tip for coming up with a research method is to get the help of others. If you have access to a mentor in your field, they can help explain what research is like in your field. If you don’t have that sort of access, look at the research methods of other research papers for advice and models. (Make sure to, as always, cite your sources.)
When you create a research question, you want your research method to be able to answer that question. It sounds pretty obvious, but it can be harder than it sounds. If you’re dead-set on doing a certain type of research or using a certain research method (ex: surveys over experiments), make sure your research question aligns with that. Conversely, if you’re certain your research question is what you want to study, make sure you can explain why your research method answers it.
Furthermore, your research method needs to be detailed and replicable.
Detailed means that you describe your research method carefully. You want to be so detailed that someone else could replicate your experiment. (More on that below.) Furthermore, every decision you make is explained. Did you decide to do a survey instead of an experiment? If so, why? Did you decide to check results every two days instead of every day? Why?
Research Tip: It’s okay if the answer to this question is “I only had time/the resources to conduct my research this way.” All researchers have limitations; the important thing is acknowledging them.
Research Tip: While not ideal, it’s also okay to make choices that make your results ambiguous, accidentally or otherwise, as long as you acknowledge them.
Replicable means that another person could replicate, or duplicate, your same experiment with the information you give them in your paper. This means making very clear details such as what equipment you used, what your set-up is like, what software you used, etc. Of course, they don’t need to get the same results as you do, just be able to duplicate your setup.
Argument Tip: Good arguments explain the method they took to get to their conclusion from their research question/inquiry question.
Guideline 5: New Understanding or Conclusion
Justifies a new understanding or conclusion through a logical progression of inquiry choices, sufficient evidence, explanation of the limitations of the conclusion, and an explanation of the implications to the community of practice.
Guideline 5 is a big one! This guideline basically says your research paper needs…
- A Line of Reasoning: What are your claims and how do they work together with your evidence and with each other?
- Evidence Use: Do you use evidence?
- An explanation of your Limitations: What can’t your research method or question discover? Why?
- An explanation of your Implications: What does your work suggest?
- For all of the above to logically align with your conclusion: Your conclusion needs to go with all of the above, and shouldn’t seem surprising given the rest of the research you’ve done.
We’ve discussed these categories in previous Big Ideas, and we’ll discuss them more in the next guides.
Argument Tip: Good arguments are methodical and make sense all throughout.
Guideline 6: Writing Conventions
Enhances the communication of the student’s ideas through organization, use of design elements, conventions of grammar, style, mechanics, and word precision, with few to no errors.
Guideline 6 is checking for your writing conventions. While you don’t need to be perfect, you want to make sure your spelling, punctuation and grammar are as accurate as possible. Furthermore, it’s important to understand your audience when it comes to writing your research paper, and as a result to write in a scholarly manner all throughout. This doesn’t mean your writing needs to be dry or lifeless, but it should be professional. Imagine you’re talking to a college professor!
Guideline 6 is also checking that your design choices and communication style helps, rather than hinders, your communication of ideas. For instance, it would be a hindrance to the communication of your ideas if your research paper was in an unreadable font.
A style tip I have that works for almost all research paper is the use of section headers. This will help organize your paper.
Argument Tip: Good arguments understand their audience and communicate in a style appropriate to that audience.
Guideline 7: Plagiarism Prevention
Cites AND attributes sources, with a consistent use of an appropriate discipline-specific style (in both bibliography/works cited AND intext), with few to no errors.
Guideline 7 is dedicated to making sure you cite your sources and use a consistent citation style to do so. This citation style should align with the discipline you’re working in — for example, English papers tend to be written in MLA format while History papers are in Chicago style. Furthermore, you should maintain this style in both the bibliography and in-text.
Research Tip: Don’t wait until the last minute to figure out your sources and citation style! Citing as you write will prevent you from forgetting to cite something and accidentally plagiarizing. Citation styles can be difficult to learn, as well, and you’ll want ample time to figure them out.
Argument Tip: Academic arguments follow the conventions of their discipline for sourcing and citations to make communication with other scholars as smooth as possible.
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