Are you about to start working on your research paper? If yes, then do you know about different types of research papers? Ohh, it is sad to hear that you do not know about its types. Remember that you cannot work straight on any writing project unless you know about its types. Knowing about the types of research can ease a lot of your problems. Commonly, there are about seven types of research papers.
However, three are the most common: narrative, descriptive, and expository research papers. Today’s topic is also about these three types. It will discuss all the differences that exist between these types of research papers. But the major focus of today’s article will be on expository research papers. Before moving on further, let’s define each research paper type first.
Narrative research paper
The first type of research paper that I am going to discuss is a narrative paper. In this research paper, the author or the researcher tries to explore and conceptualize the human experience. The emphasis of this research is on storied experience. Many people assign different meanings to their life experiences, and the researcher collects those stories to represent them in textual format. Generally, this research takes the form of interviewing different people. An important to consider is that the research revolves around the same topic. The people share their stories related to the research paper topic.
Descriptive research paper
The second type of research paper is descriptive. The researcher systematically describes and explains the situation or phenomenon in this research. In this paper, the researcher answers the what, when, and how of the research question. He does not explain anything about the “why” of the problem. This research is used to define the characteristics of a population. Many different approaches are used to answer the question in descriptive research.
An important thing to note in this type of paper is that the researcher does not control the variables. Unlike experimental research, he only observes the variables and measures them. It is why this is also called observational research.
Expository research paper
Mostly, the researchers confuse descriptive and expository research papers. However, there is a minute difference between both types of research papers. The researcher investigates the topic in an expository research paper by evaluating the available evidence. After that, he then expounds on the idea to explain and describe the idea based on the extracted information after analysis. It is essential to keep the following points in mind when writing an expository research paper:
- You write this type of paper to teach the readers about the topic
- You explain the things to the readers based on the evidence and facts
- You explain the things in an exhaustive manner
- You write this research paper in a logical manner and in 3rd person
Differences
After reading the information presented above, you must know the above-mentioned types of research papers. Now, let’s discuss the differences that exist between them.
Purpose
The first difference lies in the purpose of expository research papers and other types. The three types of research have different purposes of fulfilling. The purpose of a descriptive paper is to describe the phenomenon. The researcher takes the idea and expands on it with the help of examples. On the other hand, the narrative paper aims to narrate something. It could be the life experience of a person or any happening. The last one, the expository research paper, provides an objective description of the topic. The pieces of evidence are necessary for this.
Point of view
The second difference lies in the use of point of view or person. The descriptive papers mostly use the first person and third person. However, you must be careful when using the first person. You must not use it more often because your paper can take the shape of narration. In the meantime, the narrative research paper only uses the first person. The reason behind this is that it is a narration of life events of different people. In the end, the expository most commonly uses the third person. However, researchers sometimes also use the second person to describe the point.
Time factor
The time factor here means the sequence of events you can use in your research paper. In the case of descriptive assignment writing, there is no sequence. So, you can say that the time factor is not accounted for in this paper. At the same time, narrative paper accounts for this factor. As you are narrating some life events in this paper, you must also consider the time sequence of the events. For example, the events in narrative writing mostly follow a chronological and logical sequence. It means the life events follow the time of happenings. The older ones come first, followed by the recent ones. However, it is not the case with expository research papers. It only follows chronological order.
Style of writing
The fourth difference between all the three types of research papers is in style. Each paper follows a different style and is written on some guidelines. The descriptive paper takes the style of explaining something, and thus you can expect some long sentences in this. However, the narrative paper allows you to be more creative. You tell a story in a number of ways, but it should attract the reader. Expository writing is something different. It does not include the author’s opinion about the topic. The author only takes the idea, gives evidence, and tries to explain the idea in light of those proofs. Thus, its style is of informing and explaining.
Conclusion
To summarise, the types of research papers mentioned above are all different. The major difference lies in their style of writing and purpose. Expository research paper follows some strict rules. Therefore, you must be careful about this paper. Moreover, pay dear attention to the points above and rock in your class.
