Prepare an an annonatated. An outline is the scaffold upon which you build your paper. You probably already use a mental outline when you plan a paper, perhaps without even being aware of it. Writing the outline can give you a visual image of your plan. When you prepare an annotated outline, you will note the research that supports each section of the paper. This will help you see any areas that need further research to support them. The following example may help support the transition of your paper from a collection of research notes to a full blown paper. Suppose the research topic you chose was the relation of childhood bullying to self-esteem. The title of you paper is: Self esteem in childhood bullying. When researching the paper, you found conflicting research results. Some research showed that children with low self esteem tended to bully others, while other research showed that children with extremely high self esteem were bullies. Looking closer, you began to see that this research could be divided into studies investigating different variables, such as gender, age, and ethnic background. Now, you want to turn this into a research report. An annotated outline might look like this (all citations are fictional) Topic: The relation of childhood bullying to self esteem: Too much or too little? A. Overview of childhood bullying 1. Definitions of bullying (Simpson, 2010; O’Connor, 2008) 2. Types of bullying (Yang, 2009; Sinisi, 2011) B. Self esteem in childhood 1. Definitions of self esteem (Whitefield, 2009) 2. Impact of self esteem on behavior in childhood (Liebermann, 2010) C. Research on the relation of self esteem to bullying in childhood 1. Gender, self esteem, and childhood bullying a.Self esteem and same gender bullying (1) Self esteem in boys bullying boys (Pryzborski, 2012) (2) Self esteem in girls bullying girls b. Self esteem in opposite gender or non-gender specific bullying in childhood (no research found) 2. Age, self esteem in childhood bullying a. Self esteem and bullying from 6-9 (Brennan, 2011) b. Self esteem and bullying from 9-12 (Mendez, 2010; Lee, 2011) 3. Family structure, self esteem and childhood children a. Self esteem and bullying in children in single parent families (Shams, 2012) b. Self esteem and bulling in children in dual parent families (Mugaddam, 2011) 4. Ethnicity, self esteem and childhood bullying a. Inter-ethnic bullying and self esteem (Jacinto, 2009; Akbarzadeh, 2010) b. Intra-ethnic bullying and self esteem (Lawrence, 2011) D. Conclusions E. Summary and suggestions for future studies Preparing an annotated outline in this way will give you a way to organize and clarify your plans and allow you instructor a chance to give you feedback on the proposed structure of the paper before you begin to write. You can also see which subtopics you need to research further before proceeding with the final draft.