Free Tutorial on Organizing a Quality Nutrition Research Paper Outline


A good research paper often starts with a great outline. Your outline will help you organize and plan your paper so that once you begin writing it should feel like an exercise in filling in the blanks. It will save you a tremendous amount of time and help your paper flow more smoothly. A wonderful free tutorial for how to create an outline can be found on the web.

Tips in the Tutorial

The tutorial will show you how to quickly develop your outline using the basic components of a research paper. These components are the introduction, the main body, the conclusion, and the reference section or bibliography. If your paper is an experimental one, you will also include methods, results, and discussion as additional components.

Create a heading for each component. Under each heading, you will include the following information:

  1. Introduction

  • Your introduction will discuss what you are writing about within a couple of paragraphs.

  • The end of your introduction should include your thesis statement. A thesis statement is two to three sentences that talks about what your research question is, why it is important, and how you are going to support it.


  1. Body

  • The body is where you write about all the current and relevant research that has been conducted on the topic you have chosen. Hopefully you have chosen a topic that allows you to provide a good literature review.

  • Depending on the word requirements of your paper, this section can range anywhere from three paragraphs to several pages.

  • This is where you do the majority of your in-text citations from papers that you will later include in your reference section.


  1. Conclusion

  • In the conclusion, you reiterate your thesis statement and summarize your results.

  • Include a brief discussion of the limitations of your research.

  • Do not introduce any new information here as this is done in the literature review.

  • Discuss the practical as well as theoretical implications of your findings to your field of study.

  • Finally, you should suggest future directions for further study as indicated by your findings.


  1. Reference Section or Bibliography

  • Depending on the requirements of your paper, you will either have a reference section or a bibliography.

  • Make note of each paper as you read it for your literature review and add it to this section in the style that you are supposed to use.

  • Some common formatting styles are APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard.



Following the above suggestions found in the tutorial will help your create a great outline to follow for writing your paper. When your outline is good, your paper will flow in an easy to read and logical manner. An outstanding outline will improve your chances of getting a really good mark later when you hand in your paper. Great marks will ensure that you are noticed as someone important in the field of nutrition.