Instructions for Empirical Study Paper

An empirical study paper should contain the following sections. All sections are required for the final draft. For the pre-final draft of the report, all points and questions shown in bold and italic font are required.

The final paper is supposed to be free from grammatical and other language-related errors and issues. Points will be taken off for lack of clarity, incorrect grammar or spelling. Make sure to follow writing requirements as well as general instructions for term papers.

The length of each section should be proportional to its weight (shown in %). For example, for a 10 page paper, a section that has weight of 20% should take about 2 pages.

Abstract (3%)

The abstract should summarize the problem addressed by the study, the methodology, results, conclusions, and contributions. Avoid using the abstract to motivate the problem addressed.

I. Introduction (10%)

The section should provide the following

1. Explain clearly the problem addressed by your study.
2. Explain why this is an important problem.
3. Summarize how your study is compared and contrasted with related work.
4. Summarize the methodology that you have followed for collecting and analyzing the data.
5. Summarize results of your analysis.
6. Summarize the conclusions your drew from the results and the recommendations you offer.
7. List contributions of your study.

II. Background and Related Work (15%)

This section should

(1) (if necessary) Provide background information on the studied phenomena. Don’t assume that the reader has familiarity with the subject necessary to understand your study.

(2) Explain what other similar and related studies, particularly as reported in academic literature, have been performed and what makes your study novel and significant. Make sure to explain the similarities and differences between your study and related work, i.e., compare them and contrast.

III. Methods (20%)

This section should provide a detailed and coherent description of the methods used for collecting and analyzing the data. Depending on whether the data and its analysis are qualitative or quantitative, the important details of the methods will vary. If in doubt what to include, talk to the course instructor. It’s always better to err on including too many details than not enough. Points will be taken off not only for incorrect use of the data collection and analysis methods but also for the omission of the details about those methods, which would make it difficult to assess the validity of the methods in the context of the reported study.

IV. Results (25%)

This section should report the results of the analysis. Again, it’s always better to err on including too many details than not enough. Refrain from offering an explanation of what these results might mean or how they should be interpreted. Such explanations should be provided in Discussion.

VII. Discussion (25%)

Offer your own interpretation of the results, i.e., what the reported results (should) mean.  These are referred as conclusions. Explain their significance by comparing them with the findings of others and implications for designing more secure and private systems. Strive to answer the implicit question of “So what?”.

Offer recommendations for designing/implementing/operating more secure/private systems/processes. Ground these recommendations in the results and conclusions from your study and compare/contrast them with the academic literature.

VIII. Conclusion (2%)

This section should summarize the paper in 1-2 paragraphs. This section is different from Discussion where your draw your own conclusions from the results. Although a conclusion section may review the main points of the paper, do not replicate the abstract as the conclusion. A conclusion might elaborate on the importance of the work and/or explain the significance of the contributions made by the study reported in this paper.

References

Place references here. Make sure they are complete (e.g., page numbers, conference and journal titles, author names, dates of publication). Aim to use mostly academic references (as opposed to white or position papers, blog posts, media articles, industry standards, etc.).