Remember that the whole research process-the activities you will be engaged in during the coming weeks-is a process of testing assumptions that you are making now. You are not committing yourself to proving your initial assumptions correct. Indeed, your attitude toward your current thinking should be quite the opposite. Instead of saying to yourself, "I already have the right answer," your stance needs to be, "How valid are my present views?"
Testing ideas-opening them up to systematic, objective analysis-is the key to custom essay. In fact, the readers of your final paper will not be judging your work simply on the conclusion you finally draw. They will be far more concerned about the way you drew that conclusion; they will be far more interested in your testing procedures and the way you analyzed your evidence. As they read your paper, these are the questions they will be asking:
o Is this researcher actually testing the hypothesis he said he was testing?
o Does this researcher's final conclusion rest upon legitimate, relevant data?
o Do I consider the reasoning in this paper to be logical, valid?
o Has this researcher found and considered all the important evidence?
You are beginning this research project with assumptions you are making to assure yourself that your own thinking will be the heart of the process. If you don't start with your assumptions, you don't really have anything to critically analyze, assess, and examine. Your assumptions give you something concrete to test. At this stage you are going to turn your initial assumptions into one considered statement that answers your initial research paper question. Think of this working hypothesis/thesis as a means to an end, not the end itself. It will act as a touchstone, giving you a model of one way to make sense of your subject. If you phrase it properly, it will tell you the type of data/evidence you need to look for, and it will suggest a means you can use to assess and analyze the evidence you find. As you gather and assess the evidence, it is very possible that you will decide that your initial assumptions were not valid, but the working hypothesis/thesis will have led you to other, more informed and thus valid, ways of fitting the parts of the puzzle together into a meaningful picture.
