Week 5 Blog

Hello again followers and interested readers. As of this week I am pleased to announce that the research and result gathering portion of my project has come to an end. The entirety of my work and goals for the project as of now are to edit the existing material that I have created and to continue my research of how to analyze the results that I currently have. The majority of the work that I allotted time for was to research papers similar to my own to better understand how to discuss the results that I ended up with, but I did also take time to look back at my literature review and try to understand where my research would fit in the current academic conversation. With all this in mind, it has been a very busy week.

My first step was to begin searching for my papers similar to my own. One of the papers that I quickly found to be both similar and useful for my analysis was one entitled “Nuclear Proliferation Case Study,” in which the researchers were studying a number of radical nations that were attempting to proliferate their nuclear arsenals, including North Korea, Iran, and a few others. The focus of the study of these countries is to determine the extent of the nuclear programs of these nations and to determine how faithful the nations that signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) have been. The research is similar to my own as the researchers provided ratings for each nation based on the nation’s honesty about the size and scale of its nuclear programs and its adherence to the NPT, if they did sign it. The researchers explained that one of the limitations of their results is that using a rating based system introduces an element of subjectivity to the research, meaning that this will also be a limitation to my own research. Another helpful piece of insight that this source provided me with is that an important element to my own discussion section is an evaluation of the information with present context. The researchers clearly indicate in their discussion how their research of previous data on nuclear weapons in these nations is relevant presently, and they indicate what this research means for the future of the field, an element I had previously not considered.

Besides examining this similar paper for help with my discussion section, I began to review my literature review to understand where my research best fits in the academic conversation. I presently believe that my paper would best fit into the policy discussion that Iran has been the focus of for the U.S. and many other Western nations, as my research directly evaluates the effectiveness of policy and diplomatic action previously carried out by U.S. presidents.

This week has seen me really ramp up my focus on understanding where my work fits into the academic conversation and I have also placed a larger effort on getting a feel for how to write a proper discussion section for my paper.

Regards,

Lazar Vukcevic