research paper paper size

How to Format Your Research Paper

Writing your paper: apa 7th edition, apa style papers 7th edition.

• MLA Paper Format
• Chicago Paper Format
• Hanging Indents
• Ask a Librarian

APA 7th Edition Resources

• APA Style Blog The style and grammar guidelines pages present information about APA Style as described in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition.
• Purdue OWL: APA Style Guide This Purdue OWL style guide will help you in citing your sources in the APA Style commonly used to cite sources within the area of social sciences.

Printable APA 7th Edition Guides

Creating citations using APA 7th Edition:

• APA 7th Edition Citations - PDF
• APA 7th Edition Citations - Word

Creating in-text citations using APA 7th Edition:

• APA 7th In-Text Citations - PDF
• APA 7th In-Text Citations - Word

Integrating sources into the text of your paper using signal phrases:

• Integrating Sources - PDF
• Integrating Sources - Word

Things to know before you begin:

• Sans serif fonts: Arial (11-point), Calibri (11-point), or Lucinda Sans Unicode (10-point)
• Serif fonts: Times New Roman (12-point), Georgia (11-point), or Computer Modern (10-point)
• Margins:  1 inch on all sides
• Paragraphs:  All paragraphs (except in the Abstract) should be indented
• Spacing:  All of the text in your paper should be double-spaced (title page included)

Typical APA style papers have four main sections:

See the tabs below for a breakdown of how each portion should be formatted.

• Paper Templates
• Sample Papers
• APA 7 Citations

Below you will find templates for APA Style papers. Click the link to make a copy of the file. 

• Google Docs : To make a copy of these templates you must first sign in to your Google account. After you’re signed in, click "File" and then click “Make a Copy.”
• Microsoft Word : To make a copy of these templates download the file. 

• APA Style Student Paper Template (7th Edition) - Word Download a copy of this Word Doc and change the pre-filled information to your own.

APA Style Report Templates: These templates include multiple heading levels and should be used for report style papers.

• APA Style Student Report Template (7th Edition) - Word Download a copy of this Word Doc and change the pre-filled information to your own.

Below you will find an example of an accurately formatted APA Style student paper. 

• APA Style Student Paper Sample (7th Edition) - PDF Click here to see a sample of an accurately formatted APA style student paper.
• APA Style Student Paper Sample (7th Edition) - Word Click here to see a sample of an accurately formatted APA style student paper.

Place only page numbers in the header. 

Your paper should have the full title in bold. Place an extra space beneath the title and before your name.

Your name, your affiliation, the course title, professor’s name, and due date should be double spaced beneath the title.

All of this should be in the center of the title page.

• Put the word “Abstract” on the top of the page. Be sure it is center-aligned and in bold.
• Do not indent any paragraphs on this page.

Indent all other paragraphs throughout the body of the paper. 

• Place the entire title of your paper in Title Case on the top line of a new page.
• Be sure it is center-aligned and in bold.

• Center-align the word “References” on the first line of a new page, be sure that it is in bold.
• Your citations should be alphabetized.
• Entries are double-spaced with no extra lines between them.
• Be sure to use a hanging indent for any citations that require more than one line.

Need help formatting your APA style citations using the 7th edition of the  Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association ? Click the image or link below to go to the citation guide.

• APA 7th Edition Citations

Need help learning what hanging indents are and how to create them using Google Docs or Microsoft Word? 

• Hanging Indents This page gives a brief description of what they are, where to find information on when and how to properly use them, and also video tutorials on how to create them.
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• Last Updated: Mar 29, 2024 2:49 PM
• URL: https://necc.mass.libguides.com/formatting

To cite this LibGuide use the following templates:

APA : Northern Essex Community College Library. (Date updated). Title of page . Title of LibGuide. URL

MLA : Northern Essex Community College Library. "Title of Page." Title of LibGuide, Date updated, URL.

How Long Should a Research Paper Be? Data from 61,519 Examples

I analyzed a random sample of 61,519 full-text research papers, uploaded to PubMed Central between the years 2016 and 2021, in order to answer the questions:

What is the typical overall length of a research paper? and how long should each section be?

I used the BioC API to download the data (see the References section below).

Here’s a summary of the key findings

1- The median length of a research paper is 4,133 words (equivalent to 166 sentences or 34 paragraphs), excluding the abstract and references, with 90% of papers being between 2,023 and 8,284 words.

2- A typical article is divided in the following way:

• Introduction section: 14.6% of the total word count.
• Methods section: 29.7% of the total word count.
• Results section: 26.2% of the total word count.
• Discussion section: 29.4% of the total word count.

Notice that the Materials and methods is the longest section of a professionally written article. So always write this section in enough depth to provide the readers with the necessary details that allow them to replicate your study if they wanted to without requiring further information.

Overall length of a research paper

Let’s start by looking at the maximum word count allowed in some of the well-known journals. Note that the numbers reported in this table include the Abstract , Figure legends and References unless otherwise specified:

[1] excluding figure legends [2] excluding references

⚠ Note A review paper is either a systematic review or a meta-analysis, and an original research paper refers to either an observational or an experimental study conducted by the authors themselves.

Notice the large variability between these journals: The maximum number of words allowed ranges between 3,000 and 9,000 words.

Next, let’s look at our data.

Here’s a table that describes the length of a research paper in our sample:

90% of research papers have a word count between 2,023 and 8,284. So it will be a little weird to see a word count outside of this range.

Our data also agree that a typical review paper is a little bit longer than a typical original research paper but not by much (3,858 vs 3,708 words).

Length of each section in a research article

The median article with an IMRaD structure (i.e. contains the following sections: Introduction , Methods , Results and Discussion ) is in general characterized by a short 553 words introduction. And the methods, results and discussion sections are about twice the size of the introduction:

For more information, see:

• How Long Should a Research Title Be? Data from 104,161 Examples
• How Long Should the Abstract Be? Data 61,429 from Examples
• How Long Should the Introduction of a Research Paper Be? Data from 61,518 Examples
• How Long Should the Methods Section Be? Data from 61,514 Examples
• How Long Should the Results Section Be? Data from 61,458 Examples
• How Long Should the Discussion Section Be? Data from 61,517 Examples
• Length of a Conclusion Section: Analysis of 47,810 Examples
• Comeau DC, Wei CH, Islamaj Doğan R, and Lu Z. PMC text mining subset in BioC: about 3 million full text articles and growing,  Bioinformatics , btz070, 2019.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

13.1 Formatting a Research Paper

Learning objectives.

• Identify the major components of a research paper written using American Psychological Association (APA) style.
• Apply general APA style and formatting conventions in a research paper.

In this chapter, you will learn how to use APA style , the documentation and formatting style followed by the American Psychological Association, as well as MLA style , from the Modern Language Association. There are a few major formatting styles used in academic texts, including AMA, Chicago, and Turabian:

• AMA (American Medical Association) for medicine, health, and biological sciences
• APA (American Psychological Association) for education, psychology, and the social sciences
• Chicago—a common style used in everyday publications like magazines, newspapers, and books
• MLA (Modern Language Association) for English, literature, arts, and humanities
• Turabian—another common style designed for its universal application across all subjects and disciplines

While all the formatting and citation styles have their own use and applications, in this chapter we focus our attention on the two styles you are most likely to use in your academic studies: APA and MLA.

If you find that the rules of proper source documentation are difficult to keep straight, you are not alone. Writing a good research paper is, in and of itself, a major intellectual challenge. Having to follow detailed citation and formatting guidelines as well may seem like just one more task to add to an already-too-long list of requirements.

Following these guidelines, however, serves several important purposes. First, it signals to your readers that your paper should be taken seriously as a student’s contribution to a given academic or professional field; it is the literary equivalent of wearing a tailored suit to a job interview. Second, it shows that you respect other people’s work enough to give them proper credit for it. Finally, it helps your reader find additional materials if he or she wishes to learn more about your topic.

Furthermore, producing a letter-perfect APA-style paper need not be burdensome. Yes, it requires careful attention to detail. However, you can simplify the process if you keep these broad guidelines in mind:

• Work ahead whenever you can. Chapter 11 “Writing from Research: What Will I Learn?” includes tips for keeping track of your sources early in the research process, which will save time later on.
• Get it right the first time. Apply APA guidelines as you write, so you will not have much to correct during the editing stage. Again, putting in a little extra time early on can save time later.
• Use the resources available to you. In addition to the guidelines provided in this chapter, you may wish to consult the APA website at http://www.apa.org or the Purdue University Online Writing lab at http://owl.english.purdue.edu , which regularly updates its online style guidelines.

General Formatting Guidelines

This chapter provides detailed guidelines for using the citation and formatting conventions developed by the American Psychological Association, or APA. Writers in disciplines as diverse as astrophysics, biology, psychology, and education follow APA style. The major components of a paper written in APA style are listed in the following box.

These are the major components of an APA-style paper:

Body, which includes the following:

• Headings and, if necessary, subheadings to organize the content
• In-text citations of research sources
• References page

All these components must be saved in one document, not as separate documents.

The title page of your paper includes the following information:

• Title of the paper
• Author’s name
• Name of the institution with which the author is affiliated
• Header at the top of the page with the paper title (in capital letters) and the page number (If the title is lengthy, you may use a shortened form of it in the header.)

List the first three elements in the order given in the previous list, centered about one third of the way down from the top of the page. Use the headers and footers tool of your word-processing program to add the header, with the title text at the left and the page number in the upper-right corner. Your title page should look like the following example.

The next page of your paper provides an abstract , or brief summary of your findings. An abstract does not need to be provided in every paper, but an abstract should be used in papers that include a hypothesis. A good abstract is concise—about one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty words—and is written in an objective, impersonal style. Your writing voice will not be as apparent here as in the body of your paper. When writing the abstract, take a just-the-facts approach, and summarize your research question and your findings in a few sentences.

In Chapter 12 “Writing a Research Paper” , you read a paper written by a student named Jorge, who researched the effectiveness of low-carbohydrate diets. Read Jorge’s abstract. Note how it sums up the major ideas in his paper without going into excessive detail.

Write an abstract summarizing your paper. Briefly introduce the topic, state your findings, and sum up what conclusions you can draw from your research. Use the word count feature of your word-processing program to make sure your abstract does not exceed one hundred fifty words.

Depending on your field of study, you may sometimes write research papers that present extensive primary research, such as your own experiment or survey. In your abstract, summarize your research question and your findings, and briefly indicate how your study relates to prior research in the field.

Margins, Pagination, and Headings

APA style requirements also address specific formatting concerns, such as margins, pagination, and heading styles, within the body of the paper. Review the following APA guidelines.

Use these general guidelines to format the paper:

• Set the top, bottom, and side margins of your paper at 1 inch.
• Use double-spaced text throughout your paper.
• Use a standard font, such as Times New Roman or Arial, in a legible size (10- to 12-point).
• Use continuous pagination throughout the paper, including the title page and the references section. Page numbers appear flush right within your header.
• Section headings and subsection headings within the body of your paper use different types of formatting depending on the level of information you are presenting. Additional details from Jorge’s paper are provided.

Begin formatting the final draft of your paper according to APA guidelines. You may work with an existing document or set up a new document if you choose. Include the following:

• Your title page
• The abstract you created in Note 13.8 “Exercise 1”
• Correct headers and page numbers for your title page and abstract

APA style uses section headings to organize information, making it easy for the reader to follow the writer’s train of thought and to know immediately what major topics are covered. Depending on the length and complexity of the paper, its major sections may also be divided into subsections, sub-subsections, and so on. These smaller sections, in turn, use different heading styles to indicate different levels of information. In essence, you are using headings to create a hierarchy of information.

The following heading styles used in APA formatting are listed in order of greatest to least importance:

• Section headings use centered, boldface type. Headings use title case, with important words in the heading capitalized.
• Subsection headings use left-aligned, boldface type. Headings use title case.
• The third level uses left-aligned, indented, boldface type. Headings use a capital letter only for the first word, and they end in a period.
• The fourth level follows the same style used for the previous level, but the headings are boldfaced and italicized.
• The fifth level follows the same style used for the previous level, but the headings are italicized and not boldfaced.

Visually, the hierarchy of information is organized as indicated in Table 13.1 “Section Headings” .

Table 13.1 Section Headings

A college research paper may not use all the heading levels shown in Table 13.1 “Section Headings” , but you are likely to encounter them in academic journal articles that use APA style. For a brief paper, you may find that level 1 headings suffice. Longer or more complex papers may need level 2 headings or other lower-level headings to organize information clearly. Use your outline to craft your major section headings and determine whether any subtopics are substantial enough to require additional levels of headings.

Working with the document you developed in Note 13.11 “Exercise 2” , begin setting up the heading structure of the final draft of your research paper according to APA guidelines. Include your title and at least two to three major section headings, and follow the formatting guidelines provided above. If your major sections should be broken into subsections, add those headings as well. Use your outline to help you.

Because Jorge used only level 1 headings, his Exercise 3 would look like the following:

Citation Guidelines

In-text citations.

Throughout the body of your paper, include a citation whenever you quote or paraphrase material from your research sources. As you learned in Chapter 11 “Writing from Research: What Will I Learn?” , the purpose of citations is twofold: to give credit to others for their ideas and to allow your reader to follow up and learn more about the topic if desired. Your in-text citations provide basic information about your source; each source you cite will have a longer entry in the references section that provides more detailed information.

In-text citations must provide the name of the author or authors and the year the source was published. (When a given source does not list an individual author, you may provide the source title or the name of the organization that published the material instead.) When directly quoting a source, it is also required that you include the page number where the quote appears in your citation.

This information may be included within the sentence or in a parenthetical reference at the end of the sentence, as in these examples.

Epstein (2010) points out that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (p. 137).

Here, the writer names the source author when introducing the quote and provides the publication date in parentheses after the author’s name. The page number appears in parentheses after the closing quotation marks and before the period that ends the sentence.

Addiction researchers caution that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (Epstein, 2010, p. 137).

Here, the writer provides a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence that includes the author’s name, the year of publication, and the page number separated by commas. Again, the parenthetical citation is placed after the closing quotation marks and before the period at the end of the sentence.

As noted in the book Junk Food, Junk Science (Epstein, 2010, p. 137), “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive.”

Here, the writer chose to mention the source title in the sentence (an optional piece of information to include) and followed the title with a parenthetical citation. Note that the parenthetical citation is placed before the comma that signals the end of the introductory phrase.

David Epstein’s book Junk Food, Junk Science (2010) pointed out that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (p. 137).

Another variation is to introduce the author and the source title in your sentence and include the publication date and page number in parentheses within the sentence or at the end of the sentence. As long as you have included the essential information, you can choose the option that works best for that particular sentence and source.

Citing a book with a single author is usually a straightforward task. Of course, your research may require that you cite many other types of sources, such as books or articles with more than one author or sources with no individual author listed. You may also need to cite sources available in both print and online and nonprint sources, such as websites and personal interviews. Chapter 13 “APA and MLA Documentation and Formatting” , Section 13.2 “Citing and Referencing Techniques” and Section 13.3 “Creating a References Section” provide extensive guidelines for citing a variety of source types.

Writing at Work

APA is just one of several different styles with its own guidelines for documentation, formatting, and language usage. Depending on your field of interest, you may be exposed to additional styles, such as the following:

• MLA style. Determined by the Modern Languages Association and used for papers in literature, languages, and other disciplines in the humanities.
• Chicago style. Outlined in the Chicago Manual of Style and sometimes used for papers in the humanities and the sciences; many professional organizations use this style for publications as well.
• Associated Press (AP) style. Used by professional journalists.

References List

The brief citations included in the body of your paper correspond to the more detailed citations provided at the end of the paper in the references section. In-text citations provide basic information—the author’s name, the publication date, and the page number if necessary—while the references section provides more extensive bibliographical information. Again, this information allows your reader to follow up on the sources you cited and do additional reading about the topic if desired.

The specific format of entries in the list of references varies slightly for different source types, but the entries generally include the following information:

• The name(s) of the author(s) or institution that wrote the source
• The year of publication and, where applicable, the exact date of publication
• The full title of the source
• For books, the city of publication
• For articles or essays, the name of the periodical or book in which the article or essay appears
• For magazine and journal articles, the volume number, issue number, and pages where the article appears
• For sources on the web, the URL where the source is located

The references page is double spaced and lists entries in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. If an entry continues for more than one line, the second line and each subsequent line are indented five spaces. Review the following example. ( Chapter 13 “APA and MLA Documentation and Formatting” , Section 13.3 “Creating a References Section” provides extensive guidelines for formatting reference entries for different types of sources.)

In APA style, book and article titles are formatted in sentence case, not title case. Sentence case means that only the first word is capitalized, along with any proper nouns.

Key Takeaways

• Following proper citation and formatting guidelines helps writers ensure that their work will be taken seriously, give proper credit to other authors for their work, and provide valuable information to readers.
• Working ahead and taking care to cite sources correctly the first time are ways writers can save time during the editing stage of writing a research paper.
• APA papers usually include an abstract that concisely summarizes the paper.
• APA papers use a specific headings structure to provide a clear hierarchy of information.
• In APA papers, in-text citations usually include the name(s) of the author(s) and the year of publication.
• In-text citations correspond to entries in the references section, which provide detailed bibliographical information about a source.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

APA 7th ed. Style Guide

• Formatting Your Paper
• In-text Citations
• Textual Works
• Data Sets, Software, Tests
• Audiovisual Media
• Online Media

Formatting guidelines and sample papers are found in chapter 2 of the APA 7th edition Publication Manual

Sample papers.

You can find sample papers from Purdue OWL's website, APA 7th edition Publication Manual, or APA style website.

• APA Style Student Paper with Annotations in the Comments A Word Document featuring an APA 7th edition Style Student Paper that includes annotations as comments.
• APA Style Professional Paper with Annotations in Comments A Word Document featuring an APA 7th edition Style Professional Paper that includes annotations as comments.
• Purdue OWL Sample Papers

General Formatting Guidelines

Follow these guidelines throughout your paper:

• Double space text
• Header for student and professional papers includes the page number in the upper right hand corner
• Single space after ending punctuation
• Font size and style: Times New Roman 12 pt, Arial 11 pt, Calibri 11 pt, or Georgia 11 pt
• Use the same font type and size throughout the paper (exceptions for figure images, computer code, and footnotes - see 2.19 in APA Manual)
• Margins: 1 inch on all sides
• Left align paragraphs and leave ragged (uneven) margins on the right
• Indention: use 0.5 inch indention for the first line of every paragraph (use tab key for consistency)

Formatting Title Page

The 7th edition Publication Manual for APA introduced the student and professional papers. The major difference between these two types of papers is found on the title page. Please, see the guidelines below for formatting the title page of your document. Also note, follow your professors' guidelines for formatting the title page.

General Title Page Guidelines:

• Double space
• The title should summarize the main idea and be focused/succinct (avoid unnecessary words)
• Title written in title case (the first letter of each word is capitalized), bold, centered, and positioned in the upper half of the title page
• Use the author(s) first name, middle initial, and last name as the author's byline

Student Papers:

• title of the paper
• name of the author(s)
• author affiliation (department and institution name)
• course number and name 
• instructor name
• assignment due date (i.e. November 4, 2020)
• page number (in the header)

Professional Papers:

• author affiliation
• author note
• running head (abbreviated title) - Flush with left margin and written in all capital letters

Formatting Headings

Follow this format for headings (see 2.27 of the Publication Manual for additional details):

Level 1 headings are written in bold title case and aligned to the center. The text begins as a new paragraph.

Level 2 headings are written in bold title case and aligned flush to the left. The text begins as a new paragraph.

Level 3 headings are written in bold, italicized title case, and aligned flush to the left. The text begins as a new paragraph.

Level 4 headings are written in bold title case, indented from the left, and end with a period. The text begins after the period and continues like a regular paragraph.

Level 5 headings are written in bold, italicized title case, indented from the left, and end with a period. The text begins after the period and continues like a regular paragraph.

Formatting Reference List

The following are guidelines for formatting your reference list:

• Start on a new page after the last page of text
• Label the page Reference(s) with a capitalized R, written in bold and centered
• Double space all entries
• Use hanging indent for reference entries (first line of the reference is flush with left margin, subsequent lines are indented 0.5 inches)
• Order alphabetically (see chapter 9 section 44-49 for additional instructions on entry order)
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How To Write A Research Paper

Step-By-Step Tutorial With Examples + FREE Template

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Expert Reviewer: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | March 2024

For many students, crafting a strong research paper from scratch can feel like a daunting task – and rightly so! In this post, we’ll unpack what a research paper is, what it needs to do , and how to write one – in three easy steps. 🙂 

Overview: Writing A Research Paper

What (exactly) is a research paper.

• How to write a research paper
• Stage 1 : Topic & literature search
• Stage 2 : Structure & outline
• Stage 3 : Iterative writing
• Key takeaways

Let’s start by asking the most important question, “ What is a research paper? ”.

Simply put, a research paper is a scholarly written work where the writer (that’s you!) answers a specific question (this is called a research question ) through evidence-based arguments . Evidence-based is the keyword here. In other words, a research paper is different from an essay or other writing assignments that draw from the writer’s personal opinions or experiences. With a research paper, it’s all about building your arguments based on evidence (we’ll talk more about that evidence a little later).

Now, it’s worth noting that there are many different types of research papers , including analytical papers (the type I just described), argumentative papers, and interpretative papers. Here, we’ll focus on analytical papers , as these are some of the most common – but if you’re keen to learn about other types of research papers, be sure to check out the rest of the blog .

With that basic foundation laid, let’s get down to business and look at how to write a research paper .

Overview: The 3-Stage Process

While there are, of course, many potential approaches you can take to write a research paper, there are typically three stages to the writing process. So, in this tutorial, we’ll present a straightforward three-step process that we use when working with students at Grad Coach.

These three steps are:

• Finding a research topic and reviewing the existing literature
• Developing a provisional structure and outline for your paper, and
• Writing up your initial draft and then refining it iteratively

Let’s dig into each of these.

Need a helping hand?

Step 1: Find a topic and review the literature

As we mentioned earlier, in a research paper, you, as the researcher, will try to answer a question . More specifically, that’s called a research question , and it sets the direction of your entire paper. What’s important to understand though is that you’ll need to answer that research question with the help of high-quality sources – for example, journal articles, government reports, case studies, and so on. We’ll circle back to this in a minute.

The first stage of the research process is deciding on what your research question will be and then reviewing the existing literature (in other words, past studies and papers) to see what they say about that specific research question. In some cases, your professor may provide you with a predetermined research question (or set of questions). However, in many cases, you’ll need to find your own research question within a certain topic area.

Finding a strong research question hinges on identifying a meaningful research gap – in other words, an area that’s lacking in existing research. There’s a lot to unpack here, so if you wanna learn more, check out the plain-language explainer video below.

Once you’ve figured out which question (or questions) you’ll attempt to answer in your research paper, you’ll need to do a deep dive into the existing literature – this is called a “ literature search ”. Again, there are many ways to go about this, but your most likely starting point will be Google Scholar .

If you’re new to Google Scholar, think of it as Google for the academic world. You can start by simply entering a few different keywords that are relevant to your research question and it will then present a host of articles for you to review. What you want to pay close attention to here is the number of citations for each paper – the more citations a paper has, the more credible it is (generally speaking – there are some exceptions, of course).

Ideally, what you’re looking for are well-cited papers that are highly relevant to your topic. That said, keep in mind that citations are a cumulative metric , so older papers will often have more citations than newer papers – just because they’ve been around for longer. So, don’t fixate on this metric in isolation – relevance and recency are also very important.

Beyond Google Scholar, you’ll also definitely want to check out academic databases and aggregators such as Science Direct, PubMed, JStor and so on. These will often overlap with the results that you find in Google Scholar, but they can also reveal some hidden gems – so, be sure to check them out.

Once you’ve worked your way through all the literature, you’ll want to catalogue all this information in some sort of spreadsheet so that you can easily recall who said what, when and within what context. If you’d like, we’ve got a free literature spreadsheet that helps you do exactly that.

Step 2: Develop a structure and outline

With your research question pinned down and your literature digested and catalogued, it’s time to move on to planning your actual research paper .

It might sound obvious, but it’s really important to have some sort of rough outline in place before you start writing your paper. So often, we see students eagerly rushing into the writing phase, only to land up with a disjointed research paper that rambles on in multiple

Now, the secret here is to not get caught up in the fine details . Realistically, all you need at this stage is a bullet-point list that describes (in broad strokes) what you’ll discuss and in what order. It’s also useful to remember that you’re not glued to this outline – in all likelihood, you’ll chop and change some sections once you start writing, and that’s perfectly okay. What’s important is that you have some sort of roadmap in place from the start.

At this stage you might be wondering, “ But how should I structure my research paper? ”. Well, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution here, but in general, a research paper will consist of a few relatively standardised components:

• Introduction
• Literature review
• Methodology

Let’s take a look at each of these.

First up is the introduction section . As the name suggests, the purpose of the introduction is to set the scene for your research paper. There are usually (at least) four ingredients that go into this section – these are the background to the topic, the research problem and resultant research question , and the justification or rationale. If you’re interested, the video below unpacks the introduction section in more detail. 

The next section of your research paper will typically be your literature review . Remember all that literature you worked through earlier? Well, this is where you’ll present your interpretation of all that content . You’ll do this by writing about recent trends, developments, and arguments within the literature – but more specifically, those that are relevant to your research question . The literature review can oftentimes seem a little daunting, even to seasoned researchers, so be sure to check out our extensive collection of literature review content here .

With the introduction and lit review out of the way, the next section of your paper is the research methodology . In a nutshell, the methodology section should describe to your reader what you did (beyond just reviewing the existing literature) to answer your research question. For example, what data did you collect, how did you collect that data, how did you analyse that data and so on? For each choice, you’ll also need to justify why you chose to do it that way, and what the strengths and weaknesses of your approach were.

Now, it’s worth mentioning that for some research papers, this aspect of the project may be a lot simpler . For example, you may only need to draw on secondary sources (in other words, existing data sets). In some cases, you may just be asked to draw your conclusions from the literature search itself (in other words, there may be no data analysis at all). But, if you are required to collect and analyse data, you’ll need to pay a lot of attention to the methodology section. The video below provides an example of what the methodology section might look like.

By this stage of your paper, you will have explained what your research question is, what the existing literature has to say about that question, and how you analysed additional data to try to answer your question. So, the natural next step is to present your analysis of that data . This section is usually called the “results” or “analysis” section and this is where you’ll showcase your findings.

Depending on your school’s requirements, you may need to present and interpret the data in one section – or you might split the presentation and the interpretation into two sections. In the latter case, your “results” section will just describe the data, and the “discussion” is where you’ll interpret that data and explicitly link your analysis back to your research question. If you’re not sure which approach to take, check in with your professor or take a look at past papers to see what the norms are for your programme.

Alright – once you’ve presented and discussed your results, it’s time to wrap it up . This usually takes the form of the “ conclusion ” section. In the conclusion, you’ll need to highlight the key takeaways from your study and close the loop by explicitly answering your research question. Again, the exact requirements here will vary depending on your programme (and you may not even need a conclusion section at all) – so be sure to check with your professor if you’re unsure.

Step 3: Write and refine

Finally, it’s time to get writing. All too often though, students hit a brick wall right about here… So, how do you avoid this happening to you?

Well, there’s a lot to be said when it comes to writing a research paper (or any sort of academic piece), but we’ll share three practical tips to help you get started.

First and foremost , it’s essential to approach your writing as an iterative process. In other words, you need to start with a really messy first draft and then polish it over multiple rounds of editing. Don’t waste your time trying to write a perfect research paper in one go. Instead, take the pressure off yourself by adopting an iterative approach.

Secondly , it’s important to always lean towards critical writing , rather than descriptive writing. What does this mean? Well, at the simplest level, descriptive writing focuses on the “ what ”, while critical writing digs into the “ so what ” – in other words, the implications . If you’re not familiar with these two types of writing, don’t worry! You can find a plain-language explanation here.

Last but not least, you’ll need to get your referencing right. Specifically, you’ll need to provide credible, correctly formatted citations for the statements you make. We see students making referencing mistakes all the time and it costs them dearly. The good news is that you can easily avoid this by using a simple reference manager . If you don’t have one, check out our video about Mendeley, an easy (and free) reference management tool that you can start using today.

Recap: Key Takeaways

We’ve covered a lot of ground here. To recap, the three steps to writing a high-quality research paper are:

• To choose a research question and review the literature
• To plan your paper structure and draft an outline
• To take an iterative approach to writing, focusing on critical writing and strong referencing

Remember, this is just a b ig-picture overview of the research paper development process and there’s a lot more nuance to unpack. So, be sure to grab a copy of our free research paper template to learn more about how to write a research paper.

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Background: Energy and sports drinks have gained popularity among diverse demographic groups, including adolescents, athletes, workers, and college students. While often used interchangeably, these beverages serve distinct purposes, with energy drinks aiming to boost energy and cognitive performance, and sports drinks designed to prevent dehydration and replenish electrolytes and carbohydrates lost during physical exertion.

Objective: To assess the nutritional quality of energy and sports drinks in Egypt.

Material and Methods: A cross-sectional study assessed the nutrient contents, including energy, sugar, electrolytes, vitamins, and caffeine, of sports and energy drinks available in major supermarkets in Cairo, Alexandria, and Giza, Egypt. Data collection involved photographing all relevant product labels and recording nutritional information. Descriptive statistics and appropriate statistical tests were employed to analyze and compare the nutritional values of energy and sports drinks.

Results: The study analyzed 38 sports drinks and 42 energy drinks. Sports drinks were significantly more expensive than energy drinks, with higher net content and elevated magnesium, potassium, and vitamin C. Energy drinks contained higher concentrations of caffeine, sugars, and vitamins B2, B3, and B6.

Conclusion: Significant nutritional differences exist between sports and energy drinks, reflecting their intended uses. However, these beverages’ high sugar content and calorie loads raise health concerns. Proper labeling, public awareness, and responsible marketing are essential to guide safe consumption practices in Egypt.

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The Ideal Length of Research Papers: What’s Right for You?

Research papers are an essential part of the academic experience for many students, yet their ideal length is often contested. This article seeks to address this controversy by providing insight into what constitutes the appropriate and effective length for a research paper. A comprehensive exploration of guidelines from various sources, including university faculty members and leading industry professionals, will be presented in order to provide an informed opinion on this timely issue. Through careful analysis of data points such as word count limits, average document size requirements across institutions, formatting considerations based on style guides (e.g., MLA or APA), it can be determined which approach to research paper writing best serves both learners’ needs and instructors’ expectations. Ultimately, readers should expect a thorough examination that investigates every angle related to finding the “right” amount of content when constructing research papers that are academically sound while still being concisely expressed with precision clarity throughout each paragraph’s text flow.

1. Introduction: Understanding the Research Paper

2. the significance of length in a research paper, 3. traditional academic conventions for research papers, 4. alternatives to longer lengths: shorter formats and writing styles, 5. establishing your own ideal format or style of writing for your research paper, 6. considerations when setting an ideal length for your specific topic and audience, 7. conclusion: finding your optimal balance between brevity and depth.

Research papers are a form of communication between academics, and their purpose is to inform readers about the results of investigations into specific topics. The structure of research papers differs from that of other academic writings; they have an introduction, body sections for findings and discussion, as well as a conclusion.

• Length: Generally speaking, research paper length depends on the scope and complexity of the topic discussed but should usually be between 3-8 pages in total.

This type of writing requires critical thinking skills along with close attention to detail when it comes to data collection. It is essential that researchers take sufficient time outlining what information needs to be collected before beginning any investigation in order to ensure relevant results can be obtained. Additionally, having familiarity with various resources such as journal articles or books related to the topic being studied helps writers develop coherent arguments throughout their work.

The Impact of Length

A research paper’s length plays a critical role in the communication of its findings. Its length often helps determine how comprehensive, detailed and informative it is. Depending on the nature of the subject matter, longer papers may provide more information that can help readers understand complex concepts. In general, they are also seen as providing higher quality evidence since authors have more space to include robust argumentation for their conclusions. Therefore, when writing a research paper one should take into consideration not only what topics will be included but also how many pages are needed to effectively communicate these points.

In terms of determining an appropriate length for a particular project or academic field there is no definitive answer. Generally speaking however most undergraduate-level papers fall between 5–7 pages while graduate-level assignments tend to run 8–10 pages or even longer depending on the specific requirements set by supervisors and/or universities themselves.

The Basics of Academic Research Paper Writing

Research papers are a staple component in the academic world, requiring students to demonstrate their understanding and knowledge gained from courses. The traditional approach for producing an effective research paper is as follows:

• Develop a thesis statement which clearly outlines your argument.
• Identify and use credible sources that align with your argument.

These two components provide the foundation for any successful research paper. It should then be up to you, the writer, to create an effective structure that flows logically between ideas while expanding upon them sufficiently.

As research papers tend to require considerable effort and time, shorter formats can help get your point across quickly. There are a variety of alternative writing styles that you can employ when the length of your paper is restricted.

• Shorter Research Papers: These types of papers typically range from 1-3 pages in length. While there may be less space for arguments and analysis, they still provide enough room for students to effectively present their ideas without becoming bogged down by lengthy word counts or extraneous details.
• Essays: Essay writing provides an excellent opportunity to practice distilling complex information into smaller chunks while conveying key points succinctly. In general, essays should not exceed four pages (double spaced) depending on the course requirements.

Creating Your Own Format or Style of Writing Developing a style of writing that works best for your research paper can be an integral part of the success and impact it will have on readers. As such, you should spend ample time to find your individual format. When crafting your own personal style, some key factors to consider include clarity in language; cohesion among paragraphs and ideas; incorporating visuals effectively as possible (e.g., charts/graphs); properly citing sources; using simple but informative headings; introducing each main topic with a concise sentence or two, followed by bulleted points detailing its importance and implications; avoiding run-on sentences whenever applicable. Additionally, depending on where you are publishing your paper, there may also be specific formatting requirements dictated by publishers (this is especially common when submitting papers for publication). When it comes to length – while varying based on assignment type – general guidelines recommend that undergraduate research papers range from 3-7 pages in length while graduate-level assignments usually require 10+ page lengths.

When setting an ideal length for your topic and audience, it’s important to consider the purpose of your writing. Different types of documents have different lengths that are suitable in terms of scope and content. For example, a blog post can typically be shorter than a research paper or dissertation.

The other key factor is understanding who your target audience is – their expectations about document length will affect how long you should write. As a general rule, it helps to keep things concise by using short sentences and avoiding unnecessary detail where possible. Research papers often vary in length but they usually range from 8-10 pages double spaced; any longer may risk losing readers’ attention.

Achieving the Optimal Balance It can be challenging to determine exactly how much detail or brevity is appropriate for a research paper. The length of your paper will depend on the complexity and scope of your topic, as well as which formatting style you are using (e.g., MLA, APA). Generally speaking, though, most research papers should range from 5-15 pages long in order to adequately explore their topics while still keeping them concise and comprehensible.

• To balance depth with brevity:

When creating a research paper it is essential that you do not sacrifice substance for form; there must always be enough evidence provided within each section to support its assertions and claims. To ensure this without making your document too lengthy, try utilizing different writing techniques such as visual aids like diagrams or charts when presenting complex concepts. Additionally, focus on providing only key points rather than exhaustive details; strive for being succinct yet informative!

In conclusion, the length of research papers can vary greatly depending on a variety of factors. The most important thing is to understand your audience and purpose for writing and tailor your paper accordingly. As long as you are able to properly communicate all relevant information in an organized manner, then there should be no restriction on how long or short your paper needs to be; it all depends on what works best for you!

How to Write and Publish a Research Paper for a Peer-Reviewed Journal

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• Published: 30 April 2020
• Volume 36 , pages 909–913, ( 2021 )

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Communicating research findings is an essential step in the research process. Often, peer-reviewed journals are the forum for such communication, yet many researchers are never taught how to write a publishable scientific paper. In this article, we explain the basic structure of a scientific paper and describe the information that should be included in each section. We also identify common pitfalls for each section and recommend strategies to avoid them. Further, we give advice about target journal selection and authorship. In the online resource 1 , we provide an example of a high-quality scientific paper, with annotations identifying the elements we describe in this article.

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How to Choose the Right Journal

The Point Is…to Publish?

Writing and publishing a scientific paper

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

Writing a scientific paper is an important component of the research process, yet researchers often receive little formal training in scientific writing. This is especially true in low-resource settings. In this article, we explain why choosing a target journal is important, give advice about authorship, provide a basic structure for writing each section of a scientific paper, and describe common pitfalls and recommendations for each section. In the online resource 1 , we also include an annotated journal article that identifies the key elements and writing approaches that we detail here. Before you begin your research, make sure you have ethical clearance from all relevant ethical review boards.

Select a Target Journal Early in the Writing Process

We recommend that you select a “target journal” early in the writing process; a “target journal” is the journal to which you plan to submit your paper. Each journal has a set of core readers and you should tailor your writing to this readership. For example, if you plan to submit a manuscript about vaping during pregnancy to a pregnancy-focused journal, you will need to explain what vaping is because readers of this journal may not have a background in this topic. However, if you were to submit that same article to a tobacco journal, you would not need to provide as much background information about vaping.

Information about a journal’s core readership can be found on its website, usually in a section called “About this journal” or something similar. For example, the Journal of Cancer Education presents such information on the “Aims and Scope” page of its website, which can be found here: https://www.springer.com/journal/13187/aims-and-scope .

Peer reviewer guidelines from your target journal are an additional resource that can help you tailor your writing to the journal and provide additional advice about crafting an effective article [ 1 ]. These are not always available, but it is worth a quick web search to find out.

Identify Author Roles Early in the Process

Early in the writing process, identify authors, determine the order of authors, and discuss the responsibilities of each author. Standard author responsibilities have been identified by The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) [ 2 ]. To set clear expectations about each team member’s responsibilities and prevent errors in communication, we also suggest outlining more detailed roles, such as who will draft each section of the manuscript, write the abstract, submit the paper electronically, serve as corresponding author, and write the cover letter. It is best to formalize this agreement in writing after discussing it, circulating the document to the author team for approval. We suggest creating a title page on which all authors are listed in the agreed-upon order. It may be necessary to adjust authorship roles and order during the development of the paper. If a new author order is agreed upon, be sure to update the title page in the manuscript draft.

In the case where multiple papers will result from a single study, authors should discuss who will author each paper. Additionally, authors should agree on a deadline for each paper and the lead author should take responsibility for producing an initial draft by this deadline.

Structure of the Introduction Section

The introduction section should be approximately three to five paragraphs in length. Look at examples from your target journal to decide the appropriate length. This section should include the elements shown in Fig.  1 . Begin with a general context, narrowing to the specific focus of the paper. Include five main elements: why your research is important, what is already known about the topic, the “gap” or what is not yet known about the topic, why it is important to learn the new information that your research adds, and the specific research aim(s) that your paper addresses. Your research aim should address the gap you identified. Be sure to add enough background information to enable readers to understand your study. Table 1 provides common introduction section pitfalls and recommendations for addressing them.

The main elements of the introduction section of an original research article. Often, the elements overlap

Methods Section

The purpose of the methods section is twofold: to explain how the study was done in enough detail to enable its replication and to provide enough contextual detail to enable readers to understand and interpret the results. In general, the essential elements of a methods section are the following: a description of the setting and participants, the study design and timing, the recruitment and sampling, the data collection process, the dataset, the dependent and independent variables, the covariates, the analytic approach for each research objective, and the ethical approval. The hallmark of an exemplary methods section is the justification of why each method was used. Table 2 provides common methods section pitfalls and recommendations for addressing them.

Results Section

The focus of the results section should be associations, or lack thereof, rather than statistical tests. Two considerations should guide your writing here. First, the results should present answers to each part of the research aim. Second, return to the methods section to ensure that the analysis and variables for each result have been explained.

Begin the results section by describing the number of participants in the final sample and details such as the number who were approached to participate, the proportion who were eligible and who enrolled, and the number of participants who dropped out. The next part of the results should describe the participant characteristics. After that, you may organize your results by the aim or by putting the most exciting results first. Do not forget to report your non-significant associations. These are still findings.

Tables and figures capture the reader’s attention and efficiently communicate your main findings [ 3 ]. Each table and figure should have a clear message and should complement, rather than repeat, the text. Tables and figures should communicate all salient details necessary for a reader to understand the findings without consulting the text. Include information on comparisons and tests, as well as information about the sample and timing of the study in the title, legend, or in a footnote. Note that figures are often more visually interesting than tables, so if it is feasible to make a figure, make a figure. To avoid confusing the reader, either avoid abbreviations in tables and figures, or define them in a footnote. Note that there should not be citations in the results section and you should not interpret results here. Table 3 provides common results section pitfalls and recommendations for addressing them.

Discussion Section

Opposite the introduction section, the discussion should take the form of a right-side-up triangle beginning with interpretation of your results and moving to general implications (Fig.  2 ). This section typically begins with a restatement of the main findings, which can usually be accomplished with a few carefully-crafted sentences.

Major elements of the discussion section of an original research article. Often, the elements overlap

Next, interpret the meaning or explain the significance of your results, lifting the reader’s gaze from the study’s specific findings to more general applications. Then, compare these study findings with other research. Are these findings in agreement or disagreement with those from other studies? Does this study impart additional nuance to well-accepted theories? Situate your findings within the broader context of scientific literature, then explain the pathways or mechanisms that might give rise to, or explain, the results.

Journals vary in their approach to strengths and limitations sections: some are embedded paragraphs within the discussion section, while some mandate separate section headings. Keep in mind that every study has strengths and limitations. Candidly reporting yours helps readers to correctly interpret your research findings.

The next element of the discussion is a summary of the potential impacts and applications of the research. Should these results be used to optimally design an intervention? Does the work have implications for clinical protocols or public policy? These considerations will help the reader to further grasp the possible impacts of the presented work.

Finally, the discussion should conclude with specific suggestions for future work. Here, you have an opportunity to illuminate specific gaps in the literature that compel further study. Avoid the phrase “future research is necessary” because the recommendation is too general to be helpful to readers. Instead, provide substantive and specific recommendations for future studies. Table 4 provides common discussion section pitfalls and recommendations for addressing them.

Follow the Journal’s Author Guidelines

After you select a target journal, identify the journal’s author guidelines to guide the formatting of your manuscript and references. Author guidelines will often (but not always) include instructions for titles, cover letters, and other components of a manuscript submission. Read the guidelines carefully. If you do not follow the guidelines, your article will be sent back to you.

Finally, do not submit your paper to more than one journal at a time. Even if this is not explicitly stated in the author guidelines of your target journal, it is considered inappropriate and unprofessional.

Your title should invite readers to continue reading beyond the first page [ 4 , 5 ]. It should be informative and interesting. Consider describing the independent and dependent variables, the population and setting, the study design, the timing, and even the main result in your title. Because the focus of the paper can change as you write and revise, we recommend you wait until you have finished writing your paper before composing the title.

Be sure that the title is useful for potential readers searching for your topic. The keywords you select should complement those in your title to maximize the likelihood that a researcher will find your paper through a database search. Avoid using abbreviations in your title unless they are very well known, such as SNP, because it is more likely that someone will use a complete word rather than an abbreviation as a search term to help readers find your paper.

After you have written a complete draft, use the checklist (Fig. 3 ) below to guide your revisions and editing. Additional resources are available on writing the abstract and citing references [ 5 ]. When you feel that your work is ready, ask a trusted colleague or two to read the work and provide informal feedback. The box below provides a checklist that summarizes the key points offered in this article.

Checklist for manuscript quality

Data Availability

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Vetto JT (2014) Short and sweet: a short course on concise medical writing. J Cancer Educ 29(1):194–195

Brett M, Kording K (2017) Ten simple rules for structuring papers. PLoS ComputBiol. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005619

Lang TA (2017) Writing a better research article. J Public Health Emerg. https://doi.org/10.21037/jphe.2017.11.06

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Ella August is grateful to the Sustainable Sciences Institute for mentoring her in training researchers on writing and publishing their research.

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Home » Research Paper – Structure, Examples and Writing Guide

Research Paper – Structure, Examples and Writing Guide

Table of Contents

Research Paper

Definition:

Research Paper is a written document that presents the author’s original research, analysis, and interpretation of a specific topic or issue.

It is typically based on Empirical Evidence, and may involve qualitative or quantitative research methods, or a combination of both. The purpose of a research paper is to contribute new knowledge or insights to a particular field of study, and to demonstrate the author’s understanding of the existing literature and theories related to the topic.

Structure of Research Paper

The structure of a research paper typically follows a standard format, consisting of several sections that convey specific information about the research study. The following is a detailed explanation of the structure of a research paper:

The title page contains the title of the paper, the name(s) of the author(s), and the affiliation(s) of the author(s). It also includes the date of submission and possibly, the name of the journal or conference where the paper is to be published.

The abstract is a brief summary of the research paper, typically ranging from 100 to 250 words. It should include the research question, the methods used, the key findings, and the implications of the results. The abstract should be written in a concise and clear manner to allow readers to quickly grasp the essence of the research.

Introduction

The introduction section of a research paper provides background information about the research problem, the research question, and the research objectives. It also outlines the significance of the research, the research gap that it aims to fill, and the approach taken to address the research question. Finally, the introduction section ends with a clear statement of the research hypothesis or research question.

Literature Review

The literature review section of a research paper provides an overview of the existing literature on the topic of study. It includes a critical analysis and synthesis of the literature, highlighting the key concepts, themes, and debates. The literature review should also demonstrate the research gap and how the current study seeks to address it.

The methods section of a research paper describes the research design, the sample selection, the data collection and analysis procedures, and the statistical methods used to analyze the data. This section should provide sufficient detail for other researchers to replicate the study.

The results section presents the findings of the research, using tables, graphs, and figures to illustrate the data. The findings should be presented in a clear and concise manner, with reference to the research question and hypothesis.

The discussion section of a research paper interprets the findings and discusses their implications for the research question, the literature review, and the field of study. It should also address the limitations of the study and suggest future research directions.

The conclusion section summarizes the main findings of the study, restates the research question and hypothesis, and provides a final reflection on the significance of the research.

The references section provides a list of all the sources cited in the paper, following a specific citation style such as APA, MLA or Chicago.

How to Write Research Paper

You can write Research Paper by the following guide:

• Choose a Topic: The first step is to select a topic that interests you and is relevant to your field of study. Brainstorm ideas and narrow down to a research question that is specific and researchable.
• Conduct a Literature Review: The literature review helps you identify the gap in the existing research and provides a basis for your research question. It also helps you to develop a theoretical framework and research hypothesis.
• Develop a Thesis Statement : The thesis statement is the main argument of your research paper. It should be clear, concise and specific to your research question.
• Plan your Research: Develop a research plan that outlines the methods, data sources, and data analysis procedures. This will help you to collect and analyze data effectively.
• Collect and Analyze Data: Collect data using various methods such as surveys, interviews, observations, or experiments. Analyze data using statistical tools or other qualitative methods.
• Organize your Paper : Organize your paper into sections such as Introduction, Literature Review, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. Ensure that each section is coherent and follows a logical flow.
• Write your Paper : Start by writing the introduction, followed by the literature review, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. Ensure that your writing is clear, concise, and follows the required formatting and citation styles.
• Edit and Proofread your Paper: Review your paper for grammar and spelling errors, and ensure that it is well-structured and easy to read. Ask someone else to review your paper to get feedback and suggestions for improvement.
• Cite your Sources: Ensure that you properly cite all sources used in your research paper. This is essential for giving credit to the original authors and avoiding plagiarism.

Research Paper Example

Note : The below example research paper is for illustrative purposes only and is not an actual research paper. Actual research papers may have different structures, contents, and formats depending on the field of study, research question, data collection and analysis methods, and other factors. Students should always consult with their professors or supervisors for specific guidelines and expectations for their research papers.

Research Paper Example sample for Students:

Title: The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health among Young Adults

Abstract: This study aims to investigate the impact of social media use on the mental health of young adults. A literature review was conducted to examine the existing research on the topic. A survey was then administered to 200 university students to collect data on their social media use, mental health status, and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. The results showed that social media use is positively associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. The study also found that social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) are significant predictors of mental health problems among young adults.

Introduction: Social media has become an integral part of modern life, particularly among young adults. While social media has many benefits, including increased communication and social connectivity, it has also been associated with negative outcomes, such as addiction, cyberbullying, and mental health problems. This study aims to investigate the impact of social media use on the mental health of young adults.

Literature Review: The literature review highlights the existing research on the impact of social media use on mental health. The review shows that social media use is associated with depression, anxiety, stress, and other mental health problems. The review also identifies the factors that contribute to the negative impact of social media, including social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO.

Methods : A survey was administered to 200 university students to collect data on their social media use, mental health status, and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. The survey included questions on social media use, mental health status (measured using the DASS-21), and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and regression analysis.

Results : The results showed that social media use is positively associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. The study also found that social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO are significant predictors of mental health problems among young adults.

Discussion : The study’s findings suggest that social media use has a negative impact on the mental health of young adults. The study highlights the need for interventions that address the factors contributing to the negative impact of social media, such as social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO.

Conclusion : In conclusion, social media use has a significant impact on the mental health of young adults. The study’s findings underscore the need for interventions that promote healthy social media use and address the negative outcomes associated with social media use. Future research can explore the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing the negative impact of social media on mental health. Additionally, longitudinal studies can investigate the long-term effects of social media use on mental health.

Limitations : The study has some limitations, including the use of self-report measures and a cross-sectional design. The use of self-report measures may result in biased responses, and a cross-sectional design limits the ability to establish causality.

Implications: The study’s findings have implications for mental health professionals, educators, and policymakers. Mental health professionals can use the findings to develop interventions that address the negative impact of social media use on mental health. Educators can incorporate social media literacy into their curriculum to promote healthy social media use among young adults. Policymakers can use the findings to develop policies that protect young adults from the negative outcomes associated with social media use.

References :

• Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2019). Associations between screen time and lower psychological well-being among children and adolescents: Evidence from a population-based study. Preventive medicine reports, 15, 100918.
• Primack, B. A., Shensa, A., Escobar-Viera, C. G., Barrett, E. L., Sidani, J. E., Colditz, J. B., … & James, A. E. (2017). Use of multiple social media platforms and symptoms of depression and anxiety: A nationally-representative study among US young adults. Computers in Human Behavior, 69, 1-9.
• Van der Meer, T. G., & Verhoeven, J. W. (2017). Social media and its impact on academic performance of students. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 16, 383-398.

Appendix : The survey used in this study is provided below.

Social Media and Mental Health Survey

• How often do you use social media per day?
• Less than 30 minutes
• 30 minutes to 1 hour
• 1 to 2 hours
• 2 to 4 hours
• More than 4 hours
• Which social media platforms do you use?
• Others (Please specify)
• How often do you experience the following on social media?
• Social comparison (comparing yourself to others)
• Cyberbullying
• Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
• Have you ever experienced any of the following mental health problems in the past month?
• Do you think social media use has a positive or negative impact on your mental health?
• Very positive
• Somewhat positive
• Somewhat negative
• Very negative
• In your opinion, which factors contribute to the negative impact of social media on mental health?
• Social comparison
• In your opinion, what interventions could be effective in reducing the negative impact of social media on mental health?
• Education on healthy social media use
• Counseling for mental health problems caused by social media
• Social media detox programs
• Regulation of social media use

Thank you for your participation!

Applications of Research Paper

Research papers have several applications in various fields, including:

• Advancing knowledge: Research papers contribute to the advancement of knowledge by generating new insights, theories, and findings that can inform future research and practice. They help to answer important questions, clarify existing knowledge, and identify areas that require further investigation.
• Informing policy: Research papers can inform policy decisions by providing evidence-based recommendations for policymakers. They can help to identify gaps in current policies, evaluate the effectiveness of interventions, and inform the development of new policies and regulations.
• Improving practice: Research papers can improve practice by providing evidence-based guidance for professionals in various fields, including medicine, education, business, and psychology. They can inform the development of best practices, guidelines, and standards of care that can improve outcomes for individuals and organizations.
• Educating students : Research papers are often used as teaching tools in universities and colleges to educate students about research methods, data analysis, and academic writing. They help students to develop critical thinking skills, research skills, and communication skills that are essential for success in many careers.
• Fostering collaboration: Research papers can foster collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers by providing a platform for sharing knowledge and ideas. They can facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations and partnerships that can lead to innovative solutions to complex problems.

When to Write Research Paper

Research papers are typically written when a person has completed a research project or when they have conducted a study and have obtained data or findings that they want to share with the academic or professional community. Research papers are usually written in academic settings, such as universities, but they can also be written in professional settings, such as research organizations, government agencies, or private companies.

Here are some common situations where a person might need to write a research paper:

• For academic purposes: Students in universities and colleges are often required to write research papers as part of their coursework, particularly in the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities. Writing research papers helps students to develop research skills, critical thinking skills, and academic writing skills.
• For publication: Researchers often write research papers to publish their findings in academic journals or to present their work at academic conferences. Publishing research papers is an important way to disseminate research findings to the academic community and to establish oneself as an expert in a particular field.
• To inform policy or practice : Researchers may write research papers to inform policy decisions or to improve practice in various fields. Research findings can be used to inform the development of policies, guidelines, and best practices that can improve outcomes for individuals and organizations.
• To share new insights or ideas: Researchers may write research papers to share new insights or ideas with the academic or professional community. They may present new theories, propose new research methods, or challenge existing paradigms in their field.

Purpose of Research Paper

The purpose of a research paper is to present the results of a study or investigation in a clear, concise, and structured manner. Research papers are written to communicate new knowledge, ideas, or findings to a specific audience, such as researchers, scholars, practitioners, or policymakers. The primary purposes of a research paper are:

• To contribute to the body of knowledge : Research papers aim to add new knowledge or insights to a particular field or discipline. They do this by reporting the results of empirical studies, reviewing and synthesizing existing literature, proposing new theories, or providing new perspectives on a topic.
• To inform or persuade: Research papers are written to inform or persuade the reader about a particular issue, topic, or phenomenon. They present evidence and arguments to support their claims and seek to persuade the reader of the validity of their findings or recommendations.
• To advance the field: Research papers seek to advance the field or discipline by identifying gaps in knowledge, proposing new research questions or approaches, or challenging existing assumptions or paradigms. They aim to contribute to ongoing debates and discussions within a field and to stimulate further research and inquiry.
• To demonstrate research skills: Research papers demonstrate the author’s research skills, including their ability to design and conduct a study, collect and analyze data, and interpret and communicate findings. They also demonstrate the author’s ability to critically evaluate existing literature, synthesize information from multiple sources, and write in a clear and structured manner.

Characteristics of Research Paper

Research papers have several characteristics that distinguish them from other forms of academic or professional writing. Here are some common characteristics of research papers:

• Evidence-based: Research papers are based on empirical evidence, which is collected through rigorous research methods such as experiments, surveys, observations, or interviews. They rely on objective data and facts to support their claims and conclusions.
• Structured and organized: Research papers have a clear and logical structure, with sections such as introduction, literature review, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. They are organized in a way that helps the reader to follow the argument and understand the findings.
• Formal and objective: Research papers are written in a formal and objective tone, with an emphasis on clarity, precision, and accuracy. They avoid subjective language or personal opinions and instead rely on objective data and analysis to support their arguments.
• Citations and references: Research papers include citations and references to acknowledge the sources of information and ideas used in the paper. They use a specific citation style, such as APA, MLA, or Chicago, to ensure consistency and accuracy.
• Peer-reviewed: Research papers are often peer-reviewed, which means they are evaluated by other experts in the field before they are published. Peer-review ensures that the research is of high quality, meets ethical standards, and contributes to the advancement of knowledge in the field.
• Objective and unbiased: Research papers strive to be objective and unbiased in their presentation of the findings. They avoid personal biases or preconceptions and instead rely on the data and analysis to draw conclusions.

Advantages of Research Paper

Research papers have many advantages, both for the individual researcher and for the broader academic and professional community. Here are some advantages of research papers:

• Contribution to knowledge: Research papers contribute to the body of knowledge in a particular field or discipline. They add new information, insights, and perspectives to existing literature and help advance the understanding of a particular phenomenon or issue.
• Opportunity for intellectual growth: Research papers provide an opportunity for intellectual growth for the researcher. They require critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity, which can help develop the researcher’s skills and knowledge.
• Career advancement: Research papers can help advance the researcher’s career by demonstrating their expertise and contributions to the field. They can also lead to new research opportunities, collaborations, and funding.
• Academic recognition: Research papers can lead to academic recognition in the form of awards, grants, or invitations to speak at conferences or events. They can also contribute to the researcher’s reputation and standing in the field.
• Impact on policy and practice: Research papers can have a significant impact on policy and practice. They can inform policy decisions, guide practice, and lead to changes in laws, regulations, or procedures.
• Advancement of society: Research papers can contribute to the advancement of society by addressing important issues, identifying solutions to problems, and promoting social justice and equality.

Limitations of Research Paper

Research papers also have some limitations that should be considered when interpreting their findings or implications. Here are some common limitations of research papers:

• Limited generalizability: Research findings may not be generalizable to other populations, settings, or contexts. Studies often use specific samples or conditions that may not reflect the broader population or real-world situations.
• Potential for bias : Research papers may be biased due to factors such as sample selection, measurement errors, or researcher biases. It is important to evaluate the quality of the research design and methods used to ensure that the findings are valid and reliable.
• Ethical concerns: Research papers may raise ethical concerns, such as the use of vulnerable populations or invasive procedures. Researchers must adhere to ethical guidelines and obtain informed consent from participants to ensure that the research is conducted in a responsible and respectful manner.
• Limitations of methodology: Research papers may be limited by the methodology used to collect and analyze data. For example, certain research methods may not capture the complexity or nuance of a particular phenomenon, or may not be appropriate for certain research questions.
• Publication bias: Research papers may be subject to publication bias, where positive or significant findings are more likely to be published than negative or non-significant findings. This can skew the overall findings of a particular area of research.
• Time and resource constraints: Research papers may be limited by time and resource constraints, which can affect the quality and scope of the research. Researchers may not have access to certain data or resources, or may be unable to conduct long-term studies due to practical limitations.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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How to Write a Research Paper

Use the links below to jump directly to any section of this guide:

Research Paper Fundamentals

How to choose a topic or question, how to create a working hypothesis or thesis, common research paper methodologies, how to gather and organize evidence , how to write an outline for your research paper, how to write a rough draft, how to revise your draft, how to produce a final draft, resources for teachers .

It is not fair to say that no one writes anymore. Just about everyone writes text messages, brief emails, or social media posts every single day. Yet, most people don't have a lot of practice with the formal, organized writing required for a good academic research paper. This guide contains links to a variety of resources that can help demystify the process. Some of these resources are intended for teachers; they contain exercises, activities, and teaching strategies. Other resources are intended for direct use by students who are struggling to write papers, or are looking for tips to make the process go more smoothly.

The resources in this section are designed to help students understand the different types of research papers, the general research process, and how to manage their time. Below, you'll find links from university writing centers, the trusted Purdue Online Writing Lab, and more.

What is an Academic Research Paper?

"Genre and the Research Paper" (Purdue OWL)

There are different types of research papers. Different types of scholarly questions will lend themselves to one format or another. This is a brief introduction to the two main genres of research paper: analytic and argumentative. 

"7 Most Popular Types of Research Papers" (Personal-writer.com)

This resource discusses formats that high school students commonly encounter, such as the compare and contrast essay and the definitional essay. Please note that the inclusion of this link is not an endorsement of this company's paid service.

How to Prepare and Plan Out Writing a Research Paper

Teachers can give their students a step-by-step guide like these to help them understand the different steps of the research paper process. These guides can be combined with the time management tools in the next subsection to help students come up with customized calendars for completing their papers.

"Ten Steps for Writing Research Papers" (American University)  

This resource from American University is a comprehensive guide to the research paper writing process, and includes examples of proper research questions and thesis topics.

"Steps in Writing a Research Paper" (SUNY Empire State College)

This guide breaks the research paper process into 11 steps. Each "step" links to a separate page, which describes the work entailed in completing it.

How to Manage Time Effectively

The links below will help students determine how much time is necessary to complete a paper. If your sources are not available online or at your local library, you'll need to leave extra time for the Interlibrary Loan process. Remember that, even if you do not need to consult secondary sources, you'll still need to leave yourself ample time to organize your thoughts.

"Research Paper Planner: Timeline" (Baylor University)

This interactive resource from Baylor University creates a suggested writing schedule based on how much time a student has to work on the assignment.

"Research Paper Planner" (UCLA)

UCLA's library offers this step-by-step guide to the research paper writing process, which also includes a suggested planning calendar.

There's a reason teachers spend a long time talking about choosing a good topic. Without a good topic and a well-formulated research question, it is almost impossible to write a clear and organized paper. The resources below will help you generate ideas and formulate precise questions.

"How to Select a Research Topic" (Univ. of Michigan-Flint)

This resource is designed for college students who are struggling to come up with an appropriate topic. A student who uses this resource and still feels unsure about his or her topic should consult the course instructor for further personalized assistance.

"25 Interesting Research Paper Topics to Get You Started" (Kibin)

This resource, which is probably most appropriate for high school students, provides a list of specific topics to help get students started. It is broken into subsections, such as "paper topics on local issues."

"Writing a Good Research Question" (Grand Canyon University)

This introduction to research questions includes some embedded videos, as well as links to scholarly articles on research questions. This resource would be most appropriate for teachers who are planning lessons on research paper fundamentals.

"How to Write a Research Question the Right Way" (Kibin)

This student-focused resource provides more detail on writing research questions. The language is accessible, and there are embedded videos and examples of good and bad questions.

It is important to have a rough hypothesis or thesis in mind at the beginning of the research process. People who have a sense of what they want to say will have an easier time sorting through scholarly sources and other information. The key, of course, is not to become too wedded to the draft hypothesis or thesis. Just about every working thesis gets changed during the research process.

CrashCourse Video: "Sociology Research Methods" (YouTube)

Although this video is tailored to sociology students, it is applicable to students in a variety of social science disciplines. This video does a good job demonstrating the connection between the brainstorming that goes into selecting a research question and the formulation of a working hypothesis.

"How to Write a Thesis Statement for an Analytical Essay" (YouTube)

Students writing analytical essays will not develop the same type of working hypothesis as students who are writing research papers in other disciplines. For these students, developing the working thesis may happen as a part of the rough draft (see the relevant section below). 

"Research Hypothesis" (Oakland Univ.)

This resource provides some examples of hypotheses in social science disciplines like Political Science and Criminal Justice. These sample hypotheses may also be useful for students in other soft social sciences and humanities disciplines like History.

When grading a research paper, instructors look for a consistent methodology. This section will help you understand different methodological approaches used in research papers. Students will get the most out of these resources if they use them to help prepare for conversations with teachers or discussions in class.

"Types of Research Designs" (USC)

A "research design," used for complex papers, is related to the paper's method. This resource contains introductions to a variety of popular research designs in the social sciences. Although it is not the most intuitive site to read, the information here is very valuable. 

"Major Research Methods" (YouTube)

Although this video is a bit on the dry side, it provides a comprehensive overview of the major research methodologies in a format that might be more accessible to students who have struggled with textbooks or other written resources.

"Humanities Research Strategies" (USC)

This is a portal where students can learn about four methodological approaches for humanities papers: Historical Methodologies, Textual Criticism, Conceptual Analysis, and the Synoptic method.

"Selected Major Social Science Research Methods: Overview" (National Academies Press)

This appendix from the book  Using Science as Evidence in Public Policy , printed by National Academies Press, introduces some methods used in social science papers.

"Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper: 6. The Methodology" (USC)

This resource from the University of Southern California's library contains tips for writing a methodology section in a research paper.

How to Determine the Best Methodology for You

Anyone who is new to writing research papers should be sure to select a method in consultation with their instructor. These resources can be used to help prepare for that discussion. They may also be used on their own by more advanced students.

"Choosing Appropriate Research Methodologies" (Palgrave Study Skills)

This friendly and approachable resource from Palgrave Macmillan can be used by students who are just starting to think about appropriate methodologies.

"How to Choose Your Research Methods" (NFER (UK))

This is another approachable resource students can use to help narrow down the most appropriate methods for their research projects.

The resources in this section introduce the process of gathering scholarly sources and collecting evidence. You'll find a range of material here, from introductory guides to advanced explications best suited to college students. Please consult the LitCharts  How to Do Academic Research guide for a more comprehensive list of resources devoted to finding scholarly literature.

Google Scholar

Students who have access to library websites with detailed research guides should start there, but people who do not have access to those resources can begin their search for secondary literature here.

"Gathering Appropriate Information" (Texas Gateway)

This resource from the Texas Gateway for online resources introduces students to the research process, and contains interactive exercises. The level of complexity is suitable for middle school, high school, and introductory college classrooms.

"An Overview of Quantitative and Qualitative Data Collection Methods" (NSF)

This PDF from the National Science Foundation goes into detail about best practices and pitfalls in data collection across multiple types of methodologies.

"Social Science Methods for Data Collection and Analysis" (Swiss FIT)

This resource is appropriate for advanced undergraduates or teachers looking to create lessons on research design and data collection. It covers techniques for gathering data via interviews, observations, and other methods.

"Collecting Data by In-depth Interviewing" (Leeds Univ.)

This resource contains enough information about conducting interviews to make it useful for teachers who want to create a lesson plan, but is also accessible enough for college juniors or seniors to make use of it on their own.

There is no "one size fits all" outlining technique. Some students might devote all their energy and attention to the outline in order to avoid the paper. Other students may benefit from being made to sit down and organize their thoughts into a lengthy sentence outline. The resources in this section include strategies and templates for multiple types of outlines. 

"Topic vs. Sentence Outlines" (UC Berkeley)

This resource introduces two basic approaches to outlining: the shorter topic-based approach, and the longer, more detailed sentence-based approach. This resource also contains videos on how to develop paper paragraphs from the sentence-based outline.

"Types of Outlines and Samples" (Purdue OWL)

The Purdue Online Writing Lab's guide is a slightly less detailed discussion of different types of outlines. It contains several sample outlines.

"Writing An Outline" (Austin C.C.)

This resource from a community college contains sample outlines from an American history class that students can use as models.

"How to Structure an Outline for a College Paper" (YouTube)

This brief (sub-2 minute) video from the ExpertVillage YouTube channel provides a model of outline writing for students who are struggling with the idea.

"Outlining" (Harvard)

This is a good resource to consult after completing a draft outline. It offers suggestions for making sure your outline avoids things like unnecessary repetition.

As with outlines, rough drafts can take on many different forms. These resources introduce teachers and students to the various approaches to writing a rough draft. This section also includes resources that will help you cite your sources appropriately according to the MLA, Chicago, and APA style manuals.

"Creating a Rough Draft for a Research Paper" (Univ. of Minnesota)

This resource is useful for teachers in particular, as it provides some suggested exercises to help students with writing a basic rough draft. 

Rough Draft Assignment (Duke of Definition)

This sample assignment, with a brief list of tips, was developed by a high school teacher who runs a very successful and well-reviewed page of educational resources.

"Creating the First Draft of Your Research Paper" (Concordia Univ.)

This resource will be helpful for perfectionists or procrastinators, as it opens by discussing the problem of avoiding writing. It also provides a short list of suggestions meant to get students writing.

Using Proper Citations

There is no such thing as a rough draft of a scholarly citation. These links to the three major citation guides will ensure that your citations follow the correct format. Please consult the LitCharts How to Cite Your Sources guide for more resources.

Chicago Manual of Style Citation Guide

Some call  The Chicago Manual of Style , which was first published in 1906, "the editors' Bible." The manual is now in its 17th edition, and is popular in the social sciences, historical journals, and some other fields in the humanities.

APA Citation Guide

According to the American Psychological Association, this guide was developed to aid reading comprehension, clarity of communication, and to reduce bias in language in the social and behavioral sciences. Its first full edition was published in 1952, and it is now in its sixth edition.

MLA Citation Guide

The Modern Language Association style is used most commonly within the liberal arts and humanities. The  MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing  was first published in 1985 and (as of 2008) is in its third edition.

Any professional scholar will tell you that the best research papers are made in the revision stage. No matter how strong your research question or working thesis, it is not possible to write a truly outstanding paper without devoting energy to revision. These resources provide examples of revision exercises for the classroom, as well as tips for students working independently.

"The Art of Revision" (Univ. of Arizona)

This resource provides a wealth of information and suggestions for both students and teachers. There is a list of suggested exercises that teachers might use in class, along with a revision checklist that is useful for teachers and students alike.

"Script for Workshop on Revision" (Vanderbilt University)

Vanderbilt's guide for leading a 50-minute revision workshop can serve as a model for teachers who wish to guide students through the revision process during classtime. 

"Revising Your Paper" (Univ. of Washington)

This detailed handout was designed for students who are beginning the revision process. It discusses different approaches and methods for revision, and also includes a detailed list of things students should look for while they revise.

"Revising Drafts" (UNC Writing Center)

This resource is designed for students and suggests things to look for during the revision process. It provides steps for the process and has a FAQ for students who have questions about why it is important to revise.

Conferencing with Writing Tutors and Instructors

No writer is so good that he or she can't benefit from meeting with instructors or peer tutors. These resources from university writing, learning, and communication centers provide suggestions for how to get the most out of these one-on-one meetings.

"Getting Feedback" (UNC Writing Center)

This very helpful resource talks about how to ask for feedback during the entire writing process. It contains possible questions that students might ask when developing an outline, during the revision process, and after the final draft has been graded.

"Prepare for Your Tutoring Session" (Otis College of Art and Design)

This guide from a university's student learning center contains a lot of helpful tips for getting the most out of working with a writing tutor.

"The Importance of Asking Your Professor" (Univ. of Waterloo)

This article from the university's Writing and Communication Centre's blog contains some suggestions for how and when to get help from professors and Teaching Assistants.

Once you've revised your first draft, you're well on your way to handing in a polished paper. These resources—each of them produced by writing professionals at colleges and universities—outline the steps required in order to produce a final draft. You'll find proofreading tips and checklists in text and video form.

"Developing a Final Draft of a Research Paper" (Univ. of Minnesota)

While this resource contains suggestions for revision, it also features a couple of helpful checklists for the last stages of completing a final draft.

Basic Final Draft Tips and Checklist (Univ. of Maryland-University College)

This short and accessible resource, part of UMUC's very thorough online guide to writing and research, contains a very basic checklist for students who are getting ready to turn in their final drafts.

Final Draft Checklist (Everett C.C.)

This is another accessible final draft checklist, appropriate for both high school and college students. It suggests reading your essay aloud at least once.

"How to Proofread Your Final Draft" (YouTube)

This video (approximately 5 minutes), produced by Eastern Washington University, gives students tips on proofreading final drafts.

"Proofreading Tips" (Georgia Southern-Armstrong)

This guide will help students learn how to spot common errors in their papers. It suggests focusing on content and editing for grammar and mechanics.

This final set of resources is intended specifically for high school and college instructors. It provides links to unit plans and classroom exercises that can help improve students' research and writing skills. You'll find resources that give an overview of the process, along with activities that focus on how to begin and how to carry out research. 

"Research Paper Complete Resources Pack" (Teachers Pay Teachers)

This packet of assignments, rubrics, and other resources is designed for high school students. The resources in this packet are aligned to Common Core standards.

"Research Paper—Complete Unit" (Teachers Pay Teachers)

This packet of assignments, notes, PowerPoints, and other resources has a 4/4 rating with over 700 ratings. It is designed for high school teachers, but might also be useful to college instructors who work with freshmen.

"Teaching Students to Write Good Papers" (Yale)

This resource from Yale's Center for Teaching and Learning is designed for college instructors, and it includes links to appropriate activities and exercises.

"Research Paper Writing: An Overview" (CUNY Brooklyn)

CUNY Brooklyn offers this complete lesson plan for introducing students to research papers. It includes an accompanying set of PowerPoint slides.

"Lesson Plan: How to Begin Writing a Research Paper" (San Jose State Univ.)

This lesson plan is designed for students in the health sciences, so teachers will have to modify it for their own needs. It includes a breakdown of the brainstorming, topic selection, and research question process. 

"Quantitative Techniques for Social Science Research" (Univ. of Pittsburgh)

This is a set of PowerPoint slides that can be used to introduce students to a variety of quantitative methods used in the social sciences.

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Home » Library » Paper sizes

Paper sizes

This list of the common American and European paper sizes includes the ISO standards, which are used globally. All dimensions are specified in inches, millimeters as well as PostScript points (1/72 inch, always rounded off). The overview covers:

• ISO page sizes – The ISO A series is the most frequently used page measurement standard. It includes the DIN A4 format. The ISO B sizes are used for poster printing while ISO C is meant for envelopes. The SRA standard defines press sheet sizes and is used in the printing industry.
• American paper size dimensions – such as ‘Letter’, ‘Legal’ and the ANSI series.
• English sheet sizes – with a focus on formats for writing paper and book printing .

Newspaper sizes

Iso a paper sizes.

The A-series consists of a logical set of paper sizes that are defined by the ISO 216 standard. The largest size ( A0 ) measures one square meter. The height/width ratio remains constant (1:1.41) for all sizes. This means you get the A1 size by folding an A0 paper in two along its shortest side. Then fold the A1 size in two to get an A2 size paper, and so on… A-sizes are used to define the finished paper size in commercial printing: A4 is for office documents, A5 is for notepads and A6 is for postcards.

This drawing illustrates the principle behind the ISO A series:

ISO B paper sizes

The same logic from the A-sizes also applies for the B-series, except here the starting point was the dimension of one of the sides, which starts at 1 meter. B-sizes are often used for posters.

ISO C paper sizes

C-sizes are used for envelopes to match the A-series paper. I have omitted unrealistic sizes like C0 (imagine an envelope measuring 917 by 1297 millimeters).

ISO D paper sizes

I have no idea what D-sizes are used for but the standard is there so it should be mentioned.

ISO RA & SRA paper sizes

These oversized papersizes are used by printers. The dimensions in millimetres are rounded to the nearest value.

American paper sizes

The US and Canada do not use the international standards but instead rely on the paper sizes below. The ANSI standard was added in 1995 to create a set of sizes that are based on shared dimensions. It lacks however the consistent aspect ratio of the ISO A-series.

English paper sizes (writing papers)

The English nowadays use the A-sizes for office and general use. I have no idea whether many of these definitions are still in use today. Imperial and half-imperial still seem to be widely used by artists.

UK metric book printing sizes

For books A-sizes often aren’t used because A4 is too large and A5 too small. Metric Royal Octavo and Metric Crown Quarto are 2 frequently used sizes that are more comfortable to hold and read.

The dimensions of newspaper pages are not that strictly defined, so the average or most frequently used size is mentioned.

Other sources of information

There are a number of other web sites that list paper sizes and their use. Check them out if you need a second opinion 🙂

• Papersizes.org

98 thoughts on “ Paper sizes ”

I feel like a dolt. But I love discovering conversations about small things that I may have taken for granted, never before aware of the depth and complexity, and history(!) they involve. I have note pads in many sizes and now I’ll go through them and measure them to see if I can assign them proper names. They are not all from the USA. I have some European and Asian (India and Japan). It’s the paper itself that has been my interest. Now my interest has been multiplied. Thank you for the site, and thanks to your many readers for their comments.

Wonderfully nerdy, thank you. I have printed sheet music from several different American publishers that’s 9″ W x 12″ H. It’s the sort of pieces that an amateur or school concert band would play. I don’t see that size in your list and I wonder if that’s some sort of music industry standard.

I am looking for the equivalent of 8 3/8 in x 10 7/8 in (213 mm x 276mm). What’s the name of the paper with this size?

Here’s some info (for US readers) that might save them some frustration.

Until recently it wasn’t that hard to find 3-hole punched half-letter/statement/note-size paper in both office supply stores and places like Walmart and Target. It was a convenient size – not as bulky as standard letter size paper – but still large enough to hold a reasonable amount of notes. Finally the paper was punched and decent binders were affordable so it was easy to keep the information up-to-date. I’ve used plenty of spiral-bound notebooks of the same size but one of the aggrevations is that you can’t insert pages or move them around. So they get ‘fuzzy’ with all of the tabs on the pages, and/or it starts looking really lame because I’ve ripped out so many pages of outdated information.

There were 6-ring binders with A5 paper but they were part of expensive day planner kits. (There’s also 7-hole punched paper that works with either but it’s hder to find.)

However for some reason a few years ago the half-legal paper started disappearing, then the binders and other things. It’s now gone entirely from Target (at least locally), and I think Walmart has also either fully dropped it or you can only get small packs of ruled paper for $$$. The local Staples still has binders and separators but no paper.

I’ve looked for modest A5 binders, 3- or 6-ring, but they still seem to be focused on fancier day planners than utilitarian notebooks. Note the current half-legal binders at Staples aren’t exactly cheap – they’re around $10 – but that’s a lot less than the 6-ring binders and don’t have unwanted extras like a cloth cover and strap. I just want something where I can keep my paper notes someplace convenient and in something that may not be ideal conditions. Otherwise I would just keep my notes on my ipad.

That said… you can still find half-letter paper on Amazon. Lined or unlined, 3-hole punched or not.

But now the fun bit….

One of the reasons I use a laser printer is that the pages don’t smear when they get wet. They can also print unusual sizes. With my last printer I would routinely print 3×5″ cards, but with my current printer I can’t print below 4×6″ cards.

A lot of my notes fall into a category where I’m essentially filling out a form. It’s a pretty simple process where I can print out some blank forms that I complete by hand as necessary, and then re-print the completed forms for future reference.

Fine… but either my printer or Libre Office (or both) have quietly had an update such that they no longer handle half-letter size. I can still put the paper in the software and/or printer insist on rescaling what’s printed. (I haven’t tried printing to PDF and then printing that – and I’m not even sure that would work.)

Half-letter and A5 paper are almost the same size – they’re close enough that I can put the A5 paper in the half-letter binder. But you have to check this on a case-by-case basis – the paper may brush against the tab you push to ppen the rings, or might extend a little too far to the sides.

Maybe this will all shake out in a few years – we’ll be able to get inexpensive but decent binders etc. for A5 paper, using either 3- or 6-hole punches – but for now it’s something to keep in mind if you want to create notebooks this size.

Why isn’t there a standard book size based on 8.5 x 14, folded to 8.5 x 7 for 4 pages (front and back)? Home printing is crazy difficult because it’s so hard to find quality printer paper sized to fit a home printer and to find printers that will print on standard sizes and even more difficult to find equipment reasonably priced to cut large sheets designed for large market printers down to standard book sizes.

It’s called Legal Size paper (8.5×14). I use it for exactly the same thing. Very useful.

Thank you for this information, I am a paper conservator and it is really useful to know sizes and names of paper. Sam

I am looking for 5 1/2 X 8 1/2 or the equlvalent of and preferably 3 hole punched. Have any idea where I can find that?

The only paper that size with 3 hole punch that I have been able to find is already lined or printed sets, and they cost more than I am willing to pay. I buy a ream of 8.5 x 11 and have it cut in half at the store. They will usually do this for a small fee (like $1). Some stores will punch it as well, but most are not equipped to 3-hole punch paper that size. I usually do it myself. It’s effort, but I get exactly what I want for far less than I would have to pay for almost what I want.

Found on Amazon…both lined and unlined, 3 hole punched. EZPZ

HELP! I need to find a source for a paper tray/organizer (preferably stackable) for A2-sized paper. I have seen these in archives and historical societies where they have trays of maps printed on large sized paper, but I have been unable to find such a product anywhere.

Why humans complicate everything, like if using a different size or thickness of paper will change what is written on it. Funny!

That is an odd point of view because it seems to imply that standardization adds needless complexity. It is actually meant to simplify things and reduce mistakes or misinterpretations.

One standard would be a simplification. All of these different standards complicate things. Having so many different “standards” rather defeats the concept of a standard. What mistake or misinterpretation is avoided by changing the paper size? Are we thinking that the shape or size of the paper is assigned to certain tasks only? Perhaps diplomas on A5 and legal documents on ANSI B? That might make things more efficient for those handling large quantities of paper that have different purposes. But the point that was being made was that the paper size does not alter the meaning of the content. We standardize electronic components and other things. Why not ‘actually’ standardize paper?

Which is the best paper for printing gym exercise posters

That is something that you better discuss with your printer.

this helped a lot ty

Do you have any information on a print size of 11 7/8 by 8 7/8?

where the hell is 20×30 inches?

I did not include any of the older English uncut printing paper sizes in this overview. They indeed include the 20×30 inches Double Crown size.

You mention that you’re not sure what the ISO D sizes are for – they are envelope sizes for the B series, much like C are envelope sizes for A.

hi… i am using html2pdf to convert html to pdf… actually i have a large size of html container like 12x12in (inches). and i have used A4 size for the first time then my html content not showing completely till as per the size (12×12 in) then i have look into your site and i found all paper size here.. thanks for that important info… but now, when i have used A3 size i have found, my all html content inside the pdf file….but there are so much space at the bottom of my contents in pdf… So i want to know… IS there any way to reduce this space from the pdf or any other way to convert html to pdf with manually defined page height and width…

Thanks in Advance.

Hello… can i increase height and width of A4 paper size? Actually i have a div with size of 12×12 inches and i want to create a pdf of it… and i have tried A,B,C and all related paper size. But output is 8.27×11.69 inches… How can i do this.. please help!!!

Thanks in Advance….

You don’t seem to have a problem with a paper size, you struggle with a printer driver or export settings. I can’t help with those.

thank you so much

What is the standard size of books that are published in the rest of the world other than England and the U.S.?

I am writing up a family history that will be printed in Germany and would like to utilize a size that they would be familar with.

They will print any size you want, using a bigger size and cutting it to spec. You should ask about cost per piece.

Don’t forget there is printing on demand, which is s bit more expensive but you do not have to print a big number of books to keep in stock somewhere.

Good post. I be taught something on completely different blogs everyday. It’s going to all the time be stimulating to read content material materials from other writers and comply with just a bit something from their blog.

MY original post on this topic was ‘ Why is it that UK bank statements (and some other official documents), use paper that measures 300mm X 210mm – i.e. just 3mm longer than standard A4? It matters. because it won’t fit in a standard copier feed tray.

… and I thought that size doesn’t matter …

Regarding your observation: American paper sizes lacks the consistent aspect ratio of the ISO A-series. You are absolutely correct!!!

That is because in the decades prior to Personal Computer, the US Standard “Letter” Sizes were for designed for the draftsman: the kind-a guy sitting at the angled desk with the only electrical device in sight would be the light bulb (he EVEN had to manually sharpen his own pencils).

Size A is 8-1/2″ x 11″ inches (how they determined that I do NOT know). After that (B,C,D,etc.) sizes either doubled in width and/or height as needed for drafting (the biggest ones were nick-named bed sheets). At one time I the task of printing out blue prints stored on microfilm embedded in punch cards: I think F is the largest size I remember seeing on a regular basis but I am almost positive that they go larger than that (I mean in the US Standard Letter Sizes). Most of the blue prints stored on microfilm that I saw were of size D or E.

BTW You can add 2 additional US Commercial Standard Paper Sizes (mostly for historical purposes):

#1 Statement size: 8-1/2 by 5.5 (also known as the half sheet) As a kid I always thought that the half-sheet was just a letter size sheet of paper physically torn in half. I recently cleaned out an office that had numerous forms printed in the 1970’s. The forms that were not letter size were statement size (exactly half the size of the Letter-Size sheet of paper 🙂

#2 US Standard Fan-Fold (aka green bar): 14-7/8″ by 11″ – These are/were for the wide pin-feed (teletype / industrial / factory) printers. Just FYI, Tracey

The different sizes for drafting documents in the United States. The ANSI A through E are for engineering drawings. There are a few additional sizes recognized for engineering drawings. ANSI F, which was 28×40 and mainly used for Naval designs, and G (11×22.5 to 11×90), H (28×44 to 28×143), J (34×55 to 34×176), and K (40×55 to 40×143) which are roll length drawings. Architectural drawings are another set of sizes altogether.

I wanted to change Letter to A4, but then I had to choose from a new dropdown: A4 1/4, A4 1/3. What is that?

Width should always be before height. The end.

If you are referring to my post width is before height.

Actually, width should NOT ALWAYS be before height. The grain direction for the leaf (i.e., sheet of paper) is indicated by the first dimension that is stated. Grain direction is important when printing because having the grain direction running parallel to the direction of the spine or spine fold of the content being printed is the desirable condition. This reality of paper grain direction is one of the fundamental, basic essentials in publishing and printing.

I am going to be getting a book printed do you have any suggestions on what size I should set it up for. Will be a small book currently is 91 pages 8.5 x 11(Letter)

We have music printed on 14″ x 10″ paper and then folded. Can anyone tell me what paper size this is and where it can be bought

Why do UK banks and some other ‘official’ bodies print statements on paper that is about 2mm longer than the standard A4? i.e. 210mm X 299mm

What is the percentage increase from A5 to B5 paper size.

Hopefully someone can help?

I have a question… what would be the actual size of an oversize ANSI E? Thanks!

Found this if it helps anyone

http://www.scrivs.co.uk/1/a1-paper-size.html

Do u have any information on how to fold E-size paper to fit in 11X17 binders? Would appreciate it greatly.

the information on this site is quite helpful. I can now comfortly choose a size that is close to what I have in mind. To me, ISO paper sizes remained the standard measuerements. Thanks.

Hey I’ve been told by my boss to print a document in 7.25 x 9.5 inch size.

Does this dimension have a name? Is it a ‘popular’ size?

This is most likely way too late. No it’s not a common one. The paper is the Executive, Monarch

Data is clear and i got a timely help

hi,this site is very useful 4 me.if i get any problem,sorted out by u.thx a lot.

Thanks to your website, we discovered a book we had was size A6. We needed that size to correctly scan the document quickly, without cropping. Adobe Acrobat rotated the pages correctly.

Thanks for your help!

In the UK I use A4 for document originals and print A5 for their booklet equivalent.

What size of .pdf document will allow the US to print a Letter sized original but still print a 1/2 sized booklet.

Any advice would help

Christopher,

If you have not found your answer regarding, “elephant”, I will try to give you one. Elephant is an traditional English Paper & Book size of paper. The basic size is 23″ x 28″ or 584mm x 711cm.

Hi, i am an IT admin/supervisor from middleast it helped me for my thirdparty erp’s

Thanks for Ur Effort Ur Effort Appreciated

sd/mir shaukat ali (indian)

Hi T. Ward,

What is the standard printing size for documents in India? A4, letter, other?

As far as I know it is A4 – which was adopted as the national standard in 1957.

dear sir i am starting a new printing press so i need information reguarding printing pls help me

It is not wise to enter in any business which is unfamiliar.

will you please tell me which type of paper use in laundry dry clinning bill book. what is a quality of paper which goes with keep with cloath as tag to identify customer cloths

Hi I am greatfull to you all, since i m working as a print production supervisor.This chart is very much helpfull to me, Thanks to people on NemLaxmi Pvt. Ltd

Thanks for telling me this we where talking about why the bigger the number the smaller the page size so thanks!

Is it possible to have it sent to my email box

Great job.Very useful and helpful for printers

Chris PrintEdge Ltd, Nigeria

Thanks for informations

Neat … love the comments too … have a look-see at – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size – mentions ‘elephant’ size there.

It is funny for me to read all this comments and questions about paper sizes. For me as German the sizes are crystal clear with our DIN A (Deutsche Industrie Norm) now named ISO for international understanding. I fully agree with Alistair about the ignorance of America in that matter. Sunny regards from Athens, Greece Juliane

Your website is really helpful for the architectural students like me.

Thanks once again

Your listings are very helpful as a Brit, expatriated to USA now back in UK again. I am looking for a UK source for Legal & Letter size hanging files for my US office furniture I brought back. Any ideas? Thanks, Feebs

What a mine of useful information!

Thank you for taking the time to let me have this valuable info. My query was regarding SRA3 which I have had answered admirably, thanks.

It is true then, size is everything, certainly when it relates to paper!

Have a great day!

Excellent! Informative and helpful article. Thanks for the useful, well presented and consise info.

Anyone who’s ungratefully pedantic enough to be upset or offended by it, please supply dimensions of the cavity you’d like me to insert the paper into and I’ll duly oblige. American, ISO or English measurements accepted! For some on here, I’ll prepare the A0 heavyweight stock.

Have a nice day!

i actually wanted to know the names of the various types papers used in printing industry. it seems u dont have the info.

I have a ledger I purchased in Oxford in 1969 the size of which was described as “elephant folio”. Does this size still pertain?

Do you have a pdf version of this info..

Any paper with size 6.5in x 9 in.?

thanks so much

The “D0” is an exact match to the HP plotter that I use.

Can anyone help with , L & L2 ? Thanks

This is most likely very too late for you. However, I’m trying to learn the difference between Hagaki, Wallet, Passport, l, & 2L for a personal photo collage project I’m working on. The L is 3 1/2 x 5 The 2L is 5×7.01 like a post card w/ a borderless photo.

Duncan, this is most likely way too late for your answer. I’m working on a kind of a collage photo like project. I’m throwing together a bunch of different pics together on an 8.5×11 photo paper (A Letter). During tips of how to put multi pics on 8.5×11 , it gave a break down of how many different size pics can fit on this size. I ran into the Passport, Wallet, Hagaki, L, & 2L. I’ve been googling the difference between all these sorts of papers. The 2L (or 5R) is 5×7.01 like a post card borderless photo. The L (3R) is 3.5×5 of Photographic Paper.

Thanks a lot. I found it very useful .Anytime i need help of papersize I refer it.

Hi, I am trying to find out what paper size for a publication that folds over and is (when folded) letter size or 8.5×11? Do you know what software and printers to use for this size paper?

If you want to simply fold a page along the shortest side to end up with a letter size document, you need to use a tabloid size page (11×17″). If it is a more complex folding scheme you are after, such as a gatefold or one or two folding panels, then each panel needs to be smaller to compensate for inaccuracies in folding and cutting. If this isn’t done the edge of the paper will crease when the piece is folded. I think panels that are 1/16″ of an inch less wide is the general recommendation but it is better to consult with your printer. The regular layout applications like Adobe InDesign, QuarkXpress,… are used for designing folded documents. Typically thin lines in the bleed area indicate where the document should be folded.

Great list thanks.

Can you help with paper sizes for music. I believe they are quite different.

Sorry, I have no experience with paper sizes for music.

Is there a name or number for 6″ x 3.75″ paper, which is a personal check size? I’d like to think my computer/printer has been programmed with that size but I’m not sure what to ask for.

hi, I Work as Programmer in Paper Industry In India at NemLaxmi Pvt. Ltd. This article proves to be helpful to me while studing different paper sizes while preparing coding of finished product for making every product unique. Thanks.

WHat is a livre demi-poche? And what size is it? Thanks

I cannot find a definition for it either. A ‘livre de poche’ is a pocketbook, typically 130×190 mm. ‘Demi-poche’ could be a half-size version but I cannot find any dimensions for it. I’ll ask one of my French colleagues, maybe they know.

It has taken me 70 years to get curious enough about sizes of paper and envelopes and paper. Your site has fulfilled that curiosity most admirably! Thank you.

Your information is ok. but can get a bit more stuff cause i still did not find wat i was looking for. I was looking for popular paper sizes but didnt get it.

I think it is difficult to list how popular certain paper sizes are. Obviously this depends on the intended usage but there are also big regional differences. Most of Europe sticks to ‘A4’ for letters and general office printing but you won’t find this size much in the US. If anyone has a list, please post a link!

Thank you for the information found on this site. It has been a big help – I have printed it out and put it next to our copier for the staff to see. Knowing the exact sizes of the various papers is a great help.

Whar are the avery size Crds Ib Greeting cards

I do not mind the size issue US and others. To each there own place and size. But I do mind not have copiers with preprogramed enlarge and reduction setting for standards. The common US are list or the common ISO are listed but why not have ISO to US and US to ISO the V and H ratios could be preset and ready for use.

While I agree there really is some logic behind the US paper sizes I suggest the gentleman taking umbrage be a little more sensitive to the US approach to ignoring international standards in this and many related areas.

The US continues to use measurement basis that the rest of the world largely abandoned (except for specific special cases) a while ago. Such changes are obviously not trivial for a population to embrace…but people do quickly adapt. His example of foolscap is a case in point, it is an archaic size and very difficult to find in the UK…the ISO A sizes having been adopted years ago.

It is public record that the US was the last major player to accept SI as legal remarkably recently, and remains the last to not require it on packaging and the like.

The US even insists on a different system of maritime navigation marks whilst everyone else not dominated by big brother uses a different internationally agreed approach.

It should therefore be no surprise if the raison d’etre behind the US approach is less than widely understood outside the US.

I am from the UK but have lived and worked in the US for over decade now. I know from personal experience how unnecessary these differences really are…and a little bit of flippancy in the face of such national arrogance seems totally appropriate to me…even if it was unintentional in this case.

Whoa… tell me about it! Sounds like a genuine paper expert there. Very helpful none the less. Thanks!!

Ouch, I never realized people could be this sensitive about paper sizes. Thanks for the explanation though, which is very informative! I have changed that line of text on the page.

As for this site being a professional site: it isn’t. I see it as my web-enabled notebook. I can only guarantee that visitors get more than what they paid for 🙂 … but I acknowledge that this is no excuse for making mistakes.

Again: thanks for the feedback!

I take issue with your flip comment that there is no apparent logic behind US paper sizes. The American Society for Testing and Materials sets these sizes and they are very logical and easy to remember without resorting to references (see below). Some of these sizes have also picked up synonyms such as “letter” which, I would argue, are no more illogical than British terms such as “foolscap”. A size is the functional equivalent to UK A4 and is 8.5in by 11 inches. As the letters increase the short dimension is doubled. E.g: B size is 17×11 inches (roughly A3 – also called ledger), C size is 17×22 inches, D size is 34×22, and E size (typically a ‘full-size” engineering drawing) is 34×44. Special paper sizes such as executive, legal, etc. are marketing names developed by stationary companies and immortalized by the print drivers installed on your computer. I would have expected more research from a professional printing site.

Wow, what a prick! How’s that for a flip comment?

Good response spoiled by bad spelling : STATIONERY is the word !!

Great summary for the “non-initiated” – thanks!

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A number of learning institutions are quite particular with their requirements regarding research paper sizes and formats. This is to ensure uniformity and consistency not just in its content but writers should also use the right orientation, margin size, and layout.

Letter Size

What paper size should a research paper be?

What is the structure of a research paper, what is the layout of a research paper, what is the average length of a research paper, what are the dimensions of a research paper, what is the proper margin for a research paper, what font size is used for a research paper, how long is a mini-research paper, what is the spacing for a research paper, what font style is best for a research paper, what is the minimum page of a research paper, how many pages should a research paper have, what is an apa format, how long should the introduction section be in a research paper, more in documents, orientation speech template by teacher, research essay outline template, reflective essay template, interview essay in apa documentation style template, job interview essay report with introduction template, professional student interview essay template, orientation speech, closing ceremony speech template for event, business comparative research template, comparative market research template.

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Specify a Custom Paper Size - PRO-1000

Description.

This article shows how to specify a custom paper size when printing with the imagePROGRAF PRO-1000.

Select your operating system below for information on specifying custom paper sizes.

You can print on paper sizes not listed in the  Page Size  drop-down menu (8" x 10" for example) by creating custom sizes in inches or millimeters.

• Open the printer driver setup window .
• Select the  Paper Source  under the  Main  tab.
• Click the  Page Setup  tab.

The  Custom Paper Size  dialog box opens.

Specify whether to use millimeters (mm) or inches (in.).

Specify the  Paper Size  by entering the values ( Width  and  Height ).

• Click  OK .
• Click  OK  in the  Page Setup  tab.
• Click  Print  in the  Print  dialog box. Printing will now begin.

After opening the item that you want to print, open the  Print  dialog by selecting  Print...  from the  File  menu.

You'll see the paper size currently selected. Click this, then select  Manage Custom Sizes... .

A new dialog will appear. Click the plus (+) sign to add a new custom size.

Specify the  Width  and  Height  for the size of the paper you're using. Also, after clicking the plus (+) sign in step 3, you'll see  Untitled  appear as the name of the custom size. Click  Untitled  to specify a name for your custom size. After specifying the name and size, click  OK .

- Minimum size: 3.50 x 5.00 inches (89.0 x 127.0 mm)

- Maximum size: 17.00 x 47.24 inches (432.0 x 1200.0 mm)  (This size requires  firmware version 3.010  or later)

 Manual feed tray

- Minimum size: 8.00 x 10.00 inches (203.2 x 254.0 mm)

Your new custom size will be selected. You can specify this size when printing in the future.

For support and service options, sign into (or create) your Canon Account from the link below. My Canon Account

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The state of AI in early 2024: Gen AI adoption spikes and starts to generate value

If 2023 was the year the world discovered generative AI (gen AI) , 2024 is the year organizations truly began using—and deriving business value from—this new technology. In the latest McKinsey Global Survey  on AI, 65 percent of respondents report that their organizations are regularly using gen AI, nearly double the percentage from our previous survey just ten months ago. Respondents’ expectations for gen AI’s impact remain as high as they were last year , with three-quarters predicting that gen AI will lead to significant or disruptive change in their industries in the years ahead.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Alex Singla , Alexander Sukharevsky , Lareina Yee , and Michael Chui , with Bryce Hall , representing views from QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and McKinsey Digital.

Organizations are already seeing material benefits from gen AI use, reporting both cost decreases and revenue jumps in the business units deploying the technology. The survey also provides insights into the kinds of risks presented by gen AI—most notably, inaccuracy—as well as the emerging practices of top performers to mitigate those challenges and capture value.

AI adoption surges

Interest in generative AI has also brightened the spotlight on a broader set of AI capabilities. For the past six years, AI adoption by respondents’ organizations has hovered at about 50 percent. This year, the survey finds that adoption has jumped to 72 percent (Exhibit 1). And the interest is truly global in scope. Our 2023 survey found that AI adoption did not reach 66 percent in any region; however, this year more than two-thirds of respondents in nearly every region say their organizations are using AI. 1 Organizations based in Central and South America are the exception, with 58 percent of respondents working for organizations based in Central and South America reporting AI adoption. Looking by industry, the biggest increase in adoption can be found in professional services. 2 Includes respondents working for organizations focused on human resources, legal services, management consulting, market research, R&D, tax preparation, and training.

Also, responses suggest that companies are now using AI in more parts of the business. Half of respondents say their organizations have adopted AI in two or more business functions, up from less than a third of respondents in 2023 (Exhibit 2).

Gen AI adoption is most common in the functions where it can create the most value

Most respondents now report that their organizations—and they as individuals—are using gen AI. Sixty-five percent of respondents say their organizations are regularly using gen AI in at least one business function, up from one-third last year. The average organization using gen AI is doing so in two functions, most often in marketing and sales and in product and service development—two functions in which previous research  determined that gen AI adoption could generate the most value 3 “ The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier ,” McKinsey, June 14, 2023. —as well as in IT (Exhibit 3). The biggest increase from 2023 is found in marketing and sales, where reported adoption has more than doubled. Yet across functions, only two use cases, both within marketing and sales, are reported by 15 percent or more of respondents.

Gen AI also is weaving its way into respondents’ personal lives. Compared with 2023, respondents are much more likely to be using gen AI at work and even more likely to be using gen AI both at work and in their personal lives (Exhibit 4). The survey finds upticks in gen AI use across all regions, with the largest increases in Asia–Pacific and Greater China. Respondents at the highest seniority levels, meanwhile, show larger jumps in the use of gen Al tools for work and outside of work compared with their midlevel-management peers. Looking at specific industries, respondents working in energy and materials and in professional services report the largest increase in gen AI use.

Investments in gen AI and analytical AI are beginning to create value

The latest survey also shows how different industries are budgeting for gen AI. Responses suggest that, in many industries, organizations are about equally as likely to be investing more than 5 percent of their digital budgets in gen AI as they are in nongenerative, analytical-AI solutions (Exhibit 5). Yet in most industries, larger shares of respondents report that their organizations spend more than 20 percent on analytical AI than on gen AI. Looking ahead, most respondents—67 percent—expect their organizations to invest more in AI over the next three years.

Where are those investments paying off? For the first time, our latest survey explored the value created by gen AI use by business function. The function in which the largest share of respondents report seeing cost decreases is human resources. Respondents most commonly report meaningful revenue increases (of more than 5 percent) in supply chain and inventory management (Exhibit 6). For analytical AI, respondents most often report seeing cost benefits in service operations—in line with what we found last year —as well as meaningful revenue increases from AI use in marketing and sales.

Inaccuracy: The most recognized and experienced risk of gen AI use

As businesses begin to see the benefits of gen AI, they’re also recognizing the diverse risks associated with the technology. These can range from data management risks such as data privacy, bias, or intellectual property (IP) infringement to model management risks, which tend to focus on inaccurate output or lack of explainability. A third big risk category is security and incorrect use.

Respondents to the latest survey are more likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider inaccuracy and IP infringement to be relevant to their use of gen AI, and about half continue to view cybersecurity as a risk (Exhibit 7).

Conversely, respondents are less likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider workforce and labor displacement to be relevant risks and are not increasing efforts to mitigate them.

In fact, inaccuracy— which can affect use cases across the gen AI value chain , ranging from customer journeys and summarization to coding and creative content—is the only risk that respondents are significantly more likely than last year to say their organizations are actively working to mitigate.

Some organizations have already experienced negative consequences from the use of gen AI, with 44 percent of respondents saying their organizations have experienced at least one consequence (Exhibit 8). Respondents most often report inaccuracy as a risk that has affected their organizations, followed by cybersecurity and explainability.

Our previous research has found that there are several elements of governance that can help in scaling gen AI use responsibly, yet few respondents report having these risk-related practices in place. 4 “ Implementing generative AI with speed and safety ,” McKinsey Quarterly , March 13, 2024. For example, just 18 percent say their organizations have an enterprise-wide council or board with the authority to make decisions involving responsible AI governance, and only one-third say gen AI risk awareness and risk mitigation controls are required skill sets for technical talent.

Bringing gen AI capabilities to bear

The latest survey also sought to understand how, and how quickly, organizations are deploying these new gen AI tools. We have found three archetypes for implementing gen AI solutions : takers use off-the-shelf, publicly available solutions; shapers customize those tools with proprietary data and systems; and makers develop their own foundation models from scratch. 5 “ Technology’s generational moment with generative AI: A CIO and CTO guide ,” McKinsey, July 11, 2023. Across most industries, the survey results suggest that organizations are finding off-the-shelf offerings applicable to their business needs—though many are pursuing opportunities to customize models or even develop their own (Exhibit 9). About half of reported gen AI uses within respondents’ business functions are utilizing off-the-shelf, publicly available models or tools, with little or no customization. Respondents in energy and materials, technology, and media and telecommunications are more likely to report significant customization or tuning of publicly available models or developing their own proprietary models to address specific business needs.

Respondents most often report that their organizations required one to four months from the start of a project to put gen AI into production, though the time it takes varies by business function (Exhibit 10). It also depends upon the approach for acquiring those capabilities. Not surprisingly, reported uses of highly customized or proprietary models are 1.5 times more likely than off-the-shelf, publicly available models to take five months or more to implement.

Gen AI high performers are excelling despite facing challenges

Gen AI is a new technology, and organizations are still early in the journey of pursuing its opportunities and scaling it across functions. So it’s little surprise that only a small subset of respondents (46 out of 876) report that a meaningful share of their organizations’ EBIT can be attributed to their deployment of gen AI. Still, these gen AI leaders are worth examining closely. These, after all, are the early movers, who already attribute more than 10 percent of their organizations’ EBIT to their use of gen AI. Forty-two percent of these high performers say more than 20 percent of their EBIT is attributable to their use of nongenerative, analytical AI, and they span industries and regions—though most are at organizations with less than $1 billion in annual revenue. The AI-related practices at these organizations can offer guidance to those looking to create value from gen AI adoption at their own organizations.

To start, gen AI high performers are using gen AI in more business functions—an average of three functions, while others average two. They, like other organizations, are most likely to use gen AI in marketing and sales and product or service development, but they’re much more likely than others to use gen AI solutions in risk, legal, and compliance; in strategy and corporate finance; and in supply chain and inventory management. They’re more than three times as likely as others to be using gen AI in activities ranging from processing of accounting documents and risk assessment to R&D testing and pricing and promotions. While, overall, about half of reported gen AI applications within business functions are utilizing publicly available models or tools, gen AI high performers are less likely to use those off-the-shelf options than to either implement significantly customized versions of those tools or to develop their own proprietary foundation models.

What else are these high performers doing differently? For one thing, they are paying more attention to gen-AI-related risks. Perhaps because they are further along on their journeys, they are more likely than others to say their organizations have experienced every negative consequence from gen AI we asked about, from cybersecurity and personal privacy to explainability and IP infringement. Given that, they are more likely than others to report that their organizations consider those risks, as well as regulatory compliance, environmental impacts, and political stability, to be relevant to their gen AI use, and they say they take steps to mitigate more risks than others do.

Gen AI high performers are also much more likely to say their organizations follow a set of risk-related best practices (Exhibit 11). For example, they are nearly twice as likely as others to involve the legal function and embed risk reviews early on in the development of gen AI solutions—that is, to “ shift left .” They’re also much more likely than others to employ a wide range of other best practices, from strategy-related practices to those related to scaling.

In addition to experiencing the risks of gen AI adoption, high performers have encountered other challenges that can serve as warnings to others (Exhibit 12). Seventy percent say they have experienced difficulties with data, including defining processes for data governance, developing the ability to quickly integrate data into AI models, and an insufficient amount of training data, highlighting the essential role that data play in capturing value. High performers are also more likely than others to report experiencing challenges with their operating models, such as implementing agile ways of working and effective sprint performance management.

About the research

The online survey was in the field from February 22 to March 5, 2024, and garnered responses from 1,363 participants representing the full range of regions, industries, company sizes, functional specialties, and tenures. Of those respondents, 981 said their organizations had adopted AI in at least one business function, and 878 said their organizations were regularly using gen AI in at least one function. To adjust for differences in response rates, the data are weighted by the contribution of each respondent’s nation to global GDP.

Alex Singla and Alexander Sukharevsky  are global coleaders of QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and senior partners in McKinsey’s Chicago and London offices, respectively; Lareina Yee  is a senior partner in the Bay Area office, where Michael Chui , a McKinsey Global Institute partner, is a partner; and Bryce Hall  is an associate partner in the Washington, DC, office.

They wish to thank Kaitlin Noe, Larry Kanter, Mallika Jhamb, and Shinjini Srivastava for their contributions to this work.

This article was edited by Heather Hanselman, a senior editor in McKinsey’s Atlanta office.

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• Published: 17 October 2023

The impact of founder personalities on startup success

• Paul X. McCarthy 1 , 2 ,
• Xian Gong 3 ,
• Fabian Braesemann 4 , 5 ,
• Fabian Stephany 4 , 5 ,
• Marian-Andrei Rizoiu 3 &
• Margaret L. Kern 6  

Scientific Reports volume  13 , Article number:  17200 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Human behaviour
• Information technology

An Author Correction to this article was published on 07 May 2024

This article has been updated

Startup companies solve many of today’s most challenging problems, such as the decarbonisation of the economy or the development of novel life-saving vaccines. Startups are a vital source of innovation, yet the most innovative are also the least likely to survive. The probability of success of startups has been shown to relate to several firm-level factors such as industry, location and the economy of the day. Still, attention has increasingly considered internal factors relating to the firm’s founding team, including their previous experiences and failures, their centrality in a global network of other founders and investors, as well as the team’s size. The effects of founders’ personalities on the success of new ventures are, however, mainly unknown. Here, we show that founder personality traits are a significant feature of a firm’s ultimate success. We draw upon detailed data about the success of a large-scale global sample of startups (n = 21,187). We find that the Big Five personality traits of startup founders across 30 dimensions significantly differ from that of the population at large. Key personality facets that distinguish successful entrepreneurs include a preference for variety, novelty and starting new things (openness to adventure), like being the centre of attention (lower levels of modesty) and being exuberant (higher activity levels). We do not find one ’Founder-type’ personality; instead, six different personality types appear. Our results also demonstrate the benefits of larger, personality-diverse teams in startups, which show an increased likelihood of success. The findings emphasise the role of the diversity of personality types as a novel dimension of team diversity that influences performance and success.

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Introduction.

The success of startups is vital to economic growth and renewal, with a small number of young, high-growth firms creating a disproportionately large share of all new jobs 1 , 2 . Startups create jobs and drive economic growth, and they are also an essential vehicle for solving some of society’s most pressing challenges.

As a poignant example, six centuries ago, the German city of Mainz was abuzz as the birthplace of the world’s first moveable-type press created by Johannes Gutenberg. However, in the early part of this century, it faced several economic challenges, including rising unemployment and a significant and growing municipal debt. Then in 2008, two Turkish immigrants formed the company BioNTech in Mainz with another university research colleague. Together they pioneered new mRNA-based technologies. In 2020, BioNTech partnered with US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to create one of only a handful of vaccines worldwide for Covid-19, saving an estimated six million lives 3 . The economic benefit to Europe and, in particular, the German city where the vaccine was developed has been significant, with windfall tax receipts to the government clearing Mainz’s €1.3bn debt and enabling tax rates to be reduced, attracting other businesses to the region as well as inspiring a whole new generation of startups 4 .

While stories such as the success of BioNTech are often retold and remembered, their success is the exception rather than the rule. The overwhelming majority of startups ultimately fail. One study of 775 startups in Canada that successfully attracted external investment found only 35% were still operating seven years later 5 .

But what determines the success of these ‘lucky few’? When assessing the success factors of startups, especially in the early-stage unproven phase, venture capitalists and other investors offer valuable insights. Three different schools of thought characterise their perspectives: first, supply-side or product investors : those who prioritise investing in firms they consider to have novel and superior products and services, investing in companies with intellectual property such as patents and trademarks. Secondly, demand-side or market-based investors : those who prioritise investing in areas of highest market interest, such as in hot areas of technology like quantum computing or recurrent or emerging large-scale social and economic challenges such as the decarbonisation of the economy. Thirdly, talent investors : those who prioritise the foundation team above the startup’s initial products or what industry or problem it is looking to address.

Investors who adopt the third perspective and prioritise talent often recognise that a good team can overcome many challenges in the lead-up to product-market fit. And while the initial products of a startup may or may not work a successful and well-functioning team has the potential to pivot to new markets and new products, even if the initial ones prove untenable. Not surprisingly, an industry ‘autopsy’ into 101 tech startup failures found 23% were due to not having the right team—the number three cause of failure ahead of running out of cash or not having a product that meets the market need 6 .

Accordingly, early entrepreneurship research was focused on the personality of founders, but the focus shifted away in the mid-1980s onwards towards more environmental factors such as venture capital financing 7 , 8 , 9 , networks 10 , location 11 and due to a range of issues and challenges identified with the early entrepreneurship personality research 12 , 13 . At the turn of the 21st century, some scholars began exploring ways to combine context and personality and reconcile entrepreneurs’ individual traits with features of their environment. In her influential work ’The Sociology of Entrepreneurship’, Patricia H. Thornton 14 discusses two perspectives on entrepreneurship: the supply-side perspective (personality theory) and the demand-side perspective (environmental approach). The supply-side perspective focuses on the individual traits of entrepreneurs. In contrast, the demand-side perspective focuses on the context in which entrepreneurship occurs, with factors such as finance, industry and geography each playing their part. In the past two decades, there has been a revival of interest and research that explores how entrepreneurs’ personality relates to the success of their ventures. This new and growing body of research includes several reviews and meta-studies, which show that personality traits play an important role in both career success and entrepreneurship 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , that there is heterogeneity in definitions and samples used in research on entrepreneurship 16 , 18 , and that founder personality plays an important role in overall startup outcomes 17 , 19 .

Motivated by the pivotal role of the personality of founders on startup success outlined in these recent contributions, we investigate two main research questions:

Which personality features characterise founders?

Do their personalities, particularly the diversity of personality types in founder teams, play a role in startup success?

We aim to understand whether certain founder personalities and their combinations relate to startup success, defined as whether their company has been acquired, acquired another company or listed on a public stock exchange. For the quantitative analysis, we draw on a previously published methodology 20 , which matches people to their ‘ideal’ jobs based on social media-inferred personality traits.

We find that personality traits matter for startup success. In addition to firm-level factors of location, industry and company age, we show that founders’ specific Big Five personality traits, such as adventurousness and openness, are significantly more widespread among successful startups. As we find that companies with multi-founder teams are more likely to succeed, we cluster founders in six different and distinct personality groups to underline the relevance of the complementarity in personality traits among founder teams. Startups with diverse and specific combinations of founder types (e. g., an adventurous ‘Leader’, a conscientious ‘Accomplisher’, and an extroverted ‘Developer’) have significantly higher odds of success.

We organise the rest of this paper as follows. In the Section " Results ", we introduce the data used and the methods applied to relate founders’ psychological traits with their startups’ success. We introduce the natural language processing method to derive individual and team personality characteristics and the clustering technique to identify personality groups. Then, we present the result for multi-variate regression analysis that allows us to relate firm success with external and personality features. Subsequently, the Section " Discussion " mentions limitations and opportunities for future research in this domain. In the Section " Methods ", we describe the data, the variables in use, and the clustering in greater detail. Robustness checks and additional analyses can be found in the Supplementary Information.

Our analysis relies on two datasets. We infer individual personality facets via a previously published methodology 20 from Twitter user profiles. Here, we restrict our analysis to founders with a Crunchbase profile. Crunchbase is the world’s largest directory on startups. It provides information about more than one million companies, primarily focused on funding and investors. A company’s public Crunchbase profile can be considered a digital business card of an early-stage venture. As such, the founding teams tend to provide information about themselves, including their educational background or a link to their Twitter account.

We infer the personality profiles of the founding teams of early-stage ventures from their publicly available Twitter profiles, using the methodology described by Kern et al. 20 . Then, we correlate this information to data from Crunchbase to determine whether particular combinations of personality traits correspond to the success of early-stage ventures. The final dataset used in the success prediction model contains n = 21,187 startup companies (for more details on the data see the Methods section and SI section  A.5 ).

Revisions of Crunchbase as a data source for investigations on a firm and industry level confirm the platform to be a useful and valuable source of data for startups research, as comparisons with other sources at micro-level, e.g., VentureXpert or PwC, also suggest that the platform’s coverage is very comprehensive, especially for start-ups located in the United States 21 . Moreover, aggregate statistics on funding rounds by country and year are quite similar to those produced with other established sources, going to validate the use of Crunchbase as a reliable source in terms of coverage of funded ventures. For instance, Crunchbase covers about the same number of investment rounds in the analogous sectors as collected by the National Venture Capital Association 22 . However, we acknowledge that the data source might suffer from registration latency (a certain delay between the foundation of the company and its actual registration on Crunchbase) and success bias in company status (the likeliness that failed companies decide to delete their profile from the database).

The definition of startup success

The success of startups is uncertain, dependent on many factors and can be measured in various ways. Due to the likelihood of failure in startups, some large-scale studies have looked at which features predict startup survival rates 23 , and others focus on fundraising from external investors at various stages 24 . Success for startups can be measured in multiple ways, such as the amount of external investment attracted, the number of new products shipped or the annual growth in revenue. But sometimes external investments are misguided, revenue growth can be short-lived, and new products may fail to find traction.

Success in a startup is typically staged and can appear in different forms and times. For example, a startup may be seen to be successful when it finds a clear solution to a widely recognised problem, such as developing a successful vaccine. On the other hand, it could be achieving some measure of commercial success, such as rapidly accelerating sales or becoming profitable or at least cash positive. Or it could be reaching an exit for foundation investors via a trade sale, acquisition or listing of its shares for sale on a public stock exchange via an Initial Public Offering (IPO).

For our study, we focused on the startup’s extrinsic success rather than the founders’ intrinsic success per se, as its more visible, objective and measurable. A frequently considered measure of success is the attraction of external investment by venture capitalists 25 . However, this is not in and of itself a good measure of clear, incontrovertible success, particularly for early-stage ventures. This is because it reflects investors’ expectations of a startup’s success potential rather than actual business success. Similarly, we considered other measures like revenue growth 26 , liquidity events 27 , 28 , 29 , profitability 30 and social impact 31 , all of which have benefits as they capture incremental success, but each also comes with operational measurement challenges.

Therefore, we apply the success definition initially introduced by Bonaventura et al. 32 , namely that a startup is acquired, acquires another company or has an initial public offering (IPO). We consider any of these major capital liquidation events as a clear threshold signal that the company has matured from an early-stage venture to becoming or is on its way to becoming a mature company with clear and often significant business growth prospects. Together these three major liquidity events capture the primary forms of exit for external investors (an acquisition or trade sale and an IPO). For companies with a longer autonomous growth runway, acquiring another company marks a similar milestone of scale, maturity and capability.

Using multifactor analysis and a binary classification prediction model of startup success, we looked at many variables together and their relative influence on the probability of the success of startups. We looked at seven categories of factors through three lenses of firm-level factors: (1) location, (2) industry, (3) age of the startup; founder-level factors: (4) number of founders, (5) gender of founders, (6) personality characteristics of founders and; lastly team-level factors: (7) founder-team personality combinations. The model performance and relative impacts on the probability of startup success of each of these categories of founders are illustrated in more detail in section  A.6 of the Supplementary Information (in particular Extended Data Fig.  19 and Extended Data Fig.  20 ). In total, we considered over three hundred variables (n = 323) and their relative significant associations with success.

The personality of founders

Besides product-market, industry, and firm-level factors (see SI section  A.1 ), research suggests that the personalities of founders play a crucial role in startup success 19 . Therefore, we examine the personality characteristics of individual startup founders and teams of founders in relationship to their firm’s success by applying the success definition used by Bonaventura et al. 32 .

Employing established methods 33 , 34 , 35 , we inferred the personality traits across 30 dimensions (Big Five facets) of a large global sample of startup founders. The startup founders cohort was created from a subset of founders from the global startup industry directory Crunchbase, who are also active on the social media platform Twitter.

To measure the personality of the founders, we used the Big Five, a popular model of personality which includes five core traits: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Emotional stability. Each of these traits can be further broken down into thirty distinct facets. Studies have found that the Big Five predict meaningful life outcomes, such as physical and mental health, longevity, social relationships, health-related behaviours, antisocial behaviour, and social contribution, at levels on par with intelligence and socioeconomic status 36 Using machine learning to infer personality traits by analysing the use of language and activity on social media has been shown to be more accurate than predictions of coworkers, friends and family and similar in accuracy to the judgement of spouses 37 . Further, as other research has shown, we assume that personality traits remain stable in adulthood even through significant life events 38 , 39 , 40 . Personality traits have been shown to emerge continuously from those already evident in adolescence 41 and are not significantly influenced by external life events such as becoming divorced or unemployed 42 . This suggests that the direction of any measurable effect goes from founder personalities to startup success and not vice versa.

As a first investigation to what extent personality traits might relate to entrepreneurship, we use the personality characteristics of individuals to predict whether they were an entrepreneur or an employee. We trained and tested a machine-learning random forest classifier to distinguish and classify entrepreneurs from employees and vice-versa using inferred personality vectors alone. As a result, we found we could correctly predict entrepreneurs with 77% accuracy and employees with 88% accuracy (Fig.  1 A). Thus, based on personality information alone, we correctly predict all unseen new samples with 82.5% accuracy (See SI section  A.2 for more details on this analysis, the classification modelling and prediction accuracy).

We explored in greater detail which personality features are most prominent among entrepreneurs. We found that the subdomain or facet of Adventurousness within the Big Five Domain of Openness was significant and had the largest effect size. The facet of Modesty within the Big Five Domain of Agreeableness and Activity Level within the Big Five Domain of Extraversion was the subsequent most considerable effect (Fig.  1 B). Adventurousness in the Big Five framework is defined as the preference for variety, novelty and starting new things—which are consistent with the role of a startup founder whose role, especially in the early life of the company, is to explore things that do not scale easily 43 and is about developing and testing new products, services and business models with the market.

Once we derived and tested the Big Five personality features for each entrepreneur in our data set, we examined whether there is evidence indicating that startup founders naturally cluster according to their personality features using a Hopkins test (see Extended Data Figure  6 ). We discovered clear clustering tendencies in the data compared with other renowned reference data sets known to have clusters. Then, once we established the founder data clusters, we used agglomerative hierarchical clustering. This ‘bottom-up’ clustering technique initially treats each observation as an individual cluster. Then it merges them to create a hierarchy of possible cluster schemes with differing numbers of groups (See Extended Data Fig.  7 ). And lastly, we identified the optimum number of clusters based on the outcome of four different clustering performance measurements: Davies-Bouldin Index, Silhouette coefficients, Calinski-Harabas Index and Dunn Index (see Extended Data Figure  8 ). We find that the optimum number of clusters of startup founders based on their personality features is six (labelled #0 through to #5), as shown in Fig.  1 C.

To better understand the context of different founder types, we positioned each of the six types of founders within an occupation-personality matrix established from previous research 44 . This research showed that ‘each job has its own personality’ using a substantial sample of employees across various jobs. Utilising the methodology employed in this study, we assigned labels to the cluster names #0 to #5, which correspond to the identified occupation tribes that best describe the personality facets represented by the clusters (see Extended Data Fig.  9 for an overview of these tribes, as identified by McCarthy et al. 44 ).

Utilising this approach, we identify three ’purebred’ clusters: #0, #2 and #5, whose members are dominated by a single tribe (larger than 60% of all individuals in each cluster are characterised by one tribe). Thus, these clusters represent and share personality attributes of these previously identified occupation-personality tribes 44 , which have the following known distinctive personality attributes (see also Table  1 ):

Accomplishers (#0) —Organised & outgoing. confident, down-to-earth, content, accommodating, mild-tempered & self-assured.

Leaders (#2) —Adventurous, persistent, dispassionate, assertive, self-controlled, calm under pressure, philosophical, excitement-seeking & confident.

Fighters (#5) —Spontaneous and impulsive, tough, sceptical, and uncompromising.

We labelled these clusters with the tribe names, acknowledging that labels are somewhat arbitrary, based on our best interpretation of the data (See SI section  A.3 for more details).

For the remaining three clusters #1, #3 and #4, we can see they are ‘hybrids’, meaning that the founders within them come from a mix of different tribes, with no one tribe representing more than 50% of the members of that cluster. However, the tribes with the largest share were noted as #1 Experts/Engineers, #3 Fighters, and #4 Operators.

To label these three hybrid clusters, we examined the closest occupations to the median personality features of each cluster. We selected a name that reflected the common themes of these occupations, namely:

Experts/Engineers (#1) as the closest roles included Materials Engineers and Chemical Engineers. This is consistent with this cluster’s personality footprint, which is highest in openness in the facets of imagination and intellect.

Developers (#3) as the closest roles include Application Developers and related technology roles such as Business Systems Analysts and Product Managers.

Operators (#4) as the closest roles include service, maintenance and operations functions, including Bicycle Mechanic, Mechanic and Service Manager. This is also consistent with one of the key personality traits of high conscientiousness in the facet of orderliness and high agreeableness in the facet of humility for founders in this cluster.

Founder-Level Factors of Startup Success. ( A ), Successful entrepreneurs differ from successful employees. They can be accurately distinguished using a classifier with personality information alone. ( B ), Successful entrepreneurs have different Big Five facet distributions, especially on adventurousness, modesty and activity level. ( C ), Founders come in six different types: Fighters, Operators, Accomplishers, Leaders, Engineers and Developers (FOALED) ( D ), Each founder Personality-Type has its distinct facet.

Together, these six different types of startup founders (Fig.  1 C) represent a framework we call the FOALED model of founder types—an acronym of Fighters, Operators, Accomplishers, Leaders, Engineers and D evelopers.

Each founder’s personality type has its distinct facet footprint (for more details, see Extended Data Figure  10 in SI section  A.3 ). Also, we observe a central core of correlated features that are high for all types of entrepreneurs, including intellect, adventurousness and activity level (Fig.  1 D).To test the robustness of the clustering of the personality facets, we compare the mean scores of the individual facets per cluster with a 20-fold resampling of the data and find that the clusters are, overall, largely robust against resampling (see Extended Data Figure  11 in SI section  A.3 for more details).

We also find that the clusters accord with the distribution of founders’ roles in their startups. For example, Accomplishers are often Chief Executive Officers, Chief Financial Officers, or Chief Operating Officers, while Fighters tend to be Chief Technical Officers, Chief Product Officers, or Chief Commercial Officers (see Extended Data Fig.  12 in SI section  A.4 for more details).

The ensemble theory of success

While founders’ individual personality traits, such as Adventurousness or Openness, show to be related to their firms’ success, we also hypothesise that the combination, or ensemble, of personality characteristics of a founding team impacts the chances of success. The logic behind this reasoning is complementarity, which is proposed by contemporary research on the functional roles of founder teams. Examples of these clear functional roles have evolved in established industries such as film and television, construction, and advertising 45 . When we subsequently explored the combinations of personality types among founders and their relationship to the probability of startup success, adjusted for a range of other factors in a multi-factorial analysis, we found significantly increased chances of success for mixed foundation teams:

Initially, we find that firms with multiple founders are more likely to succeed, as illustrated in Fig.  2 A, which shows firms with three or more founders are more than twice as likely to succeed than solo-founded startups. This finding is consistent with investors’ advice to founders and previous studies 46 . We also noted that some personality types of founders increase the probability of success more than others, as shown in SI section  A.6 (Extended Data Figures  16 and 17 ). Also, we note that gender differences play out in the distribution of personality facets: successful female founders and successful male founders show facet scores that are more similar to each other than are non-successful female founders to non-successful male founders (see Extended Data Figure  18 ).

The Ensemble Theory of Team-Level Factors of Startup Success. ( A ) Having a larger founder team elevates the chances of success. This can be due to multiple reasons, e.g., a more extensive network or knowledge base but also personality diversity. ( B ) We show that joint personality combinations of founders are significantly related to higher chances of success. This is because it takes more than one founder to cover all beneficial personality traits that ‘breed’ success. ( C ) In our multifactor model, we show that firms with diverse and specific combinations of types of founders have significantly higher odds of success.

Access to more extensive networks and capital could explain the benefits of having more founders. Still, as we find here, it also offers a greater diversity of combined personalities, naturally providing a broader range of maximum traits. So, for example, one founder may be more open and adventurous, and another could be highly agreeable and trustworthy, thus, potentially complementing each other’s particular strengths associated with startup success.

The benefits of larger and more personality-diverse foundation teams can be seen in the apparent differences between successful and unsuccessful firms based on their combined Big Five personality team footprints, as illustrated in Fig.  2 B. Here, maximum values for each Big Five trait of a startup’s co-founders are mapped; stratified by successful and non-successful companies. Founder teams of successful startups tend to score higher on Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Agreeableness.

When examining the combinations of founders with different personality types, we find that some ensembles of personalities were significantly correlated with greater chances of startup success—while controlling for other variables in the model—as shown in Fig.  2 C (for more details on the modelling, the predictive performance and the coefficient estimates of the final model, see Extended Data Figures  19 , 20 , and 21 in SI section  A.6 ).

Three combinations of trio-founder companies were more than twice as likely to succeed than other combinations, namely teams with (1) a Leader and two Developers , (2) an Operator and two Developers , and (3) an Expert/Engineer , Leader and Developer . To illustrate the potential mechanisms on how personality traits might influence the success of startups, we provide some examples of well-known, successful startup founders and their characteristic personality traits in Extended Data Figure  22 .

Startups are one of the key mechanisms for brilliant ideas to become solutions to some of the world’s most challenging economic and social problems. Examples include the Google search algorithm, disability technology startup Fingerwork’s touchscreen technology that became the basis of the Apple iPhone, or the Biontech mRNA technology that powered Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

We have shown that founders’ personalities and the combination of personalities in the founding team of a startup have a material and significant impact on its likelihood of success. We have also shown that successful startup founders’ personality traits are significantly different from those of successful employees—so much so that a simple predictor can be trained to distinguish between employees and entrepreneurs with more than 80% accuracy using personality trait data alone.

Just as occupation-personality maps derived from data can provide career guidance tools, so too can data on successful entrepreneurs’ personality traits help people decide whether becoming a founder may be a good choice for them.

We have learnt through this research that there is not one type of ideal ’entrepreneurial’ personality but six different types. Many successful startups have multiple co-founders with a combination of these different personality types.

To a large extent, founding a startup is a team sport; therefore, diversity and complementarity of personalities matter in the foundation team. It has an outsized impact on the company’s likelihood of success. While all startups are high risk, the risk becomes lower with more founders, particularly if they have distinct personality traits.

Our work demonstrates the benefits of personality diversity among the founding team of startups. Greater awareness of this novel form of diversity may help create more resilient startups capable of more significant innovation and impact.

The data-driven research approach presented here comes with certain methodological limitations. The principal data sources of this study—Crunchbase and Twitter—are extensive and comprehensive, but there are characterised by some known and likely sample biases.

Crunchbase is the principal public chronicle of venture capital funding. So, there is some likely sample bias toward: (1) Startup companies that are funded externally: self-funded or bootstrapped companies are less likely to be represented in Crunchbase; (2) technology companies, as that is Crunchbase’s roots; (3) multi-founder companies; (4) male founders: while the representation of female founders is now double that of the mid-2000s, women still represent less than 25% of the sample; (5) companies that succeed: companies that fail, especially those that fail early, are likely to be less represented in the data.

Samples were also limited to those founders who are active on Twitter, which adds additional selection biases. For example, Twitter users typically are younger, more educated and have a higher median income 47 . Another limitation of our approach is the potentially biased presentation of a person’s digital identity on social media, which is the basis for identifying personality traits. For example, recent research suggests that the language and emotional tone used by entrepreneurs in social media can be affected by events such as business failure 48 , which might complicate the personality trait inference.

In addition to sampling biases within the data, there are also significant historical biases in startup culture. For many aspects of the entrepreneurship ecosystem, women, for example, are at a disadvantage 49 . Male-founded companies have historically dominated most startup ecosystems worldwide, representing the majority of founders and the overwhelming majority of venture capital investors. As a result, startups with women have historically attracted significantly fewer funds 50 , in part due to the male bias among venture investors, although this is now changing, albeit slowly 51 .

The research presented here provides quantitative evidence for the relevance of personality types and the diversity of personalities in startups. At the same time, it brings up other questions on how personality traits are related to other factors associated with success, such as:

Will the recent growing focus on promoting and investing in female founders change the nature, composition and dynamics of startups and their personalities leading to a more diverse personality landscape in startups?

Will the growth of startups outside of the United States change what success looks like to investors and hence the role of different personality traits and their association to diverse success metrics?

Many of today’s most renowned entrepreneurs are either Baby Boomers (such as Gates, Branson, Bloomberg) or Generation Xers (such as Benioff, Cannon-Brookes, Musk). However, as we can see, personality is both a predictor and driver of success in entrepreneurship. Will generation-wide differences in personality and outlook affect startups and their success?

Moreover, the findings shown here have natural extensions and applications beyond startups, such as for new projects within large established companies. While not technically startups, many large enterprises and industries such as construction, engineering and the film industry rely on forming new project-based, cross-functional teams that are often new ventures and share many characteristics of startups.

There is also potential for extending this research in other settings in government, NGOs, and within the research community. In scientific research, for example, team diversity in terms of age, ethnicity and gender has been shown to be predictive of impact, and personality diversity may be another critical dimension 52 .

Another extension of the study could investigate the development of the language used by startup founders on social media over time. Such an extension could investigate whether the language (and inferred psychological characteristics) change as the entrepreneurs’ ventures go through major business events such as foundation, funding, or exit.

Overall, this study demonstrates, first, that startup founders have significantly different personalities than employees. Secondly, besides firm-level factors, which are known to influence firm success, we show that a range of founder-level factors, notably the character traits of its founders, significantly impact a startup’s likelihood of success. Lastly, we looked at team-level factors. We discovered in a multifactor analysis that personality-diverse teams have the most considerable impact on the probability of a startup’s success, underlining the importance of personality diversity as a relevant factor of team performance and success.

Data sources

Entrepreneurs dataset.

Data about the founders of startups were collected from Crunchbase (Table  2 ), an open reference platform for business information about private and public companies, primarily early-stage startups. It is one of the largest and most comprehensive data sets of its kind and has been used in over 100 peer-reviewed research articles about economic and managerial research.

Crunchbase contains data on over two million companies - mainly startup companies and the companies who partner with them, acquire them and invest in them, as well as profiles on well over one million individuals active in the entrepreneurial ecosystem worldwide from over 200 countries and spans. Crunchbase started in the technology startup space, and it now covers all sectors, specifically focusing on entrepreneurship, investment and high-growth companies.

While Crunchbase contains data on over one million individuals in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, some are not entrepreneurs or startup founders but play other roles, such as investors, lawyers or executives at companies that acquire startups. To create a subset of only entrepreneurs, we selected a subset of 32,732 who self-identify as founders and co-founders (by job title) and who are also publicly active on the social media platform Twitter. We also removed those who also are venture capitalists to distinguish between investors and founders.

We selected founders active on Twitter to be able to use natural language processing to infer their Big Five personality features using an open-vocabulary approach shown to be accurate in the previous research by analysing users’ unstructured text, such as Twitter posts in our case. For this project, as with previous research 20 , we employed a commercial service, IBM Watson Personality Insight, to infer personality facets. This service provides raw scores and percentile scores of Big Five Domains (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Emotional Stability) and the corresponding 30 subdomains or facets. In addition, the public content of Twitter posts was collected, and there are 32,732 profiles that each had enough Twitter posts (more than 150 words) to get relatively accurate personality scores (less than 12.7% Average Mean Absolute Error).

The entrepreneurs’ dataset is analysed in combination with other data about the companies they founded to explore questions about the nature and patterns of personality traits of entrepreneurs and the relationships between these patterns and company success.

For the multifactor analysis, we further filtered the data in several preparatory steps for the success prediction modelling (for more details, see SI section  A.5 ). In particular, we removed data points with missing values (Extended Data Fig.  13 ) and kept only companies in the data that were founded from 1990 onward to ensure consistency with previous research 32 (see Extended Data Fig.  14 ). After cleaning, filtering and pre-processing the data, we ended up with data from 25,214 founders who founded 21,187 startup companies to be used in the multifactor analysis. Of those, 3442 startups in the data were successful, 2362 in the first seven years after they were founded (see Extended Data Figure  15 for more details).

Entrepreneurs and employees dataset

To investigate whether startup founders show personality traits that are similar or different from the population at large (i. e. the entrepreneurs vs employees sub-analysis shown in Fig.  1 A and B), we filtered the entrepreneurs’ data further: we reduced the sample to those founders of companies, which attracted more than US$100k in investment to create a reference set of successful entrepreneurs (n \(=\) 4400).

To create a control group of employees who are not also entrepreneurs or very unlikely to be of have been entrepreneurs, we leveraged the fact that while some occupational titles like CEO, CTO and Public Speaker are commonly shared by founders and co-founders, some others such as Cashier , Zoologist and Detective very rarely co-occur seem to be founders or co-founders. To illustrate, many company founders also adopt regular occupation titles such as CEO or CTO. Many founders will be Founder and CEO or Co-founder and CTO. While founders are often CEOs or CTOs, the reverse is not necessarily true, as many CEOs are professional executives that were not involved in the establishment or ownership of the firm.

Using data from LinkedIn, we created an Entrepreneurial Occupation Index (EOI) based on the ratio of entrepreneurs for each of the 624 occupations used in a previous study of occupation-personality fit 44 . It was calculated based on the percentage of all people working in the occupation from LinkedIn compared to those who shared the title Founder or Co-founder (See SI section  A.2 for more details). A reference set of employees (n=6685) was then selected across the 112 different occupations with the lowest propensity for entrepreneurship (less than 0.5% EOI) from a large corpus of Twitter users with known occupations, which is also drawn from the previous occupational-personality fit study 44 .

These two data sets were used to test whether it may be possible to distinguish successful entrepreneurs from successful employees based on the different patterns of personality traits alone.

Hierarchical clustering

We applied several clustering techniques and tests to the personality vectors of the entrepreneurs’ data set to determine if there are natural clusters and, if so, how many are the optimum number.

Firstly, to determine if there is a natural typology to founder personalities, we applied the Hopkins statistic—a statistical test we used to answer whether the entrepreneurs’ dataset contains inherent clusters. It measures the clustering tendency based on the ratio of the sum of distances of real points within a sample of the entrepreneurs’ dataset to their nearest neighbours and the sum of distances of randomly selected artificial points from a simulated uniform distribution to their nearest neighbours in the real entrepreneurs’ dataset. The ratio measures the difference between the entrepreneurs’ data distribution and the simulated uniform distribution, which tests the randomness of the data. The range of Hopkins statistics is from 0 to 1. The scores are close to 0, 0.5 and 1, respectively, indicating whether the dataset is uniformly distributed, randomly distributed or highly clustered.

To cluster the founders by personality facets, we used Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (AHC)—a bottom-up approach that treats an individual data point as a singleton cluster and then iteratively merges pairs of clusters until all data points are included in the single big collection. Ward’s linkage method is used to choose the pair of groups for minimising the increase in the within-cluster variance after combining. AHC was widely applied to clustering analysis since a tree hierarchy output is more informative and interpretable than K-means. Dendrograms were used to visualise the hierarchy to provide the perspective of the optimal number of clusters. The heights of the dendrogram represent the distance between groups, with lower heights representing more similar groups of observations. A horizontal line through the dendrogram was drawn to distinguish the number of significantly different clusters with higher heights. However, as it is not possible to determine the optimum number of clusters from the dendrogram, we applied other clustering performance metrics to analyse the optimal number of groups.

A range of Clustering performance metrics were used to help determine the optimal number of clusters in the dataset after an apparent clustering tendency was confirmed. The following metrics were implemented to evaluate the differences between within-cluster and between-cluster distances comprehensively: Dunn Index, Calinski-Harabasz Index, Davies-Bouldin Index and Silhouette Index. The Dunn Index measures the ratio of the minimum inter-cluster separation and the maximum intra-cluster diameter. At the same time, the Calinski-Harabasz Index improves the measurement of the Dunn Index by calculating the ratio of the average sum of squared dispersion of inter-cluster and intra-cluster. The Davies-Bouldin Index simplifies the process by treating each cluster individually. It compares the sum of the average distance among intra-cluster data points to the cluster centre of two separate groups with the distance between their centre points. Finally, the Silhouette Index is the overall average of the silhouette coefficients for each sample. The coefficient measures the similarity of the data point to its cluster compared with the other groups. Higher scores of the Dunn, Calinski-Harabasz and Silhouette Index and a lower score of the Davies-Bouldin Index indicate better clustering configuration.

Classification modelling

Classification algorithms.

To obtain a comprehensive and robust conclusion in the analysis predicting whether a given set of personality traits corresponds to an entrepreneur or an employee, we explored the following classifiers: Naïve Bayes, Elastic Net regularisation, Support Vector Machine, Random Forest, Gradient Boosting and Stacked Ensemble. The Naïve Bayes classifier is a probabilistic algorithm based on Bayes’ theorem with assumptions of independent features and equiprobable classes. Compared with other more complex classifiers, it saves computing time for large datasets and performs better if the assumptions hold. However, in the real world, those assumptions are generally violated. Elastic Net regularisation combines the penalties of Lasso and Ridge to regularise the Logistic classifier. It eliminates the limitation of multicollinearity in the Lasso method and improves the limitation of feature selection in the Ridge method. Even though Elastic Net is as simple as the Naïve Bayes classifier, it is more time-consuming. The Support Vector Machine (SVM) aims to find the ideal line or hyperplane to separate successful entrepreneurs and employees in this study. The dividing line can be non-linear based on a non-linear kernel, such as the Radial Basis Function Kernel. Therefore, it performs well on high-dimensional data while the ’right’ kernel selection needs to be tuned. Random Forest (RF) and Gradient Boosting Trees (GBT) are ensembles of decision trees. All trees are trained independently and simultaneously in RF, while a new tree is trained each time and corrected by previously trained trees in GBT. RF is a more robust and straightforward model since it does not have many hyperparameters to tune. GBT optimises the objective function and learns a more accurate model since there is a successive learning and correction process. Stacked Ensemble combines all existing classifiers through a Logistic Regression. Better than bagging with only variance reduction and boosting with only bias reduction, the ensemble leverages the benefit of model diversity with both lower variance and bias. All the above classification algorithms distinguish successful entrepreneurs and employees based on the personality matrix.

Evaluation metrics

A range of evaluation metrics comprehensively explains the performance of a classification prediction. The most straightforward metric is accuracy, which measures the overall portion of correct predictions. It will mislead the performance of an imbalanced dataset. The F1 score is better than accuracy by combining precision and recall and considering the False Negatives and False Positives. Specificity measures the proportion of detecting the true negative rate that correctly identifies employees, while Positive Predictive Value (PPV) calculates the probability of accurately predicting successful entrepreneurs. Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (AUROC) determines the capability of the algorithm to distinguish between successful entrepreneurs and employees. A higher value means the classifier performs better on separating the classes.

Feature importance

To further understand and interpret the classifier, it is critical to identify variables with significant predictive power on the target. Feature importance of tree-based models measures Gini importance scores for all predictors, which evaluate the overall impact of the model after cutting off the specific feature. The measurements consider all interactions among features. However, it does not provide insights into the directions of impacts since the importance only indicates the ability to distinguish different classes.

Statistical analysis

T-test, Cohen’s D and two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test are introduced to explore how the mean values and distributions of personality facets between entrepreneurs and employees differ. The T-test is applied to determine whether the mean of personality facets of two group samples are significantly different from one another or not. The facets with significant differences detected by the hypothesis testing are critical to separate the two groups. Cohen’s d is to measure the effect size of the results of the previous t-test, which is the ratio of the mean difference to the pooled standard deviation. A larger Cohen’s d score indicates that the mean difference is greater than the variability of the whole sample. Moreover, it is interesting to check whether the two groups’ personality facets’ probability distributions are from the same distribution through the two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. There is no assumption about the distributions, but the test is sensitive to deviations near the centre rather than the tail.

Privacy and ethics

The focus of this research is to provide high-level insights about groups of startups, founders and types of founder teams rather than on specific individuals or companies. While we used unit record data from the publicly available data of company profiles from Crunchbase , we removed all identifiers from the underlying data on individual companies and founders and generated aggregate results, which formed the basis for our analysis and conclusions.

Data availability

A dataset which includes only aggregated statistics about the success of startups and the factors that influence is released as part of this research. Underlying data for all figures and the code to reproduce them are available on GitHub: https://github.com/Braesemann/FounderPersonalities . Please contact Fabian Braesemann ( [email protected] ) in case you have any further questions.

Change history

07 may 2024.

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-61082-7

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Acknowledgements

We thank Gary Brewer from BuiltWith ; Leni Mayo from Influx , Rachel Slattery from TeamSlatts and Daniel Petre from AirTree Ventures for their ongoing generosity and insights about startups, founders and venture investments. We also thank Tim Li from Crunchbase for advice and liaison regarding data on startups and Richard Slatter for advice and referrals in Twitter .

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Contributions

All authors designed research; All authors analysed data and undertook investigation; F.B. and F.S. led multi-factor analysis; P.M., X.G. and M.A.R. led the founder/employee prediction; M.L.K. led personality insights; X.G. collected and tabulated the data; X.G., F.B., and F.S. created figures; X.G. created final art, and all authors wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Fabian Braesemann .

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The original online version of this Article was revised: The Data Availability section in the original version of this Article was incomplete, the link to the GitHub repository was omitted. Full information regarding the corrections made can be found in the correction for this Article.

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McCarthy, P.X., Gong, X., Braesemann, F. et al. The impact of founder personalities on startup success. Sci Rep 13 , 17200 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-41980-y

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-41980-y

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