DATA COLLECTION AND METHODOLOGY
To address your question, you will have to collect data (quantitative and/or qualitative) that provides you the ability to conduct meaningful tests of the question that is the focus of your paper. You cannot rely solely on data that others have collected and simply reinterpret it. You need to find your own unique data or bring together lots of data sets to answer your unique question. Common forms of data are qualitative: e.g., interviews with practitioners in the field, or even interviews with inmates or probationers. Or quantitative: e.g., the number of arrests and convictions, the number of inmates/offenders who are high school dropouts, etc. You will need to discuss the data that you are using and why it is relevant to your question and the methods that you will use to analyze that data. Then, obviously you have to do a sound job of analyzing the data.
FINDINGS/DISCUSSION
This is the central part of the paper. Based on the analysis of the data that you have compiled, what do your findings tell you and the reader? In what ways do they address the initial question on which you have based your research and how do your findings fit within the existing literature? In addition, it is appropriate for one to discuss the limitations of the findings.
