Planning and Developing a Theoretical Paper Utilizing Aggregate Data: An Example of Comparative Societal Impact on Educational Outcome

This case documents my sequential experience in exploring and writing a research paper that investigated changes in student educational performance due to systemic differences between various developed countries with prime emphasis on the United States. The original work was a theoretical initiative that utilized aggregate data presented in purely descriptive form to test the effects of various international sociopolitical or economic systems on student performance in various academic areas, utilizing outcome data from the Program for International Student Assessment. By reading this case in conjunction with the original work, readers will gain a better understanding of writing a deductive theoretical paper and its stages. The conclusions solely relied on utilizing simple cross-comparability of aggregate data rather than complex statistical techniques due to many of the assumptions of the model in the literature as well as missing data and a limited number of cases.