Issue Paper Extra Credit

I've heard that some people start writing their paper with developing a thesis beforehand. I tried doing this but based upon my research I had already developed a thesis. I just had to lean towards what all of my research was point to. Once I developed my thesis I has so many thoughts. The more I writ e the more I find out that I create so many ideas and thoughts that I want to include into my paper. Sometimes I spend just an hour trying to see how I want to organize my paper and before I know it I've written a paragraph. Something that I notice that helped was the bibliography that we had to do. As I looked at that I was able to see what my plan was for cited that article or journal entry.

My targeted audience is an inter-denominational council of American Churches. Because it’s multiple faiths I've tried to be less bias as possible. Although they know that I’m representing a Mormon’s opinion about why youth are leaving religion it was challenging to give my reason they could connect with all of the other faiths. The way that I narrowed my topic was providing in my article examples of studies done by other researchers using different religion sects. For example for one of my reasons I wrote about why youth are leaving religion I used a study that sampled 742 Korean American Students who were apart of the Baptist, Methodist, Sung-gyul, Full Gospel, and Presbyterian church. This was the only way I knew of trying to connect all religions on one viewpoint. I knew that if a use doctrine for an example of why the youth were leaving then that would create a strongly bias opinion.

Some questions that I have about research is if it’s appropriate to cite someone who has write a topic issue who cited someone else in their article? For example I found some on HBL library I found some articles that didn't have reference pages. Should I cited the author although he cited someone else? Would that make my paper loose it’s authority and credibility? As well I used a scripture in my paper and I was wondering what the rule for quoting scripture is? In my paper I used my opinion to create my theses and provided sources of studies done that can make my opinion not seem bias. I also included personal quotes from people. These people aren't anyone special like famous well known religious leaders. They are just people who fit in my topic that share their experience that connects with my thesis. Does using this give my paper authority?