ENG102 - First-Year Composition

A cause is something that produces an event or condition; an effect is what results from an event or condition. The purpose of the cause-and-effect essay is to determine how various phenomena relate in terms of origins and results. Sometimes the connection between cause and effect is clear, but often determining the exact relationship between the two is very difficult.

Statistics can potentially be great for cause or effect. Here are some top sites for statistics.

• Census.gov
• Data and Statistics about the U.S. (USA.gov)
• GlobalStat
• Our World in Data - The University of Oxford
• Pew Research Center
• United Nations Statistical Commission - UNSD 
• US Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) 
• US Bureau of Labor Statistics 
• US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: National Center for Health Statistics 
• US Environmental Protection Agency: Envirofacts 
• US Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics: Childstats.gov

Cause and Effect Sources are Potentially Anything that has Factual Information.

Reliability

Since you are doing college-level research it's very important to make sure your source is reliable. You should read all sources critically, but you can trust the sources you can get through our Library. See our Evaluating Sources information.

Finding Topics

CQ Researcher, Issues & Controversies, Gale In Context Opposing Viewpoints, and Gale In Context Science can also help you come up with topics by taking a look at their browse topics pages.

You Can Use Pro & Con Sources, But...

Opinion or pro & con articles, books, or other sources can be used for cause & effect research assignments, but you have to be careful so as not to produce an unintentionally biased paper or presentation that is meant to be objective.

Credit: COM Library

• The purpose of the cause-and-effect essay is to determine how various phenomena are related.
   
• The thesis states what the writer sees as the main cause, main effect, or various causes and effects of a condition or event.
   

• The cause-and-effect essay can be organized in one of these two primary ways:

  1. Start with the cause and then talk about the effect.
  2. Start with the effect and then talk about the cause.
      
• Strong evidence is particularly important in the cause-and-effect essay due to the complexity of determining connections between phenomena.
   
• Phrases of causation are helpful in signaling links between various elements in the essay.

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