Principals of Research Writing

What is Research Writing? Process of communicating your research  Before the fact  Research proposal  After the fact  Research report

Types of Research Reports Original Reports Reviews Abstracts Thesis Textbooks

What is Research? It is any systematic activity designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge The systematic activity needs to be designed to allow repetition and confirmation Generalizable knowledge is knowledge that can be applied to populations or conditions outside the sample group

General Format of Reports What you do? Purpose Why you do it? Introduction How you do it? Materials & Methods What you find? Results What it means? Discussion What next? Future Directions Who to thank? Acknowledgment

The Literature Review Must be focused on the research question Steps for writing a literature review: Consider a research idea or question Find & read relevant research article Select & summarize most appropriate ones Focus your argument & formulate your hypothesis Organize summaries into a convincing story

Research Question Is it important? Can it be answered? What is the best approach to answer the question? How much will it cost? ImportanceAnswerability

Journal Article Summarization What was the authors’ research question? How did the authors answer that question? (methods & design) What are the results? So what? What is the article’s relevance to my own research question?

Purpose of Journal Article Summarization Provides information about the current state of knowledge of the topic Helps argue the case for your own research question

Writing the Introduction In the introduction, you are attempting to inform the reader about the rationale behind the work, justifying why your work is an essential component of research in the field. Your goal in this section is to introduce the topic to the reader, provide an overview of previous research on the topic and identify your own hypothesis.

Writing the Introduction Introduce the Topic: Your first task is to provide a brief description of the research question. Provide a brief history of your topic and explain how it relates to your current research. Summarize Previous Research: The second task of your introduction is to provide a summary of previous research that is relevant to your topic. Researching Your Topic: Search journal databases to find articles on your subject. Once you have located an article, look at the reference section to locate other studies cited in the article. Provide Your Hypothesis: Once you have summarized the previous research, explain what is missing from previous studies on your topic? What research questions have yet to be answered? Your own hypothesis should lead from these questions. At the end of your introduction, offer your hypothesis and describe what you expected to find in your experiment or study.

Writing the Methods The methods section of a research paper requires a clear and precise description of how the study was done. The methods section should describe: ▫What was done to answer the research question ▫Describe how it was done ▫Justify the experimental design ▫Explain how the results were analyzed. The methods section structure should: ▫Describe the materials used in the study ▫Explain how the materials were prepared for the study ▫Describe the research protocol ▫Explain how measurements were made ▫What calculations were performed ▫State which statistical tests were done to analyze the data.

Writing the Results The results section of a research paper describes to the reader the outcome and findings of the research project. Use descriptive statistics to describe the overall characteristics of the groups being compared or sample tested End each statistical test with a sentence or two indicating what that particular statistical result says about the hypothesis or question. Use tables and figures. Tables and figures should help the reader visualize the important results. Tables and figures are helpful to summarize a large amount of data that is essential for the reader to see but for which it would be too difficult to include each number in the narrative format of the results section.

Writing the Discussion IntroductionDiscussion Justify the purpose Choose journal articles that support your research question End with you want to look at Explain the results Choose journal articles that support/contradict your findings End with conclusions