- [Instructor] Hello, and welcome to the video lecture
for Writing Research.
So in this topic, we're gonna think about
how do we write the results and the implications
and put it all together to write a report
about the research that we do?
Three main considerations that we're going
to talk about here are the audience,
the form and the length, and the sections.
First, we wanna know who the audience is.
Are they scientists?
Are they scholars? Are they lay readers?
And that sort of guides you.
How much jargon can you use?
How many really specific vocabulary terms
can you use?
So will you use nomothetic and idiographic
with lay readers?
Probably not, but if they're social science researchers
and scholars, then maybe you could.
So you need to think about how much do they already know,
and what do you wanna explain?
Another example, if we're talking about life at UVM,
there's certain things
that I think every student would know about,
maybe the Davis Center.
But if you're talking to an outside audience
and talking about the Davis Center,
they're not gonna know what you mean.
So you wanna think about who's the reader,
and what do they know, and what do I have to explain,
and what can I assume that they already know?
Research reports can have a number
of different lengths and formats.
So sometimes you can just write an abstract
of about 500 words, sometimes a short report,
just a few pages.
The most important output that I'm expected to do
is peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles,
such as you see the banner for one
on which I actually serve on the editorial board.
So I actually review a lot of articles for this one,
as well as write articles.
They tend to be in the ballpark of 20 to 30 pages.
Other outputs.
So oftentimes you might write a working paper,
sort of halfway through the project,
sort of have I learned so far, what is tentative,
and share them and get them out there,
while you still continue
to maybe gather data, refine arguments,
and eventually maybe submit it to a journal.
If you got funding, you may want to write a report.
They may wish for you to write a report.
If you get a research-based degree,
such as certain master's of science or a PhD,
you have to write a thesis or a doctoral dissertation.
And in some cases, there are whole books written
on one or more research projects.
Here are sections that you will very
commonly find in a research paper,
especially a scholarly article.
So first is an abstract, which is an overview.
And then keywords, which are words that are important,
but not in the title,
so that we learned
when we were looking for articles
for our lit reviews that keywords can help us find 'em.
Then you'll find an introduction,
which sort of sets up the study.
What are we doing and why?
Then a lit review. What do we already know?
And then what are the gaps?
And then the formulation of the research questions,
which should really address those gaps.
And we've done this before, so this is somewhat of a review.
Here is a video on avoiding plagiarism.
So if you ever wonder, "Should I cite this or not?"
here's some guidelines, or you can always ask me as well
or ask a reference librarian.
Next, you see the methods,
which is how did you collect and analyze the data?
And there should be enough detail
that the reader should theoretically be able
to reproduce your study.
And then finally, the results.
Well, what did you learn? What are the answers?
Maybe some themes and quotations
if you have qualitative data,
if you have quantitative, descriptive,
and inferential statistics.
Once you've presented the results,
then you want to discuss them.
What are the major findings, a quick recap.
And then how do they compare and contrast
to what was learned before?
So go back to your lit review.
What did we learn?
What's new? What's not new?
And then often implications.
What do we do with this?
Many of my work,
they tend to have implications for future research,
but especially for management, for practice,
and also for policy.
And then conclusions.
We sort of sum it up.
We go over the limitations.
And often this is also
where you find future research directors, directions.
You wanna acknowledge your funders and any reviewers.
Make sure that you cite, that you give the full citation
of any references that you cite.
And in some cases, you may wanna put an appendix on the end,
such as your survey instrument or interview guide.
So those are all the sections that you commonly find,
especially in a journal article.
They may not all have all of them,
but most of 'em have most of them.
And this is a good guideline
of sort of what should you expect to write about
when you write about your research?
There are also steps about sharing
your results once you're done.
So here's a common sequence.
And this would be especially for a master's student.
So the first thing is you might do a poster
where you submit it to a professional meeting
and sort of get feedback and advice.
And then once you have some results,
submit an abstract and present to one of these
for professional meetings, again, get feedback.
And then finally, submit it to a journal
and hopefully get a revise and submit.
So they say, "Yes, we like it,
but here's how it has to change," and you do that.
And once you gain galley proofs,
so that is, once it's been accepted and they say,
"We like this. It's ready to go,"
they will send you a copy of it laid out
in their journal format,
basically exactly what it'll look like in the journal,
and go back through one last time,
make sure that there aren't any typos or anything like that.
Send it back, and then it is ready to go.
And that's always a very exciting moment.
I also want to discuss some really important how-to tips
about writing the article.
And I definitely want you to keep these in mind
when you write your final report,
and they have to do with lit review, organization,
and the idea of curation, or to curate.
And I'll go over each one.
When you do your lit review,
usually you have an inverted funnel.
You can think about using the coding techniques
that we have learned
to think about your lit review.
So the open codes are sort of at the bottom of the funnel
are your everybody findings.
The axial codes are the major themes and patterns.
And the selective codes are the overarching themes.
You can sort of use these same principles
to organize your lit review.
And then when you write it out,
the axial codes may be the headings of the section,
and the open codes are sort of the topic sentences
for each paragraph in your lit review.
So you really wanna use good organizational skills
and take them right to the bottom of the funnel,
which is the research gap.
This is what we don't know.
So you sort of take them from general to specific,
down through in a well-organized way,
down to the bottom of the funnel, which is your gap.
This is what we don't know.
Here is a definition of curate,
and I will let you read it.
You may wanna pause it.
And here is where this comes from.
So what I mean is a museum curator
does an exhibit,
that there's many, many possible items
that could go into that,
but they carefully select and organize them in a way
and lay them out in a way to really tell a story
or to create a specific account
of what was the art of this time,
and why was it meaningful, and what was most meaningful?
So you really want to, as a researcher, think as a curator.
So you wanna present it like this,
not like this, not just a pile of artwork
all jumbled together
with no argument,
no structure, no thread of meaning.
You also don't wanna do it throw spaghetti at the wall
and see what sticks.
Nor do you want a laundry list.
So you don't just want a list of things that have,
without sort of tying what's the relationship between them
and organizing them into key themes.
As I say here, there's an almost infinite number of ways
to write a research paper.
There are many studies you may or may not include
in the lit review.
There's results you may or may not include in the results.
You can't include everything.
So what you do is you carefully curate them
and put together to tell a story of the study
and have a good alignment between the lit review
and your results.
So that means that when the analysis
and the implications are complete,
you go to the bottom of the funnel,
and you think about what are the most important things
that we learned?
What are the takeaways?
What are the really important sort of lessons or results
that have emerged from the study?
And then you want to go back and realign the paper,
especially the lit review,
but also your results and the discussion,
and really emphasize and enhance parts
that take you to that key finding,
and omit or minimize things that do not.
That is the end of this video lecture.
Please remember to do the assessment before class.
Thank you.