A dissertation proposal (the the final dissertation) begins with the chapter titled: "Introduction". Students have asked me: "How do I write the introduction?" The question deserves an answer. Writing the introduction to a dissertation is no more magical than writing any other part of the work. While students have different styles, and professors have different demands and requirements, the opening chapter is literally what it is called, the introduction. I learned long ago that this chapter is designed to answer a simple question: "What is this study about?" I often recommend that my students use this as their opening sentence..."This study is about...." and succinctly in the first sentence, tell us, the readers, what the whole thing is about. When you are ready to do that, you are ready to write the rest of your dissertation proposal.
After stating in clear language what your study is about, a few more sentences to elaborate the opening sentence should provide the reader with the big picture. Then you are on to the rest of the introduction. I ask my students to lay out the big picture in the paragraphs following. Let me use an example. Lets take an example, and say that a student is studying levels of survivor guilt in adult children in alcoholics. The dissertation proposal begins with "This study is about levels of survivor guilt in adult children of alcoholics." Adult children of alcoholics are known to take a great deal of responsibility within their families, and some appear to have difficulties that relate to feeling overly responsible for others, and that give rise to feelings of guilt. (Here we make a few unsubstantiated statements that will be developed in detail, with numerous references to the literature in the literature review). Understanding the role of guilt in this population may contribute to our knowledge related to treatment, when treatment is needed.
From here the story is expanded greatly, and we, the readers, are told why it is important to discover this information --namely, how pervasive is this problem potentially, how many people are we talking about? How many alcoholic families are there in the United States (or Europe, or any specific country, or within any specific population, ethnicity, gender etc, depending on the focus of the study). In other words, the student lays a wider net for the story, describing the bigger issue, providing the context for the study. If the population overall has a very low rate of alcoholism, the reader wants to know that. That would tell us that not many people would be affected by whatever you find out in the study. If there is a large alcoholic population, we want to know that as it would imply there may be many people walking around with this specific problem. You go from the broad figures, demographics of alcoholism, to the more detailed picture, perhaps getting into the rates of alcoholism within sub-populations within the larger culture. How many disadvantaged people compared to how many higher socioeconomic class people suffer from alcoholism? Is this a problem that exists across class, race, ethnicity, gender? Or is it particularly relevant for sub-populations.
You might address some common myths about alcoholism and being the child of alcoholics. You don't get heavily in to the literature, except to reference perhaps a few major studies. You get all the government statistics possible, related to your study. You might give a few examples, to bring a story element to light. While you make the text meaningful, avoid any polemics or hyperbolic writing. You only get to polemicize at the end, if in fact your data, once its collected, confirms whatever hypotheses you might hold. This said, the whole introduction in a sense, is telling a big story. "Here is why I am doing this study, this is why it is important, meaningful," is what what you are saying. If there is a history to the story, a sociopolitical context, here is where we write about it. If there is a biological component to your study, you broadly describe that. You are using broad brush strokes so to speak, so by the end of the introduction the reader is into the story, and wants to find out the answer to the question that the dissertation is posing.
In the study of levels of survivor guilt in adult children of alcoholics, part of establishing the big context might involve discussing guilt in general and the history of knowledge about guilt, or excessive responsibility for others. You might get into the whole issue of dysfunctional families, families where communications are altered by the presence of alcohol or other substances; you might discuss the importance of communication in general, in creating functional family life. You might discuss family communication across cultures. You might suggest an evolutionary aspect to your topic. From telling the reader about rates of alcoholism in the nation, or in the world for that matter, in developed nations and developing nations, and in describing big issues involved, the larger context, you get us, your reader involved. This is your aim.
Towards the end of the introduction, you move in again, to the specific study, and you describe briefly what you are going to do. You might briefly describe your over all design, giving the name to the kind of research design you're using. You end the introduction by a restatement of the first question "What is this study about?" with the hopes that your reader knows a great deal more about your study, why you are doing it, what are the major issues involved, and why it is important. Hopefully, you will have your reader with you, eager to go on, and eager to find out what you discover when you collect your data.
Showing posts with label research how_to_do_research research literature_review writing academic how_to. Show all posts
Showing posts with label research how_to_do_research research literature_review writing academic how_to. Show all posts
Friday, March 28, 2008
Monday, December 3, 2007
How to do Research III: The Literature Review, Part B.
How do you "review" the literature?
I've served as Chair on over 25 dissertations, and I've written many articles for "scholarly" publications, so I think I know how to review literature. A review of literature doesn't necessarily mean a "critical" review, that is it doesn't mean you have to criticize the studies you are describing. If a study has serious flaws, you would mention that, but many if not most articles in journals are reporting on studies that are basically sound, if they weren't they wouldn't have been accepted for publication. When I write a literature review, what is expected is that I report on the studies that came before the one I'm presenting or that led me to want to do the study I've done. "The literature" means in essence, the published results of studies in a given area. To review the literature means to write a readable summary of published research reports related to my study. Its that simple.
Please, don't write detail after detail and after detail
Students often begin the literature review, thinking they are supposed to write details about the studies they're describing, and they start listing the number of subjects in the study, all the measures used, the demographics of the study, one right after the other --almost like they are summarizing methods sections of prior research reports. This is not what I want to read, nor what I write, when I'm summarizing a body of studies, that is "the literature." Instead, what is more appropriate, is to write about the essence of a study, to report on the main findings, and only include details as much as is needed to provide the story of the study. Think about a body of research on a topic that has been "hot" for a decade, and I am doing research on some different aspect of the topic. Perhaps there are fifty studies that are relevant to the current study being presented in the dissertation or journal article. No one wants to read details about fifty studies. What we want to know is the basic findings of these studies, and we want to read this material after it has been organized coherently, so it is relatively easy to read. We want the author to figure out and present the conclusions from the mass of data presented in numerous research reports. If the findings of the studies on the topic are contradictory, that is more important than findings from any one study. We want to know right off that the literature presents contradictory findings. This tells us that the data found in all these studies suggests different conclusions, and therefore there is not yet a consistent and coherent understanding of whatever it is that is being studied. Perhaps our study will provide some new slant that will clear up areas of confusion, perhaps it will just add more to the mix. The point here is that we want to know the conclusions we can come to, even if it is only to say we don't yet have a clear conclusion. This all forms the background for presenting our own current study. Thus the literature review presents the story of a body of research.
Learning how to read studies is not the same as writing the literature review
In trying to teach students how to read literature, professors often come up with a fairly complex structure that they hope will help students focus on the details of an article, thereby be able to understand the study being described. This is useful for learning to read research articles, however it is not a model for describing prior research in a literature review. To use the model of the 50 studies done around a given topic --in preparing to write the literature review, it is fine to tear each study apart into this complex structure. This might ensure that you know what a study is about, what was done, and what was found. But in writing about the study, you only need to summarize what was found, what was concluded by the study. On occasion you might provide a detail, for example if a study was unusually large, you might refer to that .."In a large multisite study of treatment for unipolar depression" provides the picture of a very large, or substantial study and suggests that one should probably pay attention to the conclusions. This is obviously different from writing "in a study of 98 subjects diagnosed with unipolar depression..." although you could get away with this phrasing, provided you don't repeat that level of detail for one study after the other.
The literature review is the story of a body of research
When you write the literature review, you are transmitting the story of the relevant research. You are saving readers a whole lot of time and trouble by summarizing prior studies and then presenting some conclusions. If you keep the concept of a story or a series of stories in mind, you are more likely to write something that is lively and readable. There are limits of course because academic writing is by nature, likely to be, at least, slightly, boring. However, as you have found a topic interesting enough to conduct a study of your own about it, you have a good chance of presenting an interesting background story in your presentation of the literature. An essential feature of an outstanding literature is that it is interesting -- the author has managed to report on many sources of data, in and of itself rather dry, and has woven it all together with important conclusions, thereby lifting it out of the realm of tedium and into something that is almost light and interesting. That is the kind of lit review I want to read, and the kind I hope I know how to write.
I've served as Chair on over 25 dissertations, and I've written many articles for "scholarly" publications, so I think I know how to review literature. A review of literature doesn't necessarily mean a "critical" review, that is it doesn't mean you have to criticize the studies you are describing. If a study has serious flaws, you would mention that, but many if not most articles in journals are reporting on studies that are basically sound, if they weren't they wouldn't have been accepted for publication. When I write a literature review, what is expected is that I report on the studies that came before the one I'm presenting or that led me to want to do the study I've done. "The literature" means in essence, the published results of studies in a given area. To review the literature means to write a readable summary of published research reports related to my study. Its that simple.
Please, don't write detail after detail and after detail
Students often begin the literature review, thinking they are supposed to write details about the studies they're describing, and they start listing the number of subjects in the study, all the measures used, the demographics of the study, one right after the other --almost like they are summarizing methods sections of prior research reports. This is not what I want to read, nor what I write, when I'm summarizing a body of studies, that is "the literature." Instead, what is more appropriate, is to write about the essence of a study, to report on the main findings, and only include details as much as is needed to provide the story of the study. Think about a body of research on a topic that has been "hot" for a decade, and I am doing research on some different aspect of the topic. Perhaps there are fifty studies that are relevant to the current study being presented in the dissertation or journal article. No one wants to read details about fifty studies. What we want to know is the basic findings of these studies, and we want to read this material after it has been organized coherently, so it is relatively easy to read. We want the author to figure out and present the conclusions from the mass of data presented in numerous research reports. If the findings of the studies on the topic are contradictory, that is more important than findings from any one study. We want to know right off that the literature presents contradictory findings. This tells us that the data found in all these studies suggests different conclusions, and therefore there is not yet a consistent and coherent understanding of whatever it is that is being studied. Perhaps our study will provide some new slant that will clear up areas of confusion, perhaps it will just add more to the mix. The point here is that we want to know the conclusions we can come to, even if it is only to say we don't yet have a clear conclusion. This all forms the background for presenting our own current study. Thus the literature review presents the story of a body of research.
Learning how to read studies is not the same as writing the literature review
In trying to teach students how to read literature, professors often come up with a fairly complex structure that they hope will help students focus on the details of an article, thereby be able to understand the study being described. This is useful for learning to read research articles, however it is not a model for describing prior research in a literature review. To use the model of the 50 studies done around a given topic --in preparing to write the literature review, it is fine to tear each study apart into this complex structure. This might ensure that you know what a study is about, what was done, and what was found. But in writing about the study, you only need to summarize what was found, what was concluded by the study. On occasion you might provide a detail, for example if a study was unusually large, you might refer to that .."In a large multisite study of treatment for unipolar depression" provides the picture of a very large, or substantial study and suggests that one should probably pay attention to the conclusions. This is obviously different from writing "in a study of 98 subjects diagnosed with unipolar depression..." although you could get away with this phrasing, provided you don't repeat that level of detail for one study after the other.
The literature review is the story of a body of research
When you write the literature review, you are transmitting the story of the relevant research. You are saving readers a whole lot of time and trouble by summarizing prior studies and then presenting some conclusions. If you keep the concept of a story or a series of stories in mind, you are more likely to write something that is lively and readable. There are limits of course because academic writing is by nature, likely to be, at least, slightly, boring. However, as you have found a topic interesting enough to conduct a study of your own about it, you have a good chance of presenting an interesting background story in your presentation of the literature. An essential feature of an outstanding literature is that it is interesting -- the author has managed to report on many sources of data, in and of itself rather dry, and has woven it all together with important conclusions, thereby lifting it out of the realm of tedium and into something that is almost light and interesting. That is the kind of lit review I want to read, and the kind I hope I know how to write.
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