Research paper ABC
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short and good[1]:
AN ABC FOR WRITING ACADEMIC RESEARCH PAPERS
3rd edition,September, 2006
BEN EMANS
ONNE JANSSEN
University of Groningen
Faculty of Management and Organization
Human Resource Management & Organizational Behavior Department
Landleven 8, Postbus 800, 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands
+ 31 (0)50 363 7845/ 4288
Table of contents
ABSTRACT1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 The ABC of Academic Research Papers
1.2 What an Academic Research Paper is not
1.3 The Sections an Academic Research Paper Consist of
1.4 Thought and choice in thesis writing: writing ABC, thinking CAB
2. THE INTRODUCTION SECTION
2.1 Real Research Questions and (Three Kinds of) Pseudo Research Questions
Preliminary questions
Data related questions
Consequential questions
2.2 Introducing the Research Questions
2.3 Announcing the Research Report Nature of the Paper
2.4 The Section’s Title
3 THE THEORY SECTION
3.1 Use of Literature in the Theory Section
3.2 Issues to be Excluded from the Theory Section
3.3 Elaborating the Research Questions
3.4 Explaining the Research Questions
3.5 Justifying the Research Questions
3.6 Inter-section Correspondence and other Issues Related to the Composition of the Theory Section
4 THE METHODS SECTION
4.1 What Has to be Treated in the Methods Section?
4.2 What Should not be Treated in the Methods Section?
5 THE RESULTS SECTION
5.1 Enhancing Conciseness and Transparency: Inter-Section Correspondence
5.2 Enhancing Conciseness and Transparency: Giving a Helping Hand to the Reader
5.3 Enhancing Conciseness and Transparency: the Use of Tables / 6. THE DISCUSSION SECTION
6.1 Framing Things Positively
6.2 Giving a Helping Hand to the Reader
6.3 Room for Speculation and Interpretation
6.4 Making Use of Literature
7. ADDITIONAL ISSUES: TITLE, ABSTRACT, APPENDICES, SIZE
7.1 The Title
7.2 The Abstract
7.3 Use and Abuse of Appendices
7.4 The Size of a Research Report Paper
8. SOME WRITING HABITS TO BE AVOIDED
8.1 Listing Dissimilar Entities
8.2 Incoherent Paragraphs
8.3 Unconnected Paragraphs
8.4 Ungrounded Statements
APPENDIX: STYLE GUIDE
Front Page
Second Page: Abstract.
Headings and Sections
Footnotes
Hypotheses
Language
Appendixes
Tables and Figures
Citations
References
MANAGEMENT SUMMARY
SHORT AND GOOD: AN ABC FOR WRITING ACADEMIC RESEARCH PAPERS
ABSTRACT
This text contains a number of instructions for writing a master thesis or, more generally, an academic research paper. The defining characteristic of such a paper is explained to consist of the combination, in this text referred to as the ‘ABC’, of A) a question, B) a method and C) an answer, or more precisely stated: A) a well-articulated question or a series of well-articulated questions, B) a well-described, systematic method that has been applied for looking for answers to that question or those questions and C) those answers themselves, thoughtfully presented and discussed. The text describes how these three elements tend to be treated in the five sections that a research paper basically consists of and that deal with, successively 1) the introduction of the research question(s), 2) the theoretical elaboration of the research question(s), 3) the research method, 4) the research results and 5) the interpretation of those results, resulting in attempted answers to the research questions and in conclusions that can be consequently drawn. Specific instructions for writing each of these sections are outlined. Thereafter a number of additional issues are discussed, such as the paper’s title and abstract. To conclude, some general do’s and don’ts for authors of research papers are spelled out. As a supplement to these texts an appendix containing a so-called style-guide (list of lay-out and other rules) for research papers has been attached.
SHORT AND GOOD: AN ABC FOR WRITING ACADEMIC RESEARCH PAPERS
1. INTRODUCTION
MscBA and other students who are in the final phases of their studies tend to put much time and effort into writing their thesis. In doing so, they try to render an accurate and readable account of the piece of research that they performed as a concluding part of their curriculum. In our role of teacher/supervisor we quite often see those students getting stuck in their writing endeavors. It is our task, then, to help them to overcome the problems encountered. A number of the instructions we happen to give to that end appear to be called for, sooner or later, in the course of each thesis project. These instructions, most of them being related to an understanding of the essentials of thesis writing, are collected in this booklet. Hopefully, our students will become better prepared for their thesis work, when they take notice of them in advance. By following them, they can be sure to end up with a thesis that perfectly fits the requirements that apply to scientific writings in the field of Business Administration.
Each of the subsequent chapters deals with one specific category of writing instructionswhereas this introduction chapter sets the stage for these treatments by presenting a number of underlying principles.The principles relate to, first, the defining characteristics of an academic research paper (such as a thesis), second, a couple of things a research paper is not[2], third, the sections research papers basically consist of andfourth,finally, something extremely fundamentalabout ‘thought and choice in thesis-writing’.
1.1 The ABC of Academic Research Papers
An academic research paper is a report about a systematically performed search for answers to a number of clear and interesting questions. This is a wide-ranging definition that is nonetheless far from meaningless. The questions involved may vary from very theoretical to very practical, and the corresponding search approach may take the shape of surveying opinions by means of a questionnaire, monitoring processes by means of an observation tool, scrutinizing literature or analyzing documents according to some plan, or whatever other way of information gathering. All these varieties give rise to a research report in the academic sense of the term. The common feature shared by them is the presence of three distinct elements: A) a number of questions, B) a systematic approach for finding answers to those questions and C) the answers themselves. Of course, the third one, C, is the main element, as it represents the research outcomes. The thesis’ novelty and uniqueness first and foremost lays in the C-part of it.That very C, however, is understandable and believable only if A and B have been soundly exposed before. For that reason it is the triplet ABC that can be said to constitute the defining fundamentals of a research report. That is the message, inherent in the definition given above, to be kept in mind.
In the remaining parts of this chapter, and in the chapters that follow, we intend to go into detail about the issue how to deal with the A, B and C components in the process of thesis writing. Before doing so, though, we feel urged to spell out what an academic research report is not. More specifically, we want to make clear that such a report is entirely different from two other types of reports that tend to be written by students, namely an activities account and a literature review. During the process of thesis writing, elements of these types appear to easily slip into the text, which consequently looses its much of its ABC-nature. The result, then, is a hybrid, hard-to-read end product, which is evidently something to avoid.
1.2 What an Academic Research Paper is not
Activities account.In an activities account (in the case of a student who writes a thesis) the author provides a history of things he/she has done when working on his/her research telling, for instance, about what made him/her decide to focus on the subject matter chosen, about the other options he/she had considered before, about the clarifying and helpful talks with experts he/she had during the successive phases of the research project, about all kinds of things done that afterwards turned out to be irrelevant and so on. An account like has near to nothing to do with a research report. Sure, it may contain contents that are pertinent to a research report, especially as regards the research method that has been applied by the researcher. Basically, however, the author’s wanderings and experiences are irrelevant from a research point of view. Students are nonetheless often inclined to rather exhaustively tell about the steps taken by them from the very start of their thesis work. The result, then, is a lengthy, boring and confusing stream of words, which continuously distracts the reader’s attention from what really counts: our ABC. Thesis writers are thus encouraged to permanently keep in mind the difference that exists between a historical piece of writing and a research report, strictly sticking to the latter when doing their job.
Literature review. In a literature review, the other type of report a thesis is not, the author gives an overview of things published in a certain field. It’s objective is to introduce its readers into that particular field. This is fundamentally different from the objective of a research report. There, too, a lot of attention tends to be paid to literature. The reason to do so, however, is only to explain the above mentioned A, B, and/or C. Especially the explanation of A, the research question(s), always involves a discussion of writings that have been published. The goal, then, is to highlight the relevant elements in those writings, rather than exposing them in their entirety. Students feel nonetheless often inclined to rather exhaustively tell about the contents of books and papers read by them. Again, the result is, then, a lengthy, boring and confusing stream of words. Sieving the relevant out of the bulk of literature is part of the art of thesis writing.
1.3 The Sections an Academic Research Paper Consist of
The writing instructions collected in this booklet apply to plain research reports, devoid of remnants of activities accounts and/or literature reviews. The set-up of those reports simply follows the A-B-C order (see above), giving rise to a standard sequence of sections.
To begin with, research questions (A) are presented in the so-called introduction section, to be elaborated thereafter in the so-called theory section. These two sections, ‘introduction’ and ‘theory’, may merge with each other. We get then one big and comprehensive introductory section, where the research questions are meticulously explained, after having been roughly outlined first. A subsequent section, called the method section, is devoted to the methods (B) that have been used to arrive at an answer to the presented research questions. Topics like interview questions that have been asked, databases that have been analyzed and the set-up of the study – experimental or otherwise - are treated in this section. Two sections, finally, are devoted to the research outcomes, that are the answers (C) that can be given to the research questions. Firstly, in the results section, the information that has been gathered is presented, as far as it is relevant for answering the research questions. In a second step, in the discussion or conclusion section, this information is interpreted. In this section the author thus reflects on the performed research and derives, in doing so, the theoretical and practical lessons that can be learned, related to the research questions. This section is the final part of a thesis text.
None of the five thesis sections can be missed. Each of them serves a specific and essential purpose. That does not mean, however, that each of them needs to have the same weight and size. Students are sometimes puzzled by the question what is fashionable as regards the size of, for instance, their theory section, or their discussion section. The best way to find an answer to those questions is to cursorily inspect research papers published in journals like The Academy of Management Journal. One will see, then, that there is much variety. It all depends on the nature of the reported research. If the focus is on theory development, the theory section may comprise half of the thesis. If the focus is on data collection and data processing, the results section may grow rather large.
1.4Thought and choice in thesis writing[3]: writing ABC, thinking CAB
When you contemplatethe whole of your thesis,there is one question that stands out as being worth to bother about. This question is: what is my main ambition with this paper, that is, what is the key message I want to transmit to the reader, or, what is new in my thesis that I hope my readers will recall for ever? At first, the answer to this question may consist of a vast amount of findings and ideas. The more this is the case, the more there is reason for reconsideration: readers will never recall some amorphous mass of interesting things. A thesis is not an encyclopedia of findings. Even when the performed research covers a multitude of investigated issues (which is most often the case), one has to decide what single issue is going to be the key one, and what other issues are consequently going to be presented as background and context phenomena only, if they will dealt with at all. Infact, this means that one starts thinking about the C in the ABC-triplet, the answers given to research questions, rather than about the A, the questions themselves. Those questions are, in a sense, secondary.
At a first glance, this may look like anillegal or anyway an illogical, an upside-down approach: first deciding on the answers one is going to give, and thereafter devising the corresponding questions. And indeed, the design of a research project followsthe other, the normal, the logicalABC-route of first delineating the research questions in order to find answers thereafter. The first set-up for a thesis text also perfectly mirrors this normal route. Another option does not exist. Once the data collections and data analyses have been performed, however, there may be good reasons to rethink the initial set-up, because in that phase of the study – if not earlier - one most often becomes aware of what really makes the whole of the research endeavors interesting. Thena little bit of courage to redefine the initial research lines might be quite beneficial. This may lead to a new demarcation of the research outcomes, a redefinition of the thesis’ subject matter and the corresponding research questions, adaptationsin the introductory and method sections and a rewording of the thesis title.
The process of redefining the thesis’ central idea and rewriting one or more sections can go on until the final drafts of the thesis are prepared. It is a kind of dialectical approach: working at a piece of the text one develops new ideas, which necessitate the rewriting of other pieces, which gives rise to more new ideas and so on.We also may call it a wholistic approach of thesis design: starting from one central idea (the main ambition of the thesis) all pieces of the thesis text are elaborated accordingly.
The A-B-C-line of a thesis, made concrete by means of the succession of its sections, reflects a specific logical way of reasoning. We may call it the ABC-logics: research questions are introduced, a method that was designed for investigating those questions is subsequently explained, then the outcomes of the investigations are presented, and finally answers to the research questions are spelled out, based on those outcomes. It is this ABC-logics, that brings about the understandability and the believability that are characteristic of academic papers. From the point of view of the reader, the way the ideas in a thesis are unfolded is a matter of these logics, and nothing else. That is the strength of academic papers. This does not mean, however, that the writer of those papers proceeds in the same logical way, when composing his/her texts. To a certain extent, the opposite may be the case, as was described above. The linear ABC-logics remainssomething to be put in the end-product, but the writer’s thinking and decision making processes may be of a more wholistic and dialectical nature.
In the remaining parts of this booklet firstly instructions are given for writing each of the five successive sections that were mentioned above. Thereafter a number of additional issues are treated, such as the report’s title, abstract and appendices. This is followed by a list of common but dysfunctional writing habits, to be recognized and avoided by thesis writers. In an appendix attached to these texts, finally, a so-called style-guide[4] is unfolded, that is, a list of rules for the lay-out and other formal attributes of a paper, such as the use of tables an the way of referring to literature.
2. THE INTRODUCTION SECTION
The first section of a thesis serves for introducing the questions that underlie the reported research. A first rough outline of these questions is presented. At the very start of the exposé the reader thus gets an impression of the issues brought up in the thesis. Examples of roughly worded questions are: ‘to what degree does the transition to a market oriented organization structure help banking employees to perform their jobs in a customer oriented way?’, or ‘what change management approaches are effective when a manufacturing firm decides to outsource a part of its production?’. A couple of instructions about how to introduce research questions like these will be given below. Before that, some remarks are made about the phenomenon of research questions itself.