Writing and Research Process

Surveying sources on your research area is the first step. Sources are used to broaden your research paper and to acknowledge how your research fits and builds on previous research. All sources should be to ‘scholarly materials’, except for rare cases, usually as directed by instruction from the instructor or the innate nature of the field of study. Scholarly materials include published and non-published articles, conference abstracts, and certain books (not core textbooks). Scholarly materials have been peer-reviewed and contain references to other such materials. There are three basic grades of sources: (1) primary sources, (2) secondary sources, and (3) tertiary sources.

Examples of primary sources are reports of original research data and period historical accounts. Secondary sources, often termed reviews of the literature, are writings others have done using primary sources. Examples of tertiary source are special topics textbooks.

You generally will not want to reference (or put much weight on) other reviews of the literature and other secondary sources, especially if they mirror your precise topic. There are two chief special circumstances in which the above does not exactly apply: (1) position statements or established scholars making an important point or argument based on research others did and (2) differing opinions and results from yours on the topic and hypothesis you studied. In both cases, it is both acceptable and necessary to use such secondary sources.

Audience: Audience is the group—type of people—to whom you are aiming your paper. An article written in a newspaper would differ greatly from one written to the Royal Society of London. Such a paper would be far less technical and not assume the reader was already an expert on the given subject and would contain far more explanations of background information that a scholar would be assumed to know already.

Language, Tone, & Point of View: For all papers and reports, proper English and sound organisation is required.
Research papers must be in the scholarly third-person point of view, though there are limited exceptions to this rule. You may give limited personal experience or opinions. You might say: ‘Ramirez and Poling (2008) found Humpty-Dumpty disease to be more common among Latino populations than other groups; however, based on my observations in rural WV, I disagree with them.’ Writing in a scholarly way is different from writing casually (Ex. 1), but it need not be dry or dull. One must also consider the tone is the way in which ones comes across in the writing and must be duly considered. It should be in active voice, as much as possible, and it should be engaging.

Example 1:

Casual: Dr. Fred said broken legs don’t heal too fast.
Scholarly: Lower extremity fractures have a slow healing time. (Fred F. Personal communication. 9/9/2008).

Passive voice: The X.Y.Z. was operated on by Dr. Thomas.
Active voice: Dr. Thomas performed the procedure on X.Y.Z.

There are, of course, times when active voice could neither be used in light of conservation of economy of space nor would it be actually possible to be ‘active’ (Ex. 2).

Thesis: The subject is the overall idea you want to examine; the topic is the next more specific idea within the subject; and the thesis needs to be yet more specific, controversial, defensible, and novel. Your thesis is what you explain and argue in your paper. You do have subtopics, of course, but those all support your thesis. The thesis is your interpretation of the facts pertaining to the topic. As such, it needs to be more than a description (Ex. 1). It needs to show evidence of serious analysis. The thesis is what you explain and argue in your paper and bring evidence in to support—like bringing in facts in a legal case to prove one’s client’s assertions. It also needs to be limited enough to receive a thorough treatment within the page range with which you must work, but it should not be so limited as to not have enough sources available or in the case of original research not be able to generate enough novel data. Generally, the examination of a particular thesis should result in a significant contribution to the body of knowledge on a particular topic. If the thesis lacks the potential to do this, even if it meets other criteria, then it is probably weak and should not be used.

Example 1:

i. Not a thesis: Many deaths occurred in the surgical setting during the American Civil War.
ii. Not a thesis: Did contemporary science exist to prevent many deaths occur in the surgical setting during the American Civil War?

iii. Thesis: The science to prevent the many deaths that occurred in the surgical setting during the American Civil War existed during that time, but it was generally ignored and not accepted into general surgical practice.