If you are writing an empirical paper (a paper with original analysis of systematically collected data), don’t start with your argument, start with your research question. Show us that you didn’t know the answer before you collected your data.
And if you thought you knew the answer already, show us what led you to that hunch–what literature did you read that helped you form your hypotheses?
If you are writing a theoretically motivated empirical paper, make sure you specify your research question! Opinions differ, but toward the end of your intro is a good place, but definitely sometime before you get to your findings! Your findings need to answer the question.
As I discuss more in RQSS, not every paper has or needs a RQ. Some are spin-off papers from an empirical project that make an intervention into the literature. It would be artificial to add an RQ there. You’re making an argument and leveraging evidence. That’s different!
Most of the time, we’re trying to figure out WTF is going on so we need to go out with a question and an open-mind. This prevents us from imposing our own views and biases on our data and making flawed arguments.
Making your RQ explicit is also important because readers/reviewers/editors need to determine if your research design makes sense in light of your RQ. Make your RD match your RQ!
…a BIG big big issue we get is manuscripts that don’t follow a typical social science layout, put their findings in the lit review, don’t give enough data and methods, or don’t understand the purpose of a discussion and conclusion section
A few years ago, I wrote a chapter on how to organize an article and what exactly each part is supposed to do. You can find a link to it and other materials on my Resources page. You can find it linked right above this graphic: https://ashleytrubin.com/resources/
One of my most common comments on manuscripts: KonMari your paper! Make sure everything is in the right place. Take your findings out of the intro, lit review, data and methods section, and conclusion, and put them in the findings section.
Intros can have a brief summary of your findings, but not extensive discussions and not actual data (e.g., quotations). Ditto for discussions and conclusions.
Lit reviews should motivate your study, not draw on your study’s findings. Focus on what we know from the secondary literature–and do it in a way that makes us see the need for or benefit of your study.
But no empirical details until we’ve read your data and methods section. (Which also means make sure you have a data and methods section! If you have original empirical data, you need a data and methods section.)
When you put all your findings in one place, it makes it easier to find and cut down redundancies (or contradictions!) and to see the strength (and weaknesses) of your data.
And keep your lit review out of your findings section! An occasional reference to the secondary literature in the findings is fine, but that’s about it. Instead, the Discussion section is a great place to put your findings in conversation with the literature.
Sprinkling your findings throughout your paper can lead to another problem: endogeneity or using your findings to motivate your study. Remember that the best studies are motivated by problems in the literature (what we know and what we don’t). That leads to the RQ.
As I explain in my book #RQSS, how you motivate your study is not necessarily what brought you to that subject. I study something “because it’s there!” damnit. But I still have to motivate it in terms others in my field care about.
But when we use what we know from our study to motivate it, we’re putting the cart before the horse—and losing a prime opportunity to get people outside of our topic to care about study.
I’ll say it again and again: don’t use the findings from your study to motivate your study. That’s endogenous. Use the extant literature to motivate your study, then give us the findings in the findings section.
I’ll say it again and again, don’t put your findings in your lit review. Prior to your data and methods section, you should reference them once: a brief highlight in your intro that tells the reader what’s coming. Don’t interweave them in the lit review; that’s the discussion.
In your lit review, instead of just listing similar studies and saying your study makes a contribution to this literature, say how it’s moving the literature forward or why this study is necessary.
If you aren’t citing anyone in your article’s conclusion (or maybe fewer than four works), your conclusion is not effective. This counts for triple if you don’t have a discussion section. Put your work in conversation with the larger literature.
Understanding what the discussion and conclusion sections do was one of the great mysteries to me. My cheat sheet: Disc ~ lit rev; conc ~ intro. Meaning: your disc relates your findings to the lit covered in the lit review. Your concl relates your study to lit from intro.
The hourglass model makes so much sense once you learn about it. Start broad, get narrower and narrower, then broaden out, end broad.
It’s hard to have a conversation if you’re not speaking to/with studies. If you mean like you’re gesturing to a literature you already referenced, that might be okay, but it would be better to be specific about whom you’re engaging. But if it’s not engaging the literature… no.
If you’re laying out directions for future research, that’s fine. And also if you’ve already engaged the lit in a discussion section where you put your findings in conversation with the lit, then that’s much more okay. The prob is very narrow concls that just rehash the findings.
Ashley T. Rubin 