Student's guide to writing college papers, Fourth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2010
How experienced researchers think about their questions
What researchers do and how they think about it
Writing your paper
We know how anxious you may be feeling if you are facing your first big research project. What should I write about? How do I find information on it? What do I do with it when I find it? But you can handle any project if you break it down into its parts, then work on them one at a time. In the first part of this book, we show you how to do that.
You may think that some matters we explain are beyond your immediate needs. We know that a five-page paper differs from a PhD dissertation. But both require the same skills and habits of thought that experienced researchers began learning when they were where you are now. In that sense, this book is about your future, about starting to think in a new way—like a researcher.
We have organized this book as though you could create a research paper by progressing steadily through a sequence of steps, from selecting its topic to drafting and revising it. But we have not written the book that way. No researcher, no matter how experienced, ever marches straight through those steps. They move forward a few steps, go back to earlier ones, even head off in an entirely new direction. So while our sequence of chapters looks like a steady path, when you read them you'll be reminded regularly that you can't expect to follow it without a few detours, perhaps even some new starts. We'll even tell you how to check your progress to see if you might need to go back a step or two.
But you can manage that kind of looping, even messy process if you know that behind it is a series of tasks whose order makes sense, and that with a plan based on them, you can work your way toward a successful paper. There are four stages in starting and completing a research project.
✵ In chapters 2—3, we focus on how to find a topic and then in it a research question whose answer is worth your time and your readers' attention.
✵ In chapters 4—6, we show you how to find information from sources and how to use them to back up an answer.
✵ In chapters 7—11, we show you how to plan and draft your report so that you make your best case for your argument.
✵ In chapters 12—14, we show you how to revise that draft so that your readers will think that you based your answer on sound reasoning and reliable evidence.
Several themes run through those chapters:
✵ You can't jump into a project or even a part of it blindly. You must plan, then keep in mind the whole process as you take each step.
✵ A researcher does more than find data on a topic and report it. Your job is to gather specific data to answer a specific question that you want to ask.
✵ From the first day of your project to its last, you must keep in mind that your report is a conversation with your readers. You have to bring them into that conversation by asking on their behalf the questions that they would ask if they were there in front of you. And then you have to answer them.
✵ You should try to write every day, not just to take notes on what you read but to clarify what you think of it. You may not use much of this early writing in your final draft, but it prepares you for that scary moment when you have to begin writing it.
At times you may feel overwhelmed by what you read here, especially be-cause we are asking you to think about research and its reporting in ways that you will only need years from now. But we have designed this book so that when you get confused or lost, you can hunker down with our mini-guides and checklists just to get the job done. Then, when you begin to move for-ward again, you can step back to reconsider the larger issues of the nature of research and the papers we write to report it. Ultimately—probably not today, and maybe not next month or next year, but someday soon enough—you will find that your success on a job or in life will depend on your understanding of that mind-set of a researcher.
How to Use Part 1
In part 1, we lay out all the goals, plans, strategies, steps, models, formulas, and everything else we know that will help you to understand, first of all, the mind-set you need to do research well, then the processes and forms you must master to manage a research project, and finally the specific things you must do to get your paper done. We hope that each of you will engage our book in all three ways. Here's how we suggest you do that:
1. Read all of part 1 to get an overview. Read the introduction and chapter 1 carefully, then the rest as quickly as you can. Slow down when we explain what research is like, how researchers think, what the stages are, and why you need them. Speed up when we cover small details that you won't remember anyway.
2. Before you start a new stage in writing your paper, reread the chapters that cover it—for instance, read chapters 2 and 3 before you pick a research question, chapters 7 and 8 before you outline a draft. Use this reading to create a mental plan for how you will get through that stage.
3. As you work on your paper, look in the relevant chapters for checklists, models, and other guides (printed in blue) that will help you go step-by-step.
If your deadline looms and you cannot squeeze out the time for this big-to-little-picture approach, you can work the other way around: start from the checklists, models, and guides. If you understand what to do looking at them alone, do it. If not, read the surrounding text until you do. We hope you won't be so pressed for time that you have to take this shortcut, but we designed this book so that you can. If you do, go back and read the sections you skipped after you turn in your paper. You'll be glad you did.
Go to www.turabian.org to find supplemental materials related to part 1.
1: What researchers do and how they think about it
1.1 How Experienced Researchers Think about Their Questions
1.1.1 Topic: “I am working on the topic of . . .”
1.1.2 Question: “. . . because I want to find out how or why . . .”
1.1.3 Significance/So What: “. . . so that I can help others understand how or why . . .”
1.2 Two Kinds of Research Questions
1.2.1 Practical Questions: What Should We Do?
1.2.2 Conceptual Questions: What Should We Think?
1.2.3 The Challenge of Answering So What? for Conceptual Questions
1.3 How Researchers Think about Their Answers/Arguments
1.3.1 Think of Your Readers as Allies, Not Opponents
1.3.2 Think of Your Argument as Answers to Readers' Questions
1.3.3 Use the Parts of Argument to Guide Your Research
1.4 How You Can Best Think about Your Project
1.4.1 Focus on Convincing Readers, Not on Filling Pages
1.4.2 Picture Yourself in Conversation with Your Readers
1.5 How to Plan Your Time (No One-Draft Wonders Allowed)
Every successful researcher does at least two things in a research report: she raises a question that readers want an answer to, and then she answers it. In this chapter, we show you how to get started by finding or inventing a research question interesting enough for readers to care about and challenging enough that you have to research its answer. Then we show you how to plan your project by mapping out the parts of the argument you will need to support that answer.
1.1 How experienced researchers think about their questions
All researchers gather facts: we'll call them data. But they use those data in different ways. Some people gather data on a topic just to satisfy their curiosity: for example, there are history buffs who collect stories about the Battle of the Alamo because the history of the Alamo is their hobby. In that case, they don't have to care whether others are interested: they can research in whatever way they want and needn't bother to write up what they find.
Most researchers, however, do their research in order to share it—because their colleagues or clients need it, because they think their question and its answer are important to others, or just because they want others to know something interesting. But when researchers share their results, they have to offer more than just random data they happened to dig up on their topic. They look for and report only certain kinds of data—those that they can use to show that they have found a sound, reliable answer to a research question, such as Why has the Alamo story become a national legend? In other words, they look for and report data that they can use as evidence to support a claim that answers a question.
The best researchers, however, try to do more than just convince others that their answer is sound. They also show why that answer is worth knowing by showing why their question was worth asking in the first place. In a business setting, researchers usually show why their research helps someone decide what to do:
If we can understand why our customers are moving to the competition, we can know what we have to change to keep them.
But in an academic setting, researchers usually show how the answer to their research question helps others understand some bigger, more important issue:
Historians have long been concerned with how we Americans developed our sense of national identity. If we can figure out why the Alamo story has become a national legend, then we might better understand how regional myths like the Battle of the Alamo have shaped that national identity.
But even if you cannot imagine yourself appealing to historians, you can locate that larger issue in the context of your class:
A major issue in this class has been how we Americans developed our sense of national identity. If we can figure out why the Alamo story has become a national legend, then we might better understand how regional myths like the Battle of the Alamo have shaped that national identity.
You can find out whether your question is a worthy one by describing your project in a sentence like this one:
1. I am working on the topic of stories about the Battle of the Alamo,
2. because I want to find out why its story became a national legend,
3. so that I can help my classmates understand how such regional myths have shaped America's sense of a national identity.
In its second and third parts, this sentence takes you beyond a mere topic to state a question and its importance to readers.
When you state why your research question is important to your readers, you turn it into a research problem. A research problem is simply a question whose answer is needed by specific readers because without it they will suffer a cost. That cost is what transforms a question that is merely interesting to you into one that you expect others to care about.
TQS: How to Identify a Worthy Research Question
You can help yourself think about your project by describing it in a three-step sentence that states your TOPIC + QUESTION + SIGNIFICANCE (or TQS):
TOPIC: I am working on the topic of ___________,
QUESTION: because I want to find out ___________,
SIGNIFICANCE: so that I can help others understand ___________.
Don't worry if at first you cannot find a worthy significance for the third step. As you develop your answer, you'll find ways to explain why your question is worth asking.
Note: Like all of the formulas you will find in this book, the TQS formula is intended only to prime your thinking. Use it to plan and test your question, but don't expect to put it in your paper in exactly this form. You will use its information in your introduction, but not the sentence itself (see chapter 13).
That three-step TQS sentence is worth a closer look because the success of your project will depend on your ability to discover or invent a good research question.
1.1.1 Topic: “I am working on the topic of . . .”
Researchers often begin with just a topic, something that sparks their curiosity, such as the Battle of the Alamo. But if you stop there, you've got problems. Even a focused topic is a poor guide to your work. You can only mound up notes on the facts you happen to find on your topic. You will have no principled way to decide which facts to look for, which ones to use in your paper, and which to discard. When that happens, students typically run into trouble, in the form of a data dump. They dump everything into a report that reads like a grab bag of barely connected facts. Most readers quickly become bored, asking, Why are you telling me this? They might read on, but only if they are already interested in the topic. But even readers fascinated with your topic will want to know: What do these facts add up to?
1.1.2 Question: “. . . because I want to find out how or why . . .”
Experienced researchers don't start their research until they have not just a topic but a question about it, such as Why has the regional story of the Alamo become a national legend?
Researchers know that readers want the facts they read about to add up to something. Specifically, they want those facts to back up some main finding—a claim that adds to their knowledge or understanding. But they will think that claim is worth reading about only if it answers some research question. Without such a question to guide their reading, your readers will struggle to see what, if anything, your research adds up to.
At the same time, you need such a question to guide the research leading up to your paper: without one you will struggle to know what information you need. All you can do is discover everything you can about your topic and hope you can pull it together at the end. But with a research question, you can know what facts to look for and, when you find them, which ones to use in your paper—those facts that are relevant to your question. (As we'll see later, you'll need not only the facts that support your answer but also any ones that might seem to discredit it.)
You may have to do some preliminary reading about your topic to come up with a question, but in every research project, formulating that question is the crucial first step.
1.1.3 Significance/So What: “. . . so that I can help others understand how or why . . .”
Experienced researchers also know, however, that readers won't be interested in just any research question. They want to know why the answer you have found is worth knowing. So once you find a question that you like, expect that readers will ask you a question of their own: So what?
You could ask the question How many cats slept in the Alamo the night before the battle? but who would care about its answer? All but the most fanatical catlovers would want to know: So what? Why should I care about those cats? Readers ask So what? about all research questions, not just the off-the-wall ones. If you tell readers that you want to research the question Why has the regional story of the Alamo become a national legend?, you should expect them to ask in turn: So what? Why should I care that you can explain that? Your answer must point them to the significance of its answer: If we can find that out, we might better understand the bigger issue of how regional stories shape our national identity. Experienced researchers know that readers care about a question only when its answer might make them say not So what? but That's worth knowing! Of course, professional researchers have a big advantage: they already know what issues their readers care about. Students, especially beginners, have less to go on. So don't worry if at first you cannot find some great significance to your research question. Keep hunting for a good So what?, but all won't be lost if you don't find one. As long as you find a question in any way relevant to your class, you can always explain its significance in terms of the class (for more on this, see 13.1.3):
. . . so that I can help my classmates understand how such regional myths have shaped America's sense of a unified national identity, which has been an important issue in our study of American diversity.