Draft your final introduction - Writing your final introduction and conclusion - Research and writing

A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, Ninth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2018

Draft your final introduction
Writing your final introduction and conclusion
Research and writing

10.1 Draft Your Final Introduction

10.1.1 Establish a Context of Prior Research

10.1.2 Restate Your Question as Something Not Known or Fully Understood

10.1.3 State the Significance of Your Question

10.1.4 State Your Claim

10.1.5 Draft a New First Sentence

10.2 Draft Your Final Conclusion

10.2.1 Restate Your Claim

10.2.2 Point Out a New Significance, a Practical Application, or Opportunities for Further Research (or All Three)

10.3 Write Your Title Last

Once you have a final draft and can see what you have actually written, you can write your final introduction and conclusion. These two framing parts of your paper crucially influence how readers will understand and remember the rest of it, so it’s worth your time to make them as clear and compelling as you can. In chapter 2 we showed you how to develop a project around a research problem. Here we show you how to use that problem to craft an introduction likely to engage your readers and a conclusion likely to solidify their understanding and prompt new questions.

What seizes readers’ attention in a research paper is not a snappy hook but a problem they think needs a solution, and what holds their attention is a promise that you’ve found it. As we’ve said, you can always work with readers who say I don’t agree. What you can’t survive are those who shrug and say I don’t care.

Your introduction has three aims. It should do the following:

✵ ▪ put your research in the context of other research

✵ ▪ make readers understand how your paper addresses a problem they care about

✵ ▪ give them a framework for understanding it (which sometimes, but not always, includes announcing your claim)

Most introductions run about 10 percent of the whole (in the sciences they are often shorter).

Your conclusion also has three aims. It should do the following:

✵ ▪ leave readers with a clear idea of your claim

✵ ▪ make readers understand its importance

✵ ▪ suggest further research

Conclusions are usually shorter than introductions. In article-length papers, they are usually sections; in theses and dissertations, they are usually separate chapters.

10.1 Draft Your Final Introduction

Introductions to papers in different fields can seem different, but behind most of them is a pattern with the four parts described in 6.2.2:

1. 1. Opening context or background. When this summarizes relevant research, it’s called a literature review that puts your project in the context of other research and sets up the next step. Keep it short.

2. 2. A statement of your research question, or your research problem’s condition. This is typically a statement of what isn’t known or understood or of what is flawed about the research you cited in step 1. It often begins with but, however, or another word signaling a qualification.

3. 3. A statement of the significance of your question, or your research problem’s consequence. This answers So what? It is key to motivating your readers.

4. 4. Your claim or a promise of one. This addresses the research problem expressed in step 2. Here is an abbreviated example (each sentence could be expanded to a paragraph or more):

For centuries, risk analysts have studied risk as a problem in statistics and the rational uses of probability theory.context But risk communicators have discovered that ordinary people think about risk in ways that seem unrelated to statistically based probabilities.question/problem-condition Until we understand how nonexperts think about risk, an important aspect of human cognition will remain a puzzle.significance/problem-consequence It appears that nonexperts judge risk by visualizing worst-case scenarios, then assessing how frightening the image is.claim

10.1.1 Establish a Context of Prior Research

Not every paper opens with a survey of research. Some begin directly with a research question stated as something not known or understood, followed by a review of the relevant literature. This is a common strategy when the gap in knowledge or understanding is well known:

The relationship between secondhand smoke and heart disease is still contested.

But if that gap isn’t well known, such an opening can feel abrupt, like this one:

Researchers do not understand how ordinary people think about risk.

As a rule, a research paper prepares readers by describing the prior research that it will extend, modify, or correct. If the paper is intended for general readers, the context it provides can be brief:

We all take risks every day—when we cross the street or eat high-fat food, and even when we take a bath. The study of risk began with games of chance, so it has long been treated mathematically. By the twentieth century, researchers used mathematical tools to study risk in many areas: investments, commercial products, even war. As a result, most researchers think that risk is a statistically quantifiable problem and that decisions about it should be rationally based.

In a paper intended for other researchers, this opening context typically describes the specific research the paper will extend or modify. It is important to represent this prior research fairly, so describe it as you think the researchers who conducted it would.

Ever since Girolamo Cardano thought about games of chance in quantitative terms in the sixteenth century (Cardano 1545), risk has been treated as a purely mathematical problem. Analyses of risk significantly improved in the seventeenth century when Pascal, Leibniz, and others developed the calculus (Bernstein 1996). In the twentieth century, researchers widened their focus to study risk in all areas of life: investments, consumer products, the environment, even war (Stimson 1990; 1998). These problems, too, have been addressed almost exclusively from a mathematical perspective. [Detailed discussion of contemporary research follows.]

Some papers, especially theses and dissertations, go on like that for pages, citing scores of books and articles only marginally relevant to the topic, usually to show how widely the researcher has read. That kind of survey can provide helpful bibliography to other researchers, especially new ones, but busy readers want to know about only the specific research that the researcher intends to extend, modify, or correct.

Early in your career you might not be able to write this review of prior research with much confidence, because you’re unlikely to know much of it. If so, imagine your reader as someone like yourself before you started your research. What would you have wanted to know? What did you get wrong that your research has corrected? How has it improved your own flawed understanding? This is where you can use a working hypothesis that you rejected: It might seem that X is so, but . . . (see also 4.1.2).

10.1.2 Restate Your Question as Something Not Known or Fully Understood

After establishing the context, state what that prior research hasn’t done or how it’s incomplete, even wrong. Introduce that statement with but, however, or some other term indicating that you’re about to modify the received knowledge and understanding that you just surveyed:

Ever since Girolamo Cardano . . . mathematical perspective.context But risk communicators have discovered that ordinary people think about risk in ways that are irrational and unrelated to statistically realistic probabilities. What is not understood is whether such nonexpert risk assessment is based on random guesses or whether it has systematic properties.question restated

10.1.3 State the Significance of Your Question

Now you must show your readers the significance of answering your research question. Imagine a reader asking So what?, then answer it. Frame your response as the consequence of not knowing the answer to your research question:

Ever since Girolamo Cardano . . . mathematical perspective.context But risk communicators have discovered that . . . What is not understood is whether such nonexpert risk assessment is based on random guesses or whether it has systematic properties.question restated [So what?] Until we understand how risk is understood by nonexperts, an important aspect of human reasoning will remain a puzzle: the kind of cognitive processing that seems systematic but lies outside the range of what is called “rational thinking.”significance

Alternatively, you can phrase the consequence as a benefit:

Ever since Girolamo Cardano . . . mathematical perspective.context But risk communicators have discovered that . . . What is not understood is whether such nonexpert risk assessment is based on random guesses or whether it has systematic properties.question restated [So what?] If we could understand how ordinary people make decisions about risks in their daily lives, we could better understand a kind of cognitive processing that seems systematic but lies outside the range of what is called “rational thinking.”significance

You may struggle to answer that So what? It is a problem that only experience can solve, but the fact is, even experienced researchers can be vexed by it.

10.1.4 State Your Claim

Once you state that something isn’t known or understood and why it should be, readers want to see your claim, the answer to your research question (we abbreviate a good deal in what follows):

Ever since Girolamo Cardano . . . mathematical perspective.context But risk communicators have discovered that ordinary people think about risk in ways that are systematic but irrational and unrelated to statistically realistic probabilities.question [So what?] Until we understand how risk is understood by nonexperts, an important kind of human reasoning will remain a puzzle: the kind of cognitive processing that seems systematic but lies outside the range of what is called “rational thinking.”significance It appears that nonexperts assess risk not by assigning quantitative probabilities to events that might occur but by visualizing worst-case scenarios, then assigning degrees of risk according to how vivid and frightening the image is.claim

If you have reason to withhold your claim until the end of your paper, write a sentence to conclude your introduction that uses the key terms from that claim and that frames what follows:

It appears that nonexperts assess risk not by assigning quantitative probabilities but by systematically using properties of their visual imagination.promise of claim

Those four steps may seem mechanical, but they constitute the introductions to most research papers in every field, both inside the academic world and out. As you read your sources, especially journal articles, watch for that four-part framework. You will not only learn a range of strategies for writing your own introductions but better understand the ones you read.

10.1.5 Draft a New First Sentence

Some writers find it so difficult to write their first sentence that they fall into clichés. Avoid these:

✵ ▪ Do not repeat the language of your assignment.

✵ ▪ Do not quote a dictionary definition: Webster defines risk as . . .

✵ ▪ Do not begin too generally: For centuries, philosophers have debated the question of . . . (Remember that you are not writing to everyone, only to your research community.)

If you want to begin with something livelier than prior research, try one or more of these openers (but note the warning that follows):

1. 1. A pithy quotation:

As Dale Carnegie once said, “All life is a chance.”

2. 2. A striking fact:

Many people drive rather than fly because the vivid image of an airplane crash terrifies them, even though they are many times more likely to die in a car crash than a plane wreck.

3. 3. A relevant anecdote:

George Miller always drove long distances to meet clients because he believed that the risk of an airplane crash was too great. Even when he broke his back in an automobile accident, he still thought he had made the right calculation. “At least I survived. The odds of surviving an airplane crash are zero!”

You can combine all three:

As Dale Carnegie once said, “All life is a chance.” For example, many people drive rather than fly because the vivid image of an airplane crash terrifies them, even though they are more likely to die in a car crash than a plane wreck. George Miller always drove long distances to meet clients because he believed that the risk of an airplane crash was too great. Even after he broke his back in an automobile accident, he still thought he had made the right calculation. “At least I survived. The odds of surviving an airplane crash are zero!”

Be sure to include in these openers terms that refer to the key concepts you’ll use when you write the rest of the introduction (and the rest of the paper). In this case, they include calculating, risk, vivid image, more likely.

Now the warning: before you write a snappy opening, be sure that others in your field use them. In some fields they’re considered too journalistic for serious scholarship.