Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [229]
—Richard Niesenbaum, Professor of Biology
The introduction is one of the hardest sections to write. In the introduction, students must summarize, analyze, and integrate the work of numerous other authors and use that to build their own argument.
The task is to read each article and summarize it in their own words. The key is to analyze rather than just repeat material from the articles so as to make clear the connections among them. (It is important to note that experimental psychologists almost never use direct quotes in their writing. Many of my students have been trained to use direct quotation for their other classes, and so I have to spend time explaining how to summarize without directly quoting or plagiarizing the work that they have read.)
Finally, in the introduction the students must show explicitly how the articles they have summarized lead to the hypothesis they have devised. Many times the students see the connection as implicitly obvious, but I require that they explicitly state the relationships between what they read and what they plan to do.
—Laura Edelman, Professor of Psychology
The format of the empirical paper in psychology resembles an hourglass. It starts reasonably broad, narrows, and then broadens again to the larger perspective: “Now that we know this, where can we go with it? What are the implications?” As in other kinds of science writing, the empirical psychology paper consists of abstract, introduction, methods, results, and discussion. The introduction is especially difficult to write because it must contextualize the new research by pulling together a lot of reading from a variety of sources. This part of the introduction, the literature review, answers the question, “What do we know?”
In order to efficiently locate the new study in the context of others’ work on the subject, writers must integrate citations. Rather than summarize what Johnson found and then what Smith found and then what Moore found, the writer needs to bring these together into a more concise summary. All three studies might be summarized and cited in one paragraph or even a single sentence. As a rule of thumb, citations should include more than one source. Single citations don’t allow enough integration.
—Mark Sciutto, Professor of Psychology
Integration of Citations in a Literature Review: A Brief Example
Note in the following paragraph—from a 1999 article in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin—how the citations (in parentheses) include more than one study:
Self-presentational motives play a role in a variety of potentially dangerous health-related behaviors, including behaviors that lead to risk of HIV infection; accidental death and injury; and alcohol, tobacco, and drug use (Leary, Tchividjian, & Kraxberger, 1994; Martin, Leary, & Rejeski, in press). The desire to be perceived as a risk-taker, brave, or one of the crowd (or conversely, concerns about being viewed as overly cautious or neurotic) may lead people to take chances with their health to create the desired image (Denscombe, 1993; Finney, 1978).
Introductions in Scientific Papers: A Brief Example
The following example comes from a set of excerpted introductions that biochemistry professor Keri Colabroy uses to teach her students how to write concise, focused sentences of two types: Type #1: sentences that orient readers to the scientific context of a new study while also showing the need for it, and Type #2: sentences that succinctly state what the paper/study has accomplished. The sentences come from a paper published in Nature Chemical Biology 2006.
#1 Although the antitumor activity of these two compounds has been shown to involve binding to microtubules, the targets and modes of actions for many other bioactive cyanobacterial metabolites remain elusive.
Dr. Colabroy comments: This is a great sentence. You can see the tension. Some activity has been shown, but there is still something we don’t understand … and