qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page i Writing and Presenting Research 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page ii © Angela M. Thody, 2006 First published 2006 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP SAGE Publications Inc.
2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B-42, Panchsheel Enclave Post Box 4109 New Delhi 110 017 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN-10 1 4129 0292 4 ISBN-13 978 1 4129 0292 2 ISBN-10 1 4129 0293 2 ISBN-13 978 1 4129 0293 9 (pbk) Library of Congress Control Number: 2005934768 Typeset by C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India Printed on paper from sustainable resources Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page iii Study skills Writing and Presenting SAGE Research Angela Thody SAGE Publications London ● Thousand Oaks ● New Delhi 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page iv Contents Overview 1 Conventions or 2 Principles for 3 Adapting to Alternatives? Selecting Appropriate Audience: Adjusting page 3 Writing and for their Aims Presentation Styles page 34 page 18 Want to know what Your readers and style to go for? This Follow this framework listeners really do chapter helps you from the first day matter, so find out what sort it out you start researching is wanted by academics a topic or less specialized audiences, national or international 4 Adapting to 5 The Arts and Craft 6 Primary Data Audience: Adjusting of Writing page 79 for your Purposes page 58 page 49 Collected a mountain of From getting started data? Find out how to Do you know your to proofreading, learn get it under control aims? Will you reveal how to cope with them to your readers everything from jargon and listeners? Is it and colloquialisms to ethical to let audience tenses and tone aims have priority over yours? 7 Literature and 8 Quantified Data 9 Qualitative Data Methodology page 109 page 129 page 89 This is how to make It’s pretty crowded Find out why you your numbers really with all those voices need to include them, count. But without to report. Here’s how what’s the right style forgetting that to make them really and how to organize the words matter too expressive them 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page v CONTENTS OVERVIEW v 10 Narrative 11 Beginnings and 12 Citations: Data Ends Bibliographies, page 145 page 159 Referencing, Quotations, Notes Poetry, history, stories: Impact, guide, review, page 185 are you writing impress. Discover the a novel bestseller or significance of how Getting it correct – the a research report? you start and finish final exciting challenge 13 Becoming a 14 Getting into Print 15 Copyright Presenter page 214 page 221 page 203 Whether conventional This is what you write An introduction to or alternative is your for so use this quick copyright and style, find out how to reference guide to help intellectual property be effective 16 Epilogue 17 Appendix: Bibliography page 235 Research Method page 241 for this Book Who supports my page 238 All the text references and belief about the further reading importance of, and Author bio-data choices for, writing and Discover how I wrote presentation? this book and what Where do you fit in? were its antecedents 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page vi 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page vii Contents List of Boxes xi List of Figures xiii List of Tables xiv Hazard Warning xv Appreciation xvi PART I PREPARATION 1 1 Conventions or Alternatives? 3 1.1 Debates to resolve 3 1.2 Context of the debates 6 1.5 Resolving the debates? 14 1.7 Review 17 2 Principles for Selecting Appropriate Writing and Presentation Styles 18 2.1 Framework of principles 18 2.2 Dialogue with the data 18 2.3 Writing and presenting 24 2.5 Review 33 3 Adapting to Audience: Adjusting for their Aims 34 3.1 The value of an audience 34 3.2 Attitudes to audience 35 3.3 Assessing readers and listeners 36 3.5 Audiences outside academia 42 3.6 Academic and less specialist audiences combined 44 3.7 Acknowledging the power of readers and listeners 47 3.8 Review 48 4 Adapting to Audience: Adjusting for your Purposes 49 4.2 Defining your purposes 50 4.3 Overt purpose: enhancing knowledge 50 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page viii viii WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 4.4 Covert purposes: careers and finance 51 4.5 The overt and covert combined: influencing policy 52 4.7 Review 57 5 The Arts and Craft of Writing 58 5.1 How easy is writing? 58 5.2 The writing process 59 5.3 Style and tone 66 5.4 Review 76 PART II SELECTION AND REDUCTION 77 6 Primary Data 79 6.1 Selection and reduction 79 6.2 How little do you need? 79 6.3 Using the guiding principles to select and reduce data 80 6.4 Using categorization to select and reduce data 84 6.5 Review 88 7 Literature and Methodology 89 7.1 Literature reviews and methodology surveys: definitions 89 7.2 Literature reviews and methodology surveys: locations and extent 90 7.5 Review 105 PART III PRODUCTION 107 8 Quantified Data 109 8.1 Quantified data presentation: purposes 109 8.2 Quantified data presentation: the challenges 110 8.3 Qualitative and narrative data quantified 111 8.7 Language and style 120 8.10 Review 125 9 Qualitative Data 129 9.2 Qualitative data writing and presentation: purposes 132 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page ix CONTENTS ix 9.3 Qualitative data formats 132 9.6 Focus group data 139 9.7 Historical, literary and legal data 141 9.9 Review 144 10 Narrative Data 145 10.6 Review 158 11 Beginnings and Ends 159 11.1 Why beginnings and ends matter 159 11.2 Abstracts, executive summaries, key points, prefaces 161 11.3 Acknowledgements, appreciation, forewords 164 11.5 Author notes or bio-data 167 11.6 Bibliography, endnotes, references 168 11.7 Conclusions, summary, recommendations 168 11.11 Keywords or descriptors 175 11.12 Quotations at the beginnings and ends of texts 176 11.13 Titles and title pages 178 11.14 Review 184 12 Citations: Bibliographies, Referencing, Quotations, Notes 185 12.1 Uses for citations 185 12.2 Major citation systems 186 12.3 End-of-text citations: bibliography, references, works cited, further reading 189 12.4 In-text citations (what to put in those brackets) 190 12.5 Quotations in the text 193 12.7 Review 200 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page x x WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH PART IV PUBLICATION: REFERENCE GUIDES 201 13 Becoming a Presenter 203 13.1 Challenges and opportunities 203 13.2 Conventions and alternatives 204 13.3 What’s effective for both conventional and alternative presentations? 205 13.4 Review 213 14 Getting into Print 214 14.3 Chapters in edited books 218 14.5 Success and rejection 219 14.6 Extending the audience for your research and publications: using the web 219 14.7 Ten top tips: publish or perish 220 15 Standing on the Shoulders of Giants – Without Violating their Copyright 221 Lora Siegler Thody and Serena Thody 15.2 Violation of copyright 224 15.3 Your own copyright 227 15.4 Libel and slander 230 15.5 Websites for reference 230 15.6 Authors’ bio-data 231 PART V VALEDICTION 233 16 Epilogue 235 16.2 How the protagonists line up 235 16.3 Where you and I fit in 236 17 Appendix: Research Method for this Book 238 17.1 Inception of the project 238 17.4 Data presentation 240 Bibliography 241 Index 252 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page xi Boxes 1.1 Differentiating conventional and alternative research writing styles: poetic format 4 1.2 Differentiating conventional and alternative research writing styles: textbook format 5 2.1 Example of the same research data in both a primary (journal article) and a secondary (crime novel) format by the same author 21 2.2 Template for the basics of a research report 22 2.3 Template for the basics of a university thesis 23 2.4 Research writing and presentation: dealing with the practicalities 30 2.5 After publication: marketing your research 33 3.1 Writing appropriately for less specialist audiences 43 4.1 Ways of reporting to research respondents 57 5.1 How to stop writers’ block 62 5.2 Data categories in tabular form 85 6.3 Selecting categories for your data 86 7.1 Purposes of literature reviews 91 7.2 Criticism in literature reviews 98 7.3 Template for methodology reviews 99 8.1 Criteria for evaluating quantitative formatting 125 9.1 Qualitative data writing and presentation: purposes 132 9.2 Writing and presenting individual interview data: requirements 135 10.1 Challenges to be met in the writing and presentation of narrative 147 11.1 Design criteria for beginnings and ends 160 11.2 Objectives for abstracts, executive summaries, key points, prefaces 162 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page xii xii WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 12.1 Uses for citations 186 12.2 Citation and style systems: examples 186 12.3 In-text citations: what, where and how 192 12.4 Comparisons of citations in the text and citations in notes 195 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page xiii Figures 2.1 Framework of principles to guide your selection of writing and presentation styles 19 2.2 Contrasting formats for the title page of a conference paper 26 5.2 How to procrastinate 62 5.3 Do you need print versions of work-in-progress? 63 5.4 Techniques for drafting and redrafting 64 6.1 Illustration of data reduction: extracts from an advertisement for a commercial product developed from research 80 7.1 Literature and methodology reviews for different audiences and purposes 91 8.1 The effect of repositioning table titles and explanatory information 115 8.2 Four figures collated from one article, showing variety of formats, sanserif font within the figures, column alignment and differing title fonts and formats 123 11.1 Contrasting styles of title pages 182 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page xiv Tables 4.1 Extract from a research report: tabulated data from which varying priorities were selected by different users 54 8.1 Purposes of quantified data writing and presentation (version 1) 109 8.2 Extract to illustrate quantified reduction of historical and literary data: the incidence of terminological categorizations of women 112 8.3 Extract to illustrate quantified reduction of observational data: time spent alone by CEOs 113 8.4 Extract to demonstrate the presentation of a table without accompanying text 116 8.5 Extract to demonstrate the presentation of a table with accompanying repetitive text 117 8.6 Extract to demonstrate the presentation of a table with accompanying non-repetitive text 117 8.7 Extract to demonstrate the presentation of a table with accompanying explanatory text 118 8.8 Purposes of quantified data writing and presentation (version 2) 121 8.9 Descriptive Analysis of Schools Backgrounds and Teachers Backgrounds (Ho, 2003: Table 2) 126 8.10 Descriptive Analyses of Schools’ and Teachers’ Backgrounds (revised version) 127 9.1 Conventions and alternatives for qualitative data polyvocality 131 11.2 Types of bibliographies 191 13.1 Comparisons between conventional and alternative presentations 206 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page xv Hazard Warning Read in chapter order, this book presents a wide-ranging, introductory guide to the choices to be made in deciding how to communicate research findings in documents and presentations.
Once you have familiarized yourself with the contents, the book becomes a valuable reference. The book is necessary because although pluralism in research methodologies has become accepted, pluralism in the ways in which research can be reported is much less accepted; nor are there many sources of information on the possible varieties of report- ing research. New researchers may find this book destabilizing if they have not previously con- fronted many choices of how to write up, or present, their research. Experienced researchers may find this book causes arguments about cherished ideas concerning what is, or is not, conventional for reporting research.
If you want to discuss the destabilizing or the arguments with me, do make contact: Emerita Professor Angela Thody, angelathody450@hotmail.