Concepts are the building blocks of research articles
The building blocks of a social science research article are concepts. The author must present and define all major concepts. Throughout the article, the author must link these concepts together…
Saturation in Qualitative Research
Saturation is a fundamental yet unscientific aspect of qualitative research. In this post, I explain what saturation is and why it is often unscientifically derived. Thematic analysis creates categories Qualitative…
Counting Chaos: Problems of Early Covid-19 Pandemic Data Reporting
This post examines the early state of administrative data that the public and authorities used to understand the beginning stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. It highlights challenges in data collection…
AI Writing Tips from Economist Tyler Cowen
Notable economist Tyler Cowen tells us how to use artificial intelligence (AI) for writing and learning. We learn it from an interview with David Perell, in his “How I Write”…
Sociology is dangerous! Why authoritarians and their supporters attack sociology
The Trump Administration censors sociological knowledge In 2025, the Trump Administration banned words that sociologists regularly use from appearing on government websites and publicly-funded school curricula materials, according to a…
How to Find, Read, and Organize Academic Social Science Research
The bare bones of academic research is: Find and read academic articles, and organize the massive amounts of research materials you will collect and produce. This post is a how-to…
ChatGPT Deep Research Output Misleads Us about Data Collection and Analysis
tl;dr ChatGPT Deep Research cannot access any datasets that it was not trained on. It spits out reports that strongly imply that it can, but it cannot. Some researchers and tech…
Futurist and Culture Critic Ted Gioia on Cycles, Decline, and the Rise of Microculture
How can we best understand the current cultural landscape and what it means for the future? The Rick Beato interview of Ted Gioia, two thought leaders in the music and…
Grant writing: What makes social science research ideas fundable?
From idea to grant proposal: empirical research projects in the social sciences See also Some Tips on Finding Research Grants 10 Tips for Writing Research Grant Proposals Why funding? Funding…
How to write an abstract for a social science research article
After the title, the abstract is the next important part of your article that your social science audience will read. In this post, we explain how to write an abstract…
Effective titles in social science research are short, truthful, and informative
You want people to read your research. When looking for a useful article, titles are often the first thing people see. Titles should be useful — they should let the…
Quantitative Research in the Social Sciences and ChatGPT
We covered a basic approach in How to use ChatGPT in Social Science Research; in this post, we focus on specific issues of using ChatGPT for quantitative research. Caveat: This…
How to write a peer review for an article in a social science journal
Part of being a professional social scientist is to write peer reviews for article in academic journals. This post discusses how to write them. Basic Principles Peer review serves to…
Writing Peer Review in the Social Sciences: Constructive, Honest, and Respectful
Peer review is a fundamental activity in social science. Whether you are a student or a seasoned professor, constructive feedback on your article by your colleagues is a necessary step…
Predicting the Future: Wired Magazine, 2022
The Wired World in 2022 predicted the technological advances and technology-driven changes that will make headlines next year. I read them and made notes so you don’t have to. Here…
Don’t Look Up (2021): Blame, Change, and Social Forces
When “We tried” is not good enough. In a way, the asteroid in Netflix’s dark comedy Don’t Look Up absolves everyone of blame — no one caused the asteroid to appear and…
Distraction-free: Productivity Apps and Devices
Are you a writer? Yes. Do you battle distractions? Yes. Will apps and devices help with that? Probably not. Phones. Cat videos. Hamster videos. We are distracted. I am distracted.…
What is an empirical research article in the social sciences?
Definition and purpose Empirical research articles in the social sciences are documents that communicate research ideas. Articles present the answers to the social scientist’s research questions. The purpose of an…
Arcs and Flow: Good academic writing with examples
What is good academic writing in the social sciences? How to write academic research articles well? We provide the building blocks of good academic writing with examples. In short, good…
Research Questions with Examples
All research starts with a question. We define “research question” and provide examples of research questions in the social sciences. What is a research question? A research question is a…
Knowledge gap and examples
Researchers often talk about the “knowledge gap.” What is the “knowledge gap?” This post explains what the “knowledge gap” is and provides examples from the social sciences. See also At…
How to use ChatGPT in Social Science Research
In this post, I discuss how to use ChatGPT and other AI assistants in social science research. The take-away message is: The AI is the assistant and you are the…
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Social Scientist
As AI increases in use and popularity, the profession of the social sciences will change. AI will eventually change the daily job of the social scientist in terms of research,…
How to think about academic writing in the social sciences
With so many parts to write in a research article, academic writing can seem overwhelming. How should we think about academic writing? In this post, to help with your thinking,…
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