Category: Academic Professionalization
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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” podcast. Here is Tyler Cowen’s advice. Play around with AI Cowen advises writers to play around with AI to understand…
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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 report from The New York Times. In the banned word list: activism, inequality, intersectionality, gender, historically, political, underrepresentation, socioeconomic, and…
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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 guide for social science students to manage academic research. How to find academic articles It all comes down to the…
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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 allows researchers the time, space, and materials to execute a research idea. Grant proposals communicate the research idea to the…
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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 for an empirical article in the social sciences, with examples. By empirical article, we mean articles in which data analysis…
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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 reader know what to expect. In this post, we explain how to write effective titles for your social science research.…
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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 post reflects what I’ve learned until March 2024. Remember that the AI tools develop quickly. Some of the problems or…
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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 ensure the integrity and quality of scholarly research. It’s a process designed to evaluate the value of a research work.…
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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 in the writing process. A hallmark of feedback is an honest assessment of the strengths and limitations of the work…
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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 article is to communicate ideas from one researcher or research team to an audience. There are many ways to do…
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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 director. See also Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Social Scientist Quantitative Research in the Social Sciences and ChatGPT Many AI…
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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, teaching, and administration. There are ethical issues of plagiarism, defined as “pretending to write something that is not yours –…
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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, I present a simple philosophy of academic writing in the social sciences. It acknowledges who we are and is rooted…
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Academic Writing for Psychology Students
This is for the course “Critical Academic Writing” taught, in English, at the University of Warsaw’s Faculty of Psychology. This course is designed to teach first-year MA students in psychology the skills necessary for academic writing in English in order to write a quantitative, high-quality MA thesis. A high-quality MA…
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How to write the results section of a research article in the social sciences
When you analyze data, your readers will want to know the results. But, you have lots of data and lots of analyses. How can we best write the results section of an empirical research article in the social sciences? Articles on writing empirical research articles in the social sciences Some…
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How to write the theory section of a research article in the social sciences
Every empirical research article in sociology and political science requires a theory section. When you conduct research with data, there are dozens of concepts and theories to choose from. However, only some can fit into the theory section. What to do? This post provides some commonsense tips on how to…
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