Category: Writing
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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 and explain how they relate to one another. When you think of your article, think of the main concepts and…
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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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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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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 outlets have been critical about ChatGPT Deep Research: Raffaele Ciriello: “It’s no surprise that unreliable data can slip in, since…
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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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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. And yet, we love to write. We hope to avoid distractions and just write. In the battle for writerly focus…
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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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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 academic writing builds arcs and achieves flow. How? This is done through point-first paragraphs and logical structures within paragraphs. Don’t…
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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 clear and concise goal that is derived from the knowledge gap. Researchers ask questions to obtain valuable knowledge about the…
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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 a glance… What is the knowledge gap? The knowledge gap is the space between what we know and what we…
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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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