Category: Writing
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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 worry — we will define…
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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 relationships between concepts. When phrased…
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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 do not know. “Whereas we…
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How to use ChatGPT in Social Science Research
In this post, I discuss how to use ChatGPT in social science research. The take-away message is: The AI is the assistant and you are the director. Many AI tools for social scientists There are many AI tools out there, including ChatGPT. Otter.ai does transcripts. Notion.so integrates notes (including transcripts). Consensus.app is like Google Scholar…
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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 in honesty and respect. Social…
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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 thesis presents an argument based…
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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 tips on how to write…
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How to write the theory section of a research article in the social sciences
Every empirical research article in the social sciences requires a theory section. When you do research with data, there are dozens of concepts and theories to choose from. But only some can go into the theory section of your article. What to do? This post provides some commonsense tips on how to write the theory…
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Writing Habits and Writing Strategies
Staring at a white Word doc or looking up at a mountain of scrap notes — you may find yourself stuck. You are stuck because you need to write the draft of the article, but you find it hard to write. What to do? In this post, we discuss writing habits and writing strategies for…
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Some Tips on Finding Research Grants
Tips for researchers to obtain grant funding In addition to the top tips for grant writing, I gathered some tips by Jonathan O’Donnell in a blog post for LSE. With shrinking funding options and more and more PhDs in the world, how to get grants? Some tips if you are… A Reviewer of Grants Register to review…