ACADEMIC

2019. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

SKILLS
for interdisciplinary studies
Revised edition

Koen van der Gaast

Laura Koenders
Ger Post
Copyright

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 Academic Skills for Interdisciplinary Studies

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 Academic Skills
for Interdisciplinary
Studies
Revised Edition

Koen van der Gaast

Laura Koenders

Ger Post

Amsterdam University Press

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 Academic Skills for Interdisciplinary Studies is Volume 1 of the Series Perspectives on
Interdisciplinarity.

Second, revised edition 2019

Originally published as Academische vaardigheden voor interdisciplinaire studies by

Joris J.W. Buis, Ger Post & Vincent R. Visser (2015). Now available as Academische
vaardigheden voor interdisciplinaire studies. Vierde, herziene druk, by Koen van der
Gaast, Laura Koenders & Ger Post (2019), ISBN 9789463725118.
© Amsterdam University Press

Text translated by Vivien Collingwood

Cover and interior design: Matterhorn Amsterdam

ISBN 978 94 6372 092 2

e-ISBN 978 90 4855 006 7 (pdf)
NUR 143

© Koen van der Gaast, Laura Koenders & Ger Post / Amsterdam University Press
B.V., Amsterdam 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

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 Table of contents

Acknowledgements 10
Introduction 11
About this book 11
Central theme: research practice and the empirical cycle 11

Part 1 Orientation and reading 14

1 Preparatory reading and searching 15
Familiarizing yourself with a topic 15
Finding your bearings outside the university 16
Finding your bearings at university 16
Finding your bearings between university and society 17
An initial literature search 17
Concepts and theories 17
Scholarly literature 19
Grey literature 20
Academic literature and ‘ordinary’ search engines 21
Scholarly search engines 21
Availability 21
The library 22
Digital search engines and databases 22
Search methods 22
Ordering your search results 24
Continuous search 24
Exploratory reading 25
Speed reading 25
Sources 28
Other useful sources 28
2 Gathering and organizing key information 29
Optimizing your study environment 29
Learning objectives 30
Reading strategies 31
Reading textbooks 31
Reading academic articles and books 32
Systematic reading 33
Organizing information 35
Sources 37
Other useful sources 37

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 3 Studying thoroughly and critically 38
Sentence-level analysis 38
Types of argumentation 40
Simple argumentation 40
Plural argumentation 41
Coordinating argumentation 42
Subordinate argumentation 42
Implicit motivation 44
Critically evaluating texts 45
Sources 47
Other useful sources 47

Part 2 Making your research measurable 48

4 From your topic to your question 49
Theoretical framework 50
From theories to concepts and dimensions 50
The theoretical framework and interdisciplinary research 52
The problem statement 53
Sources 54
5 Formulating a good question 55
Characteristics of a research question 55
Types of questions 56
Sources 58
6 A testable concept 59
Why operationalize? 59
From dimensions to indicators and variables 60
Operationalization and validity 61
Other forms of operationalization 62
Sources 63
7 Making a research instrument 64
Qualitative versus quantitative 64
When qualitative and when quantitative? 65
Operationalization 67
Structure of the instrument 68
Determining your sample 68
Making a qualitative research instrument 69
Formulating interview questions 70
From indicators to topic lists or questionnaires 70
Order of the questionnaire 70
Phrasing interview questions 71
Validity and reliability of your instrument 72
Assessment by an ethics committee 73
Sources 74
Other useful sources 74

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 Part 3 Doing and writing up research 76
8 Research practice 77
Research practice: quantitative research 77
Safeguarding the validity of quantitative research 77
Keeping a log 79
Organizing your data 80
Getting familiar with your data 80
Research practice for qualitative research: conducting interviews 81
Before the interview 81
During the interview 81
After the interview 83
Analysing the interview 84
After coding 86
Sources 87
Other useful sources 87
9 The structure of your article 88
Argumentation structure 88
Objections 89
Framing an argument: pitfalls 92
The structure of a scholarly article 93
The introduction 96
The middle section 97
The literature review 97
The research article 98
Methodology 98
Results 99
Presenting data 100
Figures 100
Table 101
The discussion and the conclusion 101
Valorization 103
Sources 103
10 Finishing your article: academic writing, titles, and abstracts 104
The title and the abstract 104
Writing clearly 104
Academic language use 106
Sources 108
Other useful sources 108

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 11 Citing sources and the bibliography 109
Reference management software 110
In-text citations 112
Quotes 112
Paraphrasing 113
Citations in the bibliography 114
Journals 115
Books 116
Research reports 117
Internet resources 117
Personal communication and interviews 117
Sources 118
Other useful sources 118

Part 4 Reflecting and communicating 120

12 Preventing fraud and plagiarism 121
Plagiarism of written work 121
Plagiarism of fellow students 121
Working responsibly in a team 122
Fraud: falsifying data 122
13 Collaboration, feedback, and peer review 124
Collaborating: drawing up a team charter 124
Evaluating teamwork 127
Giving and receiving feedback 127
Feedback on behaviour 127
Feedback on content 129
Peer review 130
Reflecting on assumptions 131
Sources 132
Other useful sources 132
14 Presenting 133
Defining the theme of your presentation 133
Structure and coherence 134
Visual aids 135
Using figures, tables, images, or film clips 136
Presentation skills 138
Practising your presentation 140
Leading a discussion 140
Ask good questions 140
Creating a safe atmosphere 142
Giving poster presentations 143
Points to bear in mind when designing a poster 143
Your elevator pitch 144
Sources 145
Other useful sources 145

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 Appendices 146
Appendix A Sample literature review 148
Appendix B Sample research article 158
Index 169

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 Acknowledgements

First of all, we are greatly indebted to the countless students and lecturers who have
worked with or on this handbook over the last ten years. We are especially grateful
to the authors of the previous edition, Joris Buis and Vincent Visser, who laid the
foundations for this book. Unfortunately, we do not have space to mention everyone
here. In any case, we would like to express our great appreciation for the useful
feedback on the previous edition that we received from the following lecturers:
Gerwin van der Pol, Astrid Ruiter, Veerle Eggens, Myrtille Gumbs, Jeanette Mostert,
Brit Giesbertz, and Danielle van Versendaal (all from the University of Amsterdam);
Willem van der Kuijlen and Paul Vermeer (both from Radboud University
Nijmegen); and Saskia Pronk-Tiethoff (Leiden University). We would also like to
thank the following students and alumni from the University of Amsterdam for their
helpful comments: Myrthe Detiger and Thomas Janssen (Future Planet Studies);
Lina Dokter and Joran Buwalda (Natural and Social Sciences); and Viebeke Nielsen,
Sean van Mil, and Emma Frenken (Psychobiology).

In addition, we are grateful to Frankie Pols (Future Planet Studies alumnus) and
Janna Cousijn for providing the literature report and the research article, respectively.

We would also like to thank the following colleagues for reading earlier drafts and for
their constructive comments and suggestions: Linda de Greef, Fenna Hoefsloot, and
Jasper ter Schegget.

Finally, we would like to thank Yorike Hartman and Bregje Swart for managing
multiple drafts of this handbook, and we are grateful to Bob van den Berg for helping
with the design and layout.

Koen van der Gaast

Laura Koenders
Ger Post
November 2018

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 Introduction

About this book

This book is intended for university students, especially students taking
interdisciplinary courses, as well as anyone who wants to add depth to their academic
research or learn how to analyse scholarly texts. As an interdisciplinary student,
you’re rather like a parachutist: in the years to come, you’ll be landing in many
different academic landscapes. Not only will you be expected to get to grips with the
material quickly and familiarize yourself with different disciplines’ specialized terms
and mentalities (the scholarly jargon), but you will also be encouraged to add your
own knowledge to these disciplines, describe it clearly, and share it in articles and/
or presentations. What’s more, certain aspects of this will often have to be done in a
team. In other words, it is quite an undertaking.

Academic skills are the tools you can use, both during and after your course, to
assimilate, develop, share, and question new knowledge. This book was therefore
written with the following question in mind: As an interdisciplinary student, what
skills should you have developed by the end of your degree course? But that’s not
to say that only one road leads to Rome. Over the years, you will develop all of these
skills in your own way. At the beginning of your studies, you can use this book to
find your footing. In the later stages of your studies, you might reach for it from time
to time when you think: How did that work again...? We hope that this book proves to
be a good and, above all, useful starting point for your academic and interdisciplinary
development.

The book can be read in two ways: ab ovo – in other words, from beginning to end,
as one usually reads a book; or as a reference guide, depending on where you’ve got
to in your university education or research.

Central theme: research practice and the empirical cycle

Although academic skills are multifaceted, they share one common denominator:
research. A scholar has an inquiring mind, extracts knowledge from other research,
and adds his or her own knowledge by doing research. Scholars also have their own
methodology for doing research, which distinguishes scholarly research from, say,
journalistic research.

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 What’s more, as an interdisciplinary student, you’ll find that research is an excellent
opportunity to draw connections between the many disciplines you’ll encounter
during your degree course. From day one, students – and interdisciplinary students
in particular – are confronted with insights from research in multiple disciplines.
Although we do not have the space here to go into research practice in detail
(something we’ll leave to more specialized books on research skills), having read
this book, you’ll have a better understanding of the particular skills a scholar needs.
You’ll also have a better understanding of the similarities and differences between
the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences and the knowledge they
produce.

In the nineteenth century, universities were divided into three more-or-less distinct
clusters of academic disciplines: the natural sciences, which investigate natural
phenomena (in the broadest sense of the term); the social sciences, which are
concerned with knowledge about human behaviour and human society; and the
humanities, which study knowledge originating from the human mind. These three
clusters were then subdivided into a wide range of academic disciplines, such as
physics (natural science), sociology (social science), and history (the humanities).
In the past, these branched off into specializations and subspecializations such
as quantum mechanics, educational sociology, and maritime history. At most
universities, this division is reflected in the degree programmes on offer.

All of these disciplines have their own research traditions. They all use their own
methods and approaches, of course, but these methods have one thing in common:
they are systematic and grounded in empiricism. Empiricism means ‘based on
observation.’ One example of this structured approach to doing and describing
research is the inductive-deductive cycle. In this cycle, a scientist formulates a theory
based on an observation; this is known as the inductive phase. Then the scientist
has to consider whether this theory is correct. This is done by devising a method and
formulating a testable hypothesis, which is known as deduction. Then the scientist
tests whether the hypothesis is correct, by gathering data. Finally, the results and the
conclusion are evaluated, whereby the scientist reflects on whether the conclusion
is consistent with the initial observation. If the conclusion is not consistent with
the observation (which is in itself a new observation), the theory is adjusted and the
whole cycle begins again.

In scholarly practice, the empirical cycle is not only used to design research, but also
to describe the process of doing research. The structure of this book is roughly based
on the research phases described above – not because this is the best or only way of
doing science, but because it is an accessible way of describing research practice and
forms a useful core theme. Moreover, it shows how academic thinking and working
is an iterative process, regardless of whether you’re a natural scientist, a social
scientist, or a humanities scholar (or a mix of all of three), or whether you’re doing
research or revising for an exam. It consists of a number of connected steps that are
often repeated a number of times.

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 For this reason, in the first part of this book we discuss the orientation phase, in
which you learn how to read scholarly literature and formulate the theory that you’re
going to investigate. In the second part, we discuss the academic skills that will
help you draft a good research question, and we explain how to operationalize your
question; that is, how to devise a testable method and how to record this process. In
the third part of the book, on carrying out and writing up research, you’ll learn how
to write the main body of a scholarly article.

The fourth part of the book is about reflecting and communicating. These skills,
which you will always need, come up during the scientific process in various ways.
Although these skills might appear less obvious, they are essential for academia.
Without these skills, it would be impossible to do effective research or even to
make it as a scholar at all. These skills are especially important for interdisciplinary
researchers, because communication between disciplinary perspectives is a key first
step in the direction of integration, and because critical self-reflection can reveal
and help you overcome the assumptions – often implicit – that hinder integration
(Menken & Keestra, 2016). Even if you don’t stay in academia, these skills will
remain important to you in your career.

Figure 1 The structure of this book is based on the empirical cycle

Inductive phase
PART 1
Familiarization with
topic and reading
scholarly literature

PART 4
Reflecting and
communicating

PART 3 PART 2
Doing and Making research
recording research measurable

Testing and Deductive phase

evaluation phase

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 Part 1
Orientation and
reading
At the start of your research, you need to explore your topic broadly and
thoroughly, so you can eventually come up with a well-defined research question.
In order to do this, you need to learn how to gather and organize knowledge. A
key aspect of this is reading, searching for, and ordering literature. Although this
is more important for some disciplines than for others, it is almost impossible to
complete a course without getting to grips with the existing literature. In the next
three chapters, we’ll guide you through this process.

In Chapter 1, we look in more depth at how to use concepts and theories in the
preparatory phase of your research, when you speed read the articles that you’ve
found. In Chapter 2 we consider a different reading technique, one that helps you
to extract essential information from a text quickly. We also look at how you can
best set up your study environment to make optimal use of this reading technique.
In Chapter 3, we briefly explain how to analyse very complex texts, and look at
how you can organize all of the information you’ve gathered during your reading.

The following academic skills are addressed in this part:

■■ Familiarizing yourself with a topic.
■■ Searching for and reading literature, including scholarly literature.
■■ Distinguishing between major and minor issues.
■■ Ordering information.
■■ Analysing the structure of an argument.
■■ Critically assessing texts.

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 1 
Preparatory reading and
searching

When you start an academic project – whether it’s a research study or a degree
course – it is important to learn how to familiarize yourself with a topic well.
Preparatory reading plays a key part in this.

You’ll need three things for this. First of all, you need to select a particular research
field by familiarizing yourself broadly with a topic. Second, you need scholarly
knowledge, so that you can also familiarize yourself with the academic aspects
of your chosen research field. And third, from this seemingly endless amount of
information, you need to be able to extract the information you find interesting and
that will help you to focus on the problem you will eventually investigate.

Familiarizing yourself with a topic

It’s best to familiarize yourself with a discipline or topic as broadly as possible by
looking beyond academia. Finding a topic is not always easy; some people have a
whole raft of ideas to get working on, whereas others can take days or even weeks to
come up with the right one. A few tips:
■■ Be enthusiastic, but not unrealistic. It goes without saying that you should choose
a topic that fires your enthusiasm, but when making your selection, consider
your options carefully – mainly in terms of time, but also in terms of skills. You
won’t be expected to publish any revolutionary findings in a first-year paper. In
most cases, a small and well-defined topic is interesting (and complex) enough.
For example, you might be tempted to throw yourself into finding out to what
extent an entire economy has become circular, but it may already be challenging
and tricky enough to find out which building materials are being recycled in the
construction sector, and in what ways.
■■ Be open-minded, but beware of cul-de-sacs. One of the aims of a university
degree course and/or research is to generate creative and innovative research,
so you should be open to new dimensions, new methods, and yet-to-be-explored
topics – but beware of drifting too far from the mainstream. If you do, you
may find yourself in a cul-de-sac: a dead end that is difficult to escape. Many
exciting-sounding social developments and/or innovations still lack large-scale
applications, and often little research has been done on them. It is unlikely that
you, someone who is just starting out, will be able to contribute much. You
should always find out first whether enough is known about a topic already, or
you might find yourself wasting a lot of time on it.

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 ■■ Be creative, but stay close to the assignment. First-year students are often set
assignments in which they learn particular skills that are tested later. Although
you need to be creative when using your research skills, make sure that you
don’t lose sight of the objective. This starts with the topic itself; if one learning
objective of the assignment is to carry out a survey, it isn’t helpful to choose a
topic for which you need to find respondents on the other side of the world.

Finding your bearings outside the university

In some cases, the assignment includes a list of potential topics; in others, you are
free to choose your own topic. In both cases, though, you need to decide exactly
what you’re going to research. Scholarly research almost invariably starts with an
observation: something that catches your eye or fascinates you. Such observations can
be made anywhere, meaning that there are no limits to the source of inspiration.

One place where you can look for inspiration is current events. Start your search with
something that has sparked your interest – perhaps something you recently saw or
read. The advantage of being an interdisciplinary student is that you often have great
freedom in your choice of topic, as you’re not limited by disciplinary boundaries.
Current events are covered by countless media sources and platforms. You could look
at newspapers, television programmes, and social media platforms, of course. In
particular, documentaries and TV programmes with an investigative approach (such as
the BBC’s Panorama programme) can frame topics nicely. Magazines such as Time,
Prospect, or The Economist are good places for finding short, in-depth analyses of
particular topics.

You could also look at popular scientific journals (see ‘Other useful sources’ at
the end of this chapter). Sometimes, you can take inspiration from museums and
exhibitions; in the field of modern art in particular, links are often drawn with current
events and social developments, and sometimes even directly with science and
technology.

Finding your bearings at university

The university world can often feel (and can be) massive and impersonal, but this
doesn’t mean that it is impossible to make personal contacts or develop a network.
Many successful academic careers have started this way. Not only can lecturers and
researchers serve as interesting subjects of study, but they can also act as very helpful
guides in the diffuse landscape of the university.

Although professors and lecturers tend to be extremely busy, they are often
enthusiastic about motivated and smart students who are interested in their research
field. For this reason, they are often prepared to discuss ideas with you, even if they
do not teach you personally. You do need to approach them with focused questions,
though, and not just general talk such as: ‘Do you know of a good topic for me?’ In
many cases, a good starting point is the scholar themselves. Do a search on them in
a search engine, take a look at their university web page, read recent publications,

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 and search for any events, lectures, and blogs they might be involved with. Perhaps
this will give rise to new search terms, domains, or lecturers, which will help you to
continue your search.

Finding your bearings between university and society

As well as current events, you could also consider social and scholarly debates (or
a mix of the two), where you can browse topics to your heart’s content. Lectures and
debates are frequently organized by the university (or by foundations with academic
links). Lectures are often a good opportunity to familiarize yourself with a particular
academic field. What’s more, debates often showcase socially relevant topics that
are discussed from multiple angles. In most university towns, you’ll come across
organizations that hold regular lectures, debates, and thematic evenings, often
in partnership with or organized by university lecturers and professors. If you’re
interested in transdisciplinary research where academic knowledge and practical
knowledge come together, this is certainly a useful place to start your search.

An initial literature search

Once you’ve selected your topic, it is important to get a rapid, thorough overview of
the key publications, what these publications show, and which gaps still exist in the
academic knowledge. The objective of a literature review is to find academic sources
that help you to map out the concepts, theories, and empirical studies that are
relevant to your topic. This objective is two-fold. On the one hand, you want to find
out as much as you can about your research field. On the other hand, you also want
to tap into unexplored fields, in order to find your own particular research topic.

You therefore need to come up with keywords and search terms based on the topic
you’re interested in, which can be used to find useful literature. As you do this, it’s
important to understand what lies at the heart of scholarship; in other words, what
concepts and theories are. And second, you need to know exactly what a scholarly
article is. Finally, you need to know which databases are available and how to use
them.

Concepts and theories

Concepts and theories form the bedrock of all scholarship. They are a key fixture in
the humanities and social sciences, and are often referred to as such; but natural
scientists also use concepts and theories, consciously or not. Theories are supposed
relationships between concepts. A concept is an abstraction, supposed pattern, or
idea that can be defined or combined in different ways. This supposed relationship
between concepts can take the form of a correlation, when you see a link between
two concepts; for example, if concept A is measured somewhere, and concept B
is also measured. However, if you can make a reasonable case that concept A can
explain the presence of concept B (in other words, that A leads to B), this is known
as a causal relationship (Walliman, 2011). Concepts are thus the building blocks of
theories.

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 To give an example of a causal relationship (cause-effect): a scholar might
hypothesize that the increase in social media (concept 1) is leading to a digitally
dependent culture (concept 2). In this case, ‘increase in social media’ and ‘digitally
dependent culture’ are concepts that can be used to describe and explain reality.
Demonstrating a causal relationship is tricky, though, because it is hard to exclude
the possibility that this is only a correlation – and it would be wrong to presume
a causal relationship purely on the basis of a correlation. How wrong? See Figure
1.1! To return to the claim that the ‘increase in social media’ is leading to a ‘digitally
dependent culture’, what if a third concept, ‘technological progress’, were to explain
both the ‘increase in social media’ and our ‘digitally dependent culture’? Or perhaps
our digitally dependent culture is leading to an increase in social media?

Figure 1.1 There is a correlation between the number of films that feature the actor Nicolas Cage and
the number of people who drown in swimming pools each year, but this doesn’t mean that there is a
causal relationship between the two – that is, that one causes the other. Source: Vigen (n.d.)

drownings Correlation: 66.6% (r=0.666004) films

140 6

120 4
Swimming pool drownings

100 2
Nicholas Cage

80 0
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Theories and concepts also play a major role in research in the natural sciences.
Underlying seemingly neutral terms such as ‘soil quality’ and ‘ecosystem services’
are complex discussions about how these should be defined. This means that
definitions (and theories about the supposed relationships between them) can differ
significantly across the disciplines and between scholars. One scholar might define
‘poverty’ as ‘having to live on less than 1 euro a day’, for example, whereas another
might define it as ‘the absence of sanitary facilities’. And when it comes to the
relationship between ‘criminality’ and ‘poverty’, it makes a big difference whether
you define ‘criminality’ as the ‘number of burglaries’ or ‘fraud’. Everything stands or
falls with how concepts are defined and how they are thought to relate to one other,
and it is also crucial how these concepts and theories are operationalized (made
measurable; more on this in Part 2) and eventually used in a research study.

All of this might sound complicated and abstract, but now it’s time for the good
news: concepts and theories simultaneously act as beacons that can guide you
through your university career. Focusing on concepts and theories will allow you to
find your bearings rapidly in a new academic field (see the rest of this chapter), cut to
the heart of a text, draw useful links between several texts (Chapter 2), and help you
to organize the information that you need easily (Chapter 3). What’s more, focusing
on concepts and theories will help you to formulate a theoretical framework, define
your problem clearly, and, ultimately, come up with a pertinent, well-defined research

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 question (see Part 2). You will also use concepts and theories when you construct
a research instrument and when analysing your results (see Part 3). In short, if the
core theme of this book is research practice, then concepts and theories are the core
theme that runs through research practice, as it were.

TIP
If you want to do interdisciplinary research, it is essential to understand and work
with concepts and theories from different research fields, so that you are able
to draw links between them (see Menken and Keestra (2016) on why theory is
important for this). With an eye to your ‘interdisciplinary’ academic training, it
is therefore a good idea to start your first steps in research with concepts and
theories.

Scholarly literature
All scholarly articles therefore contain concepts and theories, but we can also
recognize academic texts through other characteristics. Scholars produce various
kinds of texts, which differ from other texts in a number of respects. If you are
reading for research purposes, it is important to be able to distinguish non-academic
sources from academic ones.

Although texts in different academic disciplines can differ significantly in terms

of structure, form, and length, almost all academic articles (research articles and
literature reports) share a number of characteristics:
■■ They are published in scholarly journals with expert editorial boards. An example
of a well-known journal in the natural sciences is Nature; a highly valued
scholarly journal in the social sciences is the Journal of Political Economy; and
Poetics is a highly regarded journal in the humanities (especially in the field of
literature).
{{ One way to measure a journal’s value is its impact factor. This is based on

the number of citations of its articles in other scholarly articles, with the
reasoning that an oft-cited article must be groundbreaking and important in
its field. A good overview of journal impact factors can be found in the Web of
Science’s journal citation reports.
■■ These journals are peer-reviewed, which means that their content is assessed
by at least two independent and usually anonymous scholars (see Chapter 13
for more on peer review). If you are unsure whether a journal is peer-reviewed
or not, you can always Google it (search for the name of the journal and
‘peer-reviewed’).
■■ These articles are written by authors who have no direct commercial or political
interest in the topic on which they are writing, and the authors’ background is
always given (often including their contact details, which can be found at the
beginning of the article). Many articles include the statement: ‘The authors
declare that there is no conflict of interest’.

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 ■■ Articles are often preceded by an abstract: a concise summary of the key findings,
the context and the implications of the research (see Chapter 10 for more on
drafting abstracts).
■■ Articles contain a large number of references to other scholarly publications
on the same topic. The references are often in the text, either at the end or in
the middle of sentences. In addition, all of the references are provided in a
bibliography at the end of the article (see Chapter 11).

In short, scholarly literature can be distinguished from ‘ordinary’ literature because

the degree of objectivity and reliability is guaranteed, it is closely monitored by the
academic community, and the authors themselves have no commercial or political
interest in the topic. In Chapters 1 and 2, we delve more deeply into the different
kinds of academic literature and the various strategies that you can use to read it.

Grey literature
In addition to academic literature, you will come across grey literature. These are
publications written by researchers or research organizations, but they are not
peer-reviewed. There is thus no guarantee that the content of these studies has
been checked by specialists. Nevertheless, you will often read such texts, because
they frequently contain specialized and specific knowledge that is not available in
academic publications.

Grey literature derives its name from the fact that it occupies the ‘grey area’ between
academic and non-academic literature. For this reason, it is often difficult to gauge
whether these articles are of sufficient quality to be used as reliable sources. They
include advisory reports, sometimes by organizations on their own performance, and
sometimes by consultancies on other organizations and external projects. Often, you
will need to look carefully at the independence (or otherwise) of these reports. Who
funded them and who has an interest in what outcome? There are also non-academic
research reports such as UN reports, data from statistics institutes, and government
reports. Although these are not, strictly speaking, peer-reviewed, the reliability of
these sources means that their contents can be assumed to be valid. Despite this, it is
a good idea to use academic sources alongside these sources. Finally, you will come
across non-academic (or yet-to-become academic) publications from the academic
world. They include theses, such as Master’s and Bachelor’s theses, and doctoral
research that is ongoing or that hasn’t yet been published in academic journals.
You should be critical of these sources, as there is no guarantee that every thesis
is of high quality. And we shouldn’t forget popular scientific books: books that are
written by scholars, but in a more accessible style. In many cases, these books are
also reliable, because their arguments are often backed up with references. You can
usually include grey literature in your research bibliography (see also Chapter 11), but
if you’re not sure, you can ask your lecturer or supervisor whether the source you’ve
found meets the requirements.

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 Academic literature and ‘ordinary’ search engines
It is likely that one of the first things that you’ll learn in academic circles is that
Google and Wikipedia are unreliable: the former due to its commercial interests,
the latter because anyone, in principle, can adjust the information and few checks
are made on the content. But this doesn’t mean that you are not permitted to use
these tools. On Wikipedia, you will often find detailed overviews of scientific theories
and findings. Although you may not cite these (see Chapter 11 for more on citation
rules), they sometimes contain useful citations or references to scientists and/
or publications associated with a theory or a method. Always use these sources
as a means to another end: that of finding (and learning to understand) academic
publications.

TIP
You can use search operators to filter your Google search results. For example, it
is possible to limit your results to PDF files by adding ‘filetype: pdf’ in the search
bar. Useful overviews of search operators are available online (for more on search
methods, see Box 1.1 on page 23).

Scholarly search engines

A huge amount of scholarly research is published. To give you an idea: in the exact
sciences, in 2015 alone there were more than 25,000 different peer-reviewed journals
(a number that is growing by around 3% a year), and the popular scientific database
Web of Science contains more than 40 million individual scientific sources. One of
the greatest challenges for students, especially interdisciplinary students, is how to
find the right needles in this vast haystack of scientific information. How can this be
done? And what tools are available to help you?

Availability
A lot of information about academic sources can be found on the Internet, and
almost all journals publish their articles online. In the case of most scholarly
journals, you need to subscribe in order to get access (with the exception of open
access journals, which provide content free of charge). When you’re at university, you
can make use of your institution’s subscriptions; universities usually subscribe to
thousands of journals. However, you will sometimes come across articles that cannot
be accessed at your institution. If this happens, keep searching using standard search
engines. For example, you may have the good fortune that the author has put the
article online themselves. In that case, you could always email the author to ask for
the article (authors don’t receive royalties for articles, so they won’t lose out if you
don’t buy it), or search for a different article instead.

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 The library
One source of knowledge that now seems rather old-fashioned is the physical
library, such as the libraries run by educational institutions and municipalities. It
is usually possible to search the collections using a digital search engine on the
library’s website. You might be tempted to ignore the dusty old library building and
consult the digital library from your armchair, but in certain circumstances, this can
be unwise. Books can be valuable, because they give authors the space to expand
and describe ideas or research fields in all their complexity. As a result, a book will
sometimes contain all the information you need in one fell swoop. And you will
sometimes find a level of depth in a book that you’d never encounter in a scholarly
article, because articles usually need to follow a tight structure. In Chapter 2, we will
focus in more depth on the relationship between books and articles.

By now, most journals have digitized their older publications, but this is not
always the case. During your Internet search, you may therefore be referred to the
library, where you can pick up a hard copy of the article or have it sent to you. Most
educational institutions have an efficient system that allows you to call up paper
journals rapidly or have them delivered to your faculty.

Digital search engines and databases

Various databases and search engines can be used to search scholarly journals. Most
of them contain many thousands of journals, and sometimes millions of individual
scientific sources.

Students and researchers mainly use these search engines to search for relevant
scholarly literature for their research. Perhaps the best known is Google Scholar,
which is popular among students – partly due to familiarity with the brand. However,
it is not the only search engine (nor is it necessarily the best). Through your
university, you may also have access to other disciplinary and interdisciplinary search
machines with extensive search functions for specialized databases, such as the Web
of Science, Pubmed, Science Direct, and Scopus.

Search methods
All of these search engines allow you to search for scholarly sources in different
ways. You can search by topic, author, year of publication, and journal name. Some
tips for searching for literature:
1 Use a combination of search terms that accurately describes your topic.
2 You should use mainly English search terms, given that English is the main
language of communication in academia.
3 Try multiple search terms to unearth the sources you need.
a Ensure that you know a number of synonyms for your main topic
b Use the search engine’s thesaurus function (if available) to map out related
concepts.

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 If you want to do research into financial crises, for example, search for ‘falling
property prices’, ‘banking crisis’, ‘decline in economic performance’, or a
combination of these. The ideal combination of search terms is different for each
topic: overly general keywords can result in too many search results, overly specific
keywords can produce too few. You should therefore use operators and commands
to refine your search combinations. You will find several useful operators and
commands in Box 1.1.

TIP
During your search, it is advisable to keep track of the keywords and search
combinations you use. This will allow you to check for blind spots in your search
strategy, and you can get feedback on improving the search combinations. Some
search engines automatically keep a record of this. What’s more, if you’re writing
a review paper or literature review, for example, you can describe your search
functions in your methods section.

Box 1.1 Operators and commands for search engines (adapted from Sanders, 2011)

Command Explanation Example

AND Search only for terms desertification AND carbon

that occur together. dioxide

OR Search for articles acidification OR acidified

containing one of the
two terms.

NOT Do not include this term. sustainability NOT pollution

* Variation on words. econ* (gives results for economy,

economical, economic, etc.)

“” Search for this exact “social unrest in Ukraine”

phrase.

~ Search for synonyms. ~cognition (also gives results

for: apprehension, awareness,
intelligence, perception, etc.)

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 Ordering your search results
In the digital library, it is often possible to order your search results in different ways.
For example, you can rank the articles according to the date of publication, with the
most or least recent article at the top. Although this is important (studies can date),
it does not immediately help you with your initial search. You can also rank them
according to relevance; in that case, the articles at the top of the list are those closest
to your search terms. Early on in your research, though, it is most useful to rank
your results on the basis of references. In this case, the articles at the top of the list are
those that are used most often by other authors and best reflect the key debates and
research in the field you’ve identified. Later, when you start to read more thoroughly
and search for new texts based on this (see Chapter 2), you’ll find it more useful to
rank articles on the basis of relevance or date.

Continuous search
Searching for literature is a dynamic process. It won’t be enough simply to read
your first ten search results; you need to keep ordering and assessing the literature
you’ve found, and keep searching for different and/or better search results and more
relevant articles. One tip for guiding this dynamic process is to use your search
results to find more relevant sources.

First, articles often give an overview of the keywords that are relevant to this article
(listed after the abstract), and you can use these keywords to help you to refine or
improve your search combination. Second, search engines such as Google Scholar
often give you the option of searching the other way round; that is, looking at which
recent articles refer to a particular article that you’ve already found. To do this, click
on the ‘cited by’ link in the search result. This allows you to find more recent sources
that build on the information in the source you’ve found (see Figure 1.2). This is also a
useful way to get an overview of the scholarly debate surrounding a particular theme.

What’s more, search engines often give you the option of searching for ‘related
articles’, and these literature suggestions can also help you when searching for other
relevant sources. After downloading an article, some search engines automatically
open a pop-up window suggesting similar articles. Don’t close this window out of
hand, as it will often contain useful suggestions. You can also ask the search engine
to notify you when certain publications in your field of interest are published.

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 Figure 1.2 A scholarly article is embedded in the literature

References

Earlier scholarly articles Article you’ve found More recent articles

on which the article that build on the
you’ve found builds article you’ve found

Exploratory reading
Now that you’re familiar with the wonderful world of academia and have a general
sense of what your research will be about, you need to make a start on your actual
research. How do you make a selection from the enormous number of articles that
are often available on a topic? Keep the following four questions in mind, and use
them to guide your literature review:
■■ What is already known about my topic and in which discipline is the topic
discussed?
■■ Which theories and concepts are used and discussed within the scope of my
topic, and how are they defined?
■■ How is my topic researched and what different research methods are there?
■■ Which questions remain unanswered and what has yet to be researched?

These questions will remain important throughout the exploratory phase. In the final
section of this chapter, we describe a reading technique that allows you to filter large
chunks of text rapidly, so you can gauge whether it is relevant for your research. In
chapters 2 and 3, we describe additional reading techniques that allow you to delve
more deeply into a text.

Speed reading
In order to guide the speed reading technique, you can use theories and concepts
(as discussed above). When speed reading, you familiarize yourself rapidly with
a text and consider how it relates to the other texts you’ve found. The following
components are present in most articles, and they will help you to extract the key
theories and concepts from the article.

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 First of all, an article or a book chapter has a title. The title is often a condensed
summary of the whole publication, reduced to a single sentence. Given that most
research involves trying to find a relationship (theory) between concepts, you can
be pretty sure that the title will contain one or more concepts. The title of the book or
journal can also be a good indication. Not only do titles often contain concepts and
theories, but they also indicate the disciplinary or interdisciplinary field in which
the text is located. What’s more, nearly all articles include an abstract. This is a brief
summary of the whole study; not only the results, but also the approach and the
theoretical basis. The abstract is often followed by several keywords, which often
include concepts, too.

Run through the titles, abstracts, and keywords of the articles at the top of your list
and work out which ideas (concepts) keep coming back. Next, use the abstract to
figure out what these concepts mean, and also try to see whether they are connected
and whether this differs for each study. If you are unable to work out what the
concepts mean, based on the context, don’t hesitate to use dictionaries or search
engines. Make a list of the concepts that occur most frequently in these texts, and try
to draw links between them. A good way to do this is to use a concept map, which
sets out the links between the concepts in a visual way; see Figure 1.3.

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 Figure 1.3 This concept map is based on the introduction to the research article in Appendix B. The
theoretical framework used to explain the concepts and the relationships between them has been
represented visually. The different possibilities in the model are shown in red and green. Obviously,
you can put what you like here, depending on your aim. If you want to know which relationships have
already been researched and which have not, for example, you could expand the concept map by
adding references to articles you’ve read. If your aim is to understand the text thoroughly, you could
devise and add your own examples, as has been done in the orange blocks..

Reduced chance No or less In case of high

of relapse craving for the drug cognitive control:
ability to suppress
attentional bias for
drug cues

Person always uses Environmental Environmental Drug cues

drugs in the same factors become factors become automatically and
surroundings associated drug drug cues strongly draw
person’s attention =
attentional bias
for drug cues
Smoking a cigarette
in the pub

In case of low
Increased chance Craving for drug cognitive control:
of use, even if unable to suppress
you’ve given up attentional bias
for drug cues

In pub =
wanting to smoke

All being well, by now you will have found a list of articles and used them to identify
several concepts and theories. From these, try to select the theories and concepts that
you want to explore further. This choice isn’t set in stone, of course; you can broaden
your search again later if you fail to find a good research question based on the
current selection. However, selecting at this stage will help you to frame and focus
your research.

The next step is to discover to what extent these articles deal with these concepts
and theories in similar or different ways, and how combining these concepts and
theories leads to different outcomes. In order to do this, you will need to read more
thoroughly and make a detailed record of what you’ve learned; and that is what we
shall focus on in the next chapter.

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 Sources
Menken, S., & Keestra, M. (eds.). (2016). An introduction to interdisciplinary
research: Theory and practice. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Sanders, E. (2011). Eerste hulp bij e-onderzoek voor studenten in de
geesteswetenschappen: Slimmer zoeken, slimmer documenteren. Retrieved
from https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/17774
Vigen, T. (n.d.). Spurious correlations. Retrieved from http://tylervigen.com/
spurious-correlations
Walliman, N. (2011). Research methods: The basics. USA: Routledge.

Other useful sources

Useful popular-science journals for finding a topic include:
-- New Scientist: www.newscientist.com
-- Scientific American: www.scientificamerican.com
-- IFLScience: www.iflscience.com

For more practical tips on how to study successfully, go to www.uva.nl/en/home

and type ‘study skills’ into the page’s search function, and then go to ‘studying
successfully’. The tip sheet ‘How do you read smartly’ is particularly useful for the
various reading strategies.

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 2 
Gathering and organizing key
information

A second academic skill that is used in the preparatory phase of research is being
able to distinguish effectively between core and supporting information in a text.
This is an important skill to have, whether you’re preparing for a research project
or revising for an exam. How can you make sense of the overwhelming quantity
of information to be found in books, articles, seminars, and lectures, and how do
you extract the information that is relevant?

First of all, it is important to create an optimal learning environment, so you can

use your time as efficiently as possible to get to the heart of a text. What’s more, it is
important to know which learning objective you’re working towards, so you know what
kind of information you need to save. Finally, various reading strategies can help you
extract essential information from a wide range of texts.

Optimizing your study environment

Perhaps the grades for my recent exams are already online? As you’re reading a
text, you’ll notice that it’s hard to stop thoughts such as these popping into your
mind. Lots of students are familiar with this problem: whether the distraction is an
upcoming grade or social media, your studies are interrupted and your results suffer
as a consequence.

Many people find it helpful to study in blocks of 25-45 minutes, taking short breaks
in between. During these blocks, you should not allow yourself to be distracted
by outside stimuli or your own thoughts. This method is known as the pomodoro
technique (named after its Italian inventor, who used a tomato-shaped kitchen timer
to measure out 25-minute blocks), and it’s a great one to try if you are having trouble
concentrating. See ‘Other useful sources’ at the end of this chapter for a website that
explains the pomodoro technique in more detail.

In order to improve your concentration, it is important to limit distractions while

you’re studying (see Box 2.1) Turn off your phone, make sure that your email
program is closed if you are working at your computer, and don’t allow yourself to
visit social media or news sites. If you need to study on your laptop (when writing a
research paper, for example), there are all kinds of useful apps that can temporarily
block social media; see ‘Other useful sources’ for an overview.

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 Box 2.1 Distractions while studying

What many students think: What research shows:

My telephone doesn’t distract me Negative effect of telephones on

at all – in fact, it helps me to study. cognitive learning during lectures
(Wei, Wang & Klausner, 2012).

If I use my laptop, I take much Making notes on a laptop leads to less

better notes. learning than making notes on paper
(Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014).

If I read the literature on my laptop, Students can give better answers to

I remember much more. questions about a printed text than about
a digital text they have read online
(Mangen, Walgermo & Brønnick, 2013).

Not everyone learns in the same way and not everyone is distracted by the
same things. Ask yourself the following questions to find out which method of
concentration works best for you: for how long can you concentrate at a time? At
which time of day are you at your best: for example, are you a morning person
or an evening person? What do you find difficult (writing an essay, for example)?
Where do you study best: at home or in the library? What is most time-consuming:
reading literature or writing papers? Depending on the answers, you can choose the
concentration method that suits you best.

Learning objectives
You often read a text because you want to learn something or find something out.
When you read a text, you focus on finding the information that is stored there. You
might also be interested in understanding the author’s argument, or in assessing
the correctness of their arguments or theories. The objective that you set yourself
when reading a text influences how you prepare for reading, your reading speed, and
whether (and how) you take notes. Before you start reading, it is important to ask
yourself the following questions:
■■ In how much detail do I want to understand this text?
■■ How much prior knowledge do I have on this topic?
■■ How much do I want to remember of this text after I’ve read it?
■■ Do I need to criticize this text?
■■ Is it important to draw links between this text and the lectures or other sources?

How you answer these questions will determine how you can best approach the text.
You will have noticed that it is not always necessary to read a text from left to right
and from beginning to end, as you would a novel, for example. In some cases, you
are expected to ask yourself these questions and figure out what’s needed for the

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 assignment. In most cases, though, the assignment will set a number of learning
objectives. Learning objectives are the theme that runs through every course, and
they are often used to link an assignment with an overarching learning task. In many
educational institutions, lecturers are taught to link learning objectives as effectively
as possible to all of the components of a course: lectures, exams, assignments, and
assessments.

It should come as no surprise, then, that learning objectives enjoy such a prominent
place in course handbooks, lectures, and seminars. As a student, do make use
of this; if you know what the learning objective is, you will know how detailed
your knowledge-gathering needs to be. When doing an exam or submitting an
assignment, this can make the difference between passing and failing. There is a
difference, for example, between being able to reproduce the figures and concepts
that you come across in a lecture or text, and being able to apply these concepts in
new contexts.

Depending on the learning objective, you will need to study the course material
at different levels. Sometimes lecturers will give you practice questions, but if
they don’t, the learning objectives should give you an insight into this. Learning
objectives are often based on Bloom’s classification, which divides objectives into
different levels of knowledge: remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, and
evaluating (Bloom et al., 1956). Sometimes, you just need to reproduce knowledge
(‘remembering’) and explain it in your own words (‘understanding’), something that
is often required in exams. Other times, there are essay questions that require you to
apply theories or concepts to new cases (‘applying’), interpret particular research data
(‘analysing’), or even give your own critical assessment (‘evaluating’). All being well,
the course handbook will explain how the learning objectives are linked to the exams.

Reading strategies
When reading texts, it is best to take detailed notes and distinguish major issues from
minor ones. When doing this, it is important to distinguish between the sources of
knowledge that you use: are you going to read textbooks, academic books, or articles?

Reading textbooks
You will encounter different types of books in the academic world. Some books are
written by scholars to provide an overview of their field; these books can be read in
a similar way to academic articles (see below). Then there are more theoretical and
philosophical books, which are written by authors in order to develop ideas. These
texts are sometimes difficult and complex; we shall spend more time on them in
Chapter 3. And then there are textbooks that have been produced specially for a
certain discipline. Often very accessible, these books are a good place to start when
learning how to get to the heart of a text quickly.

Textbooks often work with concepts, as well as various theories that define these
concepts in a number of different ways (see Chapter 1). The great thing about these

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 books is that they frequently highlight concepts or put them in bold or different
colours, making them easy to spot – and thus making it very easy to make notes.
It’s a question of reading through the highlighted concepts and underlining the
accompanying explanations. It is wise to underline just the amount of text that allows
you to understand the concept and how it is used; don’t underline more than this, as
it reduces the utility of making notes.

It is also a good idea to make connections between concepts as you are reading
textbooks. One way to visualize the relationships between concepts is to make a
concept map, in which you sketch out the links between the concepts and theories
(see Chapter 1). Finally, assuming it’s your own copy, don’t hesitate to jot down
your own thoughts in the margin: what something reminds you of, where you read
something like this before, and, above all, how this relates to other concepts in the
text.

TIP
At the end of each chapter, it is a good idea to rewrite or retype all of the
concepts and their definitions, so that you have one overarching list of concepts.
Before an exam, you can compare this list with the content of the lectures,
learning objectives, and mock exam questions.

Reading academic articles and books

Making notes on academic articles and books is slightly more complicated. Academic
publications can take a number of forms, the most important ones being articles,
review articles, and books. Articles (also known as ‘research papers’) are written with
the aim of sharing academic work with a wider academic audience, and they often
discuss empirical research. Review articles (also known as ‘literature reviews’) are
overview studies that describe the key state-of-the-art findings in a discipline, or in a
research field within a discipline.

In academic books, the state of the research in a whole research field is often mapped
out. Sometimes these are overview studies consisting of work by multiple authors,
and sometimes they are overview studies of a period in the work of one author. In
general, they integrate or collect a lot of research and many literature reports.

In practice, as a young researcher, you will tend to use academic articles; and because
these have a fixed structure (and the structure of books and review articles can differ
somewhat), we have chosen to focus on academic articles here. The structure used
by these articles is often determined more by the research they are exploring than
ease of reading. Although the structure can differ slightly from the norm at the level
of detail, most articles consist of an introduction, a middle section, and a discussion
(the IMD structure; see also Chapter 9 on how this structure works).

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 If you only need to extract essential information from a text for an exam or your own
research, you certainly don’t need to read all of the sections. The introduction and
the conclusion are often good starting points for quickly discovering: 1) the central
concepts and theories; 2) how they are operationalized (that is, how they are used
in the research; see also Part 2); and 3) which research results this led to. It is often
useful to scan the methods section to find out exactly what the researchers did with
the above-mentioned concepts and theories. This section is often very technical,
however, and laden with jargon that applies specifically to the researcher’s field. If
you only need to understand the essence of the text, you’ll rarely need this level of
detail.

As you would expect, the results section contains lots of relevant information. In
quantitative studies, it is often the case that these results are expressed in highly
technical jargon, too. Later in your course, you will do methodological modules
that explain this jargon. In the early stages of your course, the main thing is to
understand the interpretation of the results that is given. You should thus look
carefully at what the author has made of the data shown. In doing so, focus
particularly on the figures, which reiterate the main message. What do they say, and
how is this interpreted?

Systematic reading
Not only is it important to understand the structure of the text and know which
sections you need to focus on, but it is also important to know how you should then
extract key information from the text. You can do this by using the technique known
as systematic reading. For this, it can be helpful to distinguish the line of argument.
A line of argument is made up of central positions, which themselves consist of
arguments with accompanying explanations and/or examples. Sometimes these
positions are easy to recognize from statements such as: ‘In this study, it will be
argued that...’

Sometimes, however, the arguments are less easy to recognize – but the good news is
that here, too, it can be really helpful to identify concepts and theories. As these are
the building blocks of scholarly research, it is almost impossible to introduce a line
of argument in a paper without using any concepts or theories. Other components
that allow you to recognize the line of argument include enumerations (‘First, second’
– see Chapter 3 for more signal words). In some cases, the author will also make a
recommendation in the line of argument on what should be done or where further
research is needed. If you mark these things in your text, you will get a clearer idea of
the central position and, with this, the essence of the text (see Figure 2.1).

Finally, it can be useful to take a closer look at the figures and images. What do they
say? How are they used in the text? Are they used illustratively or do they show a
research result?

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 Figure 2.1 Example of a text that has been marked up using the systematic reading technique
Source of the original text: Bierman (2014)

List of Central statement Repetition/conclusion

arguments in an argument of argument

Concepts Explanation of the argument

To start with, the Anthropocene creates, changes or reinforces multiple

independence relations within and among human societies. For one thing, it creates
new forms and degrees of interdependence among the more than 190 formally
sovereign countries and their national jurisdictions.
Some of these new interdependencies emerge from functions of the Earth System
that transform local pollution into changes of the global system that affect other
places that have (much) less contributed to the problem, with examples being climate
change, stratospheric ozone depletion, the global distribution of persistent organic
pollutants and the global spread of species with potential harm for local ecosystems.
Countries are also becoming more interdependent when local environmental
degradation leads to transregional or global social, economic and political crises, for
instance through decreases in food production that raise global food demands and
prices. In short, the Anthropocene creates a new dependence of states, even the most
powerful ones, on the community of all other nations. This is a defining characteristic
as well as a key challenge that requires an effective institutional framework for global
cooperation.
Second, the Anthropocene increases the functional interdependence of human
societies. For example, political response strategies in one economic sector are
likely to have repercussions to many others. Functional interdependence also relates
to mutual substitutability of response options, which poses special problems of
international allocation. In climate governance, for example, for every global policy
target there are unlimited number of possible combinations of local responses
across nations and time frames with equal degrees of effectiveness. In short,
increased functional interdependence in the Anthropocene requires new degrees
of effective policy coordination and integration, from local to global levels.

Illustrations/examples/explanation Recommendation

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 Organizing information
As you do your literature review, you will find and read many sources. So many, in
fact, that after some time you will no longer know which sources you’ve already read
and which information is relevant. If you are reading texts in order to write an article,
it is essential to keep track of the sources you’ve found and what kind of information
you have got (or can get) from them. You should start doing this as you scan the
search results. When you study your sources thoroughly and critically, it is important
to make a personal record of which information is relevant for further research. If
you are using reference management software (see Chapter 11), it is a good idea to
save important articles directly in your software program.

This process can be streamlined by using a so-called literature matrix: an overview

in a spreadsheet (in Microsoft Excel, for example, or in a table in Microsoft Word)
where you save all of the relevant information that you find for each concept. Always
include the page number where you found the information. You can also cut and
paste sentences from articles that are (or might be) important for your research.
This may help you to avoid plagiarism later, because it allows you to distinguish
between the original wording and your own phrasing (see also Chapter 12). Add a
few sentences to the overview on why you think the source is usable, and why the
concept is useful within the overarching theme of your topic. In this way, you not
only gather sources, but you also organize them.

For example, suppose that you want to do research for your exploratory study into the
relationship between meat and environmental damage. It might have struck you that
‘water use’ is a common concept used by the most frequently cited authors. Table 2.1
can then be used to keep track of different opinions on the definition of ‘water use’.

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 Box 2.2 Example of a literature matrix (adapted from De Jong, 2011)

Concepts Text 1 (Author, Text 2 (Author, Text 3 (Author, Notes

Year, Definition) Year, Definition) Year, Definition)

Water use Baroni et al. Ercin et al. (2012) Renault and The definition
(2007) define describe water Wallender (2000) used by Baroni et
water use as the use as the total do not define al. (2007) is not
percentage of volume of fresh water use as specific enough
total fresh water water that is such, but ‘water (for example)
consumption that used indirectly productivity’: the
is taken up by or directly for a ratio of the mass
production product of the product
(p. 285) (p.392) versus the water
consumed
(p.277)

Meat
production

Land use

The first articles you find and select may not contain all the information you are
looking for. This can be a recurring problem in your research study, certainly in the
early stages, but don’t let this discourage you. Instead, use the literature matrix to
identify the remaining gaps.

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 Sources
Bierman, F. (2014). The Anthropocene: A governance perspective. The
Anthropocene Review, 1(1), 57-61.
Bloom, B.S., Englehart, M.D., Furst, E.J., Hill, W.H., & Krathwohl, D.R. (1956). The
Taxonomy of educational objectives, handbook I: The Cognitive domain.
New York: David McKay Company.
Flick, U. (2011). Introducing research methodology: A beginner’s guide to doing a
research project. London: Sage.
Jong, J. de (2011). Handboek academisch schrijven: In stappen naar een essay,
paper of scriptie. Bussum: Uitgeverij Coutinho.
Mangen, A., Walgermo, B.R., & Brønnick, K. (2013). Reading linear texts on paper
versus computer screen: Effects on reading comprehension. International
Journal of Educational Research, 58, 61-68.
Mueller, P.A., & Oppenheimer, D.M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard:
Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science,
25(6), 1159-1168.
Wei, F.F., Wang, Y.K., & Klausner, M. (2012). Rethinking college students’
self-regulation and sustained attention: Does text messaging during class
influence cognitive learning? Communication Edition, 61(3), 185-204.

Other useful sources

You’ll find many tools online that help you to maintain your concentration or plan
efficiently. Here are some examples:

-- The Forest app: this app for aiding concentration can be installed on your
mobile phone. https://www.forestapp.cc/en/
-- Ommwriter: if you find it difficult to start writing, Ommwriter creates a peaceful,
distraction-free writing environment on your computer. https://ommwriter.com/
-- Coffitivity: this website features a range of sound clips of background noise
– useful if you’re sitting in a packed library and are distracted by typing and
coughing. https://coffitivity.com/
-- Anti-social: this app blocks all social media on your computer for as long as you
need to work. https://antisocial.80pct.com
-- The Kanbanflow is a workflow planning website that offers an online
environment for working with the pomodoro-timer technique. https://
kanbanflow.com/
-- Wunderlist is a program for your computer and telephone where you can save
and organize all your to-do lists. https://www.wunderlist.com/
-- The most dangerous writing app: this app punishes you if you stop
writing for too long, by deleting all of your recent progress. http://www.
themostdangerouswritingapp.com/

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 3 
Studying thoroughly and
critically

When you’re getting to grips with a text, it can help to make the argument
explicit. You can represent the structure of the argument in diagrammatical
form, for example, or – if you’re working with a difficult text – analyse the text
at sentence level. In this chapter, we explain a method that you can use to
understand a complex text. We also describe different forms of argumentation,
which can help you when criticizing scholarly texts.

Sentence-level analysis
Techniques such as speed reading (see Chapter 1) and systematic reading (see Chapter
2) can often get you a long way, whether you’re revising for an exam or trying to get
a quick overview of a research field. Some theoretical and/or philosophical texts are
more complicated, though, not least because they analyse and explain issues at a
highly abstract level. If the theories themselves are difficult to understand or the line
of argument is not immediately clear, it can be useful to approach the text as you
would a text in a foreign language – when you need to analyse the text at sentence
level before you can understand its core message.

In this case, too, it can be useful to identify concepts and theories, but not
immediately. First, divide complicated sentences into several main and subordinate
clauses. You can do this by looking at the conjunctions; the words that link the
different sentences and sentence constituents. It can also be useful to look at
whether these conjunctions are coordinating or subordinate conjunctions. If they are
coordinating conjunctions (for example, ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘or’, ‘then’, ‘thus’, ‘because’),
you know that the two clauses are on a par and likely to be of equal importance. If
subordinate conjunctions are used (for example, ‘when’, ‘if’, ‘whilst’, ‘as soon as’,
‘before’, ‘for’, ‘now’, ‘then’, ‘after’), you know that a principal clause is being linked to
a dependent clause. This helps you to understand the structure.

If a principal clause is followed by a dependent clause, this often means that the
dependent clause further explains or develops the information given in the principal
clause. Thus, when a writer states a view, they often do so in the principal clause,
after which they explain their view in the dependent clause. Subsequently, for each
principal and dependent clause, you can subdivide the text into finite forms, subjects,
and direct objects.

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 As you’re trying to understand a tricky text, it is useful to take note of the signs that
the author has provided. Authors use connecting phrases and signal words to clarify
the connections between sentences. This can be helpful when you are trying to figure
out the relationship between arguments or data (see Box 3.1 for possible signal words
and their function within the structure of the sentence).

Box 3.1 Signal words

Structural function Possible words

Enumeration and, moreover, first, second, furthermore, what is more,

not only, but also

Reason, cause, result since, because, for the reason that, in order to,
therefore

Condition if, when, provided that, unless, when

Concession although, admittedly, still

Contrast however, on the other hand, in contrast, nevertheless,

despite, on the one hand, still, while

Comparison as if, as well as, also, equally, like, similarly

Summary in short, in sum, to summarize

Conclusion hence, it follows that, in conclusion it can be stated that

Degree of probability probable, improbable, under normal circumstances,

(un)likely

All of the above might seem like something out of secondary school, but it can be
really helpful when trying to understand a complex text. Looking at which object or
person forms the central focus, which verbs are linked to them, and which other
objects and people are connected to these in turn, offers a rapid insight into the
structure of a sentence. You can do this easily with a pen, using different shapes
(circles, squares, triangles) to represent the different concepts, their relations, signal
words and reference words (see Figure 3.1). And once you have understood the whole
sentence, it is easier to understand the meaning of the concepts and theories.

Fear not; you won’t need to use this method for the rest of your academic career. At a
certain point, you’ll understand the jargon and improve your reading technique, and
you’ll no longer need all of these extra aids. Until then, though, it can be helpful to
keep using this method.
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 Figure 3.1 Example of a text that has been analysed at sentence level
Source of the original text: Madison, J. (1788). Article 10. The Federalist papers

Core concept 1 Reference words that connect

concept 1 with following sentence

[ If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican

principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. ]
[ It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable
to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. ]
[ When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government,
on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the
public good and the rights of other citizens. ]

Signal words Core concept 2

Possible relation Consequence of possible

between 1 and 2 relation between 1 + 2

Types of argumentation
Sometimes, it’s not enough to analyse the text at sentence level: although you may
understand exactly what is being said, you may still be unsure about the precise
point that the writer wants to make. In this case, one solution is to analyse the
text at the level of the argument By identifying different types of argumentation
and representing them in a handy, clear diagram, you can figure out the author’s
intentions more effectively. What’s more, this gives you the option of critiquing the
author’s argument. We do this by drawing on a few examples from the literature
review in Appendix A.

Simple argumentation
The most basic form of substantiation is the simple argument. With this, you
defend a view using just one argument. In the example below, the argument that
a vegetarian diet is healthier is used to convince the reader of the view that people
should not eat meat:

People should not eat meat, because a vegetarian diet is healthier.

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 Simple argumentation

View
People should not eat meat.

because
Argument
A vegetarian diet is healthier.

Plural argumentation
If you are defending a view, you will normally need to provide more than one
argument. Putting forward a number of arguments strengthens a view, because
even if one argument is disproved, the other arguments will continue to support the
view. In the literature review, for example, two arguments are given for the view that
people should not eat meat:

People should not eat meat because a vegetarian diet is healthier, and
because not eating meat is better for the environment.

In this case, each individual argument supports the view; the arguments are
self-standing. In principle, one argument would have sufficed. You can thus see
plural argumentation as a combination of a number of single arguments that
support the same view. We can represent this type of reasoning as follows:

Plural argumentation

View
People should not eat meat.

because because
Argument Argument
A vegetarian diet is healthier. It is better for the environment.

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 Coordinating argumentation
In other cases, the arguments supplied to support a view are used in such a way that
they are inseparable:

The government’s environmental policy is erratic. On the one hand, the

government is supporting wind energy projects, while on the other hand, it is
cutting back on subsidies for solar energy.

It is only possible to claim that the government’s environmental policy is erratic

if both of these opposing arguments hold. When arguments are intertwined
in this way, we call this coordinating argumentation. One disadvantage of this
argumentation is that if one argument falls, the case as a whole is undermined (in
contrast to plural argumentation, for example). A coordinating argument can be
represented diagrammatically as follows:

Coordinating argumentation

View
The government’s environmental
policy is erratic.

because because
Argument Argument
It is supporting wind energy It is cutting back on subsidies for
projects. solar energy.

Subordinate argumentation
It is often necessary to substantiate an argument by using other arguments; for
example, because you think the argument needs backing up in order to be credible:

People should not eat meat, because this is better for the environment.
More water is needed to produce one kilogram of meat than to produce one
kilogram of vegetables.

The view is that people should not eat meat, because this is better for the
environment. In order to convince the reader that people really do need to cut
down on the amount of meat they consume, the writer substantiates the argument
that this is better for the environment with the argument that more water is
needed to produce a kilogram of meat than a kilogram of vegetables. This latter
argument is thus not a direct argument for the view, but supports the first argument
(strengthening this argument, thereby strengthening the case as a whole). We call
this subordinate argumentation. The structure of a subordinate argument is weaker
than that of a plural argument. After all, if a single argument can be refuted, the

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 whole line of argumentation falls. For example, if you could convincingly show that
more water is not needed to produce meat than to produce vegetables, then the
grounds for the argument above (that not eating meat is better for the environment)
and ultimately the view itself (that people should not eat meat) would be
undermined. This type of argument can be represented diagrammatically as follows:

Subordinate argumentation

View
People should not eat meat.

because
Argument
This is better for the environment.

because
Argument
More water is needed to produce
a kilogram of meat than to produce
a kilogram of vegetables.

Now we know which forms of argumentation can be used, we can represent the
structure of any text diagrammatically. You do this, first, by establishing what the
writer’s viewpoint is. Then you ask ‘why?’ and look for the answer in the text. With
these arguments, you can again ask the ‘why?’ question, et cetera. Below you will
find an example of an argument structure based on the article at the end of this book
(Appendix A). If you are going to write your own texts, setting out the argumentation
structure is a useful starting point for planning your article. We will return to this in
Chapter 9.

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 Structure of argument derived from the sample paper in Appendix A

View
It is necessary for people to start eating less meat.

because because
Argument Argument
The negative impact on nature Much more water is needed to
reserves is greater with an produce meat than to produce
omnivorous diet than with a vegetables.
vegetarian diet.

because because
Argument Argument
More land is needed for the cattle Water reserves are falling
industry, both for cultivating feed worldwide, and this has been
and to provide a habitat. linked to the global food
shortage.

because because
Example Example
Soya is often used for feed and in Research shows that deforestation
order to cultivate soya, many in Brazil in the period between
nature reserves in Brazil are 2000 and 2006 primarily occurred
being destroyed. due to cattle farming.

Implicit motivation
As shown above, argumentation consists of a viewpoint and (at least) an argument.
But there is something else that is not reflected in the diagrams above: the
relationship between the viewpoint and the argument. This is rarely stated explicitly,
which is why it is also known as the concealed argument.

Take the argument: ‘Elsa has mastered the material, she got ten out of ten.’
Considering this argument critically, you could cast doubt on the point that’s being
made in two ways. First, you could cast doubt on the high grade: perhaps marking
by a second examiner reveals that Elsa actually got a much lower grade. Suppose,
though, that the test was marked a second time and Elsa did get ten out of ten; you
could still criticize the argumentation by focusing on the relationship between the
view and the argument. Is it really the case that getting a ‘ten’ proves that Elsa has a
command of the material? Perhaps Elsa simply learned the answers to the questions
by heart, and she is unable to apply the material to other cases.

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 The argument is thus based on a general assumption: ‘If someone gets ten out of
ten, they have a command of the material’. When analysing a text, it is wise to reflect
on implicit assumptions such as these. Has the writer jumped to conclusions?
These relationships between the viewpoint and the argument are not only helpful
when critiquing a text, but also when elucidating the assumptions that are made by
researchers (in a particular field). These assumptions can prove fertile ground for
integrating different perspectives (see Menken & Keestra, 2016; see also ‘reflecting
on assumptions’ in Chapter 13.

Critically evaluating texts

Now that you have learned to analyse a text at sentence level and assess the strength
of its arguments using an argumentation diagram, you have taken the first steps
towards critically evaluating a text. Nevertheless, it is important to look not only at
what the text says, but also at the context in which it was written. You need to check
the origins of all the sources you consult. Just because something is being claimed in
a scholarly journal, this does not mean that it is incontrovertible (see also the fallacies
in Chapter 9).

It is tempting, for example, to write something like, ‘Author A (year) says this and
THEREFORE it is true’, in a literature review. However, this is not a good reflection
of what academic research is. If you read an academic research report carefully,
you’ll see that the researchers qualify their claims and conclusions and put them
in a particular context. Moreover, the quality of academic research varies; although
much research is carried out meticulously, other studies are badly thought-out or
incomplete. Therefore, in addition to finding relevant literature, it is also important
to be able to analyse and discuss the quality of the research. Box 3.2 contains a
checklist for determining whether a particular article or journal is reliable.

By organizing, collecting and assessing theories, you will broaden your

understanding of your research field – and this will ultimately allow you to sharpen
the focus of your own research, too. The process of considering multiple theories
provides a rapid insight into which issues have yet to be resolved in academia,
and where there is still room for a new study or piece of research. This process of
considering and discussing existing theories, accompanied by your own critical
reflection on these and your own argument about where the theoretical gaps in
scholarship lie, is also known as the theoretical framework. The process of weighing
up theories and searching for as-yet-unexplored scientific fields will really help you to
define your topic, and we will focus more on this in Chapter 4.

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 Box 3.2 Checklist: assessing the quality of academic literature

Criterion What should you look at? What should you watch out for?

Academic Do the authors Not every academic medium answers

debate contextualize their findings these questions. Some of the grey
more broadly? Do they literature, but also more popular
mention limiting factors? scientific texts, focuses less on the
Are these relevant for your broader implications of the research.
research? That is not to say that this literature is
unsuitable, but you should be extra
critical.

Research Is it clear which choices Lack of experience may result in

design have been made and your being intimidated by jargon or
why? Are other choices statistical measurements, meaning
considered? Are the that you tend to think: It must be OK.
relevant steps taken in the Nevertheless, even when you lack
research discussed? expertise, you can still say something
meaningful about the choices that
have been made and whether these
have been substantiated.

Citations Do other authors cite this A high citation score can also indicate
article? Does the author controversial or weak research –
have many citations from something you should bear in mind.
other authors? By contrast, if an article is not or hardly
cited, this does not necessarily mean
that the quality of the research isn’t up
to scratch. It may also mean that the
research has yet to be picked up by
the field, or that it has only just been
published.

Journal Does the journal have a Again: scholarly journals with lower
impact high impact factor? (A impact factors are not necessarily of
factor journal’s impact factor inferior quality. They may also publish
can be an indicator of good research.
its quality. You will find
comprehensive lists of
impact factors on the
Internet.)

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 Sources
Baroni, L., Cenci, L., Tettamanti, M., & Berati, M. (2007). Evaluating the
environmental impact of various dietary patterns combined with different
food production systems. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 61(2),
279-286.
Ercin, A.E., Aldaya, M.M., & Hoekstra, A.Y. (2012). The water footprint of soy milk
and soy burger and equivalent animal products. Ecological Indicators, 18,
392-402.
Madison, J. (1788). Article 10. The Federalist papers.
Menken, S. & Keestra, M. (eds.). (2016). An Introduction to Interdisciplinary
Research: Theory and Practice. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Renault, D., & Wallender, W.W. (2000). Nutritional water productivity and diets:
From ‘Crop per drop’ towards ‘Nutrition per drop’. Agricultural Water
Management, 45, 275-296.

Other useful sources

The software package Rationale is a good option if you want to represent the
structure of your argument diagrammatically. You can create a structure for free at
rationaleonline.com. If you want to save or print out the argumentation structure,
you will need to pay.

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 Part 2
Making your
research
measurable
Now that you have a broad overview of your research field, it’s time to define
your topic and make it researchable (Chapter 4). One of the tricky things about
the process of defining your topic is knowing when to stop zooming in. You’ll
rarely feel that you’ve defined your topic perfectly. Sometimes it will feel too
general (for example, if you define your research on online bullying as ‘bullying by
secondary-school pupils’), and sometimes it will feel too specific and only relevant
to a tiny group (for example, if you narrow it down to ‘the bullying emails sent by
one particular secondary-school pupil’).

In order to help you with this, in this part we describe how you can use a
theoretical framework to transform your topic into a well-defined problem
statement and research question (Chapter 5); how to draft a well-phrased research
question that helps you to structure the rest of your study (Chapter 6); and how to
make your theories and concepts measurable (Chapter 7).

Academic skills:
■■ Writing a theoretical framework and a problem statement.
■■ Defining a topic.
■■ Formulating a research question.
■■ Operationalizing.
■■ Creating a research instrument.

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 4 
From your topic to your
question

It can be very difficult to define how broad or narrow your topic can or should be
in relation to the research project you’re embarking upon. A 2,000-word literature
review or a 10,000-word Master’s thesis differ significantly in terms of the amount
of depth you can achieve. Unfortunately, there is no golden rule for how long a
project should be in relation to the chosen topic.

Concepts and theories can provide a good indication, however, as you can narrow
or widen the scope by limiting or expanding the network of related concepts. In
the literature review in Appendix A, for example, a single network of concepts (the
relationships between meat production, soya production, soil use, and water use) is
investigated. If you wanted to expand this research, you could broaden these concepts
or choose to investigate several conflicting theories. In other words, defining your
topic is a dynamic process. You start by mapping out the theories and concepts that
you will need for your research question, but it is very likely that you will broaden or
narrow these in the early stages.

Of course, it is important and really helpful to have an overview of all the relevant
concepts and theories in the research field (or multiple fields, if you’re doing
interdisciplinary research) that sparked your interest. But having an overview is not
sufficient to get you started on your own topic. First, because all of those theories and
conceptualizations can contradict one another at times. It is the task of the researcher
to take a clear position amongst the jumble of conflicting or complementary theories.
This is often done in the theoretical framework.

Second, it is insufficient to have an understanding of the existing theory. You also

need to identify the knowledge gaps in this overview, in order to discover which
relationships between concepts have yet to be researched (or which methods have
yet to be used to investigate these relationships). This is known as the problem
statement: a statement of what, based on the theory, has yet to be clarified about the
topic, and why it is essential to investigate this. Based on this statement, you will
finally be able to formulate your research question: the question that will shape the
rest of your research.

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 Theoretical framework
Theoretical frameworks can differ from study to study. This is because, first of
all, theory is used in different ways in academic research. For example, there are
disciplines that do not approach theory as it is conceived here, namely as theory in
empirical scholarship: a relationship between concepts. For example, some theories
are not descriptive, but prescriptive (also known as normative theory). In the field
of ethics in philosophy, for example, we come across many ideas about how people
should act in certain situations. In addition, theory can also mean the history of ideas.
In this case, rather than using theories and concepts to explain reality, you use them
to study the ideas that underlie these concepts. In political science, for example, one
could write a theoretical framework on different concepts of liberty (negative versus
positive) and how these have changed over the centuries (Maussen & Moret, 2014).

Aside from precisely which theoretical framework is used, studies can also differ in
terms of the role the theoretical framework plays within them. For example, there
are purely methodological papers in which the theoretical framework mainly indicates
the state of existing research in a field. And conceptual-theoretical studies frequently
omit the ‘debate’ between different theories, because this is already covered in
the research. Often, the theoretical framework of these studies offers a general
description of the theories that are addressed in detail later in the study.

In this book, we focus mainly on the role of theory in the empirical cycle. The
theoretical framework plays a prominent role in this, because it not only outlines the
state of the research field, but it also demarcates the niche where you, the researcher,
are intending to contribute to knowledge in one or more research fields.

From theories to concepts and dimensions

In order to find that niche, you must look at what other researchers have done, first
broadly and then in increasing detail. In practice, the reasoning is often the other
way around. Especially in action research or transdisciplinary research (where you
draw on knowledge from outside academia and you often work on specific cases),
you start with a certain problem and come up with theories to explain it. Even then,
however, you start with a broad theoretical basis, and you try to keep narrowing it
down until you identify the aspects of a theory that is relevant to describing and/or
explaining your case.

Based on your exploratory literature review, you built up a picture of the key authors
and their most important articles. And in these articles, you were able to find the
most common theories. These theories consist of concepts that, in turn, are defined
in different ways. Take the literature review that is featured at the end of this book
as an example. A literature review can be a piece of self-standing research (such as
in Appendix A), but it can also be the first report in what will eventually become a
research study. Based on the literature study, the broad topic of the environmental
impact of eating meat is narrowed down to a comparison between eating soya and
meat and the use of land and water. This is a well-defined topic for a literature review.

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 For a research study in which you want to generate your own results, though, the
topic needs to be narrowed down further – primarily because you want to identify
a gap in the existing knowledge, an aspect that has yet to be researched. However,
this does not automatically mean that you need to produce new data or information
in order to contribute to scholarship. Taking a new approach to the literature (such
as in a literature review) or discussing it in a different context (a new case) are often
excellent ways of doing scientifically relevant research, too. In these cases, you are
also looking for gaps in the existing knowledge.

A good way to find a ‘niche’ in your chosen research field is to keep investigating
which dimensions of the concepts are identified by the different authors. By this, we
mean the ‘scope’ of the concept; what possible meanings are included in the concept
by the author(s). Identifying the different dimensions helps you to define which
aspects of the concept you want to measure and which you do not. In doing so, you
can use a literature matrix like the one used in Chapter 3, but you can now expand or
deepen it further

In the example (Box 4.1), there is a clear division between authors who look at the
total use in production (water use) and those who take additional factors into account
(water footprint). By looking in such detail, you will quickly spot the contrasts and
similarities, but above all the gaps. For example, you could look in even more detail
at the ‘whole production chain’, and at whether there are parts of the chain that have
yet to be investigated in relation to water use and meat consumption. Or you could
look at areas where the water-footprint method has been used, and whether there is
a new dimension (for example, soya production) of another relevant concept that has
yet to be included in existing research.

This whole process is covered in the theoretical framework: from the general
description of the relationships between the concepts, and the more specific
description of the differences in the dimensions identified by the authors, to the gap
in the knowledge you think can be observed. When you eventually write this up, it is
therefore important to follow a clear, strong line of argumentation; see Chapter 9 of
this book.

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 Box 4.1 Concepts and dimensions

Theory Concepts Dimensions Application

(source,
empiricism,
anecdotes)

Meat Water use Water Water use: (water

production, (Baroni et al., consumption for consumption)
soya 2007) production 70% of total fresh
production, water by livestock
and water use and agriculture

Water footprint Direct water Water footprint

(Ercin et al., 2012) footprint (indirect and
= total volume of (water consumed direct): water use
fresh water that in the production of meat burger 14
is used directly of a certain x larger than that
or indirectly product) of a vegetarian
to produce a burger
product Indirect water
footprint (water
consumption in
whole production
chain)

The theoretical framework and interdisciplinary research

When you do interdisciplinary research, your theoretical framework is where you
link several theoretical perspectives together; it is where you describe how different
disciplines approach similar concepts differently.

Taking the example from Box 4.1, this could mean that a natural scientist and a
humanities scholar take different approaches to water use. For example, there
are humanities scholars who think about how water is represented. Whereas the
concept of ‘water use’ may be conceived in the way defined in Box 4.1, as running
water, it is also possible to define water at different points in the water cycle,
such as the moment of precipitation, rather than the point at which it joins water
flows that ultimately lead to consumption (Da Cunha, 2018). This is an example
of how contrasting conceptualizations can lead to interdisciplinary integration
(see also Menken & Keestra, 2016), for it invites a debate between humanities
scholars and natural scientists about how water use should be defined and used in
interdisciplinary research.

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 The problem statement
The theoretical framework ends with the establishment of the knowledge gap; in
the problem statement you argue why this gap should be filled with your study. Two
factors are important in this: scholarly and social relevance.

Scientific relevance means the value that your research will add to existing scientific
practice. This relevance can be demonstrated in many ways. For example, this
could concern the lack of data that your research is going to rectify, but it could also
be about proving that a previous theory is wrong or qualifying an existing theory.
Or, on the contrary, it could entail integrating two research fields (the holy grail of
interdisciplinary research). You might also want to test a research result from one
context in a new one (for example, a study that is set up in one country and carried
out in another one, under different conditions).

Second, filling the knowledge gap must be socially relevant. This means that your
research findings should be of interest to society in a broad sense, from businesses
to NGOs, and from governments to fellow citizens. When making the case for social
relevance, it is often useful to think of a particular target group and to try to put
yourself in their shoes; or reflect on current social debates in the media or politics,
and the extent to which this study could contribute to them.

Be aware that the problem statement can play different roles in different disciplines.
In some disciplines, the problem statement is only mentioned in the introduction,
after which it is explained further in the theoretical framework. In other disciplines,
however, the problem statement follows on from the theoretical framework, and
more or less forms the conclusion to this section – and thereby the bridge to your
research question (see Chapter 5). There are also disciplines where the problem
statement is synonymous with the entire research question and sub-questions,
and sometimes the whole introduction. This means that you should always check
the description of the assignment carefully to see what is meant by the ‘problem
statement’. Also be aware of how this differs from the problem description of
problem sketch (which is often meant to be a broad introduction to the case that
you’re researching).

The problem statement provides the perfect overture to the phrasing of the research
question. The theoretical framework explains what has and hasn’t been researched
yet, and in the problem statement, this is summarized as the research objective.
The question should then be phrased in such a way that the research objective is
captured as precisely as possible, in the form of the question that is answered at the
end of the study. When you phrase this question, you’re actually starting to define the
structure of the rest of your study. We explain how to formulate a research question
in Chapter 5.

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 Sources
Baroni, L., Cenci, L., Tettamanti, M., & Berati, M. (2007). Evaluating the
environmental impact of various dietary patterns combined with different
food production systems. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 61(2),
279-286.
Da Cunha, D. (2018). River literacy and the challenge of a rain terrain. In D. Venkat
Rao (ed.), Critical Humanities from India. Contexts, Issues, Futures. India:
Routledge.
Ercin, A.E., Aldaya, M.M., & Hoekstra, A.Y. (2012). The water footprint of soy milk
and soy burger and equivalent animal products. Ecological Indicators, 18,
392-402.
Maussen, M., & Moret, M. (2014). Academische vaardigheden voor politicologen.
Amsterdam: College voor Sociale Wetenschappen.
Menken, S., Keestra, M. (eds.). (2016). An Introduction to Interdisciplinary Research.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

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 5 
Formulating a good question

Once you’ve decided which concepts and which dimension(s) of these concepts
you’re going to research, and you’ve reflected on the potential relationships
between these concepts, it is time to capture this in a clear research question.

Characteristics of a research question

When it comes to academic problems, it’s hardly ever the case that you formulate the
perfect research question in one go. Drafting a good research question is one of the
most difficult, but also one of the most important, aspects of academic research. It is
an iterative process in which you go back and forth between the literature you’ve read
and your research question, and you will probably draft many versions before coming up
with the definitive one. A number of factors are important in this respect; see Box 5.1.

Box 5.1 Checklist for research questions

You do not always need to cover the following issues literally in your research question, but
they should be clear from your argumentation and described in your introduction.

Relevance Is the scholarly or social significance of the question clear? This

shows why your question is worth researching. This is often
clear from your problem statement.

Precision Is the question formulated in an unambiguous way? State what

you want to study as precisely as possible. This helps you to
avoid answering the wrong question in your research. In other
words, ensure that your question is sufficiently defined.

Feasibility Can the question be answered? This means that the question
must be formulated in such a way that it leads to a suitable
research design. Ideally, you should be able to infer from the
question how it should be answered.

Positioning Is the question of sufficient scholarly quality? It is important

within field to reflect on whether your question can be answered within a
scholarly field. Check whether your topic fits within the area of
knowledge you have in mind.

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 Types of questions
Academic questions can be divided into roughly two sorts of questions. First, you
have comparative questions. These are questions whereby you compare two or more
concepts, or look at the relationship between them. For example:

What are the differences between X and Y?

What are the differences between a vegetarian and an omnivorous diet?

What is the relationship between X and Y?

To what extent is there a relationship between water footprint and the quantity
of meat consumed?

Another option is to compare the concept across two or more groups. For example:

To what extent is X different in group A than in group B?

What is the difference in the water footprint of a vegetarian and an omnivorous

diet?

Finally, you can formulate a comparative question by contrasting the concept

measured in your research with a certain criterion. Of course, this is only possible if
generally applicable criteria exist. For example:

To what extent is X, as measured here, commensurable with the general

criterion for X?

To what extent is the water footprint measured in the group of Dutch vegetarians
commensurable with the water footprint of the average Dutch person?

Second, you have explanatory questions. With these, you try to unravel the
explanations that underlie a phenomenon, something that is particularly common in
literature reviews. An example of such a question is:

To what extent do X and/or Y explain Z?

To what extent can meat production and soya production explain the increase in
the global water footprint?

Naturally, there are disciplines where other sorts of questions are used. In design
studies, for example, we come across questions such as:

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 How can objective X be achieved?

How can the Dutch meat sector reduce its CO2 emissions by 30% by 2030?

In this case, the answer is a description of the objective and an action plan setting out
the steps that need to be taken in order to achieve this. Bear in mind that research
questions such as these are only appropriate for studies that seek to develop a
solution or scenario for a particular research problem.

Thus, when formulating your question, anticipate the type of answer that will follow.
As you can see above, the structure of the answer can be inferred from the form of
the question. If you reflect on this in advance, you will avoid a situation in which
you’re unable to answer your question with the resources to hand. The answer to
your research question doesn’t need to be definitive, though. For example, a literature
review can end with a conclusion such as: ‘There are two studies (Bergen, 2012;
Smith, 2005) that make a reasonable case that... A third study by Janssen et al. (2014)
nuances this by showing how...’

In addition, it is very important to delimit your question. In other words, the terms
and concepts that make up the question should be defined as clearly and specifically
as possible, so that it is clear exactly what you want to research. For example, it
is very important to specify the concept that you are going to investigate in your
question. A question such as: ‘What influence does the agrarian sector have on the
environment?’ contains the concepts ‘agrarian sector’ and ‘environment’. However,
these concepts have a great many different dimensions; the agrarian sector, for
example, covers crop cultivation, horticulture, livestock, and so on. The environment
covers water quality, air quality, soil pollution, biodiversity, and so forth.

Try to formulate your question in such a way that the dimension you want to
research is made clear, such as: ‘To what extent does crop cultivation have an impact
on water quality?’ The final step is often to specify the location and/or the case. For
example: ‘To what extent does the cultivation of potatoes in Flevoland have an impact
on eutrophication in this region?’

Another option is to specify these dimensions in sub-questions. In this case, you take
a main question and divide it into sub-questions. For example, the main question
could be: ‘What influence does dairy farming have on greenhouse gas emissions?’
You can subsequently divide the concept of greenhouse gas into different dimensions
and answer each sub-question. For example:
1 ‘What influence does dairy farming have on methane gas emissions?’
2 ‘What influence does dairy farming have on carbon dioxide emissions?’

You then address the answers to the sub-questions in the conclusion. In this way,
taken together, the answers to the sub-questions answer the main question.

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 Sources
Jong, J. de (2011). Handboek academisch schrijven: In stappen naar een essay,
paper of scriptie. Bussum: Uitgeverij Coutinho.
Oost, H. & Markenhof, A. (2003). Een onderzoek voorbereiden. Baarn: HB uitgevers.

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 6 
A testable concept

By formulating relevant indicators and variables, you can make the abstract
(concepts and, to a lesser extent, dimensions) concrete. In this chapter, we explain
how to do this.

Why operationalize?
It’s often the case that abstract concepts and processes are not ‘visible’; they only exist
on paper as words, not in the form of something that can be described and explained
in concrete terms. You therefore need to make these concepts and indicators
measurable. In other words, you need to operationalize them.

We use the term ‘operationalization’ to describe the process of transforming abstract

ideas in a research field into specific measurable units. This is because concepts
such as ‘water consumption’ and ‘problematic drug use’ are not visible in themselves
and thus cannot be measured directly. All kinds of associations can be made with
them. In the case of water consumption, for example, you could think of a household
tap, but also of a river. In the case of addiction, you might immediately think of
criminality, but perhaps also of overdoses. As there are so many different potential
associations, it is impossible to measure this concept directly.

In short, the researcher has to be very precise. How often someone uses drugs,
for example, is a first step in defining problematic drug use; but this needs to be
specified even further. What do we mean by ‘often’? And when do we start referring
to ‘drug use’? This is the step you make in the final stage of operationalization, when
you reflect on the indicators and variables.

Operationalization is also extremely important in the context of interdisciplinary

research, because many concepts are multidimensional. By this we mean that they
cannot be measured using a single indicator, number, or concept. Operationalization
is not only about the visibility of a concept, but also about conveying its complexity.
A good example of this is discussed in Chapter 4. Defining ‘water use’ is
multidimensional, certainly if you want to approach the topic from both a natural
scientific and a humanities perspective. You therefore need to think carefully about
how to make your concepts measurable in a way that includes multiple theoretical
perspectives.

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 From dimensions to indicators and variables
Just like constructing a theoretical framework, operationalization can be done in
many different ways. You can get an overview of all the different possibilities by
making an operationalization scheme. Box 6.1 shows an example of such a scheme,
drawn up for two of the concepts from the literature review in Appendix A.

In the sample literature review, you can see clearly how the indicators and variables
relate to one another. One dimension of water use is the water that is used to
produce a product. The other dimension of water use is the water that is used in the
entire production chain. Together, these dimensions make up the water footprint (the
core concept). But you’re not there yet; for how do you measure the water used for
production and in the whole production chain? For convenience’s sake, here we have
only developed the example of water used for production. This can be measured by
looking at the water that ends up in the product itself, at how much water evaporates
during the production process, and at the quantity of water that is eventually
polluted. After that, however, you still need to establish the value that your indicator
will take. In this case, this is the number of cubic metres of water that is needed to
produce a ton of a certain product.

Indicators can thus indicate how something should be measured; they are a
roadmap, as it were, that you follow from the abstract to the specific. The variable
is the value that this indicator can eventually assume. In the literature report
(Appendix A), for example, ‘water footprint’ (the concept) can be divided into the
direct water footprint (dimension), which can be measured, among other things, in
terms of the volume of water that ends up in the products themselves (indicator) per
m3/ton of water that is stored in the product (variable) (see Box 6.1).

The concepts discussed in Chapter 4 have been operationalized in Box 6.1. In order
to show that different disciplines can take rather different approaches, we have
added an extra operationalization that contrasts with the examples from the literature
review in Appendix A. This is because water use can be approached in different
ways in the social sciences; there are researchers who see certain forms of water
consumption as a form of ‘water grabbing’, meaning that access to water and the way
such access is obtained are extremely important (Franco et al., 2013).

In the context of this research, it would be interesting to examine the extent to which
the use of water for meat production undermines access to water elsewhere in the
world. This would result in a slightly different indicator; not a volume that can be
expressed numerically, but social rules and legal norms that are expressed more
qualitatively. The ‘variable’ field has thus been left blank in this operationalization,
not because it is impossible to transform these indicators into variables, but because
it is probably better to measure such indicators qualitatively (more on this in
Chapter 7).

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 Box 6.1 From dimensions to indicators

Theory Concept Dimensions Indicator Variable

Meat Water footprint Direct water Volume of m³/ton of

production, (Ercin et al., footprint water that water stored in
soya 2012) (water ends up in product X
production, = total volume consumed in the products
and of fresh water the production themselves
water use that is used of a certain
directly or product) Volume of m³/ton of water
indirectly to water that that evaporates
produce a evaporates during the
product during the production of
production product X
process

Volume of m³/ton of water

water that is that is polluted
polluted by as a result of
waste water left the production
by factory of product X

Indirect water
footprint (water
consumption
in whole
production
chain)

‘Water Access to water Informal

grabbing’ property rights
(Franco et al.,
2013) Formal
property rights

Operationalization and validity

In order to achieve an optimal operationalization, it is insufficient simply to draw up
a scheme like the one above. As you do your research, it is important to keep casting
a critical eye over the choices you’ve made. Ask yourself questions about the validity
of your indicator; that is to say, does it measure what you want to measure? After all,
it’s quite a step to go from abstract concepts to measurable units. Sometimes you’ll
make an erroneous association, or you’ll formulate an indicator in such a way that
it no longer measures your concept as precisely as you’d defined it. In the case of

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 water use, for example, things could go horribly wrong if you were to refer only to
‘consumption’ in your indicators, and forget to include other possible forms of use.

As a result, you not only need to set out your operationalization scheme from left
to right, but you should also go over your steps again from right to left, to check
that everything you’ve done still makes sense. Reflect carefully on the choices
you’ve made, and think about whether they are justified. And when you write up
your research (see Part 3), try to substantiate these choices well. When choosing
dimensions and indicators and writing them down, it is essential to look at how
this has been done in other research – and link your own research to this (even if
only partially). There is no need to reinvent the wheel, and by citing other research,
you anchor your operationalization in the literature. In this way, you avoid a certain
degree of bias and tunnel vision.

Other forms of operationalization

The process of operationalization that we’ve described above is a useful way to
structure your research and steer it from the abstract to the measurable. It is not
the only way to do this, though. There are clear differences in how qualitative and
quantitative research studies are operationalized (see Chapter 8). In the social
sciences, there are also researchers who start with data and base their theory on this,
rather than starting with theory and working towards a measurable unit. This is
known as grounded theory.

There are also various research schools in the humanities and social sciences that
operationalize in a slightly less rigid way; they use concepts to do research, but do
not go so far as to make them into indicators and variables. In literary and cultural
studies, there is often an exchange between theories and concepts and a certain
subject of research (a book or a film, for example). Theories on trauma processing,
for example, may be discussed in relation to a particular book or film. Concepts
are thereby used implicitly to make these theories ‘visible’ in the subjects of the
research, but not as explicitly as in an operationalization scheme. For researchers and
students from these disciplines, however, practising with operationalization schemes
can also be a helpful ‘finger exercise’. Moreover, it can form a useful prelude to
interdisciplinary cooperation (see also the introduction to this chapter).

Many disciplines go through the operationalization process only implicitly or

partially. In the natural sciences (among others), some researchers work with existing
indices and methods, meaning that they do not need to go through all of the steps
themselves. However, this is not to say that it is not useful for a natural scientist to
reflect on his or her research design in this way. Reflecting on how the index that
you are using has been constructed helps you to map out the assumptions and limits
of your own research more effectively, and find out where other perspectives could
connect or contribute.

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 Sources
Franco, J., Mehta, L., en Veldwisch, G.J. (2013). The Global Politics of Water
Grabbing. Third World Quarterly, 34(9), 1651-75.

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 7 
Making a research instrument

After you have operationalized your concepts, it is time to think about your
research instrument; in other words, how can you determine which instrument
you’re going to use to measure your indicator or indicators? There are a great
many kinds of research instruments to choose from: from lab research to
ethnographic fieldwork, and from document analysis to soil research. In the
humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, different approaches require
different research instruments.

Quantitative instruments require a technical specification that can be different for

each research specialization, and for this, we refer you to the specialist literature
that you’ll use in your course’s methodology modules. Although this is also true of
qualitative instruments, there is a common basis for making instruments for this
type of research, meaning that this is easier to explain. That’s not to say, though, that
quantitative research isn’t covered at all in this book; the sample research article at
the back of the book (see Appendix B) is based on quantitative research, and in Part 3
we look at the correct way to display quantitative data.

Qualitative versus quantitative

What is qualitative research and what is quantitative research? There are many
misunderstandings about this. It is sometimes claimed, for example, that
quantitative research is objective and qualitative research is subjective. This
distinction doesn’t hold, however: although qualitative research investigates data
that are often subjective in nature, this does not detract from the objectivity of the
research itself.

What’s more, quantitative research has always suffered from the stigma that it is
‘more difficult’ than qualitative research. Quantitative research does admittedly
require a large set of skills, and statistics tends to inspire fear in many students.
Compared to this, doing interviews, a feature of much qualitative research, might
seem a breeze. But nothing could be further from the truth. Organizing, conducting,
transcribing, and analysing interviews is by no means less complicated than, say,
gathering, preparing, and analysing large statistical datasets. One factor here is that
you’re often unable to fall back on standardized methods and software, but instead
have to figure a lot out for yourself.

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 What is the difference, then? In qualitative research, the emphasis lies on
understanding what is specific to a research group or a research subject. Qualitative
research often makes use of observations and in-depth interviews. This means
that you probe in as much depth as you can during the data collection, so that
you can produce as precise a picture of the respondent as possible. These data are
subsequently ordered by coding; that is, by searching for patterns between the
respondents. By observing and talking at length with a small group of respondents,
you build up a detailed picture of all of the aspects that are important – but only
for this (often small) group. Based on these data, the researcher then looks at
what general lessons can be drawn, but often the objective is not to generalize the
qualitative research; rather, it is to get a better understanding of the specific dynamic
of the research problem.

By contrast, quantitative research allows you to make generalizations; statements

about whole populations that are generally valid. For qualitative research, this is
more difficult. In quantitative research, numerical data (or other kinds of data that
have been converted into figures) are gathered and analysed. Based on this numerical
knowledge, you can make statements, for example about possible patterns,
averages, or relationships. In order to do this, you need a research group with more
respondents, because many statistical measures are only meaningful when they
apply to a larger population. In this case, then, you are primarily interested in the
general, or what all of the respondents or subjects of the research have in common.

The decision to carry out qualitative or quantitative research should thus be based on
what you want to get out of your subjects of inquiry. You start with a different kind
of data source. In the case of quantitative research, you assume that the data can
be found in what a whole population or a whole series of research subjects have in
common. In the case of qualitative research, you assume that the data are contained
in your research subjects themselves. The knowledge is located in particular
individuals, and they are able to share it. In short, whether you go for a quantitative
or a qualitative research design is purely a methodological choice that is dictated by
precisely what you want to know and why.

When qualitative and when quantitative?

For most research in the natural sciences, it is pretty clear that the only option
available is a quantitative option – either because the data and the methods that you
are building on are quantitative, or because the generalization of data is extremely
important in the natural sciences. On the other hand, this does not automatically
mean that research in the humanities and social sciences is always qualitative.
Linguists, for example, often use quantitative questionnaires, and an increasing
amount of quantitative research is also being done in the social sciences (for
example, in psychology and sociology). In these disciplines, certainly when they
intersect in interdisciplinary research – where the humanities, social sciences, and
natural sciences come together – it is difficult to see when you should choose a
qualitative design and when you should choose a quantitative one. In this section,

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 Box 7.1 An operationalization diagram for the concepts of ‘cognitive control’ and ‘problematic
drug use’ used in the sample research article in Appendix B

Concept Dimension Indicator Question/Item Outcome

measure
(variable/score/
topic, etc.)

Cognitive control Attentional Degree of Speed in the

processes attentional bias case of incorrect
for incorrect colour/word
colour and word combination
combination (for (slower means
example, green less cognitive
printed in yellow control)
ink)

Memory
processes

Problematic drug Characteristics of Number of failed Questionnaire Score from 0-4:

use dependence on attempts to (part of CUDIT) • Never
a substance* reduce or control Over the last six • Less than
cannabis use months, how monthly
often did you • Monthly
notice that you • Weekly
were unable • Daily or almost
to stop using daily
cannabis after
starting to use it?

The use itself Frequency of Questionnaire Score from 0-4:

drug use (part of CUDIT) • Never
How often • Monthly or
do you use less
cannabis? • 2-4 times a
month
• 2-3 times a
week
• 4 or more
times a week

* This is only one possible characteristic of addiction (abuse or dependence). For reasons
of comprehensibility, it was decided not to include all the characteristics here.

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 we give you a number of tips for making this choice, based on your sample, your
choice of research design, and the operationalization of your concepts.

Operationalization
You often choose the type of research instrument you need – qualitative or
quantitative – when you operationalize your concepts. Take the example of the
research article: in this, the researchers utilize an experimental design that uses
different types of quantitative research measures, namely an experiment and an
interview with questionnaires (surveys). The question is: why is the interview
quantitative here, and not qualitative?

If we look at the operationalization of problematic drug use (Box 7.1), it becomes

clear why the authors opted for quantitative research. Two dimensions of drug use
are distinguished: the use itself, and the different characteristics of dependence on
a substance. One indicator that can show the latter, for example, is the number of
fruitless attempts that an individual has made to stop using drugs. If you measure
this, you are measuring whether someone is showing a characteristic of addiction,
and you have thereby measured a dimension of problematic drug use. The obvious
question is: should we then use a qualitative or quantitative instrument to measure
this? In which case, you must first ask: where are the valuable data here? Are we
concerned with the individual experience of the drug user, the precise dynamic
of one drug user’s addiction? Or is this about a whole series of experiences taken
together?

In this study, you want to discover the relationship between problematic drug use
and cognitive control. The main implication of this is that you want to measure both
a respondent’s problematic drug use and their cognitive control; and, above all, you
want to be able to make generalizable statements about this that apply to a whole
population group. Thus, the research is not really about one individual’s specific
experiences, simply because these are rarely generalizable. If you had wanted to do
research into one specific type of drug user’s experience of their attempts to quit in a
specific context, then qualitative research would have been an option here.

Nowadays, it is increasingly common for researchers to combine qualitative and

quantitative research. In such cases, we refer to mixed methods. In interdisciplinary
research, this is certainly a very significant addition to the research palette,
because it allows us to link more qualitative and more quantitative-oriented
disciplines. Thus, you could have an anthropologist do supplementary qualitative
research into a specific population of drug users in order to reveal other possible
causal mechanisms. Specific aspects are then combined with the possibility of
generalization.

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 Structure of the instrument
One key factor that plays a role in the choice of qualitative or quantitative research is
whether you want to use a standardized instrument that takes a rigorous approach to
the data, or want to use a design with more freedom. This is known as the distinction
between a structured and a semi-structured instrument. Fully structured instruments
are only really used in quantitative research. In this case, you use fixed questions,
a fixed order, and a fixed set of possible answers. Doing structured interviews in
qualitative research often means using a questionnaire that is completely fixed,
both in terms of content and order, but the answer options are completely open. By
contrast, a ‘semi-structured’ interview is even ‘looser’. Here, neither the questions
nor the order is completely fixed. Researchers often work with loosely formulated
topic lists (see section containing Box 7.2), which they can use differently depending
on how the interview is going.

The degree of structure in your research instrument is entirely dependent on what

you want to research and your expectations of the respondents. Again, a key factor is
whether you want to make a statement about a population, or whether you want to
find out something specific about one or more respondents within a population.

Determining your sample

Another important consideration to make when choosing a quantitative or
qualitative instrument is determining your respondents, also known as sampling.
Don’t underestimate this part! Aside from the fact that it is sometimes hard to find
respondents (either because it is hard to find respondents who can ‘measure’ your
concept or because it is hard to contact them), it is also important to make a reasoned
decision about the sample you want to use.

By sample, we mean the individuals you select from a population in order to

interview them. This is particularly important for studies in which you try to
generalize your results broadly, something that plays a particular role in quantitative
research. In that case, your sample needs to be representative of the population you
want to say something about. In qualitative research, too, it is important to have a
good sample, because you need be able to substantiate why the respondents you
have chosen are suitable for answering your research question and measuring the
concepts you have operationalized.

In quantitative research, use is often (but not always) made of random sampling.
That is to say, you attempt to make a random selection from a large population. For
example, you could identify a list of a thousand potential respondents and randomly
select a number of them using a computer program. This helps you to avoid a degree
of selection bias, whereby you nevertheless choose certain respondents, consciously
or unconsciously.

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 By contrast, in qualitative research, non-random sampling is often (but not always)
used. That is because in qualitative research you are often searching for targeted
research subjects, not because they reflect a broader population, but because they are
relevant subjects to be interviewed. There is a risk of bias here too, though, meaning
that it is always important to explain clearly how you selected the respondents.

Random sampling is sometimes confused with non-random sampling methods. Take

the example of convenience sampling; in this case, you choose your respondents
based on the degree of access you have to them. After all, if you are doing research on
the European Commission as part of an internship and you already have a network
there, it makes sense to use it. And if you subsequently need more respondents and
you ask the people in your network whether they happen to know other relevant
individuals, this is known as snowball sampling. Both are legitimate, so long as
you explain your method clearly and show why it is appropriate for your research
purposes, and you also reflect on the limits of this sampling in the discussion section
(see Chapter 9). Although there might seem to be a certain randomness to these two
methods, this randomness is not absolute; the researcher has nevertheless made a
conscious selection, meaning that these are not cases of random sampling.

Making a qualitative research instrument

Many forms of qualitative research are possible. In the humanities, we come across
all kinds of forms of document analysis and analysis of objects, cultural or otherwise.
In the social sciences, qualitative research can vary from ethnographic research to
expert interviews, focus groups, and design research (where you no longer merely
describe and explain reality, but also try to change it).

In this book, we discuss a qualitative method for conducting and analysing

interviews on an empirical, structured basis, because this gives a useful indication
of the structured, systematic approach that is required by all research, including
qualitative research. Once again, this is done using an operationalization scheme
(Box 7.2). Running through this process is a good exercise in qualitative scholarship,
even if you end up focusing more on other kinds of research, because conducting
interviews is a systematic form of interaction in which you generate data relating
to one or more people. In short, by going through this method, you lay a good
foundation that will come in handy as a scientist or scholar.

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 Formulating interview questions

From indicators to topic lists or questionnaires

When formulating a research instrument, you start from your operationalization
scheme; in this case, we go back to the scheme that we set out in in Box 7.1. Suppose
that you want to approach your research qualitatively. Then you can do one of two
things: either you can draw up a topic list, a list of potential topics to be discussed,
or you can draw up a list of possible questions. It is also possible to combine the
two. Box 7.2 shows a topic list for the operationalization scheme mentioned above,
combined with a list of possible questions. It is essential to ensure that the topics in
your topic list or the questions in your questionnaire are directly related to one or
more indicators of the dimensions that you want to measure.

Box 7.2 Example of a topic list for the operationalization scheme in Box 7.1

Topic list Possible questions

Duration of use How long have you been using cannabis?

How old were you when you first tried cannabis?
When did you start using it on a weekly/daily basis?

Addiction Have you ever tried to stop using cannabis? Did you
characteristic: succeed? How long did you refrain from using it?
limited control over How often have you tried to stop?
use Do you think about cannabis when you are not under
the influence? Do you feel like using it?

Addiction Do the people around you say anything about your

characteristic: use?
interpersonal problems Have you ever stayed home from work/college
related to use because you were under the influence?

Order of the questionnaire

When you interview someone, you obviously want the respondent to be optimally
placed to answer the questions. This means that the phrasing of the questions is
important, of course, but also the order in which you ask them, also known as the
route In general, you should always start by asking questions that are relatively easy
to answer; questions that make few demands of one’s cognitive abilities, and that
cause as little embarrassment as possible. In this way, you avoid situations in which
people switch off early in an interview, either because they find the questions too
difficult or because they feel uneasy. You can then gradually introduce more difficult
questions. Remember that it is also smart to cluster questions thematically. In other
words, it is best to group together questions that measure a single concept. This will
allow your respondents to go more deeply into a topic.

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 Phrasing interview questions
Aside from the structure, the questions themselves are also important. First of all,
you need to formulate your questions carefully. Your questions may reflect all kinds
of unspoken preferences, and they can quickly become too directive. Box 7.3 sets out
a number of things to watch out for when formulating your questions.

Box 7.3 Tips for interview questions (adapted from Assen & Van der Ark, n.d.)

Use simple words Don’t include any terms in your questions that require
particular prior knowledge. Avoid using jargon
and academic language, which may scare off your
respondent. Moreover, your respondent may not fully
understand such terms.

Be specific and Try to avoid using vague terms, such as ‘often’,

avoid vague terms ‘regularly’ or ‘sometimes’. Be aware that ‘vague’ is not
the same as ‘open’. By ‘vague’, we mean terms that
appear to indicate specificity when they do not in fact
do so. It is fine to ask an open question, whereby your
respondent is free to give an associative answer. It is
confusing, though, to ask your respondents a seemingly
specific question when the terms you use can be
interpreted in different ways. After all, what is ‘often’?
Once a week? Once a month? Once in a lifetime? If you
want to know something in particular, such as a date,
time or location, be as specific as possible in how you
ask the question.

Avoid long, Try to avoid using negative terms whenever possible

complicated (not, nothing, nobody, no, never), and never use double
sentences negations (‘not unjustifiably’, ‘no negative feelings’, etc.).
In addition, try to maximize your use of short sentences.
Questions that consist of main and subordinate clauses
can best be split into separate questions. Always
remember that the more clearly a question is asked, the
closer the answer will be to the researcher’s intentions –
and that is ultimately what it is all about.

Once your questionnaire is complete and you’ve made sure that your questions
are valid and reliable (see next section) and follow a good ‘route’, it is time to think
about the interviews themselves. For this, it is useful to make an interview script. A
script is a kind of action plan for your interview, including the planning, topic list,
background information on the respondents, the logistics of the interview, and so
forth. This helps to ensure the interview goes well, but it is also a useful resource for

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 when you eventually write up your methods section. Be sure to take this script with
you to the interview; if something goes wrong, you’ll have all the key information to
hand.

Validity and reliability of your instrument

Regardless of whether you’re doing qualitative or quantitative research, your research
instrument needs to be reliable and valid.

When you have finished your instrument (or if you’ve opted for an existing
instrument), you should look closely at the instrument’s reliability. That is to say:
could your instrument be used such that the research could be carried out twice
in an identical way? This is comparable to a weighing scale. A small deviation is
permissible, but the scale is not reliable if you suddenly find yourself 5 kilograms
heavier in one day. This is important, because the replicability of research will
otherwise be brought into question. When doing scholarly research, another
researcher should always be able to replicate your research; that is, follow your steps
precisely to see whether the same result is achieved. It is essential to have a good and
reliable instrument for this.

In addition, it is important to consider the validity of your instrument. Validity

concerns the meaning of the outcome: does the instrument indeed measure what
you want to know? It can be divided into internal and external validity; the internal
validity is high if your instrument directly measures the outcome measure without
there being possible third variables that could cause background noise or explain
the relationship. In other words, does the instrument measure what you want it
to measure? One example is that of the Eleven-plus exam to determine a primary
school pupil’s secondary-school level (in England and Northern Ireland). Does this
effectively measure a pupil’s skills in spelling, arithmetic, and so forth?

In addition, there is external validity; that is to say, the degree of generalizability. This
is particularly important in quantitative research (but qualitative research also tries
to make generalizing statements at times). In other words: can the data you gathered
during the experiment be generalized to everyday practice? Is a stress test in a lab
comparable with work or study stress, and can conclusions thus be drawn from
this? And if you have a sample that contains only psychology students, can you draw
conclusions from this about the entire population of a country?

When it comes to external validity, it is important to check carefully that you have
a good sample; that is, that you have chosen the right respondents and that no
bias has crept in. If you are conducting an interview, you need to look carefully at
the formulation of your questions. Are they overly directive? If so, this can lead
to reactivity. In this case, the respondents may behave in a socially desirable way
and say what they think you, the researcher, want to hear. This can undermine the
generalizability of your results.

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 For both reliability and internal validity, it is important to keep a close eye on your
operationalization scheme to make sure that your question really is measuring
the concept that you want to measure. One good exercise here is to think up the
answers that might be given to your question. Do these answers come close to the
concept that you want to measure? Or have you actually drifted away from where
you started? You should also try to keep a proper record of the steps you took when
operationalizing and making the questionnaire.

TIP
If you read about validity, you’ll find that there are more forms of validity than
internal and external validity alone. Different approaches identify a multiplicity of
types, including construct validity, predictive validity, and so forth. If you want to
find out more, see ‘Other useful sources’ at the end of this chapter.

Assessment by an ethics committee

It is standard for experiments involving human and animal subjects to be submitted
to the department or university’s ethics committee for approval before the research
takes place. Student research carried out within a discipline also falls under the
responsibility of the ethics committee, which is why you should always submit your
research design to your lecturer before making a start on the empirical research.

The exact form that a request to an ethics committee should take is different for each
faculty and type of research (take a careful look at the ethical requirements of the
faculty where you are doing your research). In general, the application should clearly
state exactly what you want to research. In the case of research involving human test
subjects, you need to submit an information brochure that the test subject can read
before the research. Test subjects should to be able to make out from this brochure
what the research will involve in terms of burden, risk or discomfort, whether there
is some form of reward, that their contribution is voluntary, and that their anonymity
is guaranteed.

This information should be accompanied by an informed consent that is signed

by the test subject, should they wish to take part in the research having read the
brochure. If you are giving test subjects misleading information about the research
(as is done in some psychological experiments), there are additional provisions,
such as a full debriefing to explain how test subjects were misled, and the possible
negative consequences of this deception should be taken into consideration.

In the methods section of the sample article in Appendix B, you can see how this
ethical component can be recorded in your article: ‘The study was approved by
the ethics committee of the Academic Medical Centre (AMC) in Amsterdam and
informed consent forms were signed by all participants’.

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 Sources
Assen, M.A.L.M., & Van der Ark, L.A. (n.d.). Vuistregels voor het formuleren van
vragen. Geraadpleegd op https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/upload/
f25c6b16-d0e5-4c97-bfe6-78ac661a7fe8
Cronbach, L.J., & Meehl, P.E. (1955). Construct validity in psychological tests.
Psychological Bulletin, 52(4), 281-302.

Other useful sources

A good overview of types of validity can be found in:
-- Graziano, A.M., & Raulin, M.L. (2010). Research methods: a process of inquiry
(5th edition). Boston: Pearson Education Inc., publishing as Allyn & Bacon.

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 Part 3
Doing and writing
up research
Research practice is complex and many-sided, and we have decided to discuss
those aspects that are useful for all interdisciplinary scholars. We pay attention
to how to conduct interviews in a scientific manner. This is extremely relevant,
not only because it is one of the key methods in the social sciences, but also
because natural scientists regularly use this method in both disciplinary and
interdisciplinary contexts. In addition, we focus on how to organize and record
data. This is also a skill that is very important and useful in the humanities, social
sciences, and natural sciences. This will mainly be discussed in Chapter 8.

Scholarly research should be both replicable and verifiable. By replicable,

we mean that it should be clear how the research was carried out, allowing
researchers to replicate it in order to gather more evidence for a conclusion. By
verifiable, we mean that it should be clear how a researcher obtained the data
and what argumentation underlies the conclusion. In order to be able to assess
the verifiability and the replicability, the reader should be able to verify your
sources (Chapter 11), and everything should be written down clearly (Chapter 10).
In addition, the reader should be able to follow the argumentation precisely and
retrieve all the information they need to evaluate the research (Chapter 9).

Academic skills:
■■ Setting up a quantitative research study.
■■ Conducting, transcribing, and coding interviews.
■■ Organizing and recording data.
■■ Academic writing.
■■ Citing.

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 8 Research practice

After doing your literature review, you decided upon your research question.
Next, you operationalized the concepts from your question, and came up with
a research method and instruments to study this question. Now it’s time for the
next step: research practice. Whether you are doing qualitative or quantitative
research, there are ways to ensure that you gather data in a scholarly manner.

Research practice: quantitative research

Safeguarding the validity of quantitative research

Before you start doing your research, when doing quantitative research, there are a
number of things that you should bear in mind to maximize the validity. Of course,
you can ensure that you select good, valid instruments that measure what you want
to measure (see Chapter 7), but you can also take a number of additional measures
that relate to the design of your research. The information below (see also Box 8.1) is
based on Graziano and Raulin (2010) and applies to research with an experimental
design (as opposed to research with a non-experimental design).

With an experimental design, you: 1) compare an experimental group with a control

group; 2) manipulate a variable (see Chapter 6) within this experimental group; and/
or 3) randomly assign test subjects to the experimental or control group. By contrast,
research with a non-experimental design does not meet one or more of these
conditions. An example of this is a case study, in which a person or a group of people
is followed for a certain amount of time. See the research article in Appendix B for a
good example of an experimental design, in which a group of test subjects who use
drugs is compared to a group of test subjects who do not. In this case, the second
group is the control group. By ‘manipulating’ a variable, we mean that you compare
the groups and then change the conditions for one of the groups. For example, you
give a medicine to one group of participants and see what happens.

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 If you use an experimental design in which you manipulate a variable and see
what happens, it is important for the groups to be as similar as possible before the
manipulation. In other words: all of the disruptive factors should be equal between
the groups. Suppose, for example, that your research question is about the effect of
stress on memory. You want to test this by giving a group of people a stress test, but
not giving the control group the test. Suppose that the control group were to consist
of people with a stressful job and the individuals in the experimental group were all
on holiday; you can imagine that this would give rise to problems when interpreting
your results. This can be avoided by randomizing your test subjects; in other words,
assigning them to one of the two groups by drawing lots. The idea behind this is that
the disruptive factors will then be similar for the two groups (assuming that your
groups are large enough), meaning that any difference between the groups can be
attributed to your manipulation.

If you use an experimental design without manipulation, as is done in the research

article in Appendix B, randomization is not possible, of course. In this case, the
variable that you are interested in (drug use) is not manipulated, but formed the
criterion for inclusion in the experimental group that test subjects had to meet. In
such cases, it is important to match the control group to your experimental group.
For example, you can ensure that there are equal numbers of men and women in
both groups, and that both groups have the same level of education. Again, this
ensures that these factors will no longer have any influence on the relationship that
you want to investigate.

Finally, you can ensure that your participants and/or the test leader do not know
which groups the participants are in. This is called making your participants and/
or your test leader ‘blind’. A distinction is made between single blind (only the
participants are blind) and double blind (both the participants and the test leader
are blind). In this way, you prevent the expectations of the participant or the test
leader from influencing your outcome measure. A good example of this is the
placebo effect: if people expect a medicine or medical treatment to work, they are
also more likely to experience this. The placebo effect can be obviated by preventing
participants from working out which condition they are in.

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 Box 8.1 An overview of the measures that can be taken in relation to the design of your research,
based on Graziano and Raulin (2010)

Experimental You make choices in relation to:

design

Experimental With manipulation Randomization/blinding

group vs. control
group Without Matching
manipulation

Cross-sectional Measuring the Any differences between the

design groups in one time groups could be the result of
period various factors, so you need to
identify these and figure out how
you are going to monitor them

Longitudinal Measuring the This is more work, but there is a

(pre-test post-test) groups at multiple greater chance that the group
design points in time difference is a result of your
manipulation

Keeping a log
In both qualitative and quantitative research, data are often collected over a long
period of time, and data are also frequently gathered by several people. This means
that it’s crucial to keep a good record of every step and decision. This is commonly
done in a log (or lab journal, as it is known in the biomedical sciences). Try to get
used to keeping a record of the steps in your thinking as you analyse your results. For
example, it may be extremely logical to delete a test subject’s data from the database
on the grounds that the measurement failed, but two months later, you may no
longer know precisely what you did and why. Noting down these kinds of decisions is
essential for eventually being able to write up your research in a clear and replicable
way.

With (historical) source research in the humanities, for example, it is important to

account for any numbers, facts, or anecdotes that you analyse as ‘data’. It can thus
be handy to keep a log during the research that includes the source you found, the
author, the page, in what department of which archive, and how you found it. After
all, it is important for the validity of your research that another researcher is able
to retrace your steps. You should also be aware of the hermeneutic and the double
hermeneutic. The ‘hermeneutic’ refers to the fact that the data that are taken from
a source are themselves an interpretation of a certain (social) phenomenon. The
‘double hermeneutic’ means that if you take these data and put them in a new
context, you are also creating your own new interpretation of the facts. Making a note

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 of the context of the source, where you found it, when, and so forth, will allow you
to defend your interpretations later, when accounting for the sources you have used.
You could also use the literature matrix for this, for example (or a variant of it; see
Chapter 2).

Organizing your data

As well as organizing your data, you need to think about its ethical aspects, especially
if you have gathered sensitive information or are working with vulnerable test
subjects such as children or patients. Ensure that your data are stored in a secure
environment, or secure your files with a password (this is possible for folders, for
example, or separate Microsoft files). In addition, anonymize the data by deleting the
personal details from your files and attributing test subject numbers.

It is also important to clean up your data. Sometimes minor errors are made when
entering data (capital letters, punctuation, typos), meaning that the data are not
presented in the way that was originally intended. Most software that is used to
process and analyse data (Excel, for example) includes good search tools for catching
errors. Don’t forget to save the original data file, however, just in case something
goes wrong when you’re cleaning it up.

Getting familiar with your data

As soon as you have completed your data collection, you will have a file of figures
that you will need to interpret. All being well, you can use these data to answer your
research question, and you will have already reflected on the statistics you need to
interpret them (which you did when formulating your hypothesis). Before you do
this, however, it is important to represent your data graphically (to plot them). Make
as many plots in as many ways as you can, in order to reveal patterns and recognize
outliers.

Once you understand how your data fit together, you can go on to the next step:
statistical testing in order to answer your research question. It goes without saying
that you should not adjust your research question to fit your findings (data fishing) or
leave out data points that do not fit in your hypothesized pattern. The latter is a form
of data massaging, whereby you adjust your data until you get the desired results.
Both data fishing and data massaging are types of fraud (see Chapter 12).

In statistics, a rough dichotomy can be made between classical (frequentist) statistics

and Bayesian statistics. At present, the most widely used statistics are classical
statistics. These have a number of disadvantages, however, prompting increasing
calls for more use of Bayesian statistics. It lies beyond the scope of this book to go
into this, but if you need to decide which form of statistics or specific test to use,
it is important to consider this in depth (see ‘Other useful sources’ at the end of this
chapter for helpful literature).

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 Research practice for qualitative research: conducting interviews
Social scientific research can take many forms: ethnographic, focus groups,
participatory observation, and many more. But all of these methods have one thing
in common: structured interaction with the subjects of inquiry. Setting up and
conducting interviews is a skill that is important for all of these methods, which is
why we develop the example from Chapter 7 in this chapter to illustrate how to do
qualitative research.

Before the interview

In Chapter 7, we already explained in detail how to make a research instrument. Such
an instrument can do many things, but it doesn’t provide ready-made respondents.
Exactly how you find your respondents largely depends on the context of your
research and the respondents you need (see ‘sampling’ in Chapter 7). In addition, it
is mainly about taking the initiative, keeping asking questions, and persevering if
things don’t work out immediately.

On the whole, people consider it an honour to be interviewed. People like talking

about something that’s close to their heart or that they know a lot about, whether
it’s in their personal life or part of their job. You can appeal to this by emphasizing
the unique knowledge they have or the special insight they could offer you into your
topic. Always be clear about the purpose of your research and the form it will take
(any publications).

Once you have found someone who is prepared to give an interview, it is important
to make agreements beforehand about a whole range of ethical and practical
issues, to avoid any misunderstandings. Ensure that you record these agreements/
considerations in your log straight away, so you have everything in black and white.
In Box 8.2, you will find a checklist that you can use to prepare for your interview.

During the interview

Interviews are rather paradoxical activities. On the one hand, you want to allow
the respondent to say as much as possible in as much detail as possible. You often
achieve this by asking open and descriptive questions based on your topic list, and by
giving the respondent lots of space to dwell on them. On the other hand, of course,
you want what you are told by the respondent to be comprehensible to the researcher.
This means that you should occasionally reflect on what the respondent says, and
pay slightly more attention to his phrasing. That is when you start probing; in other
words, you keep asking questions.

According to Taylor et al. (2016), keeping asking questions is the difference between
interviewing and ‘normal’ conversations. In most conversations, you fill in much
of the meaning of the other person’s words yourself. If a fellow student says that he
thinks a subject is stupid, you have a rough idea of what he means by ‘stupid’. As an
interviewer, you sometimes think you know these sorts of things, but it is important
to keep questioning nevertheless, because you may think certain things are obvious
when this is not actually the case.
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 Box 8.2 Key points for preparing for interviews (source: Taylor et al., 2016)

Anonymity Make clear agreements about whether you are allowed

to include someone’s name in your work, or whether
you should use a pseudonym. If someone is happy
to be named, but you suspect that this may cause
problems for them or may even be dangerous, it is your
duty as a researcher to point this out.

Recording In order to be able to process the interview data

effectively, you often need an audio recording of the
conversation. You should inform the respondent of this
in advance, and they naturally have the right to refuse –
so always bring a pen and paper with you.

The final say Some interviewees want to review the interview report
before it is published and reserve the right to make
changes. This can mean that you no longer measure
what you want to measure: it can undermine the validity
of your research. You should thus ensure that you make
clear agreements beforehand about how and whether
you will incorporate the respondent’s comments.

Payment Sometimes it is necessary to provide a certain

honorarium in exchange for an interview (money or
study credits). This is not ideal, as having external
motivation may cause the respondents to give the
answers they think you want to hear. In some cases,
however, this is the only way to get to speak to
someone.

Location The interview obviously needs to be conducted

somewhere. This could be your own office or the
university, but it could also be someone’s home,
the street, or even a public place such as a cafe or
restaurant. In any case, ensure that there is nothing
in the surroundings that could influence or distract
the respondent, that it is quiet enough to record
the conversation in sufficient quality, and that the
respondent is able to speak freely.

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 In short, as an interviewer, you regularly need to ask the respondent to clarify
information in order to go into it in more depth. It can be a good idea to rephrase
what the respondent has just said in your own words, and then ask whether they
could confirm this: ‘So, by stupid, you mean not challenging enough?’ But you
shouldn’t take this rephrasing too far. Ideally, you want a situation in which the
respondent is speaking most of the time and you steer them as little as possible.
Thus try, as a researcher, to keep an eye on what you say at all times. Moreover, you
should always be sensitive and never judgemental.

After the interview

The relationship between interview data and ‘the truth’ is not entirely
straightforward. On the one hand, by using established procedures, questionnaires
and/or topics, based on concepts and indicators, you try to guarantee the reliability
and the validity of your research. On the other hand, your respondents bring a
certain degree of subjectivity, and that is fine. After all, you want to sketch out the
experiences and thoughts of your respondents in as much detail as possible, so long
as you ensure that they are somewhat consistent in their answers. For this reason,
too, it is important to keep probing during the interview in order to focus and clarify
the answers as much as possible, and to study your data carefully afterwards.

In addition to this check, it is important to record your interview in text form, which
you do by transcribing it. When you have made recordings, this can often be done
using a computer. There are various software programs for this; some have to be
purchased, others are free (for example, Google Docs has a free system). What this
software should be able to do, in any case, is play the audio file at a slower speed,
so that you have time to write it down at your own pace. Be aware that you should
make a note of everything when transcribing; in principle, every cough and every
hesitation is data. Ultimately, the resulting text file (the transcript, see Box 8.3 for
an example) is the collection of data that you will analyse. You should also bear in
mind that transcribing can take rather a long time. Depending on your experience,
typing speed, and so forth, a one-hour recording will often take four or five hours to
transcribe. So be sure to reserve time for this when planning your research!

Box 8.3 Example of a transcript

Interviewer:‘Have you, er, ever previously had to deal with, um, say,
drug use in the family?’
Respondent: ‘[3 seconds of silence] Yes, um, I don’t really know about
that. I do have an uncle who, er [coughs several times],
did have some trouble of that sort, I believe, yes.

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 Analysing the interview
The transcript is by no means the end product that you will hand in and present.
First, these data need to be analysed, and this can be done by coding. This is
the process in which you try to link your concepts to your data in order to find
meaningful patterns, similarities and contrasts. These could be patterns between
your respondents themselves, or between your interview data and the theoretical
framework.

Coding is not only done in the social sciences; humanities scholars often analyse and
code their data at text level, too (for example, in discourse analysis). But there are also
humanities and social sciences scholars who analyse texts or audio-visual material
at word level, even though they wouldn’t call it this or use this systematic method.
That is why we are focusing on coding here, because it is an excellent method for
guaranteeing the reliability and validity of research.

How does coding work? Much of the methodological literature distinguishes between
three phases. First of all, there is the open coding phase. In this phase, you look
carefully at your transcript and scrutinize your respondents’ answers. The statements
can be labelled and these labels form your first codes. Much of the methodological
literature (for example, Berg, 2000; Given, 2008) suggests that you streamline this
process with a new set of questions; this time, these are used to interrogate the data,
not the respondent. See Box 8.4 for examples of such questions.

It is essential that you let the data speak. Try not to add categories that you have
defined in advance, and only make codes that come directly from the data. This is a
rough process in which you, the researcher, are free to begin broadly without losing
sight of the objective of your research.

Box 8.4 Examples of underlying questions for open coding (Given, 2008)

What is happening?

Which actions have been performed or described?

How were these actions performed?

By whom?

With what underlying purpose?

What was the meaning of this? What was the reason for this?

Which feelings or thoughts are communicated?

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 After the open coding, you move on to axial coding. You thereby cast a critical eye
over your initial list of codes and try to work out where the overlaps are, which
codes prove irrelevant on closer reflection, and which codes can be reworded and
merged. Box 8.5 contains an example of fictitious data. First, a broad sketch is made
of the catchwords that are important for this piece of data; then the similarities and
differences between the codes are considered.

Box 8.5 Fictitious example of an interview and possible open and axial codes

Text fragment Open coding Axial coding

‘Drugs made me feel powerful, like I Power. Self-image,

could take on the whole world.’ Able to take on need to perform.
the world.

‘I started using to numb my feelings, to Numb. Processing.

forget my sadness.’ Sadness.
Forgetting.

‘My self-esteem at work was very low, Low self-esteem. Self-image,

but drugs changed that.’ Change in need to perform.
self-esteem.

‘I was under a lot of pressure to perform, Pressure to Need to perform,

failure wasn’t an option for me. Using perform. processing.
drugs gave me a sense of peace.’ Failure no option.
Peace.

Finally, you move on to selective coding. With this, you try to link your axial codes
to the concepts that you wanted to measure. One way of doing this is to make a
coding tree. See Figure 8.1 for an example. Unlike the operationalization scheme,
the coding tree doesn’t run from left to right, but from right to left. You thus reason
from your codes back to the concepts and dimensions you identified during the
operationalization. In this way, you ‘complete the circle’; you have done everything
you can to guarantee the reliability and validity of your research.

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 Figure 8.1 An example of a coding tree

Change in
self-esteem

Self-image Low self-esteem

Able to take on
the world
Problematic drug use
Power
Pressure Failure no option
to perform
Pressure to perform
The use itself
Peace

Forgetting

Processing Numbness

Sorrow

Concepts and dimensions Axial codes Open codes

After coding
Your study doesn’t end with your coding tree. You can use it now to write the
narrative of your analysis; your interpretation of the research data, so to say. Based on
the codes that you’ve found and the relationship between the codes and the theory,
you write down your main findings. What patterns can you identify between the
respondents? And what contrasts? Do they confirm or negate the theory? In doing so,
don’t forget to refer clearly to your interview data (see Chapter 12).

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 Sources
Berg, B.L. (2000). Qualitative research methods for the social sciences (4th edition).
Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Given, L.M. (2008). The Sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods
(2nd edition). California: Sage.
Graziano, A.M., & Raulin, M.L. (2010). Research methods: a process of inquiry
(5th edition). Boston: Pearson Education Inc., publishing as Allyn & Bacon.
Taylor, S.J., Bogdan, R., & DeVault, M.L. (2016). Introduction to qualitative research
methods. A guidebook and resource (4th edition). Hoboken: Wiley.

Other useful sources

To get a broader picture of the ethical issues that arise when gathering and
analysing data, you could take a look at the ethical principles of the American
Psychological Association (APA):http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx.

A good starting point for immersing yourself in the discussion on classical and
Bayesian statistics is the podcast by the Human Interaction Laboratory (at Tufts
University). Google ‘The Bayes factor podcast’ and you will find multiple podcasts
by academics who use Bayesian statistics (especially Episode 2 with Eric-Jan
Wagenmakers is a good introduction into the topic).

When it comes to statistics, there are a great many different options, and the choice
of test depends on your research design and data. A lot of literature is available on
this, but if you are looking for a good basic book, then the following book by Andy
Field is highly recommended:
-- Field, A.P. (2017). Discovering Statistics using IBM SPSS Statistics (5th edition).
London: Sage Publications LtD.

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 9 The structure of your article

In this chapter, we first address how to establish a clear argumentation structure.

Subsequently, we explain the specific structure of a scholarly text and what is
usually included in the introduction, the middle section, and the discussion..

Argumentation structure
A scholarly article can be seen as a line of argument in which you convince the
reader of your conclusion, based on your results. As discussed in Chapter 3, using
an argumentation scheme can help you to break down a text, but it also works the
other way around: you can build up your text on the basis of your own argumentation
scheme.

The argumentation structure is the backbone of your text and the path that you,
the writer, mark out for the reader. Thus, it is not the path that you take during
your research. Non-fiction books, for example, often advance a viewpoint that is
substantiated in the rest of the book in a logical path. But it is unlikely that the author
began with this elaborate argumentation structure; they probably drafted it after
doing detailed research.

Thus, when writing a text, you shouldn’t ask your readers to follow the path that you
took; you should spare them the dead-end arguments, the misleading steps, and
unnecessary detours. Instead, you should mark out the shortest, most logical route to
your question, and subsequently how you got from your results to your conclusion.
In interdisciplinary texts in particular, where you need to draw links between
different perspectives, it is essential to have a clear argumentation structure.

Establishing a clear structure before you start writing can make it easier to stick
to the line of the argument (and you will become less lost in the details). It also
becomes easier to see which parts you can delete and where there are still holes in
your argument. In Figure 9.1, you will find an example of an argument structure like
this, based on the literature report in Appendix A. In this article, the arguments in
favour of the central argument and the arguments that substantiate it are divided
into sections (1.1, 1.2, etc.).

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 Figure 9.1 An example of an argument structure based on the literature review in Appendix A

1
Meat production has more negative
environmental effects than the
production of meat substitutes.

1.1 1.2
Meat consumption has a greater A vegetarian diet puts less of a
impact on land-use than a burden on the fresh-water supply
vegetarian diet. than a meat-based diet.

1.1.1 1.2.1a 1.2.1b

There is a link between the increasing More water is needed to A meat burger has a larger
use of land for cattle farming and produce a kilogram of meat water footprint than a
deforestation. than a kilogram of vegetables. vegetarian substitute.

1.1.1.1
Brazil is a good example of a
country where there is deforestation
for the cattle industry.

Objections
Although you are supposed to indicate the path to the point you wish to make as
clearly as possible, this does not mean that you should ignore any evidence that
disputes your position. On the contrary, you are expected to reflect on potential
objections when drafting a scholarly text. You can use potential objections to
make your argument and position more nuanced and stronger, for example in the
theoretical framework or the discussion section of a scholarly article. There are two
sorts of objections: a denial that the argument itself is correct, or a denial of the link
– often implicit – between the argument and the position (see Chapter 3).

As the author of a text, it is therefore wise to reflect on potential objections, because

refuting (or even negating) them can strengthen your position. In the article’s
discussion section, you can refer to both the objection and the refutation. This is
done, for example, in the sample text in Appendix A. Here, the objection plus the
refutation are used to strengthen the author’s own position. The author asserts the
view that people need to start eating less meat. The whole argument is supported
by the findings that in Brazil, more land is needed to cultivate crops for the cattle
industry than to produce soya. One counterargument is: ‘It is theoretically possible
that completely different conclusions could be drawn in other regions and for
other products.’ The grounds for this objection follow from the argument: ‘In the
research, we chose to analyse particular regions (Brazil) and particular products (soya
burgers).’

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 The objection can be negated, in turn, by rebutting the counterargument. In the
example, the rebuttal is as follows: ‘The arguments for eating less meat also apply
to other regions and products.’ This is because, as follows from the arguments
supporting the refutation: ‘Cattle will always need feed and a habitat’, and: ‘A number
of kilograms of plant material will always be needed to produce a single kilogram of
meat.’ See the argumentation structure in Figure 9.2 for an overview.

Figure 9.2 Example of an argumentation structure based on the literature review in Appendix A,
showing both the objections and their refutations

View
Meat production has more negative environmental
effects than the production of meat substitutes.

because because but

Argument Argument Objection
The negative impact on Much more water is It is theoretically possible
nature reserves is greater needed to produce meat that very different
for an omnivorous diet than to produce conclusions could be
than for a vegetarian diet. vegetables. drawn in relation to other
regions and other products.

because because because however

Argument Argument Argument Negation
More land is needed for Water reserves are falling In the research, only The arguments for eating
the cattle industry, both worldwide, and this has particular regions (Brazil) less meat also apply to
to cultivate feed and to been linked to the global and particular products other regions and
provide a habitat for the food shortage. (soya burgers) are products.
cattle. analysed.

because because because because

Example Example Example Example
Soya is often used for Research shows that Cattle always need feed Several kilograms of plant
feed and in order to deforestation in Brazil in and a habitat. material are always
cultivate soya, many the period between 2000 needed to produce a
nature reserves in Brazil and 2006 was largely due single kilogram of meat.
are being destroyed. to cattle farming.

Objections can have an additional impact on your argumentation. In scholarly

discussions, objections are often used to add nuance to a viewpoint. The philosopher
Stephen Toulmin has developed a model in which an objection is referred to as the
‘qualification’ (Toulmin, 2003).

Drawing on data, for example, it can be stated that ‘Machteld was born in
Amsterdam’, which leads to the conclusion that she therefore has a Dutch passport.
This can be claimed on the grounds that someone who is born in the Netherlands
automatically receives a Dutch passport, as provided by the Netherlands Nationality
Act. But one can think of exceptions whereby Machteld does not in fact have a Dutch
passport; because she has since adopted a different nationality, for example. This
is called the qualifier (the ‘unless’); it means that you cannot state that Machteld

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 therefore has a Dutch passport, but that it is indeed likely that she has one. In other
words: the objection adds nuance to the argumentation. This is represented in the
Toulmin model as follows (Figure 9.3):
Grounds Qualifier Claim
Figure 9.3 The Toulmin model, an argumentation structure that can be used to add nuance to a
position
Warrant Rebuttal

Grounds Qualifier Claim

Backing

Warrant Rebuttal

Backing

Example of the Toulmin model (based on Stichting Kritisch Denken, 2008)

Machteld was born Makes it likely That she therefore

in Amsterdam. has a Dutch passport.

Because Unless

Machteld was born Makes it likely That she therefore

in Amsterdam. Someone who is born She has since has a Dutch passport.
in the Netherlands adopted a different
automatically receives nationality.
a Dutch passport.
Because Unless

On the grounds that

Someone who is born She has since
in the Netherlands adopted a different
automatically
Because this isreceives nationality.
a Dutch passport.
provided in the
Netherlands
Nationality Act.
On the grounds that

Because
If you read texts this way,this
youis will discover that the links between a position and a
provided in the
conclusion are often implicit. You can imagine someone saying: ‘Machteld was born
Netherlands
Nationality
in Amsterdam and therefore Act.she (probably) has a Dutch passport.’ The connecting

motivation (‘someone who is born in the Netherlands gets a Dutch passport’) and
the backing for this (‘as provided in the Netherlands Nationality Act’) are sometimes
omitted. It can also happen that the basis for the qualifier (‘unless she has since
adopted another nationality’) is not stated explicitly. Although it is important, when
drafting an argument, to make the foundations of the argument as explicit as
possible, when writing a text, the need for efficiency comes into play and there are
some general assumptions that you won’t write down explicitly.

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 Framing an argument: pitfalls
When framing an argument, it is important to make it as clear and solid as possible.
In doing so, watch out for the invalid arguments or ‘fallacies’ that can easily slip into
texts. Fallacies may seem plausible at first glance, but they certainly don’t improve
an argument. Based on the experiences of several lecturers who were involved in the
creation of this book, we have selected the most common fallacies (see Box 9.1).

Box 9.1 Examples of various fallacies

Description Example

Circular When you repeat your position For example, if you say that a plan
reasoning rather than substantiating it is bad, ‘because it is simply no
with an argument. good’.

Appeal to The fact that an authority This theory is correct (Author A,

an authority takes a particular position on 2011).
a certain issue is not in itself a
sufficient guarantee that the
argument holds. For example,
if you take the same position
as a scholar, this does not
mean that you are exempted
from further argumentation.
You will have to explain why
the expert takes this position.

The majority If many people, or the majority For example, even if the majority
view of a group of people, hold a of the population thinks that
particular opinion or take a parliamentary democracy is the
particular position, this does best form of government, this is
not mean that it is right. not indisputably true.

False links The fact that two things For example, if research shows
(spurious are connected does not that rich people are on average
correlations) automatically mean that one happier than poor people, you
follows from the other. cannot conclude that money
makes people happier. Other
factors may be at play, and you
could also argue it the other
way around: it might be that
someone’s level of happiness
influences their economic
success.

▼
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 Logical Conclusions or views that do For example, if a lot of research
fallacies not follow logically from the shows that disarming the Middle
arguments that have been East would lead to peace, you
discussed. cannot conclude from this that if
there is no disarmament, there
will certainly be no peace. There
are also other ways of achieving
peace.

Reversing When you claim something, For example: ‘Why does God
the burden you should be the one to exist? You prove that God doesn’t
of proof assume the burden of proof exist.’
for your claim. Saying that
someone else should prove
the opposite of your claims
is misleading and does not
substantiate your own view.

False Two opposing options are For example: ‘What would you
opposition advanced, while there are in rather see covered by medical
fact many more. insurance: Viagra pills for macho
men or at-home care for old
grannies?’

The slippery Insinuating that an intervention For example: ‘If we include Viagra
slope or measure will take things in the basic package for medical
from bad to worse, while it is insurance today, then tomorrow
far from guaranteed that it will we’ll be reimbursing breast
have this effect. enlargements.’

The structure of a scholarly article

A scholarly article reflects the continuous process of scholarship (see Figure 1 on
p. 13), which is why the empirical cycle is reflected in the structure of scholarly
articles. You discuss the theory (based on previous research) in the introduction to
your article, the testing of the data in the middle section, and the conclusion and
evaluation in the discussion section. This division is known as the IMD structure
(Introduction – Middle section – Discussion). Exactly what is discussed in these
three parts is dependent on your discipline, but some aspects are always present. We
will address these in the following sections.

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 Figure 9.4 The empirical cycle. In general, previous research or the observation of a phenomenon
leads to a theory, which can thus be seen as the start of the empirical cycle. Testing the data produces
results, and these lead to a conclusion. This is evaluated, which in turn produces ideas for new
research. And this brings us back to the beginning of the process again.

Formulate theory
based on
observation

Evaluate conclusion
Devise
and (if necessary)
testable hypothesis
adjust theory

Gather data and draw

conclusion: is the
hypothesis correct?

It can generally be said that the IMD structure is based on the ‘hourglass model’.
This means that the content of the introduction and the conclusion is broad, whereas
the content of the description in the middle section is specific and narrow. By
‘broad content’, we mean that the article begins and ends with general information.
For example, this includes the definition used in your article for the concepts you
employ. As you learned in Chapter 4, when doing research, you choose one or
more dimensions that fit with your research question. This means that your report
becomes substantively narrower, because you can only investigate part of the concept.
In the discussion section, you again formulate the substantive findings more broadly
and generally, so that you can nevertheless say something (cautiously) about the
whole concept.

In the rest of this chapter, we first offer some tips on what you should address in
the introduction, the middle section and the discussion. When it comes to the
middle section, scholarly articles can be divided roughly into two groups. The
difference between them lies in the way the research question is answered. In the
case of a literature review or review article, the question is answered by searching
the literature. What has been found about this subject and how do these research
studies relate to one another? This means that you discuss and compare different
articles, which allows you to answer the research question. With a research article,

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 the research question is answered by gathering data using quantitative or qualitative
methods (Chapter 8). As this has implications for the structure and content of the
middle section (see Figures 9.5A and 9.5B), we discuss both here.

Figure 9.5A Schematic overview of the components of a literature review and how these are reflected
in the hourglass model. The introduction consists of the theoretical framework, the problem statement,
the research question, and the structure. In the middle section, the various relevant research studies
are discussed and compared. The discussion consists of the conclusion, evaluation, limitations,
suggestions for follow-up research, and the implications.

Theoretical framework explaining concepts and

dimensions and the relations between them

Problem statement with relevance

Research question

Description of structure

§1
Introductory paragraph with sub-question
Information and results of research
1.1
Information and results of research
1.2
Etc.
Concluding paragraph with sub-conclusion

§2
Idem

Conclusion:
answer to main question
and summary of main arguments

Discussion: evaluation limitations,

suggestions for follow-up research, etc.

Implications of results for theory and practice

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 Figure 9.5B Schematic overview of the parts of a research article and how these are reflected in
the hourglass model. The introduction consists of the theoretical framework, the problem statement,
the research question, and the hypothesis, design, and predictions. The middle section consists of
the materials and methods and the results. The discussion consists of the conclusion, evaluation,
limitations, suggestions for follow-up research, and the implications. These parts are marked in the
research article in Appendix B.

Theoretical framework explaining concepts and

dimensions and the relations between them

Problem statement with relevance

Research question

Hypothesis, setup, predictions

Materials and methodology

Results

Conclusion:
answer to main question
and summary of main arguments

Discussion: evaluation limitations,

suggestions for follow-up research, etc.

Implications of results for theory and practice

The introduction
In terms of content, the introduction starts broadly and becomes narrower (see
Figures 9.5A and 9.5B). This means that your introduction begins with a broad,
general introduction, with the definitions, and an explanation of the concepts that
you’re going to investigate. You also describe the potential relationship between these
concepts (theoretical framework) and why investigating this relationship is relevant
to society and/or scholarship (problem statement). This is explained in Chapter 4.
Your research question (Chapter 5) thus follows logically from this. You substantiate
all of this information based on the literature.

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 In some disciplines, it is common for this to be followed by a hypothesis: what
answer can you expect to find, based on the literature? Finally, in many disciplines,
it is common to provide a brief description of the experimental setup: what is your
dependent variable, what is your independent variable, and which indicators are
you going to use to test them? After the design section, you can conclude your
introduction with a prediction or expectation, whereby you explain what you expect to
come out of the variable.

The middle section

The literature review

Below, we explain how to write the middle section of your literature review. As a rule,
a literature review is an article in which you describe the current state of the research
in a certain field or in relation to a certain theme or problem. In doing so, you draw
links between different scholarly sources and criticize them. In general, the main
question consists of different sub-questions that are addressed in separate sections.

The middle section of the text is where you develop the question and use the
information to answer the question. The middle section is the longest part of the text,
and it is where the reader will find the lion’s share of the argumentation on which
the answer to the main question is based. In a literature review, you describe the
experiments, results, and conclusions of various articles. In doing so, it is essential
that you only report the information that is needed from the articles to answer your
question. This is done in different sections.

In each section, you should answer one sub-question. A literature review should not
be a collection of summaries. Thus, if you are drawing on three articles, you should
not describe a different article in each section; on the contrary, it is important to link
and integrate the different articles. This means that you should reflect beforehand
on which subtopic you want to address in a section, and then take information
from all of the studies that say something about this. The key thing is that you only
select useful information. For example, you might be using an article in which three
experiments are described. If only the first experiment is relevant to your question,
then you should only describe the first experiment and say nothing about the other
two.

Furthermore, the following factors are important for structuring the sections in the
middle part:
■■ You should start each section with an introductory paragraph in which you
explain why this subtopic is important for your main question. This allows you to
make a transition from the previous section. By then formulating a sub-question
(see also Chapter 5), you give direction to your section, so that the reader knows
what you are going to investigate there.

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 ■■ Then you report the information and results from other research studies that
are relevant to answering the sub-question. When describing the research, you
should not discuss everything in minute detail, but only data that are relevant to
your subtopic.
■■ You need not wait until the end of your text (the conclusion/discussion) to
evaluate the research. If your evaluation includes a critique of the research
methodology, for example, it is more logical to put this straight after the
description of the research in question. There should be a clear separation
between the description of the research on the one hand, and the evaluation on
the other hand. Ensure that you always make it clear where the information is
coming from. If you take others’ critical points on board, you should always cite
the source. Usually, your own evaluation will be clear because the information
is not accompanied by a citation, not because you’ve used the word ‘I’ (which
should ideally be avoided).
■■ Every section should finish with a short sub-conclusion. In this, you should
summarize the most important results and conclusions once more, and you
should state how the (possibly contradictory) results can be explained. Here, you
also give an explicit and detailed answer to the sub-question you addressed in this
section. In addition, this paragraph would be a good place for specific evaluations
of the research studies discussed.
■■ Ensure that every section has a heading and that the sections are linked
effectively with good transitionary sentences. Adding well-chosen subheadings
makes the literature review easier to follow. Pay attention both to the text of the
section headings and to their place in the report. Choose short, substantive texts
for the headings. An example of a good substantive heading is: ‘The relationship
between water footprint and cattle farming’. An example of a weak heading that
lacks content is: ‘The research by Barona et al. (2010)’.

The research article

In a research article, you answer the research question by gathering and analysing
data. This means that the middle section is subdivided into a methodology section
(also known as the ‘materials and methods section’) and a results section. In the
methodology section, you describe how the research was carried out, so the results
can be interpreted and the experiment can be replicated. In the results section , you
describe what came out of your experiment. Both parts lie on the narrowest point of
the hourglass model (Figure 9.5B).

Methodology
In order to ensure replicability, it is important to describe this part in sufficient
detail. In order to keep things readable, though, it is essential to be as concise
as possible. You should describe the factors that affected the results, but you can
leave out anything that is obviously required to deliver reliable work. By way of
comparison, think of a recipe in a cookbook. Quantities and actions are essential in a
recipe, but it doesn’t matter whether you mix the products in a mixing bowl or a pan.

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 Depending on the kind of research you’re doing, the description is divided into
different subheadings. Check out published articles that are similar to your research
to see how to create a logical system of subheadings. Headings that almost always
feature in such sections are the subjects of the research, the procedure and the
(statistical) analysis.

Under subjects of research, you describe the subjects in the broadest sense. These
could be a plant species, animal test subjects, a population of human test subjects, or
a microbiological cell line, but also, for example, your respondents. You report all of
the details of the test subjects or human test subjects you used in the research, such
as their gender, age and origin. You should also mention all of the conditions the
research subjects had to meet (inclusion criteria) or not (exclusion criteria) during
the recruitment. Describe the sample size, the sampling method, and how the
research subjects were divided into groups (see Chapter 7).

In the procedure section, the research design is described in full and in detail,
often in chronological order. By providing a good, comprehensive description of the
procedure, you show that you have reflected carefully on the methodology of the
research, taking account of controls, randomization, and any potential confounding
factors. In the analysis you describe what you did with your data. For example, which
statistical test(s) you used to compare the impact of the independent variable(s) on
the dependent variable(s). In addition, you should mention the analysis program that
you used here (such as SPSS or R, including the version number).

Results
The results section, like the materials and methods section, lies on the narrowest
point of the hourglass model. This means that you are not concerned with the
concepts or dimensions that you are researching, only with the indicators and their
outcome measures. You describe the most important findings of the research as
objectively as you can. Therefore, in natural scientific research, it is important not to
do any interpretation here. Interpreting, explaining, and concluding on the basis of
these results should be saved for the discussion section.

Note that this rule of thumb does not always apply. In some disciplines, it is actually
important to interpret here, because this forms part of your result. When conducting
semi-structured interviews, for example, the answers are described, but an important
part of the results is a separate analysis section that gives an interpretation of the results
(Chapter 8). You should therefore always ask your lecturer what you are meant to do.

If applicable, it is common to start the results section by reporting if any research

subjects have dropped out and the reason for this. If you are doing quantitative
research, you will be making use of statistics to test your hypothesis. In that case,
you will write the results in the running text, placing statistical values in brackets at
the end of the sentence. You should always describe the direction of the statistical
difference: more/less/higher/lower/better/worse.

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 For every result, you should give a verbal description of the research result,
substantiated with descriptive statistics and comparative (testing) statistics. For all
of the different statistical tests, you should describe the sample size, the number of
measures of freedom, and the p-value. For example, you might write: ‘Per match,
significantly more points were scored by volleyball players who train twice a week
(M = 22.3, SD = 3.4) than by those who train once a week (M = 16.2, SD = 4.6, t(61)
= 5.12, p < 0.05).’ It is wise to consult a statistics textbook or your lecturer on how
to present the statistical tests, as each scholarly journal has different formatting
conventions (just as citation formats can differ). The format that we use here is that
used by the American Psychological Association (APA).

Presenting data
Ensure that the most important results are also displayed in a figure, or possibly in
a table. You should only use relevant data. Other data that support your research,
but that are not essential to your story, can be put in an appendix. There are many
options for presenting your data. Think about what you want to present: what do
you want your readers to see at a glance? If you want to show a trend over time, for
example, a line chart is a good option, but if you are concerned with the difference
between two or more groups, then a box plot or bar chart will probably convey the
main issue more effectively. A table can be a good way of giving an overview of your
results.

Note that a figure or table should never be the only place where your data are
presented: they should also be included in the text! A figure or table should be
comprehensible in itself for the reader, so the caption (figure) or heading (table)
should contain enough detail for this. Finally, don’t forget to refer to your figures
and tables in the text. In Box 9.2 you will find extra advice, tips, and conditions for
presenting your data.

Figures
In a figure, it is common to display descriptive statistics (for example, average and
standard deviation) and to use symbols to indicate significant effects. The latter is
usually done by inserting an asterisk. Keep it visually simple:
■■ Don’t use colours or shading in the background.
■■ Shading should only be used occasionally for very complex tables with lots of
cells, and you should only use light grey.
■■ Don’t use 3D (unless this is common in your field and data cannot be displayed
in any other way) or icons (for example, piglets to represent meat production).
The latter imply a certain interpretation of the data, something you want to avoid

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 Table
A table can be a good way of presenting a quantity of data in a structured way. Like
figures, there are also rules of thumb for formatting tables. For example, if you are
using APA formatting, you should only make the horizontal lines of the table visible,
and the significant values should be indicated with an asterisk. You should ask your
lecturer which convention to follow. It is always important to round off numbers to a
relevant value. Averages or total sums are always put underneath a table or at the end
of a row, and never above it or on the left-hand side.

Box 9.2 Rules for captions for figures and tables (Booth et al., 2008)

Rule Example

Make a clear distinction A table has a title; this should be put above the
between captions for tables table, aligned left.
and for figures. Don’t forget to
refer to figures or tables in the A figure has a legend; this should be put under
text, either. the figure, aligned left.

Do not make the caption Not: ‘Water use’ but: ‘Change in water
overly general. consumption for meat production between
2000 and 2010’.

Don’t be too sparing with Thus, not one label with: ‘Water use, meat
your use of labels. This is production’, but separate labels for: ‘Change
particularly important if in water consumption for meat production
you want to distinguish in France, 2000-2010’, and ‘Change in water
between different graphical consumption for meat production in Spain,
representations of 2002-2015’.
similar-looking data.

The discussion and the conclusion

You will use your results to draw a conclusion. In some disciplines, the conclusion
usually falls under a separate heading; in others, the conclusion falls under the
heading of the discussion section. Whatever the case, this final section of your report
follows the shape of the bottom section of the hourglass. In a mirror image of the
introduction, you start specifically (narrow), based on the research findings, and
during the discussion the measurable variables are translated back into substantively
broad concepts. Common elements in the discussion are a conclusion, evaluation,
suggestions for follow-up research, limitations of the study, and implications.

It is common to start your discussion with a short summary of the most important
results, and draw one overarching conclusion from this that directly answers the
research question (and sub-questions). Here you should only discuss the results that
are already described in the middle section. Subsequently, you are going to evaluate
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 this conclusion. You can do this by going back to the theoretical framework that you
described in the introduction. Does this conclusion support the theory? Why does/
doesn’t it? Or which part of the theory does it support and which part does it not
support? Are there other studies that have the same findings as yours? And studies
that found something different? How can this be? In doing so, don’t forget to cite the
literature.

As you can see, there are many options, which means the structure of the discussion
section is less rigid than, say, that of the introduction. Regardless of your conclusion
and the direction of your evaluation, you will probably identify starting points for
follow-up research. It is common to describe these: in doing so, you complete the
empirical cycle, as they count as new observations. Consider the following:
■■ What research questions are raised by your results?
■■ What would you do differently if you were to research the topic again? How could
you overcome the limitations (see below)?
■■ In what other context could you investigate the relationship between the
concepts?

Another part that often features in a discussion section is a description of the

limitations of the study. These are those things that could have affected your outcome
measure. You do not know this for sure, of course, but if earlier articles have shown
that a certain factor (for example, male-female differences) could have had an
impact and you failed to take this into account, it is important to mention this. It is
extremely important to be transparent, because this is information the reader needs
in order to be able to assess the value of your results (see also Chapter 9).

In addition, as a researcher, you will have considered many factors that needed to be
overcome as effectively as possible. For example, factors that could be influenced in
advance, such as setting up your design, or afterwards, such as carrying out an extra
control analysis. Describing what you did to overcome the limitations as effectively
as possible strengthens your story, because it shows the reader that you have thought
about it carefully. In any case, it is standard to link these limitations to suggestions
for follow-up research, and thus give an initial impulse to solving them.

The last part that often features is the implications of your study. In this part, you
return to your problem statement, in which you described how researching this
relationship is relevant to society and/or scholarship. What does the present research
contribute? What problem have you solved (or failed to solve) with this conclusion?
Here, too, it is important to refer to the literature. Ensure that you always conclude
with a strong last sentence, such as the main conclusion of your research.

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 Valorization
Recently, there has been increasing emphasis on valorization; politicians highlight its
importance and researchers are increasingly being asked how their research results
can be valorized. Valorization can be seen as a process of creating social value from
knowledge, for example by transforming this knowledge into products, services,
processes, and new enterprises (Wakkee, Lips, Löwik, Wijnen, Schöller, n.d.).

Valorization is thus a process, which means that scientists do not simply explain how
their findings can contribute to a social or economic application, as is sometimes
the case in the discussion section of a scholarly article; instead, they interact with
other parties (outside the university) to add value to ‘pure’ scientific results. For
example, if a research study shows that a certain intervention is valuable for patients,
then in order to valorize these results, scientists can establish a partnership with
hospital support staff, patients, therapists, and health insurers, in order to develop a
tailor-made solution in the hospital.

In order to ensure that your scholarly research and knowledge contribute to a social
goal, you can go through the different steps of the valorization process. Below, we
address the first two steps (based on Wakkee et al., n.d.), which can help you to start
talking to other parties (outside the university).

1 Think about who could benefit from your findings.

2 These contacts can be a relatively easy way to start a dialogue and find out about
the most recent developments in practice – and the extent to which your results
connect with these.
3 Make your idea specific.
4 You can make your idea more specific by asking the following questions: What is
the idea? What problem or issue does it solve? Who benefits from this solution?
What is the advantage of your solution compared to existing solutions?

Most knowledge institutions have a separate department that is responsible for

valorization and brings together social parties and scholars. You should therefore
find out what’s available at the organization where you’re studying or doing an
internship.

Sources
Booth, W.C., Colomb, G.G., & Williams, J.M. (2008). The Craft of Research, third
edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kahn, J. (n.d.). Reporting statistics in APA style. Retrieved from https://my.ilstu.
edu/~jhkahn/apastats.html
Toulmin, S.E. (2003). The Uses of Argument, Updated Edition. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Wakkee, I., Lips, F., Löwik, S., Wijnen, A., & Schöller, D. (n.d.). IXA Valorisation guide
– Practical handbook for social sciences and humanities researchers [pdf].
Amsterdam: AIX.

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 10 Finishing your article:
academic writing, titles, and
abstracts

From a substantive perspective, your story is now complete. You’ve written the
introduction, the materials and methods section, the results, and the discussion.
The last important elements of a research article are the title and the abstract.
And when you finish, it is important to check your article for clarity, brevity, writing
style, consistency, and spelling. In short, in order to be able to write a good article,
you also need to know the requirements for academic writing.

The title and the abstract

The title of a research article should be informative and written as a fluent sentence,
so that it clearly communicates the key conclusion of the report. You may want to
elucidate the main title with a subtitle. The abstract of an article is often to be found
on the article’s cover page. It is the text that is shown in a search engine and is always
freely accessible. For this reason, it is important that it contains a brief summary of
all parts of the report, and enough information to allow it to be read and understood
independently of the article. An abstract is often written as a standalone summary,
with each part that is described following on logically from the last. Usually, it is the
only part of a scientific text that doesn’t contain any references. See Box 10.1 for a
checklist on what should be included in an abstract.

Box 10.1 Checklist abstract

Checklist for the abstract

1 T
 he aim of the research study (the problem statement and research
question).
2 T
 he methods that were used to answer the research question.
3 T
 he results.
4 T
 he conclusions that were drawn and their relevance.

Writing clearly
Scholarly articles tend to be difficult to read, and this certainly hasn’t improved
over the last thirty years (Knight, 2003). This has to do with the emergence of new
academic sub-disciplines with their own jargon, but also the fact that few scholars
are trained to write clearly. This is a problem, because as a writer, you need to get

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 your message across to the reader. If your writing is unclear, readers will interpret
it in their own way, and you, the writer, will no longer have any influence over their
interpretation. As a result, you won’t know whether you’ve got your message across.

Gopen and Swan (1990) investigated how the readability of an article could be
improved without simplifying the content. The following tips are based on their
research, as well as that of Knight (2003):
■■ Avoid discontinuous structures. These are sentence constructions that leave a lot
of space between related phrases. Not: ‘A man walked by wearing a hat,’ But: ‘A
man wearing a hat walked by.’
■■ The last part of the sentence is the stress position or topic position. In other
words, the reader will remember the information that is placed there – so this
is where you should put the most important information. For example, if you
write: ‘Sales rose after the product ingredients were altered,’ the emphasis is on
the change to the product; but if you write, ‘After the product ingredients were
altered, sales rose’, the emphasis is on the rise in sales.
■■ The first part of a sentence is the part the reader needs in order to understand
the logical progression of the text. By this, the authors mean that you, the writer,
must begin a sentence by building progressively on the information in the
previous sentence. You can do this with repetition, for example. If you fail to do
this, the reader has to make a mental leap. Not all readers will do this, meaning
that you won’t communicate your message effectively.
{{ • You can also use linking sentences and signal words to connect
paragraphs and sentences together. See Box 3.1 for a list of signal words and
their role in a text.
■■ Make effective use of verbs, as they indicate the actions that are taking place.
By this, for instance, it is meant that you should avoid writing: ‘We are making
an effort to achieve an improvement in our position’, but instead write: ‘We are
endeavouring to improve our position.’ In a long sentence, the reader uses verbs
as a crutch; using verbs that impart something about the content adds structure
to the sentence
{{ Avoid using the passive voice wherever possible. The passive voice makes a

text come across as impersonal and non-active. For example: ‘People were
advised by the police to stay inside.’ You can make this more active: ‘The
police advised people to stay inside.’ One tip here is that after writing a text,
you should go through it and replace as many passive constructions as you
can with active ones.
{{ Note that one exception to this is active sentences containing personal

pronouns (I, you, he, she, etc.). This is because in academic texts, it doesn’t
matter who did something, but that something was done. The passive form:
‘The statistical test was subsequently carried out’, is therefore better than the
active form: ‘I subsequently carried out a statistical test.’

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 Academic language use
In addition to the general tips above, the genre of ‘academic writing’ also has its
own characteristic style. If you ask what this style is, many students will say that
it revolves around the use of professional language and the avoidance of popular
language. This is true, of course (your text deserves a serious tone), but there are two
other aspects that are more important.

In academic writing, everything revolves around clarity, first and foremost. After all,
the research should be verifiable and replicable. A second important characteristic is
succinctness, as many scholarly journals have strict word limits. You may feel that it
is an art to balance these two: ensuring that you describe everything in your article
clearly, without using too many words. This is a skill that requires practice.

For this reason, keep looking critically at your text and remember to ‘kill your
darlings’. To achieve brevity, it is important to remove unnecessary digressions or
subordinate clauses. In order to improve the clarity of your text, there are things you
can bear in mind:
■■ Be accurate in your descriptions: The sentence: ‘The Dutch changed energy
supplier much more often in 2013’, is missing important information. For
example, it is not clear with whom the Dutch are being compared and precisely
what ‘much more often’ means. It would be better to write: ‘The Dutch changed
energy supplier twice as often in 2013 than in the previous year.’
■■ Be nuanced in your claims: your text should imply that your claims are not
irrefutably true, and you should leave space for new, possibly better insights that
might arise in future.
■■ Avoid ambiguity: even if a sentence is grammatically correct, it may not be clear.
For example, the sentence ‘Mark saw a girl looking out of the window of the
room’ can give rise to misunderstandings on the reader’s part: is Mark or the girl
looking out of the window?
■■ Use demonstrative pronouns carefully: when referring back to a previous
sentence (for example, when using the demonstrative pronouns ‘this’, ‘that’, and
‘those’), make sure that it is absolutely clear to what you are referring. Don’t make
your reader search for the meaning, as this will detract from your argument.
■■ Avoid abbreviations: Don’t use ‘e.g.’ and ‘i.e.’, but ‘for example’ and ‘that is to
say’. Abbreviations of institutions’ names may be used if written out in full on
first use, with the abbreviation given in brackets. One exception is ‘et al.’ which is
an abbreviation for ‘et alii’ (‘and others’ in Latin), which is used in references.
■■ Finally, check your report carefully for minor errors that can detract from the
content; see the checklist in Box 10.2.

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 Box 10.2 Checklist: once you’ve finished writing, check your report for:

Spelling and These errors detract from the point the writer wants to make. The
style errors fact that there are spelling errors suggests that other things are
wrong, too. Pay particular attention to:
• Grammatical and spelling errors.
• Apostrophes, especially possessives. ‘It’s’ is the short form of ‘it
is’ or ‘it has’.
• Correct notation of numbers and symbols. Numbers under
twenty should be written out wherever possible; chemical
elements and formulas should be written correctly (CO2 and
not CO2).
• Fewer and less. ‘Fewer’ should be used for items that can be
counted individually (count nouns), whereas ‘less’ should be
used for things that cannot be counted individually (mass
nouns). Fewer: ‘Ten books or fewer.’ Less: ‘The presentation
should take less time.’
• Which or that. Use ‘that’ when the added information is crucial
to understanding the sentence. Use ‘which’ when the added
information is not crucial to understanding the sentence. If you
use ‘which’, make sure you offset the added information with
commas. That: ‘Foods that contain sugar are the worst.’
Which: ‘The pasta in the canteen, which contained several kinds
of vegetables, was a healthy option.

Sentence It is generally the case that the more subordinate clauses there
length are in a sentence, the less clear it becomes.

Paragraph use Be consistent with your formatting: paragraphs should be

separated by a line or indented with a tab. Ensure that your
paragraphs are neither too long nor too short. A rule of thumb: a
paragraph should contain between three and ten sentences.

Don’t use Let your arguments speak for themselves.

exclamation
marks

References • Every statement you make should be accompanied by a

(see citation.
Chapter 11) • Every citation in the text should be accompanied by a reference
in the bibliography.
• Every article in the bibliography should be accompanied by a
citation in the text. If you have not cited an article in the text,
then it shouldn’t be in the bibliography.

Formatting Take a careful look at the formatting of the references, figures and
statistical values. Ensure that you’ve been consistent and have
used the same style throughout (number of decimals, etc.).

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 Sources
Gopen, G.D., & Swan, J.A. (1990). The science of scientific writing, American
Scientist, 78, 550-558.
Knight, J. (2003). Clear as mud. Nature, 423, 376-378.
Oost, H., & Markenhof, A. (2002). Een onderzoek rapporteren. Baarn: HB uitgevers.
Renkema, J. (2005). Schrijfwijzer. The Hague: Sdu Uitgevers.

Other useful sources

At the website of the University of Toronto, you’ll find some more tips on academic
writing: writing.utoronto.ca/advice

Various websites offer advice on technical language issues, such as spelling and
word use: www.oxforddictionaries.com, www.oed.com.

The book Effective writing in English by M. Hannay and J. Lachlan Mackenzie (2002)
is a comprehensive book that aims to give writers more control over their texts.

The book English grammar in use by Raymond Murphy (2015) is aimed at

non-native speakers of English who need to write in English. It describes key points
of grammar and syntax for students.

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 11 Citing sources and the
bibliography

Citing sources is something that’s done in every academic text: partly to indicate
the status quo in the research field, but mainly so that you can substantiate your
argument with others’ views and research. It is very important to do this with great
precision, and in this chapter, you will learn when and how to use citations in your
work.

Making effective use of citations in your interdisciplinary text will increase the
chance of your work being taken seriously by scholars from different academic
disciplines. Citation has various functions:
■■ To acknowledge work by other researchers. Failing to cite others’ work or citing
it incorrectly when the work has been used in the content of the text constitutes
plagiarism (see Chapter 12). In any case, the reader should know exactly when
you are expressing your own ideas (for example, in the form of criticism, a
conclusion, or an appraisal) and when you’re quoting others.
■■ To anchor your own text in the context of different disciplines. If you don’t link
your text explicitly to what’s currently happening in the research field, you’ll soon
be considered uninformed.
■■ To substantiate your own claims; sources then function like arguments with
verification. You thereby give the reader an opportunity to check your claims and
further investigate an idea from your work.

As you write, you will mostly use information from texts written by others. You can
use this information in your report in two ways. First, you can quote; that is, literally
copy excerpts of text written by others. As well as text, this could be diagrams,
images, or tables. Second, you can paraphrase; that is, reproduce others’ ideas
and information in your own words. Whether you choose to quote or paraphrase
depends on the kind of text that you’re writing and on the role the passage to be cited
or paraphrased plays in your text. Resist the temptation to overload your text with
quotes. You should only quote when strictly necessary, such as when the source text
expresses an idea, insight, or argument so beautifully that paraphrasing would fail to
do justice to it..

Commonly acknowledged sources do not need to be cited. For example, the

statement that ‘water boils at 100 °C or 212 °F’ does not need to be backed up with
a citation. During your studies, you will gradually develop a feeling for the kind

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 of information that can be assumed to be common knowledge within different
disciplines. As you get more experienced at reading scholarly texts, it will become
easier to make this choice: you will get better at spotting the ways in which
professional scholars in your discipline cite sources.

Thus, in your literature survey, try to state as accurately as possible where you got the
information. This is done in the running text, immediately after the information that
you have taken from the source and included in your own report. In addition, at the
end of your report, provide a detailed overview of all the sources you have used in a
reference list or bibliography.

In academia, there are different standards for formatting references, and they are
different for each discipline and sub-discipline. If you are looking for examples in
scholarly journals, you will see that the citation methods are often different. This is
because every journal chooses its own reference style. The most common reference
styles can be found in Box 11.1. One widely used reference style is APA style, and we
will explain this form of citation further here.

Box 11.1 Citation methods

Citation method Organization Website

APA American Psychological www.apastyle.org

Association

CSE Council of Science www.cbe.org

Editors

CMS Chicago Manual of Style www.chicagomanualofstyle.org

MLA Modern Language www.mla.org

Association

Reference management software

Many researchers use reference management software, which automatically puts the
citation in the text and the reference in the bibliography in the right format. This can
save you a lot of time and spare you many errors. A licence is often needed for this
software, so you should check with your university or college library to see which
reference management software packages your institution has a licence for.

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 In general, reference management programs have the following functions:
■■ They provide a central place where you can save all of the literature you’re using
and the accompanying PDF files. This allows you to categorize, search, and
comment on articles, and you’ll never mislay an article.
■■ They often allow you to make an automatic bibliography in every possible citation
style. This means that you can be sure that you are using the correct citation style.
■■ They allow you to insert direct citations in Word (or another word-processing
program) in your choice of style. You can subsequently generate a bibliography
containing all of the literature you’ve used.

Switching from typing bibliographies by hand to a software package often requires

a small investment in time (you have to find out how the program works), but it will
make your life much easier, certainly later in your studies. One of the most popular –
and the most user-friendly – programs is Mendeley.

Box 11.2 Citation software

In addition to Mendeley, there are also other reference management

programs:

ReadCube This software largely has the same functionality as Mendeley. One
advantage of this software is that you can also read articles from
the program.

RefWorks You manage your ‘library’ of citations online, so you always have it
to hand. Many people do not consider this the most user-friendly
program, however. What’s more, you need a paid licence; access
may be possible through your university. One advantage of
RefWorks is that it is compatible with Windows PCs and Macs.

EndNote The oldest and probably the best known of all the packages, but
quite expensive and no longer the most useful. Can do pretty
much the same things as the packages above.

BibTeX This is not really reference management software as such, but the
language and software that you use in combination with LaTeX
– the system used by many scientists to write and format their
articles. Some of the above-mentioned packages (Mendeley, for
example) can help you to make BibTeX files.

Word Versions of Word from Word 2007 onwards allow you to enter
citations by hand and automatically generate a bibliography in
the correct format. You can find this option under the ‘References’
tab.

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 Mendeley is a relatively new, free package that also saves your library online. It has a
number of advantages in comparison to other software packages: (1) it is free, (2) it is
user-friendly, (3) you can create references by dragging a PDF file into the program
(it automatically extracts the author, title, year, etc.), (4) you can create references by
using a browser plug-in to click on a button on the page where you found an article,
(5) you can share articles and reference lists with colleagues, and (6) it has a ‘web
importer’ to add sources rapidly to your own list.

In-text citations
Below, we have listed the most important ways to cite in the text following APA style.

Quotes
A number of standard rules apply to literal quotes.
■■ A quote must be copied exactly from the source, including capital letters,
punctuation marks, and (possibly incorrect) spelling.
■■ Never include a quote in your text without an explanation. Ensure a good link
between the quote and the text.
■■ Put parentheses after the quote: the author, the year of publication, and the page
numbers. Then end the sentence with a full stop. If the publication has already
been mentioned in the lead-up to the quote, just mentioning the page number(s)
will be sufficient.
■■ If you leave out part of the quote, you should indicate this with three interspaced
dots.
■■ Should you want to add something to the quote for clarification, put your
comments in square brackets.

A short quote of fewer than forty words can simply be included in the text. In
this case, the quote should be put after a colon and between quotation marks. For
example:
In his research, Fearnside (2000) states the following: ‘Soybeans represent a
recent and powerful threat to biodiversity in Brazil’ (p. 23).

Should the quote be longer than forty words, leave a blank line before and after the
quote and indent the text. In this case, you do not need to put the quote in quotation
marks. For example:

Once you’ve chosen a research topic, before finalizing it, it’s best to make an
inventory of the context of the topic. ... [The best way is to] search for angles
onto your topic and [to] look at which ones are described. ... You might choose
to connect your research to existing research and you can further specify your
research topic (Plooij, 2011, p. 53).

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 Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is a good way to incorporate information from a source in your own
argument. Ensure that you do not reproduce the text of the source too literally, but
that you summarize the essence of the text in your own words and cite the source.
According to APA rules, a source citation in the text of a scholarly article consists of
the name or names of the author(s) and the year. See Box 11.3 for key considerations
when formatting citations. You can refer to scholarly literature in a number of ways
using APA style.
1 Only the year in parentheses:
‘Research by Fearnside (2000) shows that soil degradation is a significant
problem in Brazil.’
2 Authors’ names and year in parentheses:
‘Research shows that soil degradation is a significant problem in Brazil
(Fearnside, 2000).’
3 Indirect reference to a source:
Should you refer several times to the same source within the same section, it is
not always necessary to put a citation at the end of every paraphrased sentence, so
long as the text shows the source of the information.
‘Research by Fearnside (2000) shows that soil degradation is a significant
problem in Brazil. ... This research also shows that...’
4 Unknown authors:
If you want to refer to a source written by an unknown author, something
that often happens when citing research reports, refer to the first words of
the reference as it is given in the bibliography (often the title) and the year of
publication:
First citation: ‘This report showed that... (Food and Agriculture Organization
[FAO], 2013)’, or: ‘The report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO;
2013) showed that...’
With subsequent in-text citations, you can use the abbreviation: ‘(FAO, 2013)’ or
‘FAO (2013)’.
5 If you have not read a publication yourself:
First of all, you should only cite literature that you have read. If you come across
a reference in a publication to another publication that you also want to use, it
is best to track down this publication and read it. If this is not possible, refer to
the publication via the other publication you’ve found. In this way, for example,
you avoid the possibility of indiscriminately reproducing dubious or incorrect
interpretations. Nor should you include the publication that you’ve cited indirectly
in the bibliography. An example from Appendix A: ‘In their book People of the
tropical rain forest, Denslow and Padoch (1988, cited in Baroni et al., 2007) show
that ...’

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 Box 11.3 Checklist for in-text citations

Citation Explanation Example

element

initials Authors’ initials or first names The research by Marcia L.

are never included in in-text Spetch and Donald M. Wilkie
citations, but they are included as a citation:
in the bibliography at the end (Spetch & Wilkie, 1983)
of the paper.

‘and’ If the names are not in According to Christopherson

and ‘&’ brackets, the word ‘and’ is and Birkeland (2013), it seems
used; if the names are in likely that...
brackets, the sign ‘&’ is used. (Christopherson & Birkeland,
2013)

full stop The citation is part of the For sufficient ...

sentence and therefore comes (Christopherson & Birkeland,
before the full stop. 2013).

et al. For publications by six or more Baroni et al. (2007)

(multiple authors, you can generally use investigated the ...
authors) the short form of the citation. Or:
The short form consists of ... an important source of
the name of the first author eutrophication (Foster et al.,
followed by the addition ‘et al.’ 2006).
(abbreviation for: ‘et alii’, Latin
for ‘and others’) and the year. First citation:
In the research by Ercin,
If a publication has three to five Aldaya, and Hoekstra (2012), ...
authors, all the authors’ names Or:
are given in the first citation, ... (Ercin, Aldaya & Hoekstra,
and the short form can be used 2012).
in later citations. Thereafter:
Ercin et al. (2012) investigated
the ...

Citations in the bibliography

At the end of a paper or research article, you provide an overview of all of the sources
that you cited in the text. This should only include the sources that you have read;
articles that you have not read or did not use in the text do not need to be included.
In any case, every reference contains the following elements: the authors, year of
publication, title, and location (for example, the name of a scholarly journal). The

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 most common options are listed here, but you can consult www.apastyle.org for a
complete overview. Here, you will learn how to cite a chapter from a multi-author
volume, doctoral and Master’s theses, newspaper articles, and films, among other
things.

Some general rules to keep in mind:

■■ The list should be in alphabetical order, by the surname of the first author.
■■ You should use indentations to distinguish the different references from each
other (don’t use bullet points).
■■ Digital articles often have a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). This is a unique
identification number and a permanent link to the location of the digital
source. This permanent link is constructed as follows: https://doi.org/
[doi-identificationnumber]
■■ Prefixes in names, such as ‘van’, ‘van der’, etc., should be placed after the
author’s initial or initials (see the first example of referencing under books in the
following section).
■■ If the author is unknown, you should refer to the organization. If the
organization is also unknown, you should give the title of the web page.
■■ Note that when citing scholarly journals, volume numbers are known as ‘issues’.

Journals
The following formatting should be used for articles from scholarly journals:

General format – digital version with DOI:

Author, A.A., Author, B.B., & Author, C.C. (Year of publication). Title of article. Name
of journal, year (volume number), page numbers. DOI: number

No space
between Not ‘and’
capital letters In italics but ‘&’ Not in italics Italics

Paper version:
Author, A.A., Author, B.B., & Author, C.C. (Year of publication). Title of article. Name
of journal, year (volume number), page numbers.

Example – 1 author
Mellers, B.A. (2000). Choice and the relative pleasure of consequences. Psychological
Bulletin, 126, 910-924. doi: http://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.126.6.910

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 Example – 2 authors
Klimoski, R., & Palmer, S. (1993). The ADA and the hiring process in organizations.
Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 45(2), 10-36. doi: http://doi.
org/10.1037/1061-4087.45.2.10

Example – 3 to 5 authors (paper version)

Borman, W.C., Hanson, M.A., Oppler, S.H., Pulakos, E.D., & White, L.A. (1993).
Role of early supervisory experience in supervisor performance. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 78, 443-449.

Example – more than 5 authors (paper version)

Wolchnik, S.A., West, S.G., Sandler, I.N., Tein, J., Coatsworth, D., Lengua, L., et
al. (2000). An experimental evaluation of theory-based mother and mother-child
programs for children of divorce. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 68,
843-856.

Books
Paper version:

Author, A.A., Author, B.B., & Author, C.C. (Year of publication). Title: Subtitle. Place:
Publisher.

No space between capital letters In italics

Digital version:
Author, A.A., Author, B.B., & Author, C.C. (Year of publication). Title: Subtitle.
Retrieved from http://url

Example – 2 authors (paper version)

Swales, J.M. & Feak, C.B. (2010). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks
and skills (3rd ed.). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Example – 2 authors (digital version)

Dvorak, R., & Ferraz-Mello, S. (2005). A comparison of the dynamical evolution of
planetary systems. doi: http://doi.org/doi:10.1007/1-4020-4466-6

Example – digital book without DOI and without publication year (n.d.: no date)
Rosenbaur, O. (n.d.). Four realities. Retrieved from http://www.onlineoriginals.com/
showitem.asp?itemID=149.

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 Research reports
Paper version:

Author, A.A. (year). Title and subtitle (report number if available). Location: Publisher.

Colon

Digital version:
Author, A.A. (year). Title and subtitle (report number if available). Retrieved on day/
month from http://url

Example – organization as author

Australian Bureau of Statistics (1991). Estimated resident population by age and sex in
statistical local areas, New South Wales (3209.1). Canberra: Australian Capital Territory.

Example – digital book with organization as author

TransCanada (2018). Annual report. Retrieved on 16 May 2019 from https://www.
transcanada.com/globalassets/pdfs/investors/transcanada-annual-report.pdf

Internet resources
Author, A.A. (year, day and month, if available). Title of document. Retrieved on day/
month/year from http://url

Example – 3 authors
De Vos, E., WidPortier, C.J., & Leonard, W.L. (2016, 13 June). Do
cell phones cause cancer? Probably, but it’s complicated. Retrieved on
16 June 2016 from http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/
do-cell-phones-cause-cancer-probably-but-it-s-complicated/

Example – Organization as author and without date (n.d.)

Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies (n.d.). Interdisciplinary education. Retrieved on
16 June 2016 from http://iis.uva.nl/en/interdisciplinary-education

Personal communication and interviews

If you’ve conducted an interview or spoken to someone, this does not count
as publicly available data, and you should not include this as a source in your
bibliography. However, you can cite the interview or the information that you were
given by this person in the text as personal communication. For example:
(A.A. Interviewee, personal communication, 11 March 2018).

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 In order to refer to an interview that is publicly available (for example, on a website),
you should use the following format:
Interviewee, A.A. (year, day month). Title of interview. (A.A. Interviewer, interviewer).
Title of web page. Retrieved from http://url

Example – interview
Kahneman, D. (2019, 13 March). The Map of Misunderstanding (S. Harris,
interviewer). Making Sense with Sam Harris. Retrieved from https://samharris.org/
podcasts/150-map-misunderstanding/

Sources
Poelmans, P., & Severijnen, O. (2014). De APA-richtlijnen: Over
literatuurverwijzingen en onderzoeksrapportage. Bussum: Uitgeverij
Coutinho.
University of Amsterdam (2014, 3 January). Fraud and plagiarism Retrieved from
http://student.uva.nl/en/content/az/plagiarism-and-fraud/plagiarism-
and-fraud.html

Other useful sources

At the APA website, you can find even more detailed advice on citations:
apastyle.org. You can also find advice on APA’s Facebook page: facebook.com/
APAStyle.

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 Part 4
Reflecting and
communicating
Certain skills are always important when studying or doing research, or when you
start work after graduating. It is important to be able to collaborate, present your
work at various stages, and ask for and give feedback to colleagues. If you do not
reflect on your assumptions, what you do and how you do it, you won’t be able to
carry out high-quality research, for example. And because academic skills should
also equip you for life beyond the ivory tower, it is very important to work on these
reflective and communicative skills.

First of all, in Chapter 12, we discuss what is meant by fraud and plagiarism
and how they can be prevented. If you leave thinking about this to the very end
of writing your article, it is probably too late. In Chapter 13, we will focus on
collaborating with others, reflecting on your own role in teams, and giving and
receiving feedback. Finally, in Chapter 14, we consider all kinds of presentation
skills.

Academische vaardigheden:
■■ Recognizing and preventing plagiarism and fraud.
■■ Collaborating.
■■ Reflecting on your own role.
■■ Presenting at an academic level.

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 12 Preventing fraud and
plagiarism

Fraud and plagiarism should always be prevented. Unfortunately, it still

sometimes happens that after publishing or submitting a text, one or more
authors are caught for fraud or plagiarism.

By plagiarism, we mean copying ideas, passages, or words and presenting them

as your own work. It is thus essential that you cite your sources well. By fraud, we
mean the falsification of data. In the case of student assignments, plagiarism – and
occasionally even fraud – are sometimes detected, too. In such cases, appeals to
ignorance (‘I didn’t know that it was plagiarism’) are rarely accepted as valid reasons
for letting the perpetrator off the hook. Below, we set out some ways to check for
plagiarism and fraud.

Plagiarism of written work

Here the art is to distinguish between those things for which you should credit
someone and those things that are obvious and considered common knowledge. In
the beginning, you will often have doubts, and in this case, you should play it safe.
It is better to cite too many sources than too few. With more experience in reading
scientific texts, it will become easier to make the call; you will develop a better eye for
the way in which professional scholars in your field cite sources.

Sometimes it is difficult to figure out whether an idea really is your own or someone
else’s, and having a careful note-taking system will help with this. If you make notes
as you read, write down what you’ve quoted literally (using quote marks) and note
the publication and the page number where you found the quote you’re copying or
paraphrasing (see ‘making a literature matrix’, Chapter 2). This way, you won’t be
in for any nasty surprises when you’ve handed in your paper. A sloppy note-taking
system is one of the main causes of plagiarism among students.

Plagiarism of fellow students

As a scholar, you never work in a vacuum. It is important to exchange ideas with
others on the topics you’re addressing. However, it is also important for your degree
course that you learn to read and incorporate the material by yourself, so that you can
then express your ideas in your own words. If work isn’t done individually, lecturers
cannot gauge the extent to which students have these skills and knowledge. For this
reason, assignments that are not done individually – with the exception of group

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 assignments – are also considered to be plagiarism, and there are penalties for this.

Both the perpetrator and the co-perpetrator of fraud and plagiarism can be penalized.
If the work of a fellow student is copied with the permission or cooperation of the
same student, then they are also complicit in the plagiarism. Sending assignments,
papers, or other forms of work to fellow students can thus result in a penalty.

When plagiarism is committed by one of the authors of a group assignment, the

other authors are also complicit in the plagiarism if they could or should have known
that their fellow student was committing plagiarism. This means that a group is
collectively responsible for the content of a piece of work. You should thus ensure
as a group that you are involved in each other’s research. Always read your fellow
students’ work carefully and point out where citations are missing, so that they can
be looked up and added before the work is handed in.

Working responsibly in a team

As an academic, you learn to work in a team. Part of this entails taking responsibility
for yourself and contributing in a reasonable way to the group work and group
process. ‘Free-riding’ means participating in a group assignment but not
contributing or contributing very little, such as by not turning up to group meetings,
not preparing the work, or failing to meet prior agreements. In short: a free-rider
shirks his or her responsibilities and attempts to pass a course with the minimum
possible effort. Be sure to take part actively and know what is expected of you, and
also ensure that the others know what is expected of them (see the team charter in
Chapter 13 for key tips). By using the team charter as a group, it is possible to prevent
free-riding.

Nevertheless, if someone is free-riding and talking to them makes no difference,

report this to your lecturer. Bear in mind that if you do this too late, your lecturer
won’t necessarily be able to do very much about it. In addition, it is difficult for a
lecturer to weigh everything up if it’s your word against the free-rider’s. Thus, always
ensure that you document the meetings and appointments well, so you can go back
to what has been promised and see which agreements have not been met (see also
Chapter 13).

Fraud: falsifying data

It is absolutely out of the question to falsify data in order to boost your research
findings. But in some cases, this is a pretty grey area. It is clear that someone who
has filled in their age as ‘183’ has made a typo, and that you should not include
this detail in your analysis. But what should you do if someone has a much slower
response time than the other test subjects? From a statistical perspective, for
example, there are ways to determine whether a data point is an outlier. When you
clean up your data in a way that is beneficial to your conclusion, you may open
yourself up to accusations of fraud. Be aware of this and check (with your lecturer)
how far you can go when cleaning up your data. Before submitting your work, check

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 once more whether you have been completely honest in displaying your research
data and the clean-up method you have used. Disappointing research data say
nothing about the quality of your research, but are part and parcel of scholarship.

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 13 Collaboration, feedback, and
peer review

When working together and exchanging ideas – both essential when doing
interdisciplinary research – giving and receiving feedback plays a crucial role.
Indeed, giving feedback on written work (also known as ‘peer review’) is one
of the most important aspects of quality control in scholarship. This chapter
therefore focuses on this key skill.

Collaborating: drawing up a team charter

A team charter allows you to find out how the strengths of the team members can
be used to their best advantage. By filling in your qualities, what you are less good at,
your expectations of others, and what you understand by effective collaboration, you
can discover at the outset where the strengths of your group lie and where potential
hazards might be lurking. For example, is there someone in the group who loves
writing? Perhaps they could take on the role of editing the written work. At the same
time, this is a good moment to identify skills you’d like to develop. If you want to
improve your project management skills, this is the perfect time to explore how you
could best do this and who could help you. You can map out your personal strengths
and weaknesses using an individual team-player matrix (Box 13.1).

Box 13.1 Example of an individual team-player matrix

What are my qualities and what do I What are my weaknesses and what
have to offer my team? does the team need to know about me?
For example: For example:
I’m good at planning. I can be too much of a perfectionist.

What are my challenges and what What are my success criteria?

do I need from my team?
For example: For example:
I need someone who’s creative and I want to get at least 80%.
someone who can keep an eye on
the bigger picture.

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 In order to discover where a team’s strengths and challenges lie, a team charter can
be drafted by sharing the individual team-player matrices amongst yourselves and
making a matrix that combines the information about the different team members.
Based on this team charter, the team members can make agreements about working
together in the coming period. In doing so, you can think about which task each
team member will do. The group member who is good at planning can make a
schedule for the group. Based on the team charter, you can also agree on a common
goal and how you want to achieve it together. Are you all working towards roughly
the same final grade? How do you want to achieve this? How will you keep each
other informed of your progress?

Moreover, the team charter can serve as a basis for agreements about working
together and as a starting point for reflection on your collaboration. Team members
can ensure that the team keeps functioning optimally by identifying issues that
might cause disagreement. For example, conflicts often stem from the feeling that
one or more team members are not putting enough effort into a project, perhaps
because they do not always turn up to team meetings or do not pull their weight on
assignments. By drawing up joint ‘rules of engagement’ at the outset, team members
can manage conflict better when it does arise (see Box 13.2 below). Moreover,
if someone breaks the rules, you can go back to the charter and point out the
agreements that they themselves signed.

Box 13.2 Team charter

Name of team:

Mission and goals:

• Describe in two sentences what the team needs to do.
• What are you trying to achieve?
• The specific goals and outcomes that you hope to achieve together as a team.
• Goals relating to completing tasks (on time or at the last minute).
• Goals relating to quality (pass mark or high grade).
• Obstacles that might prevent you from achieving the goal (for example,
student jobs, not understanding what’s expected of you, failing to stick to the
team rules, etc.).

Inventory of team members’ skills:

• What qualities do the team members have?
• What skills or what knowledge do the team members want to develop?
• What are the challenges for the various team members (and what do they
need from the team)?

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 Identifying roles
What different roles are the team members playing to make the project a
success? These can be rotated. Examples:
• Leader: takes the initiative, motivates group members, has creative ideas.
• Chair: chairs the meetings effectively.
• Note taker: makes notes during meetings and distributes them to team
members.
• Communication coordinator: communicates with the lecturer and ensures that
work is delivered correctly and on time.
• Chief editor: responsible for grammar, spelling, and layout of the work.

Basic rules
The basic rules and principles of your team. These could include:
• Assignments: who is responsible for what, when are the deadlines, quality of
the work, how you will retain control over the master document (for example,
work together in Google Docs).
• Meetings: expectations regarding presence, schedule, location, preparation,
protocol, notifications, how decisions are made.
• Contact: how (email, WhatsApp, etc.), limits (for example, not at the weekend).
• Consequences of breaking the rules: what counts as an acceptable excuse?
How to sanction rule-breaking?

Dealing with conflicts

What are the potential sources of conflict and how are you going to manage
them? For example: ‘All problems remain in the group unless a solution isn’t
found within a week. After that, we contact the lecturer.’

Signature
I participated in drafting this team charter and I agree with its content.
Date, place:
Signature of team member ...
Signature of team member ...
Signature of team member ...
Signature of team member ...

(As soon as the form has been signed by every team member, give all team
members and the lecturer a copy.)

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 Evaluating teamwork
The team charter is an important benchmark for discussing collaboration, even when
it is quite advanced, and for possible interim reflection. You can reflect, for example,
by asking yourself and the team members the following questions:

Regarding the collaboration process:

■■ About the whole group:
{{ How is the division of work going?

{{ To what extent are agreements being kept?

{{ How are the roles divided within the group? (Who is taking the lead? Who’s

the creative spirit? Who’s taking care of the details?)

{{ What’s the contribution of the group as a whole and of its individual

members? (Is the group as a whole sufficiently ambitious? Are there

significant differences between the group members in this respect? And
what’s the situation with regard to time invested?)
■■ On your role:
{{ Which aspects are going well?

{{ Which aspects do you still want to improve?

{{ Where have you managed to stick to the planning?

{{ Which parts of the group assignment still have to be done and what’s your

role in this?
{{ If you look at your own team-player matrix: what does it reveal about your

own qualities or the things that you are less good at? What adjustments or
additions can you make to your team-player matrix? What have your learned
about yourself that you can take with you next time?

Giving and receiving feedback

During the collaboration, you will give and receive feedback on behaviour and
content. Below, you will find tips for channelling this in the optimal direction.

Feedback on behaviour
When you’re working together, it’s often useful to give feedback on each other’s
behaviour, but it is also important when giving a presentation, for example. This can
be tricky, because there is always a danger that things get personal. Below, we’ve set
out some tips for giving someone feedback on their behaviour.

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 Box 13.3 Keep the following points in mind when giving someone feedback on their behaviour, for
example on a presentation or working together.

Thus not: But:

Describe specific ‘You were nervous.’ ‘You were fidgeting.’

behaviour; do not
immediately interpret,
evaluate, or moralize.

Besides describing ‘You were nervous and ‘You were fidgeting

the behaviour, explain everyone found that and that distracted
the effect that it distracting.’ me.’
has on you (thus
not necessarily on
everyone). This is your
opinion, and someone
else might well
disagree with it.

Give feedback on ‘You were nervous and that ‘You were fidgeting
behaviour that can be distracted everyone. But and that distracted
changed. you’re an insecure person, me. My advice would
so perhaps that’s why.’ be to stand still next
time.’

Keep your feedback If you mention too many Identify one or

measured and brief, so points for improvement, it two points for
that its core message will be hard for the receiver improvement and one
is clear. to keep track and this can or two things that went
have a demotivating effect well, in your opinion.
– so don’t forget to include Explain these points
some positive points. properly.

Receiving feedback – certainly on your behaviour – is perhaps even more difficult.

How do you deal constructively with personal criticism? You will find a number of
suggestions in Box 13.4.

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 Box 13.4 Checklist for receiving feedback

• Listen to the feedback without reacting. Suppress the urge to defend yourself
or explain things.

• Make sure that you understand the other. If not, ask for an explanation/clarity
(for example, if someone is being vague or over-general).

• Ask about the significance/effect of your behaviour on others

• Accepting feedback doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing with it.

• Decide for yourself whether you want to change your behaviour or not,
based on the feedback.

Feedback on content
Giving and receiving substantive feedback can be helpful, not only for improving
your work, but also for the development of your critical attitude. For example, can
you work out whether sufficient support has been given to a statement in an article?
Have you evaded or omitted counter-arguments? Is the presentation to the point?
Have you avoided packing too much text onto the slides? Have you really answered
the question that was asked?

There are a number of tips for receiving feedback. For example, asking for specific
feedback may not only ensure that a lecturer or researcher is more inclined to give it
(they know what is being asked of them and how they can contribute), but it can also
ensure that their suggestions are more valuable. Make your requests for feedback
as specific as possible. Thus not: ‘We’d really like to hear what you think.’ But:
‘We’d like to know how far you’re convinced by the argument for using an IQ test to
measure intelligence.’ Or: ‘Do you think that the definition of sustainability we’ve
chosen fits well with our research question?’

Moreover, when gathering feedback, think about the person you’re requesting
feedback from. Take a careful look at their job description; to what extent does your
question fit with the expertise of the person you’re contacting? In the case of an
environmental psychologist, for example, you could ask the following question: ‘In
our research, we want to focus on the impact of colour on perceptions of pain. Given
that you’ve done research into the effects of the colour of hospital rooms on patient
recovery, we wondered what you’d make of our idea to subject people in different
coloured rooms to pain stimuli.’

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 Peer review
When a piece of research is complete, and the scholar has sent it to a scholarly
journal, it is evaluated critically by experts in the field. This is known as peer review.
Peer review is something you can already do during your studies: you can help each
other by assessing each other’s work, and you’ll develop skills in critically reading
texts on points such as content, structure, and language use.

For an official peer review of a scholarly article, 3-4 experts are appointed by the
journal to which the article has been submitted. These reviewers give anonymous
feedback on the article. As a reviewer, based on your critical reading, you can make
one of the following recommendations to the editor of the journal:
■■ Publish as submitted. The article is good as it is and can be published (this hardly
ever happens).
■■ Publish after minor revisions. The article is good and worth publishing, but some
aspects need to be improved before it can be printed. If the adjustments can be
made easily (for example, a small amount of rewriting, formatting figures), these
are considered minor revisions.
■■ Publish after major revisions. The article is potentially worth publishing, but
there are significant issues that need to be reconsidered. For example, setting
up additional (control) experiments, using a new method to analyse the data, a
thorough review of the theoretical framework (addition of important theories),
and gathering new information (in an archive) to substantiate the argumentation.
■■ Reject. The research is not interesting, it is not innovative, or it has been carried
out/written up so badly that this cannot be redressed.

During the peer-review process, you use critical thinking skills to examine the logic
behind an argument or research article, and weigh this up against the evidence you
have. See Box 13.5 for the questions you can ask when reviewing an article.

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 Box 13.5 Checklist for analysing a research article or paper

1 Relevance to the field (anchoring)

a  What is the goal of the research or paper?
b  To what extent has this goal been achieved?
c  What does the paper or research article add to knowledge in the field?
d  Are theories or data missing? To what extent is this a problem?

2 Methodology or approach
a What approach has been used for the research? (For example:
quantitative versus qualitative, comparison, case study, intervention,
explorative, etc.)
b Is this approach consistent with the aim of the research?
c How objective or biased is this approach?
d How well has the research been carried out? What are the
methodological strengths and/or weaknesses?
e Are the results valid and reliable?

3 Argumentation and use of evidence

a  Is there a clear description of the central problem, objective, or
hypothesis?
b  What claims are made?
c  What evidence underlies the argument?
d  How valid and reliable is this evidence? (See Chapter 8)
e  Is the argumentation clear and logical?
f  Are the conclusions justified?

4 Writing style and structure of the text

a  Is the style of the text suitable for the medium/audience?
b  Is the text structured clearly, so the reader can follow the writer’s line of
argumentation?
c  Are the figures and tables displayed clearly? (See Chapter 9)

Reflecting on assumptions
It is important that your colleagues not only evaluate your research (peer review), but
that they also reflect on the assumptions behind it. This is particularly important if
you want to find out how far your results and conclusions might contribute to solving
a social problem (as with valorization, see Chapter 9), or if you want to integrate your
idea with other perspectives or disciplines in order to reach a fuller understanding of
a complex problem.

The implicit assumptions that have the effect of excluding other disciplines or
parties have an especially negative impact on interdisciplinary thinking. In order to
overcome this barrier, academics should not only reflect on the assessments in their
chosen models and variables, but they should also take a step back from their own
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 disciplinary background. They should be able to hold themselves up to the light, as
it were. This is why self-reflection plays a key role in many methods that have been
developed to promote interchange between academics from different disciplines.

As an interdisciplinary student and researcher, you are expected to have a good

idea of what your perspective on a problem is, so that this perspective can be
integrated with other ones. The Socratic method can help with this. In contrast
to many conversations in which people focus on solving a problem, the Socratic
method focuses more on the vision or perspective with which someone is tackling a
problem. The conversation is more about assumptions and values, meaning that the
solution to the problem is left out of the picture as much as possible. Participants can
challenge each other with:
■■ Requests for clarification (‘Could you explain that?’).
■■ Questions that probe assumptions (‘How could you verify or refute this
assumption?’).
■■ Questions that probe evidence and argumentation (‘Is there a reason to doubt
this evidence?’).
■■ Requests to investigate alternative perspectives (‘Does anyone see this in another
way?’).
■■ Questions that investigate implications and consequences (‘What would happen
if ...?’).
■■ Questions that interrogate the question (‘What is the purpose of this question?’).

Sources
Plymouth University (n.d.). ‘Reflection’ learning development. Retrieved from http://
plymouth.ac.uk
Radboud Zorgacademie (n.d.). Feedback geven en ontvangen. Retrieved from
https://www.radboudumc.nl/Onderwijs/Zorgacademie/Bijscholing/
Documents/Feedbackgevenenontvangen.pdf
University of Michigan (n.d.). The six types of Socratic questions. Retrieved from
http://www.umich.edu/~elements/5e/probsolv/strategy/cthinking.htm

Other useful sources

One way to evaluate a team (and to see which roles are filled and which may be
vacant) is to use the Belbin method. On Belbin.com you will find more information
about this method (google ‘Belbin’).

For more information on the Socratic method and how to use it: socraticmethod.
net.

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 14 Presenting

In this chapter, we identify different kinds of presentations. There are

presentations where content is key, for example, when you’re presenting an
article. With other presentations, the aim might be to kick-start a discussion (for
example, when presenting preliminary results at a poster presentation) or whip up
your audience’s enthusiasm about an idea (at a pitch).

A few things are always important, in any case, when it comes to guiding the
audience through your story:
■■ Make a clear distinction between major and minor elements. What is the key
theme of your story, and which details does your audience need in order to
understand it?
■■ A clearly structured, coherent story.
■■ Good visual aids that represent the results visually.
■■ Good presentation skills.

Defining the theme of your presentation

A good presentation has a clear theme that you should keep returning to, after
focusing temporarily on the details. The theme is determined by the purpose of your
presentation.

If you are giving a presentation on a scientific article, for example, the major aspects
(and thereby the theme) will be the research question, results, and conclusion. In this
case, you think about the information your audience needs in order to understand
this. For example, you may need to say something about your materials and methods
before the audience can understand the results.

If you are giving a presentation in order to get feedback or to kick-start a discussion,

the theme will be different. In this case, it is more important to lead the audience
logically through your story, and to highlight clearly any inconsistencies in it.

Finally: you have limited time for a presentation and you will be penalized if you
exceed the time limit. Thus, you must make choices about which information you
will or will not present and the order in which you will present it. As a general rule,
it takes around ten minutes to give an oral presentation of an A4 sheet of text, or one
minute per slide (see TIPS).

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 Structure and coherence
Once you have defined your theme and main message, it’s important to determine
the structure of your presentation. In most cases, this will be very straightforward;
most scholarly articles are based on the IMD structure. This, then, is what your
audience will expect, and in that case, you won’t need to include a table of contents.
Should you deviate from this structure, for example because you are presenting an
argument, it can be useful for your audience if you briefly explain how your story is
structured.

The main difference between an article and a presentation is that the audience
is unable to scroll back. This means that it’s very important to keep an eye on
consistency and convey your story well. You can zoom in on the necessary details,
but keep returning to the theme of your presentation. Name the theme, so that your
listeners know what to focus on. This means that there will be lots of repetition. This
might seem a little over the top, but it is better to refer to exactly what you’re saying
too many times than too few.

TIPS
■■ Find out everything about the audience that you’ll be presenting your story
to, and look at how you can ensure that your presentation is relevant for them.
Ask yourself the following questions:
• What kind of audience will you have (relationship with audience)?
• What does the audience already know about your topic and how can you
connect with this (knowledge of the audience)?
• What tone or style should you adopt vis-à-vis the audience (style of
address)?
• What do you want the audience to take away from your presentation?
■■ If you know there is going to be a round of questions, include some extra
slides for after the conclusion. You can fill these extra slides with all kinds of
detailed information that you didn’t have time for during the presentation. If
you’re on top of your material, you’ll be able to anticipate which questions
might come up. It comes over as very professional if you’re able to back up
an answer to a question from the audience with an extra graph or table, for
example.
■■ Think about which slide will be shown on the screen as you’re answering
questions at the end of your presentation. A slide with a question mark is not
informative. It’s more useful for the audience if you end with a slide with the
main message and possibly your contact details, so that people are able to
contact you later.
■■ Think beforehand about what you will do if you’re under time pressure. What
could you say more succinctly or even omit altogether?

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 Visual aids
Whether you’re using PowerPoint for your slides or the presentation program Prezi,
the purpose of visual aids is to support the audience during the presenter’s story.
One common error is for the presenter to use the slide presentation as a memory
aid for themselves, rather than for the audience. In order to make a good PowerPoint
presentation, it is important to remember that members of the audience can only
retain a limited amount of information. A good presentation thus minimizes the
cognitive burden on the audience, so that they are able to remember the main
message.

People have a ‘visual’ and an ‘auditory’ working memory (based on the work of
Baddeley and Hitch, 1974). During a presentation, the audience’s auditory working
memory is exposed to the voice of the presenter, possible background noise, and
questions from the audience. The visual working memory sees the colour and size
of the letters and illustrations on the PowerPoint, but also the relationship between
the images and the text, the ‘moving path’ of animations or slide transitions in the
PowerPoint, and presenter’s hand gestures and facial expressions. These systems
have limits and can become ‘overloaded’. By providing both auditory and visual
information, you reduce the chance that one of the working-memory systems
becomes overloaded and the audience is no longer able to follow you.

This has a number of implications for a PowerPoint presentation:

■■ Avoid distractions that take up cognitive space, such as irrelevant images, sounds,
too much text/words on a slide, intense colours, distracting backgrounds, and
different fonts.
■■ Small chunks of information are easier to understand and remember. This is the
case for both the text on a slide and for illustrations, tables, and graphs.
■■ When you are talking to your audience, it is usually better to show a slide with a
picture than a slide with a lot of text.

What you should do:

■■ Ensure there is sufficient contrast between your text and the background.
■■ Ensure that all of the text is large enough (at least 20 pt).
■■ Use a sans-serif font; these are the easiest to read when enlarged.
■■ Make the text short and concise. Emphasize the most important concepts by
putting them in bold or a different colour.
■■ Have the texts appear one by one on the slide, in sync with your story. This
prevents the audience from ‘reading ahead’.
■■ Use arrows, circles, or other ways of showing which part of an illustration, table,
or graph is important. You can also choose to fade out the rest of the image, or
make a new table or graph showing only the relevant information.

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 Using figures, tables, images, or film clips
It is a good idea to use figures, tables, images, or film clips, so long as you use them
properly. As mentioned above, your audience will be unable to read text at the same
time as listening to your story. What does work well is to combine spoken text with
visual representations; think of images, tables, diagrams, and video clips.

If your research results consist of lots of data, it can help the listener if you process
these in a graph, diagram, or table. If you want to discuss the development of a city,
you can use a ‘before’ and ‘after’ photo. A schematic drawing can help to explain
your experimental setup. And if you want to discuss a historical development or
experimental procedure, you can make this clearer by showing the different events
on a timeline.

Whatever you do, you should take account of a number of factors. First, assume that
the audience is seeing or hearing a clip for the first time. Make things easier for the
audience by explaining what you are going to show them and which parts you believe
to be relevant. For example, you could have a table or figure appear step by step.
When using film material, you can help the audience by telling them beforehand
exactly what they should be looking out for.

Second, be sure to edit the clip carefully: it should not eat up too much of your
presentation time. There are lots of possibilities online for downloading YouTube
films and editing them to size. Lastly, ensure that the link to the clip on your slide
works properly, and check whether the file type is supported by the computer that
you will be using for the presentation.

Examples of how to represent data visually.

Figure 14.1A Badly organized slide; too much data and badly judged title.

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 Figure 14.1B Well-organized slide: captions and anything else that is not discussed have been
removed. The table is larger and the key findings have been highlighted. The slide also has an
informative, concise title. The data are not yet readable and there are more than ten numbers in the table.

Figure 14.1C Display of information in a table, with the most important, significant data emphasized
with figures in bold.

Figure 14.1D Graph based on table C, displaying significance; has an informative title.

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 Presentation skills
A good presentation consists of a clear, substantive story, good visual aids, and
effective presentation techniques. By the latter, we mean good non-verbal and
paralingual communication. If you have an excellent story but tell it without
intonation or enthusiasm, you won’t get your message across.

Non-verbal communication is about body language and hand gestures. Paralingual

communication is about how you use your voice; that is, pitch, intonation, and the
speed at which you talk. Under ‘Other useful sources’ you will find a number of film
clips showing examples. Here are a few tips, in any case:
■■ Stand with both feet firmly on the ground. Don’t stand with your legs crossed or
keep shifting from one leg to the other. Also ensure that you don’t sway or lean.
It is useful to bend your knees ever so slightly, rather than stand with your knees
locked. Then you will stand more actively and less stiffly.
■■ Use your voice and hand gestures. This adds structure to your story and
highlights the main message. Vanessa van Edwards, the lead researcher of a
research group on social behaviour, has produced a series of short films in which
she gives tips; see the link to her YouTube channel at the end of this chapter.
■■ Make eye contact with all of your audience. If this makes you nervous, you
don’t have to make direct eye contact. One trick is to focus on the foreheads of
the people in the audience, which has the same effect. In any case, don’t forget to
look towards every corner of the room.
■■ Add enough pauses/use punctuation. Try to add a ‘full stop’ after every sentence
in the form of a very short pause. This is something you need to practise
frequently. We have a natural tendency to talk fast when we’re nervous and forget
punctuation as a result. Although we automatically use punctuation (full stops,
commas) in our writing, because it would otherwise be unreadable, we do not
automatically do this when presenting. Try to formulate full sentences and always
finish them with a pause. If you find this difficult, bear in mind the point on eye
contact and try looking at a different person in the audience with every sentence.
You can also insert a pause after every slide. Slides are often defined topics, and
this gives your audience time to process them.
■■ Silences instead of fillers. This is a good tip if you frequently use ‘filler words’
when your presentation falters (such as ‘um’ or ‘like’). It feels unnatural, but a
short silence is much better. That’s because if there’s a silence, people become
even more curious about what you’re going to say next. Filler words will only
distract or even annoy them.
■■ Think about your position relative to your audience and the screen. You
shouldn’t block the screen, of course, but neither should you stand so far away
from it that your audience has to keep switching between you and the screen.

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 ■■ Explaining figures and tables. You may be presenting figures or tables, and it’s
important to guide your audience through these carefully (Box 14.1).

Box 14.1 Presenting figures and tables

Indicate and describe:

figure table

the axes the columns

the meaning of the lines/bars/colours the rows

the meaning of the symbols the symbols

what can be concluded from this the key message of the table
figure

■■ Keep your hands calm. A nice posture for if you’re standing still, for example,
is to hold your hands with your fingers touching (Figure 14.2A), interlock your
fingers (Figure 14.2B), or hold the ring finger of your right hand with your left
hand (Figure 14.2C).

How experienced presenters hold their hands.

Figure 14.2A Fingers touching.

Figure 14.2B Fingers interlocked.

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 Figure 14.2C Holding the ring finger of the right hand with the left hand.

Practising your presentation

Now you’ve finished your presentation, it’s a good idea to practise it. Paradoxically
enough, experienced speakers practise their presentations more than inexperienced
speakers. Before you start practising, make a presentation outline. Mainly consisting
of keywords, a presentation outline ensures that you neither simply read out your
presentation nor have to learn all of it by heart. Your presentation outline should be
no longer than one page of A4.

Another option is to write your presentation out on a series of individual cards,

which you can keep to hand and check discreetly every now and then. While
practising, you can add things to your presentation or make it shorter. The great
pitfall is that holding a card in your hand can distract your audience. Another option
is to use the presenter view, the setting offered by Microsoft PowerPoint if you project
a PowerPoint presentation from a laptop onto a second screen (such as a projector
screen). This means that the notes on the laptop can be seen by the presenter, but the
audience can only see the PowerPoint presentation. The major advantage of this is
that you no longer need a crib sheet.

Practising your presentation out loud helps you to tell your story fluently and use
your slides correctly, and you’ll also discover how much time you need. Finally, you
can focus on your presentation skills as you practise.

Leading a discussion
As described at the start of this chapter, the goal of your presentation may be to get
feedback from your audience on the content of your presentation, or it may be to
kick-start a discussion. How you ask your audience for a response is very important;
after all, you don’t want to be met with blank stares and total silence. There are tips
and tricks that you can use to kick off what will hopefully be a lively and effective
discussion.

Ask good questions

One way of starting a discussion is to end your presentation with a question. In
order to keep a discussion going, it can also help to keep asking questions all the way
through. Questions should be stimulating and not overly difficult, but nevertheless
contain a degree of challenge, so think carefully about this. In order to get you
started, in Box 14.2 you will find a number of possible questions based on the web

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 pages ‘Designing effective discussion questions’ (n.d.) and ‘Keeping discussion going
through questioning, listening and responding’ (n.d.) from Stanford University.

Box 14.2 Starter questions to kick off a discussion

Types of questions Example

Closed questions
There is a limited number of possible answers to a closed • Who agrees with
question. You could think of a ‘yes/no’ question or an this?
‘or-question’, whereby you give a number of options. Most • Do you think the
people can come up with an opinion if they are given selected method is a
answer-options, because this is a safe and effective way of good one?
opening a discussion. However, these kinds of questions
are rarely sufficient to get a discussion going; you need to
keep asking about the answers that you get, or follow them
with an open question.

Open questions
Answers to open questions can take every possible • Why do you agree
form, which makes them more challenging than closed with this?
questions. An open question begins with ‘how’, ‘what’, • When can you select
‘when’, ‘where’, or ‘why’. this method?
• Do ensure that your open questions are specific: as
soon as your intentions are unclear or ambiguous, your
audience will stop answering.
• Ensure that you ask just one thing. If a number of things
are asked in one question, it will be unclear. Thus NOT:
How do you think you’ll tackle this problem and what do
you think the consequences of this approach will be?

Hypothetical question
With a hypothetical question, you sketch out a hypothetical • In what case might
situation and ask the audience what could happen. It’s not this method have
possible to give a wrong answer; this is challenging and worked?
requires creativity. You should keep an eye on the aim of
your discussion, of course. If you want feedback on your
results, for example, this isn’t the obvious way to get the
discussion going. But if you want to come up with new
ideas, it can work really well.

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 One good strategy is to have a range of questions to hand: questions that are
relatively easy to answer to start with, and more complex questions in order to
deepen the discussion. In addition, in every discussion, it is important to keep on
asking for the audience’s input. This shows that you’re taking the audience seriously.
The speaker gets the space to communicate their views to the rest of the group, and
they in turn give the rest of the group space to form their own opinions and thereby
participate in the discussion. See Box 14.3 for questions that you can use to get a
discussion going.

Finally, end the discussion with a summary: what have we talked about and what’s
the conclusion? This is something you can also do during the discussion itself; if the
discussion goes on for too long or heads off-topic, this is a good way to get everyone
focused on the topic again and back on track.

Box 14.3 Questions to stimulate discussion

Asking for clarification

With this kind of question, you ask the • Could you give me an example?
speaker to explain what they mean. • What exactly do you mean by this
term?
• Could you define that differently?

Asking for more information

Do this as soon as someone voices • What exactly do you mean?
an opinion that deviates from the • What do you base that on?
topic of the discussion, or when there
is uncertainty about the correctness
of their contribution. Be aware that
by doing so, you’re only asking the
speaker to explain his view, and you’re
not questioning his intelligence.

Verbindende vragen
These are questions that allow you • How would you relate what you’re
to link different speakers with one saying now to the information you
another. Although this can be tricky for just heard from ...?
a discussion leader, it can help to take • How does this fit with the
the discussion to the next level. information we’ve just heard?

Creating a safe atmosphere

In addition to asking questions, how you respond to your audience’s input is also
important. The wrong attitude or response can create an unsafe atmosphere,
whereby people’s motivation to take part will quickly dissipate. Below, we’ve listed a
few things that you can bear in mind to keep motivating your audience:

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 ■■ Do not take a position yourself. This limits the discussion, because it makes it
trickier to give a dissenting opinion.
{{ Think about this when phrasing your questions. Ensure that they are not

overly suggestive; the answer should not be shining through.

■■ You can make notes on a whiteboard or blackboard, so that everyone can follow
the key points. Make sure that you don’t miss anyone out if you’re making notes,
because this can imply a clear hierarchy and give your own position away.
■■ Make sure that you give the audience enough time to respond. Allow 10-15
seconds of waiting time. This might feel like a really long time, but your audience
needs time to process your question and formulate a position or answer. You
should thus ensure that you don’t reformulate or repeat your question within that
time, as this will disrupt your audience’s thinking process.
■■ Respond positively to every contribution to the discussion, even if it doesn’t cut
any ice. In the latter case, ensure that you make a serious attempt to understand
where the person is coming from. If there’s been a misunderstanding, you can
steer things in a friendly fashion: ‘Thank you for your contribution. However,
if you look at it differently, ...’, or: ‘I’m glad that you raised this, perhaps it’s
something that I’ve not communicated clearly.’ This is important for creating a
safe atmosphere in which people dare to express their opinions.
■■ Ensure that your body language is open and that you rest your arms at your sides.
Crossed arms or a frowning expression are discouraging signals that can hold the
audience back from answering your questions.

Giving poster presentations

In the academic world, it is common for scholarly findings to be published in
journals. Another form of academic communication is to attend a scientific
conference. At conferences, new work is often presented that has yet to be
published. One common method for doing this is to do a poster presentation. Poster
presentations are organized in a large hall, whereby dozens or even hundreds of
academics present their results on large posters. The scholar stands by his or her
poster and prepares an elevator pitch (see p. 144), allowing them to communicate the
content quickly. As a result, there’s a lot of one-to-one contact, providing lots of space
for feedback, questions, and discussion.

Points to bear in mind when designing a poster

The emphasis of a poster presentation lies on the results and how they’ve been
interpreted by the scholar. If you are designing a poster for a poster presentation, it is
important to keep this aim in mind. What’s more, remember that the audience will
be viewing a great many posters. This means that a good poster has to be informative
and catch the eye.

Many of the points mentioned above in relation to designing a PowerPoint

presentation are also important when designing a poster. The main difference is
that a poster should be self-standing; that is, someone should be able to read and
understand it without your having to explain it. This means that posters tend to offer

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 a complete summary of a research project, with an introduction, methods section,
results section, conclusion, and discussion. However, the emphasis (key theme) lies
on the research question, the results, and the conclusion – so ensure that these stand
out. Often, you don’t have time to dwell at length on the technical specifications of
your research, so you don’t need to cover these. Should people still have questions
about this, they can always ask them. Again, you should describe the method that’s
needed to be able to interpret the results.

Most posters are made using Microsoft PowerPoint, but you can also use Adobe
InDesign, Illustrator, or Photoshop. The important thing is that the poster is readable
from a distance, so ensure that you make everything comprehensible and use a clear
layout. In addition, it is advisable to display as much as you can graphically; it is
better to use a graph than a table or block of text.

Your elevator pitch

An elevator pitch is a short presentation taking 1-2 minutes (you should be able
to give it before a lift stops at the next floor), in which you spark your audience’s
interest in your organization, plan, or poster. This means that you must be able to
describe the main points in a logical, concise way. Be proactive with your pitch; in
other words, don’t wait for someone to ask for it, but take the initiative and give your
explanation. During your pitch, you could describe the main points of your poster or
business plan, for example. Don’t reel off your pitch at breakneck speed, but insert
pauses so that your listener has the opportunity to ask questions or request further
details.

TIPS
1 T
 hink about what your aim is: do you want to pitch a new plan, or do you want
to get your audience interested in your research?
2 Explain what you’ve done/are going to do: focus on the problem that you’ve
solved/want to solve, or the question that you’ve answered. Make it clear why
it is important to solve this problem or answer this question.
3 Explain what makes your approach unique.
4 Involve your audience in the conversation by concluding with an open
question. For example: how do you research...? Or, after a pitch for a method
to tackle burnout among staff: how is burnout dealt with in your organization?

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 Sources
Baddeley, A.D., & Hitch, G.J. (1974). Working memory. Recent advances in learning
and motivation, 8 (G.A. Bower, ed.), pp. 47-90. New York: Academic Press.
Crafting an elevator pitch (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/
article/elevator-pitch.htm
Designing effective discussion questions (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://teachingcommons.stanford.edu/resources/teaching/
student-teacher-communication/designing-effective-discussion-questions
Don McMillan, Death by PowerPoint (2010): https://youtu.be/KbSPPFYxx3o
Keeping discussion going through questioning, listening, and responding (n.d.).
Retrieved from http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/posting.
php?ID=736
Making an academic poster presentation (n.d.). Retrieved from https://nau.edu/
undergraduate-research/poster-presentation-tips/

Other useful sources

You can find tips for better presentations in the presentation ‘How to avoid
death by PowerPoint’ by David J.P. Philips (https://youtu.be/Iwpi1Lm6dFo), in the
blogpost ‘10 tips for better slide decks’ by Aaron Weyenberg (TED talk): http://
blog.ted.com/10-tips-for-better-slide-decks/, and in the article ‘Presentation ZEN’
by Garr Reynolds: http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/09/
whats_good_powe.html.

Tips for improving your physical posture during presentations can be found
in the interviews with Vanessa van Edwards (https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=wmlzri690-0&list=RDQMUjjs7rlzY9E) and the presentations by
Amy Cuddy: the TED-talk ‘Fake it till you make it’ (https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=RVmMeMcGc0Y) and her presentation at Poptech on ‘Power poses’
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phcDQ0H_LnY).

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 Appendices

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 Appendix A
Sample literature review

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 Can human beings remain omnivorous?
A comparison of the environmental impact
of an omnivorous diet and a vegetarian diet

Student name

Student number X

Module Academische writing skills

(BSc, semester 1, year 1)

Lecturer Y

Number of words 2099

Date Z

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 Background
to research
Abstract

With the growing world population, demand for food is rising. With this,
consumption of meat will rise. This literature review investigates the environmental
Main question impact of a vegetarian diet in comparison to an omnivorous diet. In doing so, we
first look at the impact of the different diets on land use. Subsequently, we consider
Sub-questions the impact on water use. Diverse scientific sources show that more land is used
and more deforestation occurs to produce food for an omnivorous diet than for
a vegetarian diet. The research cited also suggests that the water footprint for
Method an omnivorous diet is larger than that of a vegetarian diet. A change in human
(literature consumption behaviour is therefore needed, should we want to minimize the
research) impact on the environment.
and main
conclusions
Important
discussion point

= structural elements

= signalling words

= writing style

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 Broad,
attractively
written opening
Introduction

For over two million years, human beings have been eating animal and plant products
(Gibbons, 2007). With the rise in the world’s population comes the question of
whether human beings can allow themselves to remain omnivorous, or whether we
should shift to a vegetarian diet in order to save the environment.

The global population is currently growing by an average of 81 million people per

Socially relevant
year. In July 2013, there were 7.2 billion people in the world, 648 million more than
research
in 2005. Even if the fertility rate keeps falling, by 2050 the world population will
probably have reached 9.6 billion (United Nations, 2013). With the increase in the
world’s population, demand for food is also growing. According to the Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO), in the coming decades the production of basic
foodstuffs will have to rise by 60% in order to meet the anticipated demand for food
(FAO, 2013). This production will affect the environment. For example, a lot of water Example
is needed to grow tomatoes, processing potatoes requires high amounts of energy,
and cattle farming is a major cause of eutrophication (Foster et al., 2007).

Short sentences
In 2013, global meat production grew by 1.4% to 308.2 million tons (FAO, 2013).
Animal feed is needed in order to produce meat. This feed, such as soya or grain,
has to be cultivated, and this has consequences for the environment. The impact is Explanation +
greater than it would be if we were to eat the soya or grain instead of the meat, for not background info
all of the energy from this process goes into producing cattle. A number of kilos of for important
soya or grain are needed in order to produce a kilo of meat. Changing our diet could concepts
therefore help to reduce the impact on the environment. That a non-vegetarian diet (meat production,
animal feed,
has a greater impact on the environment than a vegetarian diet is stated by Marlow et
energy value)
al. (2009), for instance, in one of a growing number of articles on this subject. ‘From
an environmental perspective, what someone chooses to eat makes the difference.’
Social relevance
In this literature review, we seek to answer the question: what is the difference in the (increasing number of
environmental impact of a vegetarian versus an omnivorous diet? In order to answer publications on this)
this question, we look successively at the consequences for land use and water use.

Main question Sub-question 1 Sub-question 2

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 Cattle farming, soya production, and land-use

Introduction In this section, we seek to answer the following sub-question: what are the
to section consequences for land use of a vegetarian diet compared with those of an omnivorous
diet? We do so by considering the impact of both diets according to a life-cycle
analysis (LCA) applied to land use. Subsequently, to illustrate this impact, we discuss
the situation in Brazil.

A lot of meat needs to be produced in order to meet the rising demand for food (FAO,
Jargon is 2013). The cattle industry needs land for meat production, whether for grazing cattle
avoided or for fields in which to cultivate cattle feed. This, in turn, has consequences for land
use. In their research on the environmental impact of various diets, Baroni, Cenci,
Tettamanti, and Berati (2007) used the LCA method. The LCA is a method whereby
the environmental impact of a particular product (or combination of products) is
established by looking at the whole life cycle, from raw material to waste (Agentschap
NL, n.d.). They do this by considering various diets, including a diet containing
meat and a vegetarian diet. The daily number of calories provided by the diets is
almost identical. In addition, a distinction is made with respect to production: for
both diets, the authors looked at the difference between the environmental impact of
conventional and organic farming.

This research shows that when the same production method is used, a diet containing
meat has the greatest impact on land use (Baroni et al., 2007). Around 1.5 times more
land is needed to produce the average omnivorous organic diet than to produce a
vegetarian organic diet.

According to Baroni et al. (2007), the great impact of an omnivorous diet is largely
due to the land that is needed to cultivate cattle feed and for grazing. In their book
People of the tropical rain forest, Denslow and Padoch (1988, cited in Baroni et al.,
2007) refer to the link between the increasing use of land for cattle farming and
deforestation. Forests are cleared to cultivate enough agricultural land, and in dry
regions intensive agriculture can even lead to desertification (Christopherson &
Birkeland, 2013).

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 Brazil is a good example of a country where deforestation is taking place for the cattle Statement
industry. In his research into the environmental impact of soya cultivation in Brazil,
Fearnside (2001) states that ‘Soybeans represent a recent and powerful threat to the
biodiversity in Brazil’ (p. 23). This soya is mostly exported to countries in Europe,
where the soya is used as cattle feed. Many natural reserves are being lost to soya
cultivation, including the Cerrado, grasslands, and the rain forests (Fearnside, 2001).
In addition, major infrastructural development has taken place in order to transport
the soya. The building of infrastructure in combination with the change in land use
for plantations also has consequences for the soil. Soil degradation in the form of
erosion is a major problem in Brazil, according to Fearnside (2001). Here we should Own
mention that most, but not all, soya is used as cattle feed. Part of the soya is used for comment
soya products that are consumed directly by humans.

Most researchers agree that deforestation and soil degradation are taking place
in Brazil, but they do not agree that soya plantations are the main cause of this.
Barona, Ramankutty, Hyman, and Coomes (2010) investigated the role played by the
expansion of the number of cattle farms in deforestation in Brazil. They compared the
number of cattle farms with the link between deforestation and the expansion of the
number of soya plantations between 2000 and 2006. From this, they concluded that
the deforestation was primarily a result of cattle farming. It is the case, though, that
part of the grazing land for cattle has had to make way for soya plantations, and the
cattle farms have therefore had to shift to the rain forests.
Conclusion
It is clear that consuming a diet containing meat has more impact on land use than a
vegetarian diet. The case of Brazil illustrates the consequences that the cattle farming
industry has for land use. Whether caused by the expansion of agricultural land for
soya cultivation or the expansion of grazing land for cattle, both are a consequence Sub-conclusion
of growing meat consumption. In addition to land use, food production also has an of section
impact on water use, and this will be discussed in the following section.

Link to next section

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 Section 2 Sub-question 2

Water use

In this section, we seek to answer the following sub-question: what are the
consequences for water use of a vegetarian diet compared with those of an
omnivorous diet? We do so by comparing the differences in water use for the
production of meat and vegetables. Subsequently, we cite research into the water
footprint of a soya burger and an equivalent product as an example of the impact on
Sub-questions water use.

The world’s supply of fresh water is decreasing per head of the population, and this
decrease has been linked to the global food shortage, among other things (Pimentel
& Pimentel, 1993, cited in Baroni et al., 2007). Although Baroni et al. (2007) do not
show how a vegetarian diet impacts water use in comparison to an omnivorous diet in
their results, they do mention this as an important factor. The World Watch Institute
(2004, cited in Baroni et al., 2007) investigated fresh water consumption worldwide.
Antithesis This research shows that 70% of all fresh water is used in cattle farming and
agriculture, as opposed to just 22% by industry. It is mainly the cultivation of crops
Consequence used for cattle feed that uses a lot of water. As a result, much more water is needed
to produce a kilogram of meat than a kilogram of vegetables. Renault and Wallender
Accurate (2000) investigated the quantity of water that is used to produce different sorts of
comparison feed. Their research shows that 4.3 m3 (4,300 litres) of water is needed to produce a
kilogram of chicken or pork, whereas just 0.15 m3 (150 litres) of water is needed to
Antithesis produce a kilogram of vegetables.

In the research by Ercin, Aldaya, and Hoesktra (2012), the water footprint is
considered. In this footprint they include not only the water used in the entire
production process, but also water pollution (Hoekstra & Mekonnen, 2012). Ercin et
al. (2012) investigated the water footprint of a soya burger compared to that of a beef
burger. The research considered every part of the production of the two burgers, each
weighing 150 grams. The researchers not only looked at the footprint of the burgers’
ingredients, but also, for example, at packaging material. In addition, the researchers
Example
looked at total water consumption for the water footprint: both surface and ground
water and rain water, as well as the volume of water needed to bring contaminated
water back to an acceptable norm. The research shows that the water footprint of a
soya burger is much smaller than that of a beef burger. The water footprint of a beef
Degree of burger is fourteen times larger than that of its vegetarian substitute.
probability
The above suggests that a vegetarian diet has a somewhat smaller impact on the
fresh water supply than a diet containing meat. Whether one considers agriculture
Antithesis alone or the entire production chain makes little difference: the production of meat
has a much larger impact on water use than the production of vegetables or meat
substitutes.

Sub-conclusion

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 Answer to
main question
Conclusion and discussion

The cited sources seem to support the claim that there are differences in the Answer to
sub-questions
environmental impact of a diet containing meat and a non-meat diet. The
consequences for land use are greater for an omnivorous diet than for a vegetarian
diet. This is due to the amount of land that is needed for the cattle-farming industry, Cause
both for the cultivation of cattle feed and as a habitat for cattle. The consequences
for water use are also greater when a diet containing meat is consumed. Much more
water is needed to produce meat than to produce vegetables or meat substitutes. A
Conclusion
vegetarian diet thus appears to have a smaller negative impact on the environment.

For this research, we chose to analyse particular regions (Brazil) and particular Concession
products (soya burgers). Although it is theoretically possible that completely
different conclusions could be drawn for other regions and for other products, this Degree of
appears unlikely. Cattle will always need feed and a habitat, and a number of kilos probability
of plant material will always be needed to produce a single kilo of meat, because the
conversion will never be 100% efficient. Reasons

The environment consists of more components than land and water, of course. In
this research, we chose to look only at land use and water use, but food production Antithesis
also has other environmental effects. For example, this includes greenhouse gas
emissions, the contamination of soil, air and water, the use of natural resources,
substances that are harmful to human health, and the use of energy. These could be Limitations of
considered in future research. the research.
This mainly
adds nuance to
There is also a third option, besides a diet containing meat and a vegetarian diet:
the main and
that of a vegan diet. After all, certain animal products are included in a vegetarian sub-questions,
diet, such as eggs and milk. Cattle farming is still needed to produce these, though or at least puts
to a lesser degree. Baroni et al. (2007) did consider this diet, and their research does conclusions in
indeed suggest that a vegan diet would be even better for the environment. context.

Instead of adjusting our own consumption behaviour, it would also be possible to

make changes to cattle feed. Elferink, Nonhebel, and Moll (2008) have researched the
possibility of using waste as cattle feed. This would reduce the environmental impact Suggestions for
of meat somewhat, and would be another interesting direction to explore in future further research
research.

It is clear that as the world’s population grows, we will no longer be able to keep
consuming in our present fashion. This does not mean that we will have to stop
eating meat altogether. If we want to minimize our impact on the environment,
though, meat consumption per head will have to fall. Can human beings remain
omnivorous? For the time being, we can, but in moderation.

Short, snappy conclusion with an attractive ending

and a link back to the beginning

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 Bibliography

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environmental impact of various dietary patterns combined with different food
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Citation: Christopherson, R.W. & Birkeland, G. (2013). Elemental geosystems. Glenview: Pearson
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Elferink, E.V., Nonhebel, S. & Moll, H.C. (2008). Feeding livestock food residue
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Ercin, A.E., Aldaya, M.M. & Hoekstra, A.Y. (2012). The water footprint of soy milk
and soy burger and equivalent animal products. Ecological Indicators, 18, 392-402.
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Fearnside, P.M. (2001). Soybean cultivation as a threat to the environment in
Brazil. Environmental Conservation, 28(1), 23-38. Retrieved from https://faculty.
washington.edu/jhannah/geog270aut07/readings/GreenGeneRevolutions/
Fearnside%20-%20SoybeanCultivationThreatEnvironment.pdf
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report Food and Agriculture Organization. (2013). The state of food and agriculture 2013.
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Foster, C., Green, K., Bleda, M., Dewick, P., Evans, B., Flynn, A. & Mylan, J. (2007).
Environmental impacts of food production and consumption: A report to the
Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs. London: Manchester Business
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Gibbons, A. (2007). Food for thought. Science, 316(5831), 1558-1560.
Hoekstra, A.Y. & Mekonnen, M.M. (2012). The water footprint of humanity.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(9), 3232-3237. doi:10.1073/
pnas.1109936109
Marlow, H.J., Hayes, W.K., Soret, S., Carter, R.L., Schwab, E.R. & Sabaté, J. (2009).
Diet and the environment: does what you eat matter?. The American journal of
clinical nutrition, 89(5), 1699S-1703S. doi:10.3945/ajcn.2009.26736Z
Renault, D., & Wallender, W. W., (2000). Nutritional water productivity and diets.
Agricultural Water Management, 45(3), 275-296.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division.
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 Appendix B
Sample research article

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 Cannabis-users have stronger attentional
bias for cannabis cues. This is related to
problematic cannabis use, but not due to a
general defect in cognitive control.

Abstract

It is possible that individuals with a high level of cognitive control are more successful
in suppressing a stronger attentional bias for drug cues and thereby run a lower risk
of problematic drug use. The present study will examine this relationship. This was
investigated by administering the cannabis Stroop task (stronger attentional bias for
cannabis cues) and the classical Stroop task (cognitive control) in a group of heavy
cannabis users (N=26) and a matched control group (N=26). The severity of cannabis
use was measured using the CUDIT. The scores for the cannabis Stroop task were
significantly higher in the cannabis group than the control group, but the scores for
the classical Stroop task were equal between the groups. Within the cannabis group,
there was a positive correlation between the score for the CUDIT and the cannabis
Stroop task. In other words, the attentional bias for cannabis words was higher in the
cannabis group than in the control group, but the cognitive control scores were the
same. This suggests that cannabis users have stronger attentional bias for cannabis
cues and that this is not due to a general defect in cognitive control, but related to
problematic cannabis use. These findings supplement knowledge regarding cannabis
use and may have implications for policymakers.

This sample report is based on the article:

Cousijn, J., Watson, P., Koenders, L., Vingerhoets, W.A.M., Goudriaan, A.E., &
Wiers, R.W. (2013). Cannabis dependence, cognitive control and attentional bias for
cannabis words. Addictive Behaviors, 38, 2825-2832. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
addbeh.2013.08.011

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 Introduction

Theoretical The influential incentive sensitization model of addiction proposes that drug
framework on addiction arises because the brain is sensitized by the use of a drug. This means
attentional bias that someone who repeatedly uses drugs in the same environment becomes
hypersensitive to factors in this environment (Robinson & Berridge, 1993). These
environmental factors become drug cues, which strongly and automatically attract
this person’s attention (see Field and Cox, 2008, for a review). This leads to craving
for the drugs, which again increases the likelihood of reuse (Robinson & Berridge,
1993, 2000, 2001). Indeed, previous research has shown that increased attention
for drug cues is related to craving (see Field, Munafò and Franken, 2009, for a
meta-analysis), relapse into use, and escalation of drugs-related problems (Carpenter,
Schreiber, Church, & McDowell, 2006; Marhe, Waters, van de Wetering, & Franken,
2013; Waters, Marhe, & Franken, 2012). This shows that investigating increased
Problem statement:
social relevance attention for drug cues is an important behavioural indicator of problematic drug use.

In addition to the automatic, increased attention for drug cues, which increase the
Theoretical
framework on chance of drug use, there is a conscious cognitive control system that can suppress
cognitive control this tendency (Hofmann, Friese, & Strack, 2009; Stacy & Wiers, 2010; Wiers et
al., 2007). Cognitive control can be defined as the effective use of attention and
Theoretical memory processes, among other things, whereby behaviour can be modified flexibly
framework: (Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001; Ridderinkhof, Ullsperger, Crone,
relationship between & Nieuwenhuis, 2004). It is possible that individuals with a high level of cognitive
cognitive control
and attentional bias control are more successful in suppressing the stronger attentional bias for drug
cues and thereby run a lower risk of problematic drug use. However, this has not
Problem statement: previously been researched.
scientific relevance
The current study therefore examines the relationship between cognitive control,
Research question attentional bias for drug cues and problematic drug use. The hypothesis is that the
relationship between stronger attentional bias for drug cues and cannabis use is
Hypothesis dependent on the degree of cognitive control. Attentional bias for drug cues was
measured using the cannabis Stroop task (Cox, Fadardi, & Pothos, 2006). Cognitive
control was measured using the classical version of the Stroop task (Stroop, 1935).
Setup Both were administered in a group of heavy cannabis users and a matched control
group. Based on previous research (Cane, Sharma, & Albery, 2009; Field, 2005), the
expectation was that the cannabis users would have stronger attentional bias for the
Predictions
cannabis words in comparison to the neutral words, whereas this would not be the
case for the participants from the control group. In addition, it was expected that this
would not be a result of overall cognitive problems, and that this stronger attentional
bias for cannabis words would be related to cannabis use and cannabis dependence.

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 Method

Participants
The participants in the study were 26 heavy cannabis users and 26 participants who
never or hardly ever use cannabis (the control group), matched by age and gender.
All participants were aged between 18 and 30 years (see Table 1 for information about
the sample). All participants were recruited via online adverts. Cannabis users were
included if they had been using on a weekly basis for at least two years and had never
been treated for cannabis addiction. Participants in the control group were included
if they had not used any cannabis in the last month and had used cannabis fewer
than 50 times over their lives. Participants were excluded if they had a physical or
psychiatric disorder. The study was approved by the ethics committee of the Academic
Medical Centre in Amsterdam (AMC) and all participants signed an informed
consent form.

Materials
Demographic information about the sample was obtained by means of a generic
questionnaire, in which questions were also asked about cannabis use. The eight-item
Cannabis Use Identification Test (CUDIT; Adamson et al., 2010) was used to obtain
information about the severity of use and possible problems arising from cannabis
use. The CUDIT scores run from 0 to 32. Ninety-one per cent of patients who have
cannabis use disorders (cannabis abuse or addiction) score higher than 13 (Adamson
et al., 2010).

Cognitive control was measured using the validated Dutch version of the classical
Stroop task (Hammes, 1971). This test consisted of three subtests. For the first
subtest, one hundred words were printed on a sheet of paper in random order. These
were the words ‘blue’, ‘green’, ‘red’, and ‘yellow’ printed in black ink. The participants
had to read out loud what they could see as quickly as they could. In the second
subtest, one hundred coloured squares were printed on the sheet, in the colours blue,
green, red, and yellow. This time, the participants had to name the colour of the ink
as quickly as possible. In the third subtest, the four words ‘blue’, ‘green’, ‘red’, and
‘yellow’ were printed in coloured ink. The colour of the ink was incongruous with
the meaning of the word (for example, the word ‘blue’ was printed in yellow ink).
The cognitive control was calculated based on the time taken to carry out the various
sub-tasks (the average of the first two sub-tasks was deducted from the time taken
to carry out the third sub-task). A high score is an indication of interference and
therefore of low cognitive control.

The attentional bias for cannabis words was measured using the cannabis Stroop
task (Cox et al., 2006). The test consisted of two subtests. The first subtest consisted
of fourteen words related to cannabis use that were printed four times on a sheet of
paper in random order, in coloured ink (blue, red, yellow, and green). The second
subtest was identical, but consisted of fourteen random neutral words in coloured ink.

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 The participants had to say the name of the colour of the ink out loud. The measure
of attention was calculated by deducting the time taken to read out the neutral words
from the time taken to read out the cannabis words. A positive score is an indication
of interference due to the meaning of the words, and thereby indicates a stronger
attentional bias for cannabis words.

Procedure
Participants gave their informed consent in writing. The cannabis Stroop task was
administered first, alternately beginning with subtest 1 or subtest 2. The classical
Stroop task was subsequently administered, whereby the three sub-tasks were always
administered in the same order (1, 2, and 3). Finally, the demographic questions were
asked and the CUDIT was administered.

Statistical analysis
The demographic data were compared using independent t-tests and the male/female
proportions with an χ2-test. The scores for the attentional bias for cannabis words
and the cognitive control were compared between the cannabis group and the control
group using independent t-tests. Within the cannabis group, the researchers looked at
whether there was a relationship between the attentional bias for cannabis words and
problematic cannabis use, as measured with the CUDIT. This was done by means of a
Pearson correlation test.

Results

Both the cannabis use and the CUDIT scores were significantly higher in the
cannabis group than in the control group, and there was no significant difference
between the average ages of the two groups (Table 1). The proportion of women was
similar within the cannabis group (23%) and the control group (35%, χ2(1) = 0.84,
p = 0.36).

Descriptive On average, the attentional bias for cannabis words was significantly higher in the
statistics
cannabis group (M 2.04, SD = 3.52) than in the control group (M = -0.73, SD = 3.96,
Comparative t(50) = 2.68, p ≤ 0.01, Figure 1). By contrast, the scores for cognitive control were
statistics similar between the cannabis group (M = 32.71, SD = 10.86) and the control group (M
= 31.58, SD = 15.71, t(50) = 0.30, p = 0.76). Within the cannabis group, the researchers
found a positive correlation for stronger attentional bias for cannabis words and the
score on the CUDIT (r = 0.48, p = 0.01, Figure 2).

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 Table 1 Information about the sample of 26 cannabis users, six of whom are women
(23%), and 26 control users, nine of whom are women (35%)

Cannabis group (N=26) Control group (N=26) Statistical values

Average Standard Average Standard Test p-value
Deviation Deviation statistic
Age (years) 21.44 2.50 22.14 2.48 t(50) = -1.02 p = 0.31
Cannabis 3.33 4.25 0.02 0.10 t(25) = 3.97 p ≤ 0.01
use per week
(g)
CUDIT 12.42 6.00 0.04 0.20 t(25) = 10.51 p ≤ 0.01
score*
*CUDIT=Cannabis Use Disorders Identification Test

Figure 1 Attentional bias for cannabis words was significantly higher in the cannabis group
than in the control group

*
Attentional bias for cannabis words

10

-5

-10

-15
Cannabis group Control group

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 Figure 2 Within the cannabis group, a significant positive correlation was found between
the degree of problematic cannabis use (CUDIT score) and the attentional bias for cannabis
words
Attentional bias for cannabis words (ms)
7.5

2.5

-2.5

-5

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

CUDIT score

Discussion

The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between cognitive
control, stronger attentional bias for drug cues, and problematic drug use. It was
Summary of found that the group of cannabis users showed a stronger attentional bias for
results cannabis words compared to the group of healthy control group. In addition, we
found that the cognitive control of cannabis users was similar to that of the healthy
control group. It was also found that within the group of cannabis users, the stronger
attentional bias for cannabis words was related to more problematic cannabis use.
In conclusion: in the present study, no differences in cognitive control were found,
but a difference was found in attentional bias for cannabis cues between the cannabis
Conclusion group and the control group.

Evaluation: finding This suggests that cannabis users have a stronger attentional bias for cannabis cues,
on attentional bias which is not due to a general defect in cognitive control, but related to problematic
for cannabis cues cannabis use. The same relationship between stronger attentional bias for drug cues
and drug-use problems (dependence and use) has been demonstrated for different
sorts of drugs, including alcohol, nicotine, heroin, and cocaine (Field, 2005; Field
& Cox, 2008; Hester, Dixon & Garavan, 2006). The stronger attentional bias for
cannabis cues replicates the findings of Cane et al. (2009).

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 Evaluation:
The hypothesis investigated in this study was that individuals with a high degree of relationship
cognitive control would be more successful in suppressing the stronger attentional between cognitive
bias for drug cues, and thereby run a lower risk of problematic drug use. This has control, attentional
bias for drug cues,
been found in various studies that examine this relationship in alcohol cues (Friese,
and drug use
Bargas-Avila, Hofmann & Wiers, 2010; Grenard et al., 2008; Peeters et al., 2012).
However, our results do not support this hypothesis. This could be because the
majority of the cannabis users in our sample did not have a diagnosis of cannabis
dependence. Only 38% (just ten participants) of the cannabis users had a CUDIT Limitation
score of 13 or more, which can be seen as a clinical diagnosis of cannabis dependence.
It is therefore possible that we had insufficient statistical power to be able to
investigate the modulating role of cognitive control. Follow-up research should thus
include a sample with a sufficient number of dependent cannabis users.
Suggestion for
follow-up research
Although the present study can only speculate about causality, Waters et al. (2012)
reported that heroin and cocaine addicts had a stronger attentional bias for heroin
and cocaine cues just before craving arose and the participants experienced a relapse
in use. In addition, there are studies that have attempted to manipulate this stronger
attentional bias for drug cues through training, in order to influence drug use. This
has been done for alcohol addiction, for example, where it was indeed found that
lowering attentional bias for alcohol cues led to a lessening of relapse in alcohol use
(Fadardi & Cox, 2009; Schoenmakers et al., 2010). The same was found for nicotine
addiction (Attwood, O’Sullivan, Leonards, Mackintosh, & Munafò, 2008). In view of
the importance of attentional bias for drug cues in the process of addiction and the
possibility of influencing this, this remains an extremely important topic for
follow-up research.

The participants included in the cannabis group were all heavy cannabis users. Implication for
However, just 38% of the cannabis users had a CUDIT score of 13 or more, which can practice
be seen as a clinical diagnosis of cannabis dependence. This shows that heavy use
is not necessarily accompanied by dependence problems. In addition, in this study,
heavy use was not found to have a negative effect on cognitive control. These findings
add to our knowledge on cannabis use and may have implications for policymakers
(see also Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs [ACMD], 2003). In conclusion,
heavy cannabis users have a stronger attentional bias for cannabis cues, but this is not Conclusion
due to a general defect in cognitive control.

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 Index

A
abstract 20, 104
academic books 32
academic disciplines 12
advisory reports 20
analysis 99
anonymize 80
argumentation structure 88
articles 32
axial coding 85
B
Bloom’s classification 31
C
causal relationship 17
clean up your data 80
cluster questions thematically 70
coding 84
coding tree 85
comparative questions 56
concealed argument 44
concept 17, 33
concept map 26
conclusion 101
control group 77
convenience sampling 69
coordinating argumentation 42
correlation 17
D
databases 22
data fishing 80
data massaging 80
deduction 12
delimit 57
dimensions 51
discontinuous structures 105
discussion 101
double blind 78
double hermeneutic 79

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 E
elevator pitch 144
empirical scholarship 50
empiricism 12
et al. 106
ethical aspects 80
evaluate 101
exam 31
expectation 97
experimental design 77
experimental setup 97
explanatory questions 56
external validity 72
F
familiarize yourself with a discipline or topic 15
figure 100
follow-up research 102
fraud 121
G
gap in the existing knowledge 51
grey literature 20
H
hermeneutic 79
hourglass model 94
hypothesis 97
I
IMD structure 93
impact factor 19
implications 102
implicit assumption 45
indicators 60
inductive-deductive cycle 12
inductive phase 12
information brochure 73
informed consent 73
internal validity 72
interview script 71
introductory paragraph 97
J
journal 19
K
keywords 24

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 L
learning objectives 31
level of the argument 40
limitations 102
limit distractions while you’re studying 29
literature matrix 35
log 79
M
main question 57
manipulating 77
match 78
methodology section 98
mixed methods 67
N
negating 89
non-academic (or yet-to-become academic) publications from the academic
world 20
non-academic research reports 20
non-experimental design 77
non-random sampling 69
non-verbal communication 138
O
open coding 84
operationalization scheme 60
operationalize 59
outlier 122
P
paralingual communication 138
paraphrase 109
peer review 19, 130
plagiarism 109, 121
plot 80
plural argumentation 41
pomodoro technique 29
popular scientific books 20
poster presentation 143
prediction 97
probing 81
problem description 53
problem sketch 53
problem statement 49, 53
procedure 99

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 Q
qualitative research 64
quality 45
quantitative research 64
quote 109
R
randomizing 78
random sampling 68
reactivity 72
reference management software 35, 110
references 20
refuting 89
reliability 72
replicable 76
replicate 72
research instrument 64
research question 49, 55
results section 98
review articles 32
route 70
S
sample 68
sampling 68
scholarly journal 19
scholarly literature 20
scientific relevance 53
search engines 22
searching for literature 22
selection bias 68
selective coding 85
semi-structured 68
signal words 39
simple argument 40
single blind 78
snowball sampling 69
socially relevant 53
socratic method 132
source research 79
speed reading 25
stress position 105
structured 68
sub-conclusion 98
subjects of research 99
subordinate argumentation 42
sub-questions 57
systematic reading 33

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 T
table 101
theoretical framework 45, 49
theory 17, 33
title 104
topic list 68, 70
topic position 105
transcribing 83
transcript 83
V
validity 61, 72
valorization 103
variable 60
verifiable 76
W
write clearly 104

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 About the authors
Koen van der Gaast spent three years working as a lecturer for the Bachelor’s
programme in Future Planet Studies at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies.
He taught academic skills and various interdisciplinary courses at the interface
between the social and environmental sciences. He is presently a PhD candidate
at Wageningen University & Research and Aeres University of Applied Sciences,
Almere.
[email protected]

Laura Koenders started working as a lecturer after a research career in

neuropsychology. She has now been working for the University of Amsterdam’s
Bachelor’s programme in Psychobiology for more than three years. She teaches
academic skills and various courses in the fields of psychology, neuropsychology,
neuroanatomy, and research skills.
[email protected]

Ger Post spent five years working for the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
including as a lecturer in academic skills for the Master’s programme in Brain and
Cognitive Sciences and the Bachelor’s programme in Natural and Social Sciences.
He presently works as an educational specialist at the School of Biomedical Sciences
at the University of Melbourne.
[email protected]

About the University of Amsterdam

The University of Amsterdam (UvA) provides academic training in all areas of
science and scholarship, and welcomes students and staff – from all backgrounds,
cultures, and faiths – who wish to devote their talents to the development and
transfer of academic knowledge as a rich cultural resource and foundation for
sustainable progress.

About the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies

The Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies (IIS) is the UvA’s knowledge centre for
interdisciplinary learning and teaching. It develops new courses in collaboration with
the faculties.

The IIS has more than fifteen years of experience in interdisciplinary education and
continuously develops substantive education innovations with an interdisciplinary
character. The institute identifies new themes and issues linked to current
developments in academia and society.

More than 3,000 students study at the IIS. The IIS offers a number of
interdisciplinary study programmes along with a wide range of electives (minors,
honours modules, and various public events) for students from any faculty, staff,
and members of the public. All of its activities are interdisciplinary in nature and are
designed in collaboration with one or more faculties.

174

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 About the teaching lab
The IIS also functions as a teaching lab where experiments, publications, workshops,
guides, and methods for interdisciplinary education are shared. The institute
specializes in:
■■ teaching development and interdisciplinary education;
■■ curriculum development and accompanying organizational developments;
■■ the development of professional interdisciplinary teaching skills.

Contact
Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies
Science Park 904
1098 XH Amsterdam
Tel. +31 20 525 51 90
www.iis.uva.nl
[email protected] 


Design and layout

Bob van den Berg

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