Publishing Social Research: Considerations and Strategies

Chapter 15Summarizing and Reporting Research

Social Research Publication • What should be considered when publishing social research?

Introduction • The stage of reporting research results is also the point at which the need for new research is identified. • It is the time when, so to speak, “the rubber hits the road”—when we have to make our research make sense to others. • To whom will our research be addressed? • How should we present our results to them? • Will we seek to influence how our research report is used?

Comparing Research Designs • The central features of experiments, surveys, qualitative methods, and comparative historical methods provide distinct perspectives even when used to study the same social processes. • Comparing subjects randomly assigned to a treatment and to a comparison group, asking standard questions of the members of a random sample, observing while participating in a natural social setting, recording published statistics on national characteristics, and reading historical documents involve markedly different decisions about measurement, causality, and generalizability.

Comparing Research Designs, cont. • Not one of these methods can reasonably be graded as superior to the others in all respects, and each varies in its suitability to different research questions and goals. • Choosing among them for a particular investigation requires consideration of the research problem, opportunities and resources, prior research, philosophical commitments, and research goals.

Writing Research • The goal of research is not just to discover something but also to communicate that discovery to a larger audience: other social scientists, government officials, your teachers, the general public—perhaps several of these audiences. • Whatever the study’s particular outcome, if the intended audience for the research comprehends the results and learns from them, the research can be judged a success.

Writing Research, cont. • If the intended audience does not learn about the study’s results, the research should be judged a failure—no matter how expensive the research, how sophisticated its design, or how much you (or others) invested in it. • Successful research reporting requires both good writing and a proper publication outlet. • Consider the following principles formulated by experienced writers (Booth, Colomb, & Williams 1995:150–151):

Writing Research, cont. Respect the complexity of the task and don’t expect to write a polished draft in a linear fashion. Your thinking will develop as you write, causing you to reorganize and rewrite. Leave enough time for dead ends, restarts, revisions, and so on, and accept the fact that you will discard much of what you write. Write as fast as you comfortably can. Don’t worry about spelling, grammar, and so on until you are polishing things up. Ask anyone whom you trust for reactions to what you have written. Write as you go along, so you have notes and report segments drafted even before you focus on writing the report.

Writing Research, cont. • It is important to outline a report before writing it, but neither the report’s organization nor the first written draft should be considered fixed. • As you write, you will get new ideas about how to organize the report. Try them out. • As you review the first draft, you will see many ways to improve your writing. • Focus particularly on how to shorten and clarify your statements. • Make sure each paragraph concerns only one topic. • Remember the golden rule of good writing: Writing is revising!

Writing Research, cont. • You can ease the burden of report writing in several ways: • Draw on the research proposal and on project notes. • Use a word processing program on a computer to facilitate reorganizing and editing. • Seek criticism from friends, teachers, and other research consumers before turning in the final product. • Most important, leave yourself enough time so that you can revise, several times if possible, before turning in the final draft.

Reporting Research • You began writing your research report when you worked on the research proposal, and you will find that the final report is much easier to write, and more adequate, if you write more material for it as you work out issues during the project. • It is very disappointing to discover that something important was left out when it is too late to do anything about it. • But be forewarned: The last-minute approach does not work for research reports.

Journal Articles • Writing for academic journals is perhaps the toughest form of writing, because articles are submitted to several experts in your field for careful review—anonymously, with most journals—prior to acceptance for publication. • Perhaps it wouldn’t be such an arduous process if so many academic journals did not have rejection rates in excess of 90% and turnaround times for reviews that are usually several months.

Journal Articles, cont. • Even the best articles, in the judgment of the reviewers, are given a “revise and resubmit” after the first review and then are evaluated all over again after the revisions are concluded. • But there are some important benefits of journal article procedures. • First and foremost is the identification of areas in need of improvement, as the eyes of the author(s) are replaced by those of previously uninvolved, subject-matter experts and methodologists.

Journal Articles, cont. • A good journal editor makes sure that he or she has a list of many different types of experts available for reviewing whatever types of articles the journal is likely to receive. • There is parallel benefit for the author(s): It is always beneficial to review criticisms of your own work by people who know the field well. It can be a painful and time-consuming process, but the entire field moves forward as researchers continually critique and suggest improvements in each other’s research reports.

Applied Research Reports • Applied research reports are written for a different audience than the professional social scientists and students who read academic journals. • Typically, an applied report is written with a wide audience of potential users in mind and to serve multiple purposes. • Often, both the audience and the purpose are established by the agency or other organization that funded the research project on which the report is based.

Applied Research Reports, cont. • Sometimes, the researcher may use the report to provide a broad descriptive overview of study findings that will be presented more succinctly in a subsequent journal article. • In either case, an applied report typically provides much more information about a research project than does a journal article and relies primarily on descriptive statistics rather than only those statistics useful for the specific hypothesis tests that are likely to be the primary focus of a journal article.

Applied Research Reports, cont. • One of the major differences between an applied research report and a journal article is that a journal article must focus on answering a particular research question, whereas an applied report is likely to have the broader purpose of describing a wide range of study findings and attempting to meet the needs of diverse audiences that have divergent purposes in mind for the research. • But a research report that simply describes “findings” without some larger purpose in mind is unlikely to be effective in reaching any audience. • Anticipating the needs of the intended audience(s) and identifying the ways in which the report can be useful to them will result in a product that is less likely to be ignored.

Reporting Quantitative and Qualitative Research • The requirements for good research reports are similar in many respects for quantitative and qualitative research projects.

Reporting Quantitative and Qualitative Research • Reports based on qualitative research should be enriched in each section with elements that reflect the more holistic and reflexive approach of qualitative projects. • Reports on mixed methods projects should include subsections in the methods section that introduce each method, and then distinguish findings from qualitative and quantitative analyses in the findings section.

Ethics, Politics, and Research Reports • It is at the time of reporting research results that the researcher’s ethical duty to be honest becomes paramount. • Here are some guidelines: • Provide an honest accounting of how the research was carried out and where the initial research design had to be changed. • Evaluate honestly the strengths and weaknesses of your research design. • Refer to prior research and interpret your findings within the body of literature resulting from that prior research. • Maintain a full record of the research project so that questions can be answered if they arise.

Ethics, Politics, and Research Reports, cont. Avoid “lying with statistics” or using graphs to mislead. Acknowledge the sponsors of the research. Thank staff who made major contributions. Be sure that the order of authorship for coauthored reports is discussed in advance and reflects agreed-upon principles.

Ethics, Politics, and Research Reports, cont. • Ethical research reporting should not mean ineffective reporting. • You need to tell a coherent story in the report and avoid losing track of the story in a thicket of minuscule details. • You do not need to report every twist and turn in the conceptualization of the research problem or the conduct of the research. • But be suspicious of reports that don’t seem to admit to the possibility of any room for improvement.

Ethics, Politics, and Research Reports, cont. • Social science is an ongoing enterprise in which one research report makes its most valuable contribution by laying the groundwork for another, more sophisticated, research project. • Highlight important findings in the research report, but also use the research report to point out what are likely to be the most productive directions for future researchers.

Communicating With the Public • Even following appropriate guidelines like these, however, will not prevent controversy and conflict over research on sensitive issues.

Plagiarism • Maintaining professional integrity—honesty and openness in research procedures and results—is the foundation for ethical research practice. • When it comes to research publications and reports, being honest and open means avoiding plagiarism: • Presenting, as one’s own, the ideas or words of another person or persons for academic evaluation without proper acknowledgement (plagiarism). (Hard et al. 2006:1059)

Conclusions • Good critical skills are essential when evaluating research reports, whether your own or those produced by others. • There are always weak points in any research, even published research. • It is an indication of strength, not weakness, to recognize areas where one’s own research needs to be, or could have been, improved.

Publishing Social Research: Considerations and Strategies