Things to Consider in Academic Writing

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Şehnaz Şahinkarakaş

1. Use language that reduce bias• a) Be specific while describing individuals

Poor Preferred Be specific

Man or woman men and women

Over 62 ages 63-70

• b) be sensitive to labels for individuals or groups (don’t judge any groups)

Poor Preferred Put people first followed by a descriptive phrase

Schizophrenics people diagnosed with scizophrenics

Use parallel nouns

Man and wife

husband and wife

• c) acknowledge participation of people in a study

Poor Preferred Use impersonal termsSubjects/informants Participants

Use unbiased wordsWomen doctor Doctor

Put people first, not their disabilityMentally ill person person with mental illness

2. Encode Scholarly Terms into Your Research• Encode: Intentially use some terms to show your knowledge

about research.

• E.g. • Don’t use random in a qualitative study; it shows you don’t

know the difference of sampling in quantitative and qualitative research (use purposeful instead)

• compare and relate are good words for quantitative research; explore and discover are good words for qualitative

3. Use Ethical Writing

• Ethical writing means• Honestly reported• Shared with participants• Not previously published• Not plagiarized• Not influenced by personal interest• Properly credited to authors that make a contribution

4. Use an Appropriate Point of View• Depends on the type of your research• In quantitative research:• The researcher is the third person• Avoid use of ‘I’; use impersonal point of view (The researcher

stated….; The results were reported..)• Objectivity is emphasized

• In qualitative research:• First person (I or We) is accepted• Can be written in a lively manner• May end with questions that are unanswered

5. Balance Your Research and Content• Don’t overemphasize (trying to affect people that you know!) or

underemphasize (lack of research and content knowledge) while writing about the research.

• Poor Model (overemphasis):• In this project, survey random sampling will be used so that each

department chair has an equal opportunity of being selected. Moreover, it is important to use stratification procedures so individuals in the sample are selected in proportion to which they are represented in the population.

• Better Model• In this project, 400 academic chairpersons were randomply sampled so that

results could be generalized to the population of academic chairpersons in Research institutions of higher education (N=2000). Moreover, the 400 chairpersons represented both men and women chairs in proportion to which they were represented in the total population (300 males; 100 females).

6. Interconnect Sections for Consistency• Interconnecting sections provide a consistent discussion.

• How can we do this?• Repeat the key words everytime it is needed (the variables for

quantitative studies; the central phenomenon for qualitative)• Use exactly the same wording when you repeat the research

questions/hypotheses• Refer to previous or forthcoming sections

• E.g. As discussed in 2.4.1 OR (see Section 2.4.1)

6. Advance a Concise Title• To write a good title

• Follow APA• Avoid too long ones (recommended 12 words)• Use colon if you want to add additional info• Don’t use acronyms• Don’t use a complete sentence• Don’t make the research question the title

REFERENCES

• Creswell, J. W. (2012). Educational Research: Planning, Conducting and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research (4th edition). Boston: Pearson.

• www.phdcomics.com