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or a political standpoint and so forth. But arguments can also be subtler, weaving together different items from your critical review of the literature, taking a more equivocal position, weighing up merits and faults and coming to a nuanced conclusion. A good argument should always take into account different ways of thinking about the issues at hand in order to arrive at an evaluation of the subject matter. It is vital that your argument should be coherent so that it holds together throughout. The argument needs to be set up at the beginning, explained and
the place in which to get bogged down in a long-standing and complex debate about the nature of sociological objects and their relationship to concepts. Rather, our purpose here is to work out how best to make use of definitions of objects and concepts when they can be found in the academic literature, and what to do when such definitions elude you. We shall deal with the latter problem first. At first sight, struggling to find how a particular object or concept has been defined in an academic paper might present quite a challenge. The most immediate action
answering it Whatever kind of dissertation you write, you must choose a topic that is sociological, meaning that it is informed by debates, concepts and theories from the academic literature. You will be expected to identify not only a topic on which academics have written, but also a specific puzzle or problem, related to this topic and literature, about which you can formulate a research question. This is not to say that you will necessarily start with a ready-made topic that is recognisably sociological, although you might. Instead, you may begin from an issue
A Research Handbook for Patient and Public Involvement Researchers Chapter 1: Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) and the research process Andrew C Grundy Chapter overview This chapter defines and introduces the different stages of the research process: from identifying a problem, to reviewing the literature; then developing a research question; designing a study; obtaining funding and ethical approval; recruiting participants; collecting and analysing data; and reporting and disseminating findings. This chapter will outline how users of health services, their
main concepts and propositions used in the academic literature, provide evidence of this, show how they are connected and by doing so present your own argument. It is your argument that you must summarise in the conclusion by weaving together the points that you have made based on your use of the academic literature. Again, this can only be done if your middle section is satisfactory. Below is a further example, from an essay in which students were asked to discuss whether friends are now interchangeable with kin. One particular student has provided a more
either position it is unlikely that you will convince anybody. In a similar fashion, you need to convince not just yourself but also your reader of the position you have adopted or the interpretation you favour. You will be pitting your own argument against other possible interpretations of the question and literatures on which you draw. It is particularly important to remember that the path you take to reach your conclusions is just as important as the conclusions themselves. Moreover, that path needs to be made plain to the reader in order to make sure that
are not a replacement for reading original sources. Be flexible; begin reading a little to help you get a sense of the range of angles on your essay topic, and use that growing sense to help you judge other items on your list of possible things to read. Checking the bibliographies in textbooks and key recommended references can help you to identify the most important items. And sometimes, especially if you are in your final year or working on reviewing literature for your dissertation, it is very important indeed to go back to an original source. For example, an
ethnocentrism, homogeneity and essentialism. Improving the example There are some great features of writing and argument in this paragraph and it really shows that the student has read a number of sources and has thought about the order of the sources and quotations she uses. The paragraph focuses well on just one specific and important point and does it justice. In all, the paragraph is a strong example, yet it could be improved a little by tidying up the second sentence, and adding one extra technique. Identifying propositions in the literature
known and what will the review provide an answer to?). 1 Searching the literature (how and where studies will be identified). 2 3 Data extraction (how results will be transferred from the original studies to a review spreadsheet, so that the results of all the included studies can be viewed together). 4 A Research Handbook for Patient and Public Involvement Researchers Conducting a review 5 Quality assessment (to judge how well the original studies were conducted, and to identify any particular strengths or weaknesses that might have influenced their results
next. This can mean that practitioners do not read the academic literature or attend academic conferences that discuss research communication; making some of the more obvious places for communication less successful. Furthermore, practitioners are not always under the same institutional pressures or norms to communicate their findings, and they may not have the professional academic research and writing skills that are required for work to feature in academic journals. For those practitioners working in small companies or freelance, there may even be institutional