Archives: Academic Life

In this last and final installment (for now) of this mini-series, I want to share one more tool with you. This one is hard to show, though if you read all of the drafts for the paper, I’ve been sharing with you, you’d see it. This is less of a tool and more of a statement of belief, but once I started thinking about writing in this way, it became more enjoyable, useful, and (dare I say) easier. 

Tool #4: Writing is Thinking. Don’t worry about the perfect words now (that’s what editing is for); allow the movement from vague idea to actual words on paper to help you clarify your ideas and sharpen your thinking.  

There is so much research on the power of words in peoples’ lives. For example, James Pennebaker has a long history of research on the relationship between expressive writing and health (physical and mental). One explanation for why writing about traumatic experiences and negative emotions can improve health is that it helps verbalize the unverbalized. Our brains treat words differently than non-words and this matters for our functioning. If this is true of emotional experiences, I don’t think it’s too far of a stretch to say that taking vague ideas (“I know what I want to say, but just don’t know how to say it!”) into words on paper can also impact the nature of the ideas themselves. (Just think about the massive developmental shifts that happen in children as they learn language; language is an important mechanism of these changes!) 

Once I started viewing writing as a means to help me think, it became less of a burden. Rather than needing to have a clear idea of what I wanted to say before I said anything, I had the freedom to write, change, and develop my idea as words escaped onto paper. My writing now is a way to highlight what I know, what I don’t know, and what I need to find out more about. I now approach writing with the explicit understanding that as I write, my thinking will develop; clarity will come and go (and eventually come back if I persist long enough). The thoughts about my paper at the beginning of the process are necessarily different than my thoughts at the end because through the process of writing they have been refined, reflected on, scrutinized, and developed. That is a great thing. There is so much freedom in knowing that where I start doesn’t have to be (and won’t be) where I end. I don’t have to get it right the first time.  

In the paper that I’ve been talking about throughout these example blogs, I had four friends (one psychologist, one theologian, and two philosophers) provide feedback on what I thought was a great, almost ready to submit draft. I asked such a diverse group because the intended audience is primarily philosophers/theologians, but I am talking about psychology; I wanted feedback from individuals who could speak to the topic from a variety of interests and expertise. I was hoping that these diverse experts could point out blind spots in my thinking that I couldn’t see myself. I found that each contributed important points to think about. For example, the theologian said,  

“I would have liked to see a little more integration with theology…”

This was an idea that I didn’t really know what to do with (though, I think he was right). However, when my psychologist friend said across a number of comments, 

I was able to better contextualize what my theologian friend was saying. My paper was out of balance (literally with my structure and word count) and I spent too much space exploring interesting ideas that were not relevant to my central point. This meant that I didn’t have enough space to actually engage the theology I really wanted to. With this feedback and criticism, I was able to reflect on the purpose of these sections and my word choices to make some structural and linguistic changes that, as I see it, ultimately improved my paper.  

Importantly, as I reflected on the feedback, I used the comments as a means to look for patterns rather than comments constrained to very specific sentences. Although a specific piece of feedback might be tied to a specific word or sentence, I don’t want to just think about that word/sentence. It’s like the adage about giving a person a fish versus teaching them to fish. When we apply feedback to only specific sentences, we’ve been given a fish (and that sentence may be improved). But, when we ask ourselves how that critique or comment might be relevant to other aspects of the paper, we are learning to fish (or, here, to write). 

 The feedback here and the rounds of revisions ultimately helped me align words on paper to a better organized idea in my head.

I think it’s fitting that I end this series with the statement (confession?) that writing is my means of thinking. Fitting because so often I hear students make comments about how they don’t know what they want to say and so they can’t write. It’s true that I’ve told students that you need to have a good idea of what you want to say before you write, but a good idea is not the same thing as your final idea (or a perfect idea). I want to free you from the pressure of knowing exactly what to say before you’ve said it. You can (and should) start writing before you know exactly what you want to say. However, when you say something the first time, that should not be the final time. When you use writing to develop your thinking, it is absolutely imperative that you revise your work¹. Failing to revise your writing short changes your thinking process; your first draft (or your second draft) is not your “done draft.” Really give yourself—and your writing—the time it needs to scaffold, challenge, and hone your thinking.  

Scientific writing, even though it has an “end” (you will eventually turn your paper in!), it is meant to capture a story of discovery. And discovery is ongoing.  

I’d love to hear from you: what do you think of this idea? What do you think of the relationship between writing, feedback, and thinking?  

Also, although this mini-series is ending, that doesn’t mean it’s over. (What?) What else do you want to know about writing? What problems, ideas, or tools do you want to know more about? Let me know (and I’ll get to writing soon)!

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¹Even if you don’t explicitly think of writing as thinking, it’s really important that you edit and revise. I think my argument holds whether you recognize the influence of writing on your thinking or not.

If you found this blog helpful, check out the overview of the whole series here, so that you can find more useful information to develop your writing.

 

At this point in the scientific writing mini-series, I’m inviting you to pull up a chair (or, for those who have been to my office, a ball) so that I can show you some behind the scenes to my writing process. In the most recent blog, I walked you through how I start to find and organize research articles (on paper and in Zotero). Here, I want to show you how I move from my horizontal, unlined pages of notes to what someone might recognize as a research paper. 

I start my paper by moving my dear mom draft to the top. (I skip all formatting at this step. No title page, no abstract, just words on document. Don’t let formatting concerns slow down your thinking. I also tend to prefer to start writing single spaced because it keeps more ideas in my frame of reference—literally what I can see in my word document.) I revise my statement to my mom, based on the work I did in my note taking and reading. From there, I start writing. 

I usually start with an outline (often a more fleshed out version of the dear mom draft). Once I have a shorthand version of what I think I might want to say in a (tentative) order that I’ve sketched, I just pick a section and start writing. I’m not going to beat around the bush: at this point in my writing process, I write terribly. I write with painstaking difficulty. And yet I write. The point here is to just start. The words that you write now will not (should not!) be the final words in your paper.  

I realize that this is not a helpful statement. However, it’s the best one that I can give you because having something on paper is necessary to really flex the next tool, I want to share with you, a tool I use to revise and improve my paper.

Tool #3: Delete in a psychologically safe way. (Alternative title: Don’t love your words too much.) 

In my own paper (the one I’ve been talking you through for the past few blogs) I had at least 8 drafts. And that doesn’t include all the editing that I did that didn’t meet my qualifications for renaming/calling it a “new draft”.

Across these drafts, I engaged four types of revisions. I’ll briefly describe each, but it’s the fourth that I want to spend a bit more time on. 

• Better words. Scholarly writing should consist of words you know and are comfortable using (e.g., don’t use a thesaurus to substitute in a word you don’t know), but it should also avoid being too casual/conversational (because it’s not a conversation, it’s an intentionally constructed argument)¹. Until the paper is final, you should continuously make small tweaks. Also, the more you write, the more you will find that you have specific idiosyncrasies in your writing to watch out for. For me, it’s not uncommon for me to start 2-4 sentences within two paragraphs with the world “Although.” This is not good writing and I always have to go back and edit this. Although I don’t want to. (See what I did there?) There are lots of good writing guides that include tips on language to use/avoid in professional writing; I have combined two of my favorite short, introductory guides here².  

• More explanation. As I write and edit, I take special care to remember that the reader is not inside my head (lucky them!) and that they don’t necessarily know all the things that I know. It’s really easy to write and assume that your reader knows/is thinking about the same thing as you are. However, good writers will provide all the necessary information for their reader to understand all their words. As I write, I constantly ask myself, “what is necessary knowledge for this sentence to make sense?” Sometimes that means I need to explain a lot more than I originally thought I would, and I spend a lot of time elaborating to explain necessary context. (Cognitive psychologists call this tendency to overstate shared knowledge as the curse of knowledge.) 

• Different organization. One of the things that happens as I think through the actual communication of ideas is that I realize that I need to say things in a different order. Think about good stories: there is not one “right” way to tell it, but there are surely better/worse ways. When we write—when we tell the scientific story of mystery and discovery—we can organize our information and ideas in a way that puts us on either side of the “better” or “worse” categorizations. Sometimes when I write, I craft the same story multiple times, but in different orders, or I talk through the rational for a certain way of organizing the paper with a colleague. Both of these practices give me a big picture framework (“meta”) to think about the flow of my story. It’s not unusual for me to re-organize the order of communicated items when I find that I’m spending a lot of time explaining; sometimes what has happened is that I’m explaining things that depend on a knowledge of what I haven’t yet told the reader about. Reorganizing can be within a sentence, within a paragraph, and—importantly—across the whole paper. Sometimes the best kinds of revisions are moving the last things said to the front³. 

• Deleted content. Okay, friends. This is where we need to talk. Have you ever worked really, really hard on a paper…or a paragraph…or a sentence and felt proud? I have. But the problem with this feeling is that sometimes the most perfectly crafted sentence in this draft just doesn’t work in the next draft. But all that pride and hard work makes it really, really hard to delete that sentence (or word, or phrase, or paragraph…). However, good writers don’t love their words too much.  

I recently listened to Adam Grant interview John Greene⁴ (Adam Grant: a really interesting organizational psychologist; John Greene: a really interesting author of books, including The Fault in Our Stars). One of the things the two discussed was about learning to evaluate your work (and writing) from an external perspective because when we produce words, we are naturally inclined to think they are better than they are. In psychology, there is some great research that shows that when we produce something, we automatically value it higher than when someone else has produced the same thing (this is called the Ikea Effect). So, knowing all of this, how do we write (which I’ve said you just need to do) and then ruthlessly cut what should be deleted later? 

I deal with this in a few ways: 

1. Don’t actually delete things, just move them to a part of the paper called “Things I Cut”, saving them for the draft (e.g., Draft 2.1). After a round of edits, delete the section called “Things I Cut” and resave the draft as Draft 2.2. This way, if you sincerely regret having cut what you did, you can reclaim it later (with just a little bit of work). This is psychologically safe—the words are still there. But when you read and revise Draft 2.2 and realize that you don’t even really miss what you cut your paper will be better for it.  

2. Make edits with track changes (saving pre-change/post-change as different drafts). Track changes is a wonderful way to write collaboratively, but it’s also a great way to keep track of your own changes. If you’ve never used track changes, it’s under the “Review” tab of your word document. It’s easy to do/undo tracked changes and, if you save a million copies (Draft 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4) you can even track your evolution of the use of track changes in a way that makes it easy to recover if you find that your deletion was a terrible mistake. 

What you might notice about both suggestions is that they both involve first distancing yourself from the words you’ve written without deleting them, and then practicing safe deletion (e.g., deletion that you can always go back on later, without having to re-write everything). This makes it psychologically safe, not scary, to delete because it doesn’t feel permanent in the moment of deletion. I remember doing this obsessively with my dissertation. And frankly, my dissertation is the only time I’ve ever gone back and added in something I had previously deleted. Yet, it still feels safer to delete in stages. My final paper doesn’t realize that I’m an obsessive saver and strategic deleter. My final paper just knows it’s better because of all the bad words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs I had the guts to recognize as poorly written and delete.  

Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m the only one obsessively committed to bad writing (and in need of an intentional intervention to allow myself the freedom to delete it). However, I would bet this is not the case. Do you find it hard to delete what you’ve worked so hard to write? How do you identify parts of your paper you need to delete and how do you do it? 

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¹Recent research shows that papers that use fancy words (compared to “plain” words) are not smarter articles; they are actually less likely to get cited. Bottom line? These articles have a smaller impact than other, better written articles.

²Another one is here. Some of my favorite pieces of advice from this guide include: “Academic writing may seem pompous and convoluted to you. A lot of it is, but the best is not. Do not use words just because they sound academic (especially when you aren’t sure what they really mean).”and“ When you read, pay attention to the different ways that people indicate the relationship of their work to the truth. Words such as indicate, demonstrate, prove (not used outside of mathematics), test (a hypothesis), hypothesize, suggest, assert, question, claim, conclude, argue, discover, define, and assume do have very specific meanings in academic discourse.” and from the appendix: “Vacant Lead Sentences. The first sentences of each section, and the first sentences of each paragraph as well, are the most important sentences. They should state, in plain English, your main points. Then the details can follow.”… “Distinguish between strong and weak statements. Good scientific writing uses qualifiers and caveats sparingly. Qualifiers apply to marginal results, arguable statements, speculations, and potential artifacts. They do not apply to strong findings, well-confirmed statements, or bedrock theory. “Seem”, “appear”, “indicate”, “may”, “suggest” and the like are meaningful verbs. They are not to be used reflexively.”

³There are many ways to conceptualize the order of a paper; different orders serve different purposes. I think, for example, about the movie Memento which starts at the end and works its way back in time. The story is substantially more compelling because of the ordering of events. Most scientific stories won’t be as dramatic as the kind of reverse chronology used in Memento, but you might find that telling this before that really improves the readability of a given paper.

⁴https://www.adamgrant.net/podcast/: Season 4, Episode 18

If you found this blog helpful, check out the overview of the whole series here, so that you can find more useful information to develop your writing.

Dear Mom, 

I’m writing a paper about how to write a paper. It’s a really cool topic because when you learn how to write effectively, people engage your ideas and data more; ideas and data can change the world. 

As I said in previous blogs in this series—blogs that cover what scientific writing is, two characteristics of good writers, the structure of a scientific paper, and the oh-so-important literature review—writing well involves understanding some big picture issues (e.g., why write and how to approach the task of writing) but big pictures don’t always translate into words-on-paper. So, in this blog, I want to share some tangible “this is what I do” nuts and bolts of the writing process.  

My point in sharing is not to say “this is the correct way to write,” but to show you some tools that you might find useful (in whole or in part, or even just to inspire you to come up with an even better method). As I share bits of my process, I am mindful that there are likely inefficiencies and weird things I do that might not actually improve my thinking. As I continue to grow in my writing skill, my process will probably change. The whole point of this blog is to provide potential scaffolds that invite you into that same process of growth. I’m going to do that by showing you my actual notes and some drafts with commentary for a recent literature review I wrote, a paper that published in September 2021. This paper is titled A tale of two perspectives: How psychology and neuroscience contribute to understanding personhood. 

To start, I want to address the opening of this blog: Dear Mom. Why, you might be wondering, do I have this random letter to my mother at the beginning of this blog? To answer that question, I will turn to the first tool in my writing process. 

Tool #1: Start writing. Break through any writers blocks by telling your mother about your paper…in your paper.  

My mom is a wonderful human being. She is a longtime educator and creator of things. In my educational adventure through high school, I’m certain that my mom read each and every paper I wrote. And each and every paper was returned decorated with red ink (the marks and critiques of a loving mother helping her daughter think better and reminding her that sometimes spell check doesn’t catch homophones-doh!). With this as a background, I picked up a habit in graduate school (origin unknown) to break writer’s block with what I call a dear mom draft. 

I find that sometimes the most challenging part of writing is just starting. You stare at a blank word document on your computer, suddenly remembering that you haven’t organized your cheese drawer in the fridge or that you don’t remember when you dusted your ceiling fan last or that you’ve always been meaning to sort the paper clips in your desk drawer (you know, to make your work—like writing this paper—easier in the future). And gosh, you’re hungry now. Let’s take a break. All of these (suddenly important) tasks pop into your mind because they seem somehow easier than the unknown answer to “what am I going to write in this paper?!” So, the trick that I learned to get going was to start a paper with a salutation (I chose my mom, you can choose anyone you like) and a few sentences about what you think this paper might be about.  

In May 2021, I was in that exact position I described above (the answer is that I have never dusted my ceiling fans. For shame.) I had agreed to write a paper with the general parameters of “a paper about how psychology can advance philosophy/theology around topics of personhood.” I was a bit paralyzed. How could I take such a broad topic and turn it into a paper that someone might want to read (and, importantly, a paper that someone may find useful)? I don’t suffer the illusion that my paper will change the world, but it’s possible that someone who reads it might have ideas that can change the world. Words and ideas matter—but we have to start by, well, starting. But how? 

Let me show you an example of how I got started: the dear mom draft.  

None of this actually made it into my paper. That wasn’t really the point. But my first drafts started with this narrative. The point wasn’t that these words were going to be final words; the point was to think about what I might want to say in this paper in a way that I could communicate it to an educated other (my intended audience). These few sentences served two primary purposes: 

1. They got words on paper. It’s easier to edit when there is something there. And sometimes, once you start, you get momentum (and thus more words to edit and help you think). 

2. They helped me start the process of clarifying what the purpose of my paper was. What did I want my reader to know? You can already start to see some outlines here: I want to tell them about research in developmental psychology and I want to tell them about research in neuroscience. I didn’t have all that research found and organized yet, but by having this protracted (unedited, stream of conscious) idea on paper, I could start my search for the research that I would use in my paper. (Remember, in science writing, citations are evidence.) 

Importantly, at the point of my dear mom draft, I was already vaguely familiar with the research I intended to search for; I knew a bit about what the research in developmental psychology and neuroscience would say. (Though, rest assured, I absolutely learned some new things that shaped the direction of my paper, too!) If you know nothing about anything that might be relevant to your topic, you need to do some reading before you can even start to tell your mom what you want to talk about. For a class, this pre-work might be re-reading the textbook and the assigned reading. Re-reading the assigned material on the broad topic you will be exploring will serve as the foundation of your thinking about what you might want to say. It will be enough to get your dear mom draft going, which is the beginning of your real research (i.e., finding, reading, and synthesizing original research into your paper).  

Stay tuned for our next blog, where I show you how I move from dear mom to first draft. In the meantime, have you ever written something like a dear mom draft? What do you think of the idea? I’d love to know!  

If you found this blog helpful, check out the overview of the whole series here, so that you can find more useful information to develop your writing.

In my previous blogs in this series on scientific writing, I have covered what scientific writing is, the characteristics good writers develop, and the basic structure/purpose of different sections of a scientific paper. This is all well and good (well, at least I think it is….and you’re still here, so I’m hoping you do too), but I’ll venture that at least one of you is thinking, “but how does this apply to the paper I have to write this semester?” (I’m looking at you, Psy 328 students.) In this blog and the next, I want to focus on a specific kind of science writing, the kind that most of you will encounter as your run of the mill “research paper/literature review assignment.” Today, I will focus on conceptualizing a literature review; in the next post I will pull back the curtain on a recent literature review I wrote and walk you through my process. 

The Literature Review 

A literature review is a summary and synthesis of what other researchers have studied and found about a specific topic. This differs in important ways from the introduction-methods-results-discussion format I discussed previously. Literature reviews bring together different programs of research or theories or they synthesize research in a way that suggests new ideas or theories. The goals of a literature review will vary as a function of the intended audience; effective writers (of all stripes, not just science writers) know who their audience is, and they communicate directly to them, an issue I take up in my next post. Literature reviews are a key staple of any body of research (or, thinking in the metaphor from my last blog, a section of tapestry) because they provide an overview of that part of the tapestry.  

Literature reviews do not have all the sections of the APA style paper but share the end goal of describing how bits of the tapestry (our knowledge, as informed by emerging and ongoing research and analysis) fit together. Literature reviews are a type of research papers without original data and are thus, at their core, conceptual. To write an effective literature review it is vital to know what you want to say and bring in appropriate evidence (other people’s research) to build your case. A literature review isn’t driven by or organized around a specific set of data but rather the idea(s) of the writer. When writing a literature review, a very common type of paper assignment in college, you need to be able to clearly answer the questions: 

• Why would someone read this paper/what should they know/think when they are finished?  
• What is the thing that you have to tell them?  

As you will see when I share my process in the next blog, I find the process of writing to be utterly instrumental in the development of how I answer these important literature review questions. If you don’t have a clear idea of what you want your reader to know when you start writing, you should, at minimum, know after numerous rounds of revision. By the time your paper is finished you should be able to share in a sentence or two the “big picture idea” that your paper is engaging. (This is why you should always, always (!) write your abstract last. If you write your abstract first, you should have to re-write it to reflect the final organization which will change through the process of writing and revision.) If you can’t summarize your big idea in a few sentences (the famed “elevator pitch”), I would question whether you have a clear and focused idea of what your paper is about.  

Keep in mind that your words-on-paper are the only access that your reader has to your thoughts. No matter how brilliant your thoughts are, if your reader can’t fully discern them from your words-on-paper, your thoughts will be unable to make the desired impact. For me, my revision process is, in part, how I decide what I want to say (i.e., do I need to explain this more? This bit of information is interesting, but does it enhance my story or is it tangential to it?). My revision process also helps me focus on whether I am organizing my thoughts in a way that achieves my goals (e.g., communicates my ideas and thoughts).  

Once you know what you want to say in a literature review, remember that the research needs to be presented in a way that tells a story, the story of the thing you want your reader to know. If you are telling a story, that means that every citation, idea, or theory you include has a purpose—to advance, nuance, enrich—the storyline. Citations are the evidence of the thing you have said. Each sentence should contribute to the developing plotline of discovery you are leading your reader on. 

Take, as an example, a literature review on “eyewitness testimony.” This is a massive topic with lots of research exploring different aspects of eyewitness testimony. If you were to go to google scholar or the library database and search “eyewitness testimony” you will get a ton of sources exploring the many dimensions of eyewitness testimony. You might find some about how it is used in a courtroom, how race, gender, and age influence accuracy, and a whole host of memory biases that we need to consider. Yet, the quantity of sources says nothing about whether these sources should all be grouped together in this paper that you are writing. Just selecting a few and talking about them consecutively does not tell a good story. Imagine a paper that looked like an exploded paintball on the diagram below; the splatter (each citation/idea) is random, only loosely connected to the (very broad) concept of “eyewitness testimony.” As the splatter is random, so is this kind of paper.   

What you want to do in any literature review is have a clear idea of your focus (for example, where the yellow arrow is pointed in the diagram: a paper on how race, gender, and age interact with memory biases to influence eyewitness testimony). In this example, such a focus will help you determine to include only the research on race, gender and age on eyewitness testimony that overlaps with research on memory bias. There will be a lot of research on race, gender, and age as well as memory biases in eyewitness testimony, but when you have clarified that you are focusing on where they meet, it will help you know when to exclude interesting research that is not laser focused on your relevant topic. Such a focus is a really important first step (one that can emerge in the organization and revision of the paper as writing can refine the focus), but keep in mind that you will still need to organize the ideas in a way that is coherent, logical, and persuasive (more on that in the next blog). 

As I will tell my students: there needs to be some reason to include all of the citations, ideas and theories in your paper. Why are they together in these pages? To answer this question, you need to have a clear focus of what your paper is about and what it might be related to, but also what it is not about. This kind of clarity will guide the sources and ideas that you include as part of your discussion and the choice to not include one. The papers and ideas in your paper should hang together to help guide your reader to your ultimate conclusion: an understanding of whatever the thing is that you want your reader to know.  

Sneak Peek 

As a bit of a sneak peak, I’ll tell you that in the next blog, I plan to pull back the curtain on a paper I wrote just this year. The paper, titled A tale of two perspectives: How psychology and neuroscience contribute to understanding personhood, is one that I started thinking about in January, 2021. I did all the reading and writing for the paper, start to submission, in the month of May, 2021. (A timeline not too unlike a typical semester paper assignment.) I have since learned that this paper was accepted for publication (after some formatting fixes and a required reduction in word count)¹. In the next post, I’ll guide you through my process by sharing my notes and behind-the-scenes revisions with commentary on my process. My goal is to share some nuts and bolts for how I go from an idea-in-head and a stack of articles to a science story. I’ll address the question of “do these ideas hang together, given my audience?” mentioned above and tackle the question of “where (and how) do I start?”   

Although I want you to stay tuned, I’d also like to hear from you: do you like writing literature reviews? Why or why not? What is the hardest part for you? Share your thoughts below.  

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¹I will add a link to the paper here once it is finally published (a process that usually takes longer than we think it should…).

If you found this blog helpful, check out the overview of the whole series here, so that you can find more useful information to develop your writing.

In two previous posts (which you should read first!), I described introduced the idea of science writing as storytelling, and I explored two traits of effective writers. In this blog, I want to dive a bit deeper into the structure of scientific papers, how scientific papers document evidence that can contribute to our emerging understanding of “how the world works” (the goal of science). I will do this by discussing the purpose of different sections of an APA style paper¹.  

The Structure of Scientific Writing 

Introduction: The first part of a scientific paper is called an introduction (though the label may not appear on the paper itself). The introduction sets the stage for the science story. Here, the writer needs to frame the story by drawing from and connecting previous theory and research to the specific research in the paper. The framing of the story will be relatively big, but throughout the introduction the writer will consistently narrow in on the specific thread of the story that they are going to weave with their study.  

I like to think of the introduction as an upside-down triangle. The beginning of the intro lays out the big ideas: what is at stake and what ideas are on the table. But, as the reader (and writer) progresses through the introduction, the big ideas need to be narrowed to the realm of hypothesis. The whole science story (our discovery and construction of the way the world works) is like a giant tapestry in-progress. The whole section of the tapestry, when you step back to look at it, is the top of the upside-down triangle. (The WHOLE tapestry is the whole of human knowledge. Imagine zooming into a relatively large section of the tapestry where you can still see images and chunks of the tapestry’s story, without seeing individual threads. This section is the “whole” tapestry that the top of the upside-down triangle shows.) But individual research studies can’t deal with the whole tapestry, so throughout the introduction the reader starts to look closer at a specific part of the tapestry that is under construction. There are lots of threads here. The hypotheses of the research study, presented at/near the end of the introduction, is a zoomed-in view of one (maybe two) of these threads. The research is going to pull on these threads to see if they fit this way or that way. The individual research study is at this zoomed-in view, but the view itself won’t be meaningful without the larger picture. 

In an attempt to be explicit about my metaphors², the individual threads of the hypotheses are the very bottom point of the upside-down triangle where the plotline of the story is unfolding (scientific plot = discovery).  

In this way, the introduction absolutely has the flavor of a plot. You first set the scene, then you carefully guide your reader to pay attention to some (but not all) of the scene³. Importantly, the introduction also sets the stage for the drama of the plot, as in, “Look at all these things we know and, yet, we still cannot say with certainty how this thread fits into the tapestry. This is why my research study is needed.” 

Method: The method section is critical in the scientific story because this is where the writer starts to lay out their process for pulling the strings of the tapestry. When researchers clearly describe how they collected their data, who provided the data (in the case of human sciences), when the data were collected (etc.), then the readers have sufficient description of the process to evaluate the data that these methods and participants produced⁴.  

One of the things that makes psychology and the other social sciences so interesting (and difficult) is that the subject matter—people—are really complex. There are so many influences on human thinking and behavior, more influences than could ever be fully accounted for in any individual research study. Thus, the goal is not to measure absolutely everything, but to measure the most important things and to account for influences on how the data are produced and understood. The introduction will have brought all of these relevant influences on the table; here the science story slows down in order to really lay out the details of the process. If we return to the upside-down triangle/tapestry metaphor, the method and results sections are smaller still, zooming in to the smallest point of that triangle, examining the tapestry at the level of the thread content and composition of this particular section of the tapestry.  

If this individual research study is going to be added to the tapestry that the science story is a part of, it needs to be clear how and why the strings of the tapestry were pulled and prodded the way they were. 

 Results: The results section is where the author presents their scientific story in the language of math (and statistics)⁵. Results sections should be written without interpretation. They are designed to be a straightforward depiction of the statistical procedures and ensuing numbers. For example, “A 2 (book vs. video) by 2 (male vs. female) analysis of variance was conducted…” describes an analytic method that compared two conditions (book and video) across two genders (male and female), both of which are being treated as independent variables. The test will look at how males and females in the separate conditions of book or video scored on some dependent variable (unnamed in this example). The report would also provide the inferential statistics (e.g., t-test or, in the case of an ANOVA an F-statistic) and p-value. Let’s say that there was a statistically significant difference (i.e., p < .05) between how people responded to book versus video in this fictitious example⁶, the author would simply note that in a statistics sentence without interpreting the meaning of such a finding (e.g., “When exposed to books, problem-solving was higher (M = 5.67, SD = 1.21) than when exposed to videos (M = 2.12, SD = .34), F(1, 34) = 5.93, p < .05.)⁷ The implications of the higher problem solving scores for books compared to videos would not be interpreted here. 

Discussion: The discussion section starts with a rephrase of the results in plain English (or whatever language the paper is being written in). Take all the t-tests, ANOVAs, and multiple regressions and translate them here, omitting the statistical language. So, we might say, “Problem solving improved after exposure to books compared to videos” as a straightforward rephrase of the (fictional) test reported above. In one or two paragraphs, the key findings from the results section will be presented. This serves a few purposes. First, it helps your reader through the weeds of the analyses (especially those who skimmed it). Second, it prepares your discussion by providing a key opportunity to frame it. Throughout the discussion, the key findings will be discussed beyond what they are and extended to what they mean. Really, the discussion is the reversal of the triangle from the introduction section. The discussion turns the whole paper into an hourglass shape⁸. 

In the discussion, the key ideas introduced in the introduction get connected to the specific findings. Implications for the broader tapestry of the science story are addressed here. This is where the writer draws final connections and communicates the importance of this research story. When we know that these strings of the tapestry do that, what does that mean? How does (if it does) change our understanding of the neighboring tapestry strings? Do we have to rethink our reinterpretation of the tapestry at all, because of these findings? Does it extend our understanding in any way? Any one research paper won’t do all these things, but it will do something. This is where the writer helps the reader understand what, exactly, has been done in this paper. 

Importantly, the discussion section also highlights what this research does not do. Every study has limits and leaves open questions (either new questions or questions that remain unanswered or unclear). This section is not a trivial place to say, “we should have had a larger sample”, but a place to really wrestle with what we do and don’t know about our science story. It is also a great place to set up the next science story to help us figure out this particularly tricky part of the tapestry. Remember that good science writers are interested in improvement (growth mindset) and are genuinely curious about why things work the way they do. This means that they will not manufacture limitations where they do not exist, nor will they minimize limitations that do exist. 

The Beautiful Tapestry 

In this blog, I intended to provide a big picture framework for an individual paper; what the goals of the various paper elements are and how to think about their structure. I used the metaphor of scientific writing as the vehicle by which individual scientific studies weave small bits of a (very large) tapestry of knowledge. This is an important start, but still a bit vague on some of the details. (How do you weave?!) In blogs to com, I’ll start to unpack some specific things that I do in my own writing. It is my hope that by walking you through my example you will have the opportunity to duplicate, modify, or generate new practices that will help you develop into a better writer. 

For now, I want to hear from you: what parts of writing do you enjoy the most? What do you most loathe? Leave a comment below! 

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¹An “APA Style Paper” is a paper that is constructed according to the guidelines published by the American Psychological Association. APA style refers to the specific conventions (e.g., how to format citations) and to a style of writing. Here, I am not particularly interested in the formatting issues, but more so in the goals of the writing. These goals are shared across many scientific disciplines, even if the specific formatting style varies.

²As all members of my family, and many of my students, will attest, metaphors, idioms, and other similar language mechanisms are not my strong suit. And yet, here I am, working on my weaknesses…

³One important difference between a well-written fiction story and a scientific story is that fiction is exciting because of what is left out, what is left to the readers’ imagination. Fiction authors take advantage of allowing their readers to fill in the blanks in powerful and (often) personal ways. Science stories do not leave these same kinds of blanks. Although scientific stories have to be selective about what is included (thereby omitting some details), the goal is not to have readers fill in the blanks. One of the functions of peer-review is to ensure that important parts of the scene have not been ignored or omitted. The goal is for readers to clearly see all that is involved. Where there may be “fill-in-the-blanks” ideas, science stories will include citations for their readers to complete those omissions in a way that is consistent with previous research.

⁴Remember from Part 1: science stories are built on verifiable and compelling evidence. “Trust me, I’m a doctor” just won’t work.

⁵There are, of course, exceptions to this rule (i.e., qualitative research). However, the language of the results does change to reflect the actual analysis of the data, whatever those data are like.

⁶To connect this to methods language: a finding that there was a difference in books vs. videos on the dependent variable would be an example of a main effect; we could say that there is a main effect of media (book vs. video) on the dependent variable.

⁷The numbers in this example statistic sentence are totally made up. However, from this sentence the reader can discern important information about the main effect of the independent variable (book vs. video) on the dependent variable (problem-solving). How these variables were operationalized and measured would have been described in the method section.

⁸See the image about science papers and hourglasses here: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Framing-a-scientific-paper-The-structure-of-a-paper-mirrors-that-of-an-hourglass_fig1_307014555 If you are feeling ambitious, read the paper that it comes from, also available at this link.

If you found this blog helpful, check out the overview of the whole series here, so that you can find more useful information to develop your writing.

When I was in high school, I read The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde¹. Since it was published in 1891, I’m just going to assume that what I’ll say here about the novel doesn’t require a spoiler alert. (But, alas, if you want to avoid such a spoiler, kindly skip to the next paragraph now.) What I loved about the novel was the extreme (and incredible) juxtaposition between this dashing young man and the gruesome portrait that hid his true inner reality. He was morally and psychologically bankrupt, a secret held by his portrait. On the inside, he was empty.  

Why bring up such a tale in a blog with the subtitle, scientific writing – part 2, you ask? In the paragraphs that follow, I want to argue that writing well, especially writing of the scientific variety, requires the development of certain internal characteristics. It’s not enough to have a Dorian Gray kind of face. We need to do some inner work to effectively engage scientific writing. That is what this post is about.  

Before I lose you on the thought, “this doesn’t apply to me because I’m not a scientist! I don’t need scientific writing!”, let me address this erroneous thought head on. In your classes you are engaging scientific work and talking about it, sometimes in written form. That is scientific writing. Many of you will continue to engage these primary resources in future careers. However, even those of you who don’t: the practice of clearly delineating and communicating evidence, at the core of scientific writing, is also key to communication in general. The specific formats and expectations about details (APA style, for example) may vary, but the practice of clear thinking and information storytelling—this is something you will use well beyond your classroom years. As such, in this and future blogs, when I talk about you, dear reader, as a “scientific writer,” this is not a mistake. This is for you.  

Now, back to the rodeo. 

Developing the Disposition of a Scientific Writer 

As a graduate student, I remember co-authoring a manuscript that would become my first peer-reviewed paper published in the well-respected journal Child Development. I remember the excitement of feeling like I had something to contribute, something to say. I had an emotional connection with my paper. It—and by proxy I—was awesome. 

And then came peer review. 

The peer review for this paper was critical and hard to digest. But in the lengthy process of revision (which took multiple rounds, each with new critical peer review comments), I started to learn some valuable lessons, lessons that I want to share with you today. Reflecting on my experiences with peer review that started in graduate school, I have learned that scientific writing is more effective when I, as the writer, am committed to the ongoing development of a growth mindset and a disposition of curiosity. I believe that good scientific writers share these traits, traits that can—good news—be learned.  

Good Scientific Writers have a Growth Mindset 

Elsewhere in the CSHB blog archives there are discussions on the growth mindset. Mindset is an idea developed by Dr. Carol Dweck, a developmental psychologist at Stanford University. She argues that there are different ways of thinking about traits such as intelligence. We can consider intelligence (and intellectual capacity) to be relatively fixed—stable and enduring across the lifespan—or malleable—able to be grown and developed with effort. These beliefs about intelligence being fixed or malleable represent two ends of a continuum, with people existing at and between the extremes.  

Although Dweck’s work started with intellectual ability, it has expanded to include beliefs about traits like artistic skill, athletic ability, business acumen/leadership, relational capacity, etc. It just makes sense that we could also talk about our beliefs about writing ability. Let’s take a quick check on your beliefs: do you believe that, with practice, feedback (including criticism!), and more practice (and criticism) that you could get better at writing? Or, do you think that you are, more or less, as good as you are going to be? Think about the last paper you wrote: how many times did you read and revise it? Do you think the revision process valuable? Did you seek out critical feedback? When your professor made a suggestion, what kind of reaction did you have? I would bet that students who believe that practice and feedback are a valuable part of improving their writing abilities will spend more time revising, visiting the University Writing Center, and meeting with their professor to review drafts. These efforts are not just because they want a good grade, but because they believe these behaviors are an important part of the process of their writing skill development. This is consistent with a growth-oriented mindset, the belief that effort is directly related to skill growth and associated outcomes. What Dweck’s work shows, in general, is that the belief that you can develop and improve in an ability, like writing, leads you to behave in a way that makes it so, for example by practicing, revising, and seeking out feedback for improvement.  

Moreover, an important feature of the growth mindset is the belief that you are not your work². The work that you produce reflects your effort, sure, but a critical comment (or comments—plural!) is not an inditement of you. Rather, it is feedback about your process, effort, or something that led to the work. This feedback is all a part of the learning and growing process. In a podcast on receiving critical feedback well, Mellody Hobson said something that really made me think: she argued that critical feedback is a gift, and not a right. When someone gives you feedback, no matter how hard it is to hear, it is because they love and care for you enough to give it to you. That, she says, is an opportunity that should not be squandered.  

When I receive critical peer review today—and I do!—instead of immediately succumbing to a negative emotional reaction, I reframe the feedback. This peer reviewer at least thought enough of my paper to take the time to read it and provide critical feedback. Their points are worth wrestling with. Even when I don’t incorporate the changes suggested by the peer reviewer, my paper is always better because I had to really think through why they thought what they did, what that means for my argument, and how I can strengthen what I have to say/how I’m saying it. This response is only possible when I don’t take the criticism personal, but instead use it as an opportunity to develop my ability to write more clearly, more persuasively, and more effectively. A growth mindset says that engaging feedback—especially critical feedback—is central to the development of writing well. 

Good Scientific Writers are Curious 

Although there are likely many more qualities of good scientific writers, the second I want to share here is that good scientific writers are curious. Curiosity is a core feature of good scientists (e.g., “why does the world work this way? What explains that phenomenon?), but it is also reflected in good scientific writing.  

Curiosity is reflected in a comprehensive literature review, a deep and developing understanding of all the relevant information to the present question. Curiosity is reflected in creative and clear methods, documented thoroughly to allow for an open and honest appraisal from others. Curiosity is also reflected in an openness to the data. When we, as researchers, look at data, we have our own ideas about why they are the way they are. These ideas come from a number of sources, including our command of the scientific literature and our own worldviews and experiences. Curiosity allows individuals to say, “this is how I see it,” without getting defensive when someone else says, “yes, but have you thought of this possibility?” That other possibility is just that—a possibility. For the curious, possibilities are exciting³.  

Back to Dorian 

Although the reading of Dorian Gray has stuck with me, high school was also many (too many) years ago. There are details of the story that I don’t remember. And still, I feel confident that Dorian Gray would not have been an effective science storyteller, as he lacked a growth mindset and curiosity (along with a bunch of other important traits). Of course, as a bit of an optimist, I think that even Gray could have, with the right motivation and mentorship, learned these skills. Just like I’m learning them and like I hope you will. It will benefit your writing—and so much more.  

I have more to say on scientific writing—and say I will. If you made it this far, I would love to hear from you: what do you find is your biggest barrier to writing well? Do these characteristics of good scientific writers resonate with you? What else might you consider adding to that list? Let me know with a comment below and stay tuned—there is more to come on writing well. 

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¹I have not seen the movie, so I can’t comment except to say, rooted in my own deep (non-scientific) convictions, the book is better.

²This is a great, short video introduction to the idea of mindset: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUWn_TJTrnU. Pay special attention to the commentary on Jay and Anne’s work, and how that commentary (i.e., critical feedback) is interpreted.

³Here is a helpful guide for giving and receiving criticism in a way that is helpful: https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2021/03/science-relies-constructive-criticism-here-s-how-keep-it-useful-and-respectful

If you found this blog helpful, check out the overview of the whole series here, so that you can find more useful information to develop your writing.

My pastor has the most creative sermon titles. There is a game that we play at the end-of-year volunteers’ party which(inevitably) includes a question to try to spot the fake sermon title among all the real ones. It is next level difficult. It is in that vein that I label this blog, My Little Pony Dungeons and Dragons though, really, this blog is not about that. Not directly. Intrigued? Read on.

Now that you are (mildly) intrigued, I’ll be honest with you: I have played an adapted form of Dungeons and Dragons with My Little Ponies trying to save the world through the power of friendship. Before you think I’m weird(er than you already know me to be), let me contextualize this as a game that my whole family plays on game night. In addition to the art (see the excellent pony made by my daughter, 4 years old at the time), the math (constantly adding and subtracting dice of various numbers), and the time together, there is story. That is really what this blog is about: story.

Google defines story, in part, in reference to the plot of a thing, what it’s really about. Although our minds might immediately travel to fiction—or ponies protecting the world—in my work as a researcher I find it helpful to think about scientific writing as a particular kind of storytelling. Over the next few blog posts, I tackle scientific writing as story¹. (Can you see why I lead with ponies and dragons now? In theory, it has led you read at least this far.)

In this post, I want to introduce you to the basic premise of scientific writing. In future posts, I will explore how to approach the (sometimes daunting) task of writing well and I will frame some ideas around the different components in a scientific paper. If you’re lucky (or, as my dad would say, “a glutton for punishment”), I may even write a blog with some nitty gritty details, sharing examples from a recent paper I wrote (and re-wrote…and re-wrote again).

What is Scientific Writing?

Although you know what writing is, is anything changed by adding “scientific” as an adjective before it? To answer this question, we need to think about science. Science is the study of the natural world. Science describes how things are, explores how/why things work the way they do, and makes predictions about how things might/could/would work, given what we know. Science uses systematic observation—testing, observing, measuring things in the world in strategic and systematic ways—to draw conclusions about the world². There are many (many!) different empirical methods in science, but they share the common feature of systematic measurement and observation to acquire knowledge. Moreover, science is democratic and cumulative, meaning that debating conclusions based on (and building from) previous research in a public forum is inherent in how science works. The scientific community requires that statements about “the way things are/work” be backed up with verifiable and compelling evidence³.

By this understanding of science, then, scientific writing is the formal documentation of the scientific story with discovery as the core plotline. Scientific writing is how scientists document the verifiable and compelling evidence gathered by members of the scientific community to tell the story about how the world (and the people in it) work. Done well, scientific writing communicates the mystique and intrigue of discovery within the natural world⁴.

When I conduct a research study, I write it up in a manuscript which is submitted to a journal. The journal will send this manuscript to 2 or 3 reviewers (who are blind to my identity). This process of peer-review ensures that my paper—this piece of scientific writing—is of sufficient quality and caliber to contribute to science and warrant publication. Part of my job in writing the story is to tell the reader what they need to know in a logical, connected way⁵. (Remember, I can’t just write “this is how the world works: believe me, I’m cool; I play pony-dragons.” I have to, in my paper, document the whole process of my research so that when I ultimately claim that “this is how the world works”, my reader understands how my evidence—the research—led to that conclusion.)

So, in many ways, scientific writing is like all good writing; it differs in its content (an explication of empirically demonstrated evidence), but it is rooted in narratives of discovery.

This narrative of discovery has some formalized sections (i.e., the introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections of an APA paper). However, before we talk about these sections we need to talk about the scientific story writer. Before any words are on (digital) paper, it’s important for a scientific story writer to start with a helpful orientation to the process of writing, an orientation that is highly influential for writing successfully.

While you wait for part 2 (perhaps rolling up your own MLP dungeons and dragons character), I’d like to know: what kinds of experiences have you had with science writing? When I say “science writing,” what comes to mind/what assumptions do you have about what it is/isn’t?

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¹As I see it, writing on “writing well” is one of the most daunting topics I could choose. There are many who have written on this, and many who have written on this better than I will do here. Part of the point that I aim to make is that writing is a skill that is developed. That means that, like you, I am in development. However, if I waited until I could communicate about scientific writing skill development perfectly, then this blog would never be written and any potential benefit of this communication, imperfect as it may be, would be lost. As I will encourage you to do: start where you are and commit to developing, uncomfortable as it may be. Your product won’t be perfect, but perfect isn’t a requirement for progress. In writing this blog for you and I’m practicing what I’m preaching.

²Although many students might not immediately associate “psychology” with “science,” it should be clear that psychology is a science, even if it doesn’t share all the methods of natural sciences. That it would have different methods makes sense because it has different a subject matter; surely we can agree that we can (and should) study cells differently than human persons (even if the human persons are made up of cells).

³A very easy introduction to what science is, can be found here. If you are interested specifically in thinking about how psychological science works and fits into science, you can check out this introduction.

⁴Despite common assumptions, science is not a list of facts about the world. Science includes facts, but it not mainly a compilation of them. As such, effective scientific writing will communicate the mystique and intrigue of discovery, not just consolidate a list of findings.

⁵This has implications for the actual process of organization and writing that I will address in a future post. My metaphor hear is about maps and directions, but I’ll leave it be for now.

If you found this blog helpful, check out the overview of the whole series here, so that you can find more useful information to develop your writing.

A few months back, I decided to do something crazy. No, I didn’t sky dive (I’ve done that already). No, I didn’t wander out of a Beijing airport at 2am, totally jetlagged and confused, hoping I understood what I had been told to do (I’ve done that too). And no, I didn’t have a baby and then fly with said 3-week-old baby and her toddler sister to Oxford for 5 weeks (yep, I’ve done that crazy thing, too). This time I did something truly audacious: I sat down to write a three-part blog series on writing well, with the goal of helping my students (you!) think about research writing not as a chore to be dreaded (avoided, and finally—at the very last minute—begrudgingly completed) but instead as an opportunity to develop the skills required to turn ideas into words that inspire action and world change. Of the things I’ve listed in this paragraph, I’m not sure what the craziest item is. 

What I had originally set out to do in three blog posts is now eight (nine if you count this one). And, if I’m honest, I haven’t even said all the things I wanted to. But I still think that what I’ve done is crazy—and it just might be helpful. So, I wanted to spend a few more sentences outlining what to expect in this blog series. I will end with an invitation for you.  

In the first two blogs, I focus on some topics around orienting yourself to the task of writing. First, I address the question of what scientific writing is (hint: if you are reading this blog on this research website, you are likely have/are going to engage scientific writing at some point in your educational or professional career). Second, I explore two characteristics of effective science writers, characteristics that promote the skill development of writing well. 

In blogs three and four, I zoom in a bit and tackle how scientific papers are organized. Blog three covers the purpose of the different sections of an APA style research paper and blog four tackles how to organize a literature review of research as a stand-alone paper. For all things, including writing, I firmly believe that when we understand the purpose of something, we can engage in a way that increases the likelihood of fulfilling that purpose. In science writing, fulfilling the purpose includes clear and effective communication of discovery (e.g., what things are really like, why the world works the way it does), because discovery is the plotline of science.  

From there, blogs five through eight take a bit of a nosedive into the weeds of writing. I provide 4 examples of tools that I use in my own writing. I take the case example of a paper I recently wrote, a literature review, and I show a few of my steps from start to finish. I tell you about my Dear Mom Draft; I show you how I organize my early literature review search of research articles to deepen my understanding and preparation to start writing; I give you a peek inside my method for editing—especially how I go about deleting sentences that I know need to go but that are hard to let go of; I underscore how the writing process is the thinking process—revision isn’t just for more clarity of phrase, but for clarity of thought.  

Across all these blogs, my goal is to reinforce a basic truth about writing: it is a skill that is developed with practice. I hope that, across these blogs, you’ll be better prepared to engage in the practice of writing well and that you might learn a few tools that are useful in your own skill development.  

There are, of course, many other issues (tools, obstacles, ideas) about writing well that these blogs don’t cover. For example, I didn’t talk at all about reading as a fundamental to good writing (it is!) or specifics of focusing a research question and searching library databases for good sources (key concerns!). Another big one mentioned by a student of mine that I don’t really address is how to maintain motivation to write in the face of waning enthusiasm (and an approaching deadline). Perhaps I’ll take these up in another miniseries which I might call revenge of the writing well blog.  

Between now and the revenge, as these blogs go live over the coming weeks, I want to issue you an invitation. I invite you to engage these blogs as opportunities for your own development. Writing well is not just about the research, it’s about the world change that comes with effective communication and clear thinking. Sure, this might not come out of that paper you are writing for your class, but the skills that you are practicing may just prepare you to be able to do just that. In addition to this long-term invitation, I want to know at the outset: what is it about writing well that you want to learn more about? 

3/7/2022 Update: The University Writing Center, an excellent CBU resource for developing your writing skills, has also contributed their thoughts as a continuation of this blog series. You can (and should) check that blog out here.

Note: This is the final post in a three part series. You can start here, but you might find it worthwhile to read the first and the second post in the series!

As I’ve previously discussed, content analysis can be used to investigate picture books. It can, of course, also be used to explore patterns in traditional novels and young adult (YA) literature. One area of YA literature that has traditionally been considered “taboo” to include is religion—especially positive depictions of religion. But as YA literature embraces a more diverse portrayal of young adults, wouldn’t that also include diverse depictions of their religious beliefs? To answer this question, Dr. Alspach and I set out to conduct a content analysis of recent YA literature.

We had three primary research questions:

1.) To what extent is religion referenced in contemporary young adult fiction?

2.) How diverse is that representation? Which religions (or areligious beliefs) are most often included? How well does this reflect the actual landscape of young adult religious practice?

3.) When religion is discussed, is the representation positive, negative, neutral or mixed/complicated?

Sample

Selecting a sample for content analysis can greatly influence the results of the study. Are we looking at all published books? The popular ones? The award winners? We chose to use several lists compiled by the American Library Association since many teachers and librarians use these lists to select which new books to purchase and use in the classroom. We used several different lists so our sample would represent both “good” literature and “popular” literature. The lists we investigated produced a research sample of 38 books, including fiction and nonfiction in a variety of formats.

Procedure

Each novel was read and coded independently by two of the three researchers. We examined the books looking for overt, explicit religious references, including the direct identification of religious ideas and affiliation (i.e., a narrator or character identifying someone as atheist or Protestant or Catholic, references to deities or religious organizations, etc.), religious personnel (priests, monks, bodhisattvas, etc.), religious artifacts and apparel (i.e., prayer beads, prayer mats, crucifixes, hijabs, etc.), or religious activity (i.e., service attendance, prayer, etc.). Our coding framework also included identifying which religion was mentioned and the depth of the reference: “background,” “supporting,” or “central” to the story. After each reader had independently coded the texts, we compared results and found a high level of inter-rater reliability in all categories.

Findings

Although we found many interesting aspects of the texts we coded (and wound up with many new questions), here’s a very brief summary. The majority (87%) of the books had some religious reference—ranging from mentioning a hijab to a deep exploration of religious identity. The most commonly depicted religion was Christianity, but other contemporary religions represented in the books included Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, atheism, voodoo, Baha’i, Zoroastrianism, and even fairly small sects such as Hutterites.

Previous literary scholars, such as Campbell (1994), had identified the propensity for young adult texts to portray religion and religious figures in a manner that merely vilifies those religious traditions. We were curious to see if texts had changed in that regard, and when we coded our sample, we found that they had. We noted 20% as neutral in their religious depictions, 10% as predominantly negative in their depiction, and about 13% of the texts as purely positive in their depictions. For the majority of the texts (55%), the religious representations were mixed or complicated.

Implications

Beyond satisfying our curiosity, this content analysis offers some insight into the current state of YA literature. The books in our sample depict a variety of religious viewpoints and reactions to those viewpoints, reflecting some of the diverse experiences young adults have in terms of religious engagement. These depictions offer young adults an opportunity to see themselves in their literature as well as to learn about the beliefs and practices of others.

Looking for these patterns and trends through content analysis offers a different way of looking at what’s important to our culture—the stories we create and consume both shape and are shaped by our perception of the world. The study of literature and social science research may at first seem an odd pairing, but at their heart, they are both ways of trying to understand human nature and behavior, investigating how we perceive the world and how we share our ideas, and, if we’re really lucky, sometimes that includes a really snazzy data visualization.

Think about what you’ve been reading lately: what do you think it might say about the culture that produced it and about you as someone who consumes it? Share your thoughts below.

References

Campbell, P. (1994). The sand in the oyster. Horn Book Magazine, 70(6), 756–759.

Travis, E.J., Alspach, B., & Keith, A. (2020). Let’s talk about it: Representations of religion in young adult literature. Manuscript in preparation. California Baptist University.

Note: This is part two of a series of three. You can start here, but you might find it worthwhile to read the first post in the series!

Often when we think of social science research, we think of experiments, surveys, interviews, and maybe even some fieldwork. We think of Baby Albert, the Stanford Prison experiments, and Likert scales. I would hazard to guess that most people assume that social science must involve, well, people. But there are other researchers who study people’s creations—diaries, letters, news articles, advertisements, blogs, Instagram accounts, books, and other artifacts—to see what they tell us about the people who crafted them and to consider how they, in turn, shape the people who consume them. One method these researchers employ is content analysis, the search for patterns in recorded communication that involves identifying and categorizing themes, concepts, depictions, and even word choice within a text.

“Content analysis tells us about the creators of material and how they shape the people who consume these creations”

Since I teach children’s literature, and have several children of my own, I am particularly interested in the content analysis of children’s books. What do the stories we tell children tell us about ourselves? Who gets to tell the stories? What picture of the world do they present to children? What’s normal? What’s not? Who gets what job? What is a family like? Who speaks and who stays quiet? Is your life like the life you see in the book?

Like all research, content analysis is inherently limited—we can’t consider all the things in all the books all the time. The sample is limited. And our coding frame might miss something, or the researcher might miscode something. The measurement is limited. These are the common concerns with all empirical research. One content analysis doesn’t “prove” anything. However, it does tell us something—so here are the kinds of things researchers consider through the content analysis of children’s books and a few interesting findings.

Common Themes

One focus for content analyses is the messages and values children’s books present as important. Showalter (2016) found that best-selling picture books tend to embrace the following “virtues”: Kindness, Love, Creativity, and Vitality. But traditional virtues such as Spirituality, Humility, Self-Regulation, Forgiveness, and Mercy were rarely found. The books did, however, also embrace Vanity, Impulsivity, and Indulgence. Burton (2020) found that children’s picture books most often expressed a need to love, to be loved, and to belong.

Children’s Experiences

Other researchers look at how narratives present real-life situations. Phillips & Sturm’s (2013) study of books about kindergarten suggests that while these books accurately portray the classroom and childhood development, they lack development of child/teacher relations, racial and ethnic diversity, family involvement, and children’s quiet/alone time. A content analysis of the depiction of disabilities in Newbery Award winners from 1975-2009 found that while the depiction of characters with disabilities was generally positive, it was not proportionate to real life, in either basic population or racial diversity (Leininger et al., 2010). Other studies detail depictions of cancer (Doering, 2020; Huang et al., 2017), bullying (Oppliger & Davis, 2016;Wiseman et al., 2019), transracial adoption (Sun, 2016), religion (Raina, 2016), and other life experiences.

Factors Influencing Behavior

Researchers are also interested in how reading may equip children to navigate real-life challenges. Goloway’s (2019) analysis of fairytales from 22 different cultures found that 96% of the fairytale studied contained “multiple specific references to the three-dominant evidence-based factors” of Masten’s model of resilience. Goloway links this emphasis on resilience as a positive way to increase resilience in the child reader, especially as a protective factor for children in families impacted by substance use disorder (SUD). A study of dietary behaviors in pictures book suggests that picture books portray a variety of problematic eating behaviors of interest to social science research and psychologists; however, the problem-solving strategies used in such books do not generally line up with research-based nutrition approaches (Matvienko, 2016). So, while the books bring up real problems, they don’t offer viable solutions.

Careers & Disciplines

Another large area of interest is how picture books present adults—how are different roles and careers visualized for young readers? Are these representations diverse? Limited? Kelly’s (2018) analysis of science trade books for children considers whether this type of children’s book has improved in the diversity of depictions of scientists—spoiler, it hasn’t. The fictional scientists pictured in the award-winners were mostly white and male. Furthermore, the books mostly depicted science as life science (rather than chemistry, astronomy, etc.), giving a rather limited view of what science is really all about. Similarly, Patterson (2019) found that almost half of the children’s books on the New York Times’ best-seller list included some politically relevant content, but that the depictions of democratic leaders were most often male while monarchial leaders were most often female and less likely to actively participate in a political process in the book. In investigating these monarchial leader narratives (i.e., princess stories), Dale et al. (2016) agreed that gender stereotypes were common in the books studied: The protagonists were most often distressed, naïve, beautiful princesses who quickly fell in love. As children’s book communicate ideas about worldview, reality, and future expectations, it’s important we understand what messages they convey.

This quick overview shows the wide variety in how content analysis can be applied to children’s picture books. As we live in a world that is increasingly aware of how powerful media, including books, can be in shaping the readers’ perception of reality, I imagine this field of study will only grow. And as it does, literary concerns like characterization, setting, theme, motifs, etc., will play an important part in the critical analysis of the texts.

Click here to read the final part of this series!

References

Burton, S. C. (2011). Childhood needs and children’s literature: A content analysis of award-winning books [ProQuest Information & Learning]. In Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences (Vol. 71, Issue 11–A, p. 3968).

Dale, L. P., Higgins, B. E., Pinkerton, N., Couto, M., Mansolillo, V., Weisinger, N., & Flores, M. (2016). Princess picture books: Content and messages. Journal of Research in Childhood Education,30(2), 185–199. https://doi.org/10.1080/02568543.2016.1143415

Doering, K. L. (2020). Inclusivity in children’s literature: Examining quality of text, accuracy of representation of children with cancer in picturebooks, and children’s response to three specific texts[ProQuest Information & Learning]. In Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering (Vol. 81, Issue 5–B).

Goloway, S. (2018). Happily ever resilient: A content analysis of themes of resilience in fairytales [ProQuest Information &Learning]. In Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences (Vol. 79, Issue 3–A(E)).

Huang, X., Lee, S., Hu, Y., Gao, H., & O’Connor, M. (2015). Talking about maternal breast cancer with young children: A content analysis of text in children’s books. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 40(6), 609–621. https://doi.org/10.1093/jpepsy/jsu110

Kelly, L. B. (2018). An analysis of award‐winning science trade books for children: Who are the scientists, and what is science? Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 55(8), 1188–1210. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21447

Leininger, M., Dyches, T. T., Prater, M. A., & Heath, M. A. (2010). Newbery Award winning books 1975-2009: How do they portray disabilities? Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 45(4), 583–596.

Matvienko, O. (2016). Qualitative analysis of dietary behaviors in picture book fiction for 4-to 8-year-olds. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 48(9), 602–608. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2016.06.005

Oppliger, P. A., & Davis, A. (2016). Portrayals of bullying: A content analysis of picture books for preschoolers. Early Childhood Education Journal, 44(5), 515–526. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-015-0734-1

Patterson, M. M. (2019). Children’s literature as a vehicle for political socialization: An examination of best-selling picture books 2012–2017. The Journal of Genetic Psychology: Research and Theory on Human Development, 180(4–5), 231–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221325.2019.1635077

Phillips, E. C., & Sturm, B. W. (2013). Do picture books about starting kindergarten portray the kindergarten experience in developmentally appropriate ways? Early Childhood Education Journal, 41(6), 465–475. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-012-0560-7

Raina, S. A. (2010). Critical content analysis of postcolonial texts: Representations of Muslims within children’s and adolescent literature [ProQuest Information & Learning]. In Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences (Vol. 70, Issue 11–A, p. 4215).

Showalter, R. A. (2016). Virtue and vice in children’s literature: A content analysis of best-selling American picture books [ProQuest Information & Learning]. In Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering (Vol. 76, Issue 10–B(E)).

Sun, L. (2015). Critical content analysis of adoption texts: Representations of transracial Chinese adoption within children’s picture books [ProQuest Information & Learning]. In Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences (Vol. 75, Issue 12–A(E)).

Wiseman, A. M., Vehabovic, N., & Jones, J. S. (2019). Intersections of race and bullying in children’s literature: Transitions, racism, and counternarratives. Early Childhood Education Journal, 47(4), 465–474. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-019-00933-9