Writing Empirical Research Reports: A Basic Guide for Students of the Social and Behavioral Sciences

I found this book as a PhD student when I first began writing research reports and since then, I have used it as a reference guide to help keep my writing focused and organized. From what I understand, this book is not meant to teach you how to write or to help you generate content. If you have nothing to write about or if your ideas do not logically make sense, your writing (or lack thereof) will reflect this. What this book does offer is a series of simple, straightforward guidelines (with numerous before-and-after examples) on how to express yourself in the format of a standard research report. Furthermore, the book describes each section of a research paper and explains how that section fits in with the paper as a whole. These descriptions can help give new writers a sense of how to structure their arguments to make the most of the research report format. Finally, I wholeheartedly disagree with the earlier reviewer who believes that simply being at the higher levels of academia means that one must have already succeeded as a writer. If this were the case, then every paper published would be well-constructed, lucid and easily accessible to others in the field. Anybody who has read more than a dozen articles knows that this is far from true. Furthermore, having a lengthy history of writing (various papers in school, admission essays, etc) does not guarantee that someone will be able to easily write up a complex study with multiple experiments drawing from an extensive body of literature. If your education is worth anything then you will likely find that the demands of writing become greater as one progresses through academia because the projects become more complex and the audience more discriminating. Many thanks to the authors for putting together such a valuable and concise guide!

Provides excellent guide for college and aspiring college authors of research papers. Offers a series of guidelines of what to (and what not to) include in a competent report. Do not confuse this text with a style manual, or a topic selector. Students who find this guide useful will be familiar with a style and have selected their research topic. This guide facilitates the presentation of a students research. For those who have worked hard, this guide provides a useful method of sharing that industry with others.