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\nIt is important when writing about research to be specific. And by writing about research I mean writing about methods in a journal article, writing methods in a thesis or journal article, writing about research \u00a0design in a research bid. See what I did there? Specific, not vague.<\/p>\n
Now I\u2019m guessing you\u00a0do<\/em> know that examiners and peer reviewers always look to find the details in design and methods. They search for N = number of people, things and places, the times you are in your research location and the number of transcripts you are working on. If you don\u2019t have these N details about the research, your chapter, paper or bid will fall down.<\/p>\n However, these are not the only places where it\u2019s easy to be imprecise. You can also be vague and woolly in two other places \u2013 writing about what you want to do, and writing about your results. And, like not having N info, lack of attention to details here can cost you too.<\/p>\n If you are doing an intervention study, design or action research, or a trial, you might find yourself using these words \u2013 improve, enhance, reduce, lessen, change. Problem. These are imprecise terms. The point of intervention studies is that you can see if you have achieved what you set out to do. So the words improve, enhance, reduce, lessen, change<\/i> really don\u2019t cut it.\u00a0 You need to do more work on what these these terms mean.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take an example.<\/p>\n If you wanted to improve<\/em> something \u2013 say the ways in which doctoral researchers approach literature reviews \u2013 then you need to make improve<\/i> much more explicit. Does improve<\/i> mean that DRs<\/p>\n and you can keep adding possibilities I\u2019m sure.\u00a0You get the point. You have to say what you mean in order to see if your intervention has \u2018worked\u2019.<\/p>\n There are lots of places in reporting results where you can get very imprecise. Like saying lots of places<\/i>. Words like lots, many, few, the minority, the majority, most, frequently, rarely, often, sometimes<\/i>, are all classic instances where imprecision takes over. Problem. How is the reader to know what you mean?<\/p>\n An example or two will help.<\/p>\n Examiners and reviewers almost always pick up vagueness (two or three might not care but the rest of us do). While examiners and reviewers might let you get away with one or two instances of opaque, unclear and unfocused writing in results, we\/they\u2019ll not accept much more. And we\/they\u2019ll just outright reject any muddiness and obscurity in research design.<\/p>\n\n
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