10.1 Draft Your Final Introduction
10.1.1 Establish a Brief Context of Prior Research
10.1.2 Restate Your Question as Something Not Known or Fully Understood
10.1.3 State the Significance of Your Question
10.1.5 Draft a New First Sentence
10.2 Draft Your Final Conclusion
10.2.2 Point Out a New Significance, a Practical Application, or New Research (or All Three)
Once you have a final draft and can see what you have actually written, you can write your final introduction and conclusion. These two framing parts of your report crucially influence how readers will understand and remember the rest of it, so it’s worth your time to make them as clear and compelling as you can.
Your introduction has three aims. It should do the following:
■ put your research in the context of other research
■ make readers understand why they should read your report
■ give them a framework for understanding it
Most introductions run about 10 percent of the whole (in the sciences they are often shorter).
Your conclusion also has three aims. It should do the following:
■ leave readers with a clear idea of your claim
■ make readers understand its importance
■ suggest further research
Your conclusion should usually be shorter than your introduction. (In theses and dissertations, the introduction and conclusion are usually separate chapters.)
Different fields seem to introduce reports in different ways, but behind most of them is a pattern with the four parts described in 6.2.2:
1. Opening context or background. When this summarizes relevant research, it’s called a literature review that puts your project in the context of other research and sets up the next step. Keep it short.
2. A statement of your research question. This is typically a statement of what isn’t known or understood or of what is flawed about the research you cited in step 1. It often begins with but, however, or another word signaling a qualification.
3. The significance of your question. This answers So what? It is key to motivating your readers.
4. Your claim. This answers your research question expressed in step 2. Here is an abbreviated example (each sentence could be expanded to a paragraph or more):
For centuries, risk analysts have studied risk as a problem in statistics and the rational uses of probability theory.context But risk communicators have discovered that ordinary people think about risk in ways that seem unrelated to statistically based probabilities.question Until we understand how nonexperts think about risk, an important aspect of human cognition will remain a puzzle.significance It appears that nonexperts judge risk by visualizing worst-case scenarios, then assessing how frightening the image is.claim
Not every report opens with a survey of research. Some begin directly with a research question stated as something not known or understood, followed by a review of the relevant literature. This is a common strategy when the gap in knowledge or understanding is well known:
The relationship between secondhand smoke and heart disease is still contested.
But if that gap isn’t well known, such an opening can feel abrupt, like this one:
Researchers do not understand how ordinary people think about risk.
As a rule, writers prepare readers by describing the prior research that their research will extend, modify, or correct. If the report is intended for general readers, the context can be brief:
We all take risks every day—when we cross the street or eat high-fat food, even when we take a bath. The study of risk began with games of chance, so it has long been treated mathematically. By the twentieth century, researchers used mathematical tools to study risk in many areas: investments, commercial products, even war. As a result, most researchers think that risk is a statistically quantifiable problem and that decisions about it should be rationally based.
In a report intended for other researchers, this opening context typically describes the specific research that the report will extend or modify. It is important to represent this prior research fairly, so describe it as those researchers would.
Ever since Girolamo Cardano thought about games of chance in quantitative terms in the sixteenth century (Cardano 1545), risk has been treated as a purely mathematical problem. Analyses of risk significantly improved in the seventeenth century when Pascal, Leibniz, and others developed the calculus (Bernstein 1996). In the twentieth century, researchers widened their focus to study risk in all areas of life: investments, consumer products, the environment, even war (Stimson 1990; 1998). These problems, too, have been addressed almost exclusively from a mathematical perspective. [Detailed discussion of contemporary research follows.]
Some reports, especially theses and dissertations, go on like that for pages, citing scores of books and articles only marginally relevant to the topic, usually to show how widely the researcher has read. That kind of survey can provide helpful bibliography to other researchers, especially new ones, but busy readers want to know about only the specific research that the researcher intends to extend, modify, or correct.
It is important to represent this prior research fairly and fully: describe it as the researcher you’re citing would, even quoting, not selectively or out of context but as she would represent her own work.
Early in your career you might not be able to write this review of prior research with much confidence, because you’re unlikely to know much of it. If so, imagine your reader as someone like yourself before you started your research. What did you then not know? What did you then get wrong that your research has corrected? How has it improved your own flawed understanding? This is where you can use a working hypothesis that you rejected: It might seem that X is so, but… (see also 4.1.2).
After the opening context, state what that prior research hasn’t done or how it’s incomplete, even wrong. Introduce that qualification or contradiction with but, however, or some other term indicating that you’re about to modify the received knowledge and understanding that you just surveyed:
Ever since Girolamo Cardano … mathematical perspective.context But risk communicators have discovered that ordinary people think about risk in ways that are irrational and unrelated to statistically realistic probabilities. What is not understood is whether such nonexpert risk assessment is based on random guesses or whether it has systematic properties.question restated
Now you must show your readers the significance of answering your research question. Imagine a reader asking that most vexing question, So what?, then answer it. Frame your response as a larger cost of not knowing the answer to your research question:
Ever since Girolamo Cardano … mathematical perspective.context But risk communicators have discovered that … What is not understood is whether such nonexpert risk assessment is based on random guesses or whether it has systematic properties.question restated [So what?] Until we understand how risk is understood by nonexperts, an important aspect of human reasoning will remain a puzzle: the kind of cognitive processing that seems systematic but lies outside the range of what is called “rational thinking.”significance
Alternatively you can phrase the cost as a benefit:
Ever since Girolamo Cardano … mathematical perspective.context But risk communicators have discovered that … What is not understood is whether such nonexpert risk assessment is based on random guesses or whether it has systematic properties.question restated [So what?] If we could understand how ordinary people make decisions about risks in their daily lives, we could better understand a kind of cognitive processing that seems systematic but lies outside the range of what is called “rational thinking.”significance
You may struggle to answer that So what? It is a problem that only experience can solve, but the fact is, even experienced researchers can be vexed by it.
Once you state that something isn’t known or understood and why it should be, readers want to see your claim, the answer to your research question (we abbreviate a good deal in what follows):
Ever since Girolamo Cardano … mathematical perspective.context But risk communicators have discovered that ordinary people think about risk in ways that are systematic but irrational and unrelated to statistically realistic probabilities.question [So what?] Until we understand how risk is understood by nonexperts, an important kind of human reasoning will remain a puzzle: the kind of cognitive processing that seems systematic but lies outside the range of what is called “rational thinking.”significance It appears that nonexperts assess risk not by assigning quantitative probabilities to events that might occur but by visualizing worst-case scenarios, then assigning degrees of risk according to how vivid and frightening the image is.claim
If you have reason to withhold your claim until the end of your paper, write a sentence to conclude your introduction that uses the key terms from that claim and that frames what follows:
It appears that nonexperts assess risk not by assigning quantitative probabilities but by systematically using properties of their visual imagination.promise of claim
Those four steps may seem mechanical, but they constitute the introductions to most research reports in every field, both inside the academic world and out. As you read your sources, especially journal articles, watch for that four-part framework. You will not only learn a range of strategies for writing your own introductions but better understand the ones you read.
Some writers find it so difficult to write the first sentence of a report that they fall into clichés. Avoid these:
■ Do not repeat the language of your assignment.
■ Do not quote a dictionary definition: Webster defines risk as …
■ Do not pontificate: For centuries, philosophers have debated the burning question of… (Good questions speak their own importance.)
If you want to begin with something livelier than prior research, try one or more of these openers (but note the warning that follows):
1. A striking quotation:
As someone once said, calculating risk is like judging beauty: it’s all in the eye of the irrational beholder.
2. A striking fact:
Many people drive rather than fly because the vivid image of an airplane crash terrifies them, even though they are many times more likely to die in a car crash than a plane wreck.
3. A relevant anecdote:
George Miller always drove long distances to meet clients because he believed that the risk of an airplane crash was too great. Even when he broke his back in an automobile accident, he still thought he had made the right calculation. “At least I survived. The odds of surviving an airplane crash are zero!”
You can combine all three:
As someone once said, calculating risk is like judging beauty: it’s all in the eye of the irrational beholder. For example, many people drive rather than fly because the vivid image of an airplane crash terrifies them, even though they are more likely to die in a car crash than a plane wreck. Because of this sort of irrational thinking, George Miller always drove long distances to meet clients because he believed that the risk of an airplane crash was too great. Even when he broke his back in an automobile accident, he still thought he had made the right calculation. “At least I survived. The odds of surviving an airplane crash are zero!”
Be sure to include in these openers terms that refer to the key concepts you’ll use when you write the rest of the introduction (and the rest of the report). In this case, they include calculating, risk, vivid image, irrational, more likely.
Now the warning: before you write a snappy opening, be sure that others in your field use them. In some fields they’re considered too journalistic for serious scholarship.
If you have no better plan, build your conclusion around the elements of your introduction, in reverse order.
Restate your claim early in your conclusion, more fully than in your introduction:
Ordinary people make decisions about risk not on a rational or quantifiable basis but on the basis of at least six psychological factors that not only involve emotion but systematically draw on the power of visual imagination.
At this point you’re probably sure what your claim is, but even so, take this last chance to rephrase it to make it as specific and complete as you can.
After stating your claim, remind readers of its significance, or better, state a new significance or a practical application of your claim:
These findings suggest a hitherto unsuspected aspect of human cognition, a quantitative logic independent of statistical probabilities involving degrees of precision or realism in visualization. Once we understand this imaginative but systematic assessment of risk, it should be possible for risk communicators to better explain risk in everyday life.
Finally, suggest further research. This gesture suggests how the community of researchers can continue the conversation. It mirrors the opening context:
Although these factors improve our understanding of risk, they do not exhaust the “human” factors in judgments of it. We must also investigate the relevance of age, gender, education, and intelligence. For example,…
Your title is the first thing your readers read; it should be the last thing you write. It should both announce the topic of your report and communicate its conceptual framework, so build it out of the key terms that you earlier circled and underlined (review 9.3). Compare these three titles:
Risk
Thinking about Risk
Irrational but Systematic Risk Assessment: The Role of Visual Imagination in Calculating Relative Risk
The first title is accurate but too general to give us much guidance about what is to come. The second is more specific, but the third uses both a title and a subtitle to give us advance notice about the keywords that will appear in what follows. When readers see the keywords in a title turn up again in your introduction and then again throughout your report, they’re more likely to feel that its parts hang together. Two-part titles are most useful: they give you plenty of opportunity to use your keywords to announce your key concepts.
At this point you may be so sick of your report that you want nothing more than to kick it out the door. Resist that impulse; you have one more important task.