Project Concepts
Research Question
This post by Elsevier, outlines an acronym, FINER, that helps evaluate the quality of a research question.
- Feasible
- Can this be completed in a semester with your constraints?
- Do you have the analytical tools you need?
- Do you have access to the data you need?
- Interesting
- Will this keep you and others engaged?
- Novel
- What new thing are you sharing with others?
- Ethical
- Is this work respecting privacy and safety?
- Relevant
- Does this work help us reach our environmental goals?
Types of Studies
- Descriptive
- Information collected without an “experiment”
- Comparative
- Correlative
- Causation
- Case Study
- Cross-sectional
- Longitudinal
Types of Studies
- Laboratory
- Field work
- Computational
Comparisons
If your control and treatment are described by categorical variables, means are often compared.
If your control and treatment have a continuous variable, linear regression is a common technique.
If your variable of interest is categorical, proportions are often used.
Purpose of Graphs
Communicate main evidence or persuasive point.
Papers often have a culminating graph, map, or table that illustrates the main takeaway point of the work.
Types of Graphs
- Scatter
- Relationship between two variables for several data points
- Line Graph
- Relationship between two variables as a continuous function
- Bar Graph
- Easy comparison of relative values
- Box Plot
- Method of comparing two distributions
IMRAD Paper Format
A common way to organize research papers is the IMRAD format. This is an acronym for Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. It is commonly used in natural and social science research.
It is common to also have a bibliography. It is also common to have an appendix for detailed descriptions of methods or other sections. Finally, you might include a section for the design your are exploring, or how you selected your particular case study.
There are several references on the internet with suggestions on writing IMRAD-formatted works.
The SciWrite slides are in the Canvas course materials. Based on the numbered sections in the slides, you can find the videos for each section at this link.
Introduction RAP
The introduction section explains to the reader what your work does and where it fits in the context of the work others have done. This is where your research question, answer, and position (RAP) is articulated. Authors often visualize a paper introduction as a funnel going wide to narrow. That is, start with a broad topic of wide importance (interesting, important) and then narrow the scope to the specific (feasible, novel) work you are doing.
- Research Question
- Describes clearly what question you are asking
- Answer
- A brief summary of your findings
- (Approach)
- How you will answer your question. This is valuable for grants and methods sections.
- Position
- Where does your question and approach fit in the previous literature?
- What is the gap that your work fills?
Chaubey refers to this as the RAP of a paper. This RAP is the central theme of the paper.
Paper introductions often are ordered by Position, Research Question, and Answer (PRA). Some introductions use the RAP order with the research question first.
Introduction Inverted Pyramid
Another approach to introductions is an inverted pyramid or triangle where guide the reader from a large important topic down to our smaller topic. This approach is covered in the SciWrite course by Kristen Sainani.
- What’s known (background, important large issues)
- What’s unknown (what gaps need to be filled)
- Your research question
- Your approach and answer
- Why your approach is novel and fills in the gaps
This is often three paragraphs (bullet 1, bullet 2, bullets 3-5).
We can see the RAP parts in this approach. Bullets 1-2 are the position statement (P). Bullet 3 is the research question (R). Bullet 4 is the approach and answer (A).
Methods Section
This section of the paper details the ways that you answered your research question. Provides a clear explanation of how the work was done.
- Should provide confidence in results
- Would allow someone to replicate results
- Contains enough details of equations and calculations to
- Demonstrate your mastery of the models you chose
- Allow someone to check calculations
- Methods sections may contain diagrams that make your method clear
This reading has several methods for comparing groups.
This DOE reading describes several methods for energy impact evaluations.
Results Section
- Often quite short
- State main takeaway of results
- Usually has tables and graphs in this section
- Don’t repeat tables and graphs
- Draw reader attention to important differences or similarities
- Completed actions use past tense
- Things still true are in present tense
Figures
Design figures that most clearly illustrate your takeaway points.
Also consider the type of data you are presenting.
Categorical data might be
- Business as usual versus an intervention
- Zipcode
- Socioeconomic status
- Census Tract
Continuous data might be
- Time, Power, Energy
- Cost
- Temperature
- Heating and Cooling Degree Days
- Insolation
- Pollution
You have several design elements you can use.
- Shape
- Distance
- Size
- Color
There are several types of plots
- Choropleth: continuous data as color in polygons on a map
- Time series: continuous data on y-axis and time on x-axis
- Bar chart: continuous data on y-axis and categorical data on x-axis
- Stacked bar chart: same as bar chart but adds categorical data as color within the bar
- Scatter chart: continuous data on both x and y axis and a dot representing each observation
- countless others
Discussion Section
- Discussion starts narrowly from your evidence and builds outward to implications
- Discusses strengths and limitations of your approach
- Points out implications
- Discusses possible future work
Editing
It is useful to accept a less-than-perfect quality of writing as you let your ideas and narratives take shape. Once you have the central points on paper, you can turn to the editing phase.
Here are some points to address.
- Strong verbs
- highlight all your verbs and identify weak verbs and rewrite with more active verbs
- Topic sentences
- read the first sentence of each paragraph
- does it introduce the reader to the topic of the paragraph?
- does it reinforce the research question, answer/approach, and position of your paper?
- Overall flow
- do you paragraphs flow smoothly from one to the next?
- are the ideas laid out in a logical progression?
Bibliography
Your bibliography should contain all the sources cited in your work.
One function of the literature search is to establish a gap in published knowledge that your work fills. Ideally your introduction establishes the gap as something that should be filled.
Appendix
There is a movement to include the spreadsheets, scripts, and data used in a paper for others to use. You are encouraged to link to your spreadsheets in your paper in an appendix so that others can inspect the work of your calculations.
Posters and Slides
Posters and slides are designed to convey the basics of your work in an easy to read format accompanied by conversation or a verbal presentation.
It is common to break up the IMRAD parts into sections and place each on a slide or in a section of the poster.