The introduction to a research report accomplishes two goals:
- informs the reader by providing information from the research literature necessary to understanding the project;
- persuades the reader that the research question is credible/valuable by providing the gap in the literature.
How are these goals accomplished? In the literature review! The writer provides a brief review of the literature in a particular order. The content of the lit review informs; the organization persuades.
The 5 Steps below provide a “template” for writing an effective and persuasive introduction. Variation on the order of these steps abounds! However, many published reports follow this basic formula pretty closely because these steps accomplish the goal of ensuring that readers comprehend what writers intend.
5 steps to Writing the Introduction
- Establish Topic
- Provide significance
- Review the relevant literature
- Point out the gap
- Reveal the research question (and sometimes, hypotheses)
Establish Topic
Readers need to know immediately what part of the research world they are in — the first sentence or two of the research report should immediately identify the specific research area to which the paper contributes.
Research reports tend to start immediately – there’s very little “warm up” material involved. However, we are so used to writing this way that it may not be possible to just start at the beginning. If this is the case, go back and cross out the first couple of lines. Since establishing the topic and providing significance are so closely linked, examples of both are provided in the next section.
Cross out unnecessary fluff at the beginning of the introductory paragraph — words such as “humans have always” and statements covering all of society or evolutionary time are clues that fluff has infiltrated the Introduction.
Provide Significance
The second step to the introduction is to offer the first bit of persuasion to the reader: show the importance of the research topic by offering something of practical or research significance as found in the research literature. Keep in mind that “significance” does not mean an impassioned testimonial about why the topic is important. Instead, the significance of the research topic is constructed from published literature in the field.
Example #1: || Control as an Engagement Feature for Young Children’s Attention to and Learning of Computer Content
New interactive media are now integrated into the fabric of children’s daily lives (Rideout, Vandewater, & Wartella, 2003). Online programs for very young children are routinely accessible, and promises of enhanced learning from this potential new form of education abound. For young children, this means early computer experiences that focus on preacademic skills, such as prereading activities, can be targeted.
Analysis: The first sentence is the topic sentence. The next two point out a practical (real world) significance: first, interactive media are available; second, there may be educational benefits. The reader is now a bit more convinced that research about very small children and computer programs makes sense.
Example #2: || The Influence of Computer Games on Children’s Development. Exploratory Study on the Attitudes of Parents
Video games have been around for nearly 50 years. Recent scientific findings show that helpful and pro-social computer game content has great potential for enhancing the lives of children and adolescents, but exposure to anti-social and violent games increases the likelihood of a range of negative outcomes, with greater exposure increasing the risk (Anderson & Warburton, 2012:56).
Analysis: The topic of the report is laid out in the first sentence. The following sentence provides research significance – in other words, explains why the topic is a continuing source of scientific study.
Example #3: || Attitudes Toward Medical and Mental Health Care Delivered Via Telehealth Applications Among Rural and Urban Primary Care Patients
Appropriate health care services are often not available in many rural and remote areas, and this problem is expected to intensify in the near future, exacerbating existing rural health disparities that need to be addressed (Institute of Medicine, 2004). “Telehealth” interventions represent a strategy for potentially addressing such access to care problems. Although telehealth services do not directly address overall shortages of clinicians, they can improve access to health services in rural areas by providing a way for clinicians located in urban areas to deliver care to rural patients in relatively distant locations. Therefore, telehealth applications are becoming widely used to provide much needed medical and mental healthcare services to people in rural areas (Heinzelmann et al., 2005; Jennett et al., 2003).
Analysis: The topic in this case actually occurs in the second sentence as the “reply” to the significance laid out in sentence one. The rest of the paragraph lays out a bit of background on the current state of affairs.
Review the Relevant Literature
After introducing the topic and providing significance, the writer must now review the literature for the reader. The literature review (hereafter, “lit review,” the short phrase used by research writers everywhere) accomplishes many objectives at once. First, the lit review informs the reader of the most important research needed to understand the research question. Second, the lit review gives credibility to the writer as someone who knows what they are talking about. Third, the lit review is organized so that the research question is validated; in other words, the review leads the reader to a “gap” or “conflict” in the literature.
This is not as complicated as it sounds. You’ll have prepared an annotated bibliography to help organize the literature you’ve read. You’ve got the research question (and perhaps a tentative title) from which to reverse engineer. The task is to join these pieces.
You’ll note as a reader that the lit review is where you see the most citations; you should also be able to see how well synthesized material is! In some longer reports where the research is investigating complex interactions you may see that the lit review is organized using subheadings. Just as often it is not — instead, the lit review is organized so that each major idea is presented in its own paragraph. The conventions governing science still apply: thou shalt make it as easy as possible for the reader to locate information. For this reason, do not “weave” different ideas together in the same paragraph. For complex topics, present each part separately, then write a paragraph that combines the ideas (this should make it easier to write — concepts maps are very useful for planning this section of the paper).
Example: Attitudes Toward Medical and Mental Health Care Delivered Via Telehealth Applications Among Rural and Urban Primary Care Patients (Note: bolded words/phrases added to original)
Recent reviews of empirical data indicate that psychiatric interviews conducted via telehealth or telepsychiatry are reliable, and that patients and clinicians who use this medium for clinical services generally report high levels of satisfaction (Frueh et al.,2000; Hilty et al., 2004; Monnier et al., 2003; Morland et al.,2003). Although this early research suggests that clinical needs might be met via telepsychiatry among mental health patients, little is known about the acceptance of such applications among broad populations. In other words, although those who actually receive telepsychiatry services are satisfied, we do not know how such services are perceived among people who are not seeking mental health treatment but who might have cause to use such services in the future. Because telepsychiatry programs are rapidly appearing all over the world, health services research that addresses the acceptance of this mode of service delivery is needed to guide development efforts for health care systems (Frueh et al., 2000; Frueh et al., 2007; Hilty et al., 2004; Monnier et al., 2003; Morland et al., 2003; Ruskin et al., 2004).
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) serves as a good test case for telepsychiatry, as this disorder is prevalent in the general population at 6% to 14% (Kaplan et al., 1994), and because (compared with other psychiatric disorders) it is associated with nearly the highest rate of medical service use (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1999; Kessler et al., 1999). Additionally, individuals with PTSD may avoid treatment since avoidance and social isolation are core features of the disorder. Thus, the impact of additional barriers to care is of particular relevance to this clinical population. To date, there is preliminary evidence to support the use of telepsychiatry for PTSD specialty care among combat veterans, including strong levels of patient satisfaction and comparable clinical outcomes with traditional face-to-face care (Frueh et al., 2007).
In a cross-sectional survey we sought to examine attitudes towards medical and mental health care delivered via telehealth applications in a sample of adult rural and urban primary care patients. We also sought to examine attitudes among a sub-sample of patients with PTSD, a group likely to need help accessing a range of relevant clinical services.
Analysis: In the example above, the title “Attitudes toward Medical and Mental Health Care Delivered via Telehealth Applications among Rural and Urban Primary Care Patients” immediately suggests several pieces of information the reader will need, especially “telehealth”, the status of delivering mental health care via telehealth, and reasons for why attitudes towards this intervention might differ between urban and rural patients. The bolded phrases indicate where these terms are used, hence where they are discussed in the introduction.
Point out the Gap
The “gap” in the literature is the conflict or missing piece of information which your research question will answer. (If the research has already been done, then why waste your time and the reader’s time with all this work?) The gap also implies the contribution a piece of research makes. It’s as though the writer is saying “See, Scientific Community, we know X, but not Y, and that’s what this is about.” The reader needs to be shown that this gap exists in order to be confident that the research makes a contribution.
There are no extant data on how representative patient populations, such as primary care users, view telehealth interventions. Satisfaction with care has only been documented among relatively narrow populations that have already received mental health care via telehealth.
Analysis: The gap is a straightforward statement of information that is missing; it points to particular information that has not yet been studied. The second part of the gap highlights an area where research is not complete. Note that both gaps are simply written — there is no need for biased language here. Avoid adding emotionally-laden terms such as “unfortunate” or “shockingly”.
Reveal the Research Question
The final part of the Introduction is the Research Question – this is the part that everything else has been leading to. This is where the writer presents the question that will answer the gap as revealed by the literature to be a missing piece of the topic’s research puzzle! The RQ may be expressed as either an actual question or a declarative sentence. Some journals seem to prefer that research writer’s express the RQ as a question; some prefer the RQ is expressed as statement. Following the research question may be a hint of method, hypotheses, contribution of the work, or nothing at all.
What remains unexplored is the acceptability of such services to a broad group of people who have not yet tried it but who may face real decisions about how to best access care in the future. These data should yield useful information regarding patients’ beliefs toward telehealth applications and ways in which to address concerns patients may have with this mode of service delivery.
Analysis: The bolded sentence states the overall research question for the project — the researchers will investigate this area to illuminate what we don’t know as indicated by the gap statement.