Making connections when writing

 
Students often ask me, how do I connect the literature in my study? When you think about it, you are required to take a series of very different ideas/ literature and put them together in a way that makes logical sense. By definition, you are doing something very creative, it has never been done that way before. Somehow, you have to link these ideas as you go, so that the writing flows easily and doesn’t lose your reader. 

There are a couple of ways that I have found to accomplish this. Let's use an example paper for illustrative purposes. I will be using a paper that has recently been accepted by an education journal on developing virtual research labs (Stadtlander, Giles, & Sickel, in press). The first way to link ideas is to preview them in an introduction to the paper or to a subsection (in green in the example below). A second way is to end a paragraph with the topic that will be discussed in the subsequent one (in red).  

In a land-based lab, students gain exposure to a positive research-training environment, faculty modeling of research skills and enthusiasm for the research process, and the social experience of working with others (Love et al., 2007). These factors have been reported to increase student research self-efficacy and lead to higher research productivity (Hollingsworth & Fassinger, 2002; Phillips & Russell, 1994). The land-based academic research training environment has been found to predict research outcome expectations (Bishop & Bieschke, 1998; Kahn, 2001) and research investigative interests (Bishop & Bieschke, 1998; Kahn, 2001). 

It is not known, however, if a virtual lab can provide the research skills and research interest as seen in a land-based lab. In an attempt to examine this issue, the current study recruited 10 doctoral psychology students at an online university to participate in a 3-quarter virtual lab, in which they assisted in a faculty-designed research project. A comparison group of students was matched with the lab students based upon milestones in program progress (e.g., completion of all required courses). A measure of confidence in the development of research skills (measured with Bieschke and Bishop's [1994] Research Outcome Expectations scale), and a researcher designed research knowledge and skills self-assessment examined the students' experience, as well as weekly journals from the 3 quarters in the lab. In order to place the current virtual lab study into context, a brief history of labs in academia will be examined, as well as what is known about virtual research labs. (Stadtlander et al., in press, p. 1) 

Another method to link ideas is to refer to the relationship between the information and your study (in purple). 

Research outcome expectations have been identified as accounting for more variance in students' research interests than any other significant variable, including research self-efficacy beliefs (Bard, Bieschke, Herbert, & Eberz, 2000; Bishop & Bieschke, 1998), the research training environment (Bishop & Bieschke, 1998; Kahn, 2001), investigative interests (Kahn, 2001), and age (Bishop & Bieschke, 1998). Kahn has speculated that students may be unable to discriminate between their interest in research and their expectations about the outcomes that may result from engaging in research activities. In the present study, the Research Outcome Expectations Questionnaire (Bieschke & Bishop, 1994) was used as a measure of student researchers' confidence in the development of research competencies. (Stadtlander et al., in press, p. 4) 

Hopefully, this helps to give you some ideas how to link your different literatures. Next time we will consider the question, what exactly is a dissertation??

 

Stadtlander, L., Giles, M. & Sickel, A. (In press).  The Virtual Research Lab: Research Outcomes Expectations, Research Knowledge, and the Graduate Student Experience. Journal of Educational Research and Practice. (Advance copies available from Dr. Stadtlander, leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu)