Things to Consider in Academic Writing Assoc. Prof. Dr. Şehnaz Şahinkarakaş

1. Use language that reduce bias a) Be specific while describing individuals PoorPreferred  Be specific Man or woman men and women Over 62ages 63-70

b) be sensitive to labels for individuals or groups (don’t judge any groups) PoorPreferred  Put people first followed by a descriptive phrase Schizophrenics people diagnosed with scizophrenics  Use parallel nouns Man and wife husband and wife

c) acknowledge participation of people in a study PoorPreferred  Use impersonal terms Subjects/informants Participants  Use unbiased words Women doctor Doctor  Put people first, not their disability Mentally ill personperson with mental illness

2. Encode Scholarly Terms into Your Research Encode: Intentially use some terms to show your knowledge about research. E.g. Don’t use random in a qualitative study; it shows you don’t know the difference of sampling in quantitative and qualitative research (use purposeful instead) compare and relate are good words for quantitative research; explore and discover are good words for qualitative

3. Use Ethical Writing Ethical writing means Honestly reported Shared with participants Not previously published Not plagiarized Not influenced by personal interest Properly credited to authors that make a contribution

4. Use an Appropriate Point of View Depends on the type of your research In quantitative research: The researcher is the third person Avoid use of ‘I’; use impersonal point of view (The researcher stated….; The results were reported..) Objectivity is emphasized In qualitative research: First person (I or We) is accepted Can be written in a lively manner May end with questions that are unanswered

5. Balance Your Research and Content Don’t overemphasize (trying to affect people that you know!) or underemphasize (lack of research and content knowledge) while writing about the research. Poor Model (overemphasis): In this project, survey random sampling will be used so that each department chair has an equal opportunity of being selected. Moreover, it is important to use stratification procedures so individuals in the sample are selected in proportion to which they are represented in the population. Better Model In this project, 400 academic chairpersons were randomply sampled so that results could be generalized to the population of academic chairpersons in Research institutions of higher education (N=2000). Moreover, the 400 chairpersons represented both men and women chairs in proportion to which they were represented in the total population (300 males; 100 females).

6. Interconnect Sections for Consistency Interconnecting sections provide a consistent discussion. How can we do this? Repeat the key words everytime it is needed (the variables for quantitative studies; the central phenomenon for qualitative) Use exactly the same wording when you repeat the research questions/hypotheses Refer to previous or forthcoming sections E.g. As discussed in OR (see Section 2.4.1)

6. Advance a Concise Title To write a good title Follow APA Avoid too long ones (recommended 12 words) Use colon if you want to add additional info Don’t use acronyms Don’t use a complete sentence Don’t make the research question the title

REFERENCES Creswell, J. W. (2012). Educational Research: Planning, Conducting and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research (4th edition). Boston: Pearson.