Skip to content

Empirical Research and Writing: A Political Science Student’s Practical Guide (my reading notes)

I had known of the excellent work of Dr. Leanne C. Powner for a very long time. We are both political scientists, and since I write so much about academic writing, and I have taught research methods, it was just a matter of time until I got to read Leanne’s excellent book, published by Sage Publishers: Empirical Research and Writing: A Political Science Student’s Practical Guide. It’s a book that is highly recommended, and I am happy to vouch for it too.

As I commented on Twitter, I am distracted and therefore I bought two copies: one through Amazon.com and one at the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) in Chicago, last year. And yes, I know I should know better, so sue me.

Leanne does something very few authors do: she talks about the ins and outs of the research process in both traditions (qualitative and quantitative). This is very hard to do. Something important for both qualitative and quantitative scholars that Leanne does in her book is distinguishing how different methods, data sources and analytical techniques apply to various research designs and paradigmatic and methodological choices. This advice is pure gold.

Chapter 9 (writing up your results), 10 (peer reviewing work) and 11 (posters, papers, presentations, conferencing) are excellent, but I wish Leanne had done a companion workbook that focused solely on those components. I haven’t taught Research Methods in a while (as a stand-alone class, I mean – I teach my RAs and students how to do research all the time). But it seems to me as though this book should be taught over a two-semester class rather than in one semester. Or maybe teach the book over one semester and devote the next to writing.

At any rate, an excellent book that deserves all the accolades that it gets on a regular basis.

Posted in academia.

Tagged with , , , , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 24, 2018

Work Your Career: Get What You Want from Your Social Sciences or Humanities PhD (my reading notes)

A few weeks ago, University of Toronto Press sent me a complimentary copy of “Work Your Career: Get What You Want from Your Social Sciences or Humanities PhD“, a book written by Dr. Loleen Berdahl and Dr. Jonathan Malloy. It’s the first time I have gotten a complimentary copy of a book of this type and while UTP did not ask me to review it, I figured that it would be good for those who follow me on Twitter to get a sense of what the book offered.

I stand by what I said on the above shown tweet: I don’t think anybody who wants to work in academia should do a doctoral degree right now. The market is atrocious and we don’t anticipate that it will improve any time soon. But since there are thousands of PhD students worldwide, and I DO want them to succeed, I will continue to write about how to do a doctoral degree as much as I can.

There are a number of things that make “Work Your Career” worth checking out. It’s an honestly written book, and it does offer lots of good suggestions. It also speaks to challenges doctoral supervisors face. And as always with books like these, there are important gaps. Berdahl and Malloy cover grant proposals (which many books don’t), but they skim over the thesis writing process (which is what many books DO cover, and one of the places where most students get stuck). As I said, I like this book as a backbone/workbook to work from. his book is an excellent and refreshing addition to my collection of books on how to help doctoral students.

I am glad they do offer suggestions to faculty who supervise doctoral dissertation, but if I may be so bold as to say, I think Berdahl and Malloy should have scolded supervisors more! At any rate, a good read, which I am sure will help my own doctoral students.

Posted in academia, writing.

Tagged with , , , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 24, 2018

How to Write a Thesis (Umberto Eco) – my reading notes

I sometimes eschew book recommendations even though I have an intuition that these may actually work for my purposes. A number of scholars had recommended to me that I should check Umberto Eco’s How to Write A Thesis whose 2015 reprint was published by The MIT Press, particularly since I’ve been reading a lot of books on how to do a doctoral dissertation (mostly for my own students, but also to help others globally). As I mention in my tweet below, I’ve never been a fan of Eco’s, so I was a bit skeptical. I take my skepticism back.

After reading Umberto Eco’s book, I think I agree: yes, PhD students should read his book How to Write a Thesis. Aimed at Italian students and the Italian model of a PhD (UPDATE – apparently it was written for undergraduates!), his adaptation and translation into English is super useful. I imagine it would be useful to Spanish speakers too (the Spanish version of course exists in Spanish, you can Google it). I will be recommending it to my own doctoral students.

Posted in academia, writing.

Tagged with , , , , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 23, 2018

The Dissertation ‘Two Pager’: A strategy to sustain a “big picture” view of a doctoral thesis

When I was in graduate school, I took several courses with Professor Anthony (Tony) Dorcey, Professor Emeritus with the School of Community and Regional Planning at The University of British Columbia. Perhaps unbeknownst to everyone but only those closest to me, my first interest was in water planning and governance using multistakeholder processes. Professor Dorcey was an expert precisely in this field, and he taught me a method that I have adapted for my own doctoral students, the Dissertation Two Pager (DTP).

Literature Road Mapping

The way Tony Dorcey taught me to write a DTP was basically to summarize my dissertation in a narrative form within the constraints of a 2 pager. I couldn’t find a link on his website to draw upon. Anyways, a two pager is a document whose maximum length is precisely 2 pages, single-spaced, 12 point Times New Roman. Tony asked that his students maintained a DTP throughout their studies, and I now do the same with my own doctoral trainees. I have obviously adapted Tony’s approach to my own, particularly because not everyone can write the narrative from scratch, and I ask my students specific questions that help them guide how they think about their research problem.

As I mentioned on Twitter, DTPs evolve through time. I wouldn’t expect a first year doctoral student to know exactly what they want to answer. But I still ask them to write a DTP. I would characterize four types of DTP:

  1. A pre-comprehensive exams’ DTP. In this case, the student is still doing coursework and hasn’t written his/her doctoral exams. At this point, I would expect DTPs to be still draft forms of research questions, methods and expected outcomes.
  2. A post-comprehensive exams’, pre-proposal defense DTP. At this stage, I would expect the student to know his/her/their field well enough that he would have a very clear outline of what he/she/they plan to do and within what time frame. I would expect that my students would use their DTP to formulate their proposal.
  3. A post-proposal defense, fieldwork-focused DTP. At this stage, I would expect that the trainee would be incorporating results from what he/she/they have found in their research. It’s likely that by this point, one or more of their papers would be submitted to a journal.
  4. A pre-doctoral defense DTP. At this stage, I would expect the student to have dominated every single element of his doctoral research, and therefore his/her/their DTP would be an extended version of their thesis’ abstract.

A DTP for Stages 1 and 2 would include, in my view, the following elements (I pay particular emphasis on the gap in the literature and how the dissertation contributes):

For a DTP at Stage 3 and 4, I would expect them to be able to answer all the items I mentioned in this blog post.

As I mentioned on Twitter, my students’ DTP change every semester, and they notice the difference. I wrote my doctoral dissertation as a book, but I’ve mentored students to write 3 papers’ theses. That’s why I find the DTP such a useful tool: you can synthesize all three (or four) papers, show The Throughline (main argument), or you can summarize all chapters in the thesis, and still be able to show The Throughline. I also insist that my students write their DTP in a positive, assertive voice. “In this dissertation, I show how A, B and C variables impact Y phenomenon. Using a combination of text-as-data, social network analysis and ethnographic fieldwork strategies, I demonstrate Z“.

This last item is perhaps the one that is the most overlooked when I read doctoral dissertations for external examination. Students are hesitant about what they found. By the time you’re done with your PhD thesis, YOU are the expert. You should write as such. Hopefully my adaptation and version of the Dissertation Two Pager technique will help many students keep seeing the forest while focused on the trees.

If you liked this blog post, you may also be interested in my Resources for Graduate Students page, and on my reading notes of books I’ve read on how to do a doctoral degree.

Posted in academia, research, research methods, writing.

Tagged with , , .

5 comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 9, 2018

Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article (my reading notes)

This book, Howard Becker’s “Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article” is an excellent volume and should be read, though as I warned in my thread, must be read primarily by those who are Becker’s peers: doctoral students’ advisers. Because of the memoir style that Becker uses (a la Stephen King’s On Writing), those who will be best positioned to understand where he is coming from are those who have conducted the same activities as he has: supervising doctoral students. I do not believe this book is targeted for those who are still undertaking their doctorate.

#AcWri on the plane

Becker’s Writing for Social Scientists is a memoir-style book (a la Stephen King’s “On Writing”, or John McPhee’s Draft No. 4), but the way Becker delivers his insights is entirely for DOCTORAL STUDENTS’ ADVISORS. He shares how HE supervised/s students, and issues they face/d. Becker’s book is NOT written for doctoral students, in my opinion. And therefore the title is misleading (“How to Start and Finish your Thesis, Book or Article”). In my view, students need to read “The Clockwork Muse” by Erubavel, or “Authoring a PhD” by Dunleavy, or Bolker’s “Writing your Dissertation in 15 Minutes“.

Posted in academia.

Tagged with , , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 9, 2018

The Clockwork Muse: A Practical Guide to Writing Theses, Dissertations, and Books (my reading notes)

The Clockwork MuseAs many people who follow me on Twitter know, I’ve been reading numerous books on how to write, and particularly in the past few months, how my doctoral students can write their doctoral dissertations. My goal with all this reading is not only to improve my own writing, but also to learn better techniques to help my students get through the finish line. Doing a PhD isn’t easy and I want to make sure that as a PhD advisor I am doing the best I can. Someone on Twitter recommended The Clockwork Muse: A Practical Guide to Writing Theses, Dissertations, and Books, and I absolutely LOVE IT. The Clockwork Muse is THE PhDJourney book that everyone should read. It’s an incredibly fast and agile read and will help those who write PhD theses-as-books or 3-paper-dissertations. I’m impressed Eviatar Zerubavel is so concise and precise.

I wish I had read Zerubavel as a doctoral student, and I keep it handy in my campus office now that I am a professor.

One of the most important elements from Zerubavel’s book is his emphasis on what Scandinavian authors call the Red Thread (Pat Thomson discusses this concept in her post, the Red Thread being a coherent line of thought that goes throughout the entire manuscript and makes the argument entirely coherent). William Germano calls it the Throughline. But very few authors of writing volumes seem to place much attention on this idea, that there is one line of argument, one Red Thread or Throughline that should be discernible as you read a book, or dissertation.

Strongly recommended, both for doctoral students AND for authors (prospective and published) of books.

Posted in academia.

Tagged with , , .

2 comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 6, 2018

Writing for Peer Reviewed Journals: Strategies for Getting Published (Kamler/Thomson) – my reading notes

While I’ve followed and interacted with Dr. Pat Thomson (University of Nottingham) for a very, very long time (and I really like her), I haven’t read all the books she’s published. She’s someone who not only studies scholarly writing, but also does A LOT of it. But I am looking forward to reading more of her work. Nevertheless, I have read a few works of her that are really important for academia as a whole. Her volume with Barbara Kamler, “Writing for Peer Reviewed Journals: Strategies for Getting Published” is one of those.

There is A LOT to like about the Kamler and Thomson book, but I am particularly fond of the Tiny Texts’ approach.

There are four moves in Tiny Texts’ construction, as shown below.

  • LOCATE: Situating the paper/book/contribution within the larger context.
  • FOCUS: Narrowing the discussion to an examination of specific questions we want to address.
  • REPORT: Describing how the research was conducted so as to provide answers to the questions addressed.
  • ARGUE: Theorising and analysing and outlining the contributions. As Kamler and Thomson indicate, it links back to the LOCATE component by discussing “so what” and “now what” questions.

I linked to Pat and Barbara’s approach in my How to Write an Abstract of a Paper blog post. But I wanted to make sure to publish a post on their actual book because I believe it offers way more than just an approach to write abstract. As Pat and Barbara indicate in their book, there are 3 and 5 moves’ Tiny Texts.

In the 5 moves’ Tiny Text, the additional category (ANCHOR) goes right after focus, as it provides more grounding (methodologies’ description and contextualization).

In the 3 moves’ Tiny text, right after LOCATE, and instead of FOCUS and REPORT, the author is expected to PROBLEMATISE and create a more theoretical discussion. Then ARGUE provides the overall argument for the paper and the expected contribution and future research.

Overall, I strongly recommend Writing for Peer Reviewed Journals. It’s a really good book, and not only for the Tiny Texts’ concept, and the Four Moves, but for delving more deeply into what we do as scholars.

Posted in academia, writing.

Tagged with , , , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 1, 2018

How to write an abstract for a paper

I’ve been teaching small workshops for my lab on how to do scientific writing. Doing these short, quick courses helps me provide them with insights on how I write my own papers, and how they can write their own papers (plus dissertations and theses). With these classes, I also create a shared knowledge base and approach to investigating a topic and presenting research. Yesterday, I realized that while I have written a ton of blog posts on research, I had not published any blog posts on abstracts nor conclusions. This and my next blog post try to make amends for these omissions.

I really, really love Dr. Jessica Calarco’s 5 sentences model.

Several suggestions I got off my Twitter request:

I hope these resources are helpful!

EDIT – a few additional resources after Dr. Compton requested more…

Posted in academia, research, writing.

Tagged with , , .

1 comment

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – July 18, 2018

Why do political science and policy sciences shun homelesness as a research focus?

homeless tentDespite the fact that I study comparative public policy using environmental issues as the core focus of my work, I’ve always been interested in tackling policy issues facing vulnerable populations, regardless of whether they’re associated with environmental issues.

After all, I study commmunities facing water insecurity, toilet insecurity, informal waste pickers. All of these groups are highly vulnerable. I even have an in-press coauthored journal article with Dr. Kate Parizeau (University of Guelph) on the ethics of ethnography within marginalized communities.

This is a topic near and dear to my heart. It doesn’t need to be an environmental issue. Individuals facing homelessness, elderly folks are both communities at the margins.

The policy solution space for issues these populations face is quite important and also very understudied. So even if neither of these policy areas are environmentally-focused, I’m very strongly interested in older persons policy and homelessness policy, and I look forward to doing some research on both of these topics (either with coauthors or students of mine).

homeless tent

Part of a tent city in downtown Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada)

Because of my work on the right to sanitation and publicness, I’ve had to examine policy issues that affect homeless populations (or, as they call them in the British literature, “rough sleepers”). One of the first things I had to learn is that homelessness is a temporary and temporal property. This means, individuals may enter and exit homelessness. It’s not a permanent state, but individuals may experience homelessness, rather than “be homeless”.

As a political scientist who also publishes in policy sciences journals, I’m flabbergasted that neither discipline (political science nor policy sciences) have really had homelessness as a major research focus. This, to me, is one of the greatest failures of the discipline. I know the topic isn’t as sexy as elections, or international development, or political behaviour, but…

I argued that we had an excess of electoral studies’ political scientists (which didn’t earn me accolades, I must say), not because I don’t think elections aren’t important (they are), but because so much journal space has been taken up by electoral studies, whereas there is NOT A SINGLE JOURNAL ARTICLE in the three major journals for political science (American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review and Journal of Politics) focused on homelessness. This, to me, is atrocious. A few fellow political scientists helped me find some political science-related work, but it’s really minimal compared to the magnitude and importance of this policy area.

My plea is not for electoral studies’ scholars to stop doing that kind of work, but for political scientists and policy sciences’ researchers to focus on an under-studied area. One that sociology, anthropology, social work and geography have done extensive work on, but that remains under-researched within our discipline.

Posted in academia.

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – July 12, 2018

How to write a book chapter

I was asked by Dr. Joanna Brown for guidance on how to write a book chapter. I wouldn’t say I’m the ideal person for this task, but since I have published many of these for several edited collections, I think I can offer some advice.

I’ve got a few single-authored chapters on the go for three books at the moment (one on bottled water in the context of a human right to water, one on ethnography as a research method in comparative policy analysis, and one in press on national policy styles), and thus I wanted to share my experience writing these.

My relationship with writing chapters for someone else’s edited volume is simultaneously love-and-hate, as people who read my blog regularly may remember.

The value that different institutions place on book chapters varies widely. My own institution prefers journal articles, but as I’ve said before, I have participated in edited collections because I believe in the project, and also because these are usually collective projects I’m interested in undertaking. I’ve published book chapters in both Spanish and English, and I’ve also edited books as well, so I’m fond of the model. You should, nonetheless, consider the pros and cons of writing a book chapter.

AcWri highlighting and scribbling while on airplanes

First of all, book chapters are different from journal articles as many of these aren’t peer reviewed and therefore aren’t subject to as many changes and corrections as you could expect from articles. I will fully admit having published peer-reviewed book chapters that these are as much of a nightmare as journal article manuscripts. I have one particularly awful experience (which isn’t over yet!) in mind.

But the most important element that an author needs to keep thinking about when writing a book chapter, in my view, is how your chapter contributes to the overall Throughline of the book (I’ve mentioned The Throughline previously – or as Scandinavian authors call it, The Red Thread). I’ve also emphasized the importance of demonstrating cohesiveness and coherence throughout an edited collection, as the editors of Untapped did in their edited volume on the sociology of beer.

This sample chapter on how to write books actually provides a great example of how to write a book chapter. Normally, I would create an outline of the paper (this blog post of mine will tell you two methods to create outlines), then follow a sequential process to create the full paper (my post on 8 sequential steps may be helpful here).

More than anything, I do try really hard to use headings to guide the global argument of the chapter. The outline/sequence looks something like this:

  • Introduction. – outline of questions or topics to tackle throughout the chapter, and description of how the chapter will deal with them.
  • Topic 1 – answer to question 1.
  • Topic 2 – answer to question 2.
  • …
  • Topic N – answer to question N.
  • Discussion/synthesis. – how it all integrates and relates to the overall book.
  • Conclusions, limitations and future work.
  • References.

As I write my chapter, I make sure to link its content with other chapters in the edited volume. This may be a bit tricky because of how editors have timed contributions. Sometimes they don’t have all the chapters readily available to be shared across authors. But I’ve found that normally they do, and so they’re willing to share across all authors.

This guideline to writing chapters may also be helpful. It’s also quite important that you follow both the press and the editors’ guide (style, punctuation, citation formatting, etc.). But more than anything, I strongly believe that the best approach to writing a book chapter is to think of it as a way to present a series of thoughts in a cohesive manner that doesn’t necessarily equal a journal article. Yes, there may be empirical claims presented, and yes, there should probably some theoretical advancement in there, but again, it’s NOT a journal article.

Hope this post helps those of you writing a book chapter. If you want to read some of mine, you can download some of them here or here (Academia.Edu) or here (ResearchGate).

Posted in academia, research, writing.

Tagged with , , .

12 comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – July 11, 2018