Presenting your Research: Writing your Report

Robert Croker Fieldwork Research Methods

for Japan Nanzan University

Sections of your Report

Opening illustrative story Overview of your topic – a brief introduction to the topic and your study Readings – link your research to others’ Who you are – your introduction Middle sections – present your claims and your evidence together Discussion – pull your claims together and state them again clearly References – list of references

Opening Illustrative

Story

Opening Illustrative Story

Tell a brief story from your research which captures the essence of your study. Such stories involve the reader early on, ground them in a concrete way into the subject matter, convey some of the emotion of the setting, and provide a feel for what it might have been like to be there. Tie these stories directly to the study to make it effective – tell readers why you are telling it and how it is tied to your research topic.

Opening Illustrative Story

Place the reader in the story Make it vivid – use visual and sound cues Include your participants’ voices – this also introduces the participants to the reader Introduce the main theme

Opening Story - Example

The park was softly lit in the afternoon spring light. It was cool in this little valley, much cooler than out on the bustling, busy street only 50 feet away. The curtain of thick trees and swaying bamboo lining the road kept the sounds of urbanity out of this oasis, and I was startled to hear the incessant pitch of cicadas mix with the cheerful singing of birds and the deep love calls of frogs. “I come here every morning, and I stay all day if I can,” remarked Toru, the volunteer leader. “It refreshes me. And over one hundred people come here every day.” Looking up at the bright green hues of the spring leaves at the tops of the camphor trees on the ridge, I immediately realized how important this park was for the local people fighting to protect it from development.

Overview of your Topic

Overview of Your Topic

On the first page, directly and succinctly tell the reader what your study is about. Provide some background information, to help readers place your topic in their knowledge of Japan. State the research methods – who your participants were, how you created your data, and how you analyzed it. Summarize your main argument(s) – what you plan to illustrate in your study. Briefly explain the organization of your paper.

Readings

Readings

For larger research projects, readings are a central part of your study. For this project, as it is shorter and focused on fieldwork, they are less central. In your report, briefly summarize what other researchers have written about your topic. You can discuss theory or other studies – including both what they found and how they found it (substantive and methodological issues).

Readings - Formatting

Please use APA: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/

short quote:

According to Jones (1998), “Japan is a feudal society” (p. 200). longer quote: Jones’s (1998) study found the following:

Japan is a feudal society. This is clear from the relationships that people develop with each other, and the feelings of hierarchy that are evident in almost all interactions. (p. 200)

Your Introduction

Your Introduction

Explain who you are: ie your own identity, particularly with regard to this topic

why you are interested in this topic

your own relationship and experience with this topic and with your participants (ie if you already knew them, or whether you had to get to know them to do your fieldwork)

Your Introduction

Why do this? to reveal who you are and so alert readers to potential bias to separate yourself from your topic to show that you are aware of your own subjectivity, and warns the reader to take that into account

Your Voice in the Text

‘the researcher’ + passive voice: The researcher interviewed three subjects. Subjects were selected by random sampling.

‘I’ + active voice: I interviewed three participants. I selected the participants because of their interest in _________.

Your Voice in the Text

‘the researcher’ suggests an objectivity that doesn’t really exist ie the researcher is an individual with particular points of view, who designed and carried out the research, and this should be reflected in the writing up

Your Voice in the Text

‘I’ Less pretentious than ‘the researcher’, which is also often used to give the author a sense of authority … .. and more honest and direct. So ‘I’ is more commonly used.

Your Participants

Unless your participants gave you permission to do otherwise, change their names and any identifying features about them. If you have many participants, you could list up your participants in a table, giving their pseudonyms and other relevant information about them.

Their Voice in the Text

Quoting in English + include when and where interview was conducted:

As Taku noted, “I live in Nagoya” (interview, 2014/10/16, Nagoya).

Quoting in Japanese, with translation + include when and where interview was conducted:

As Taku noted, 「私は名古屋に住んでいます。」 (“I live in Nagoya.”) (interview, 2014/10/16, Nagoya).

Middle Sections

Middle Sections

This is the core of your report. Here, present your claims and the evidence you have to support them, using logical arguments. A claim is a statement of what is true about the world. Evidence is data that you use to illustrate and support that claim. Arguments are statements of logic which connect your evidence to your claims, and one claim to another.

Two Types of Claims

a description of something an explanation of something

with different levels of abstraction, from – a statement only about a particular situation …a more universal statement about a group

of people (eg Takarazuka fans, Japanese people) …to a universal statement about all humans

Each Section

Introduction: explain what this section is about + link it to your main argument

+ link this section to what came earlier Middle:

the core – deliver what you promised End:

summarize what you said in this section + link it again to your main argument + provide a transition to the next section(s)

Writing – two parts

“Here is what I’ve found”

= your claim

“and here are the data to support these claims”

= your evidence

Balance

You need to balance the general and the specific ie your claims and your evidence

Your claims need to be: clear, logical, consistent, reasonable

Your evidence needs to be:

relevant, illustrative, compelling, documented

Your task!

To convince readers of the plausibility of your claims. Quantitative research: formal conventions of organization and presentation Qualitative research: conventions differ depending upon the approach, but generally fewer formal conventions

Strategy One

Make a statement, then illustrate it with several examples. At the end of such a paragraph, add a final sentence to restate your argument or to add another twist. i.e. separate your claims from your evidence

Strategy One - Example

For most fans of Takarazuka, going to a performance is one of the highlights of their social calendar, particularly for women living in regional cities who only have the opportunity to see a Takarazuka performance two or three times a year. Women from Aichi explain their feelings about these performances:

“I can hardly sleep the night before, I am so excited!” noted Mayumi, a slim woman in her mid-forties.

“My friend and I always get dressed up in our best clothes, and go out to dinner afterwards to a nice cafe. It is almost the only time I go out,” reflected Tamami, a housewife from Toyota.

“I love the performances! I live for them!” said Ai, smiling. For these women, Takarazuka is a splash of color in their otherwise quiet and rather repetitive lives.

Strategy Two

Make a statement, then illustrate it with one longer example, using a colon: i.e. again, separate your claims from your evidence

Strategy Two - Example

Further evidence of volunteers’ passion for the park and its environment were clear in their questionnaire responses. Toru, one of the older volunteers, wrote:

“I began coming to this park when I was a child. I can remember fishing with my friends in the pond in the northern part of the park. Then, the water was clean and there were many fish and frogs. But after the expressway was built upstream, the water became dirty and the fish and frogs were no longer there. I want my grandsons and their sons to be able to fish in this pond. I feel that is my responsibility, my contribution to the future. I will come here every day to help.”

Strategy Three

Intertwine claims, evidence, and your interpretations of that evidence to form a flowing paragraph.

i.e. claims and evidence are mixed together.

Strategy Three - Example

For children who have learned to respect school and to take their academic responsibilities seriously, the experience of total immersion in a foreign language environment can be devastating. “I felt like a piece of wood,” says a fifteen-year-old boy. Even the simplest question was torture. “The teacher would ask me my name and I was afraid to say it because I would say my family name but she wanted me to say my first name.” This from a 12-year-old girl from China.

Strategy Four

Combine your claims, evidence, and your interpretations of that evidence into a narrative, as though you are telling a story. i.e. claims and evidence are mixed together. You are much less distanced from the material that you’re presenting. You put together the descriptions you gained from observations and interviews together.

Strategy Four - Example

Bobbie Dijon was always the tallest girl in her class; only a few boys were taller. Some of the children laughed at her in elementary school, but by the time she was twelve she was so strong and so big that nobody ever teased her, for they feared that Bobbie would haul them off and pound them with her fists, which she had been known to do. It was not, her teachers said, that she was a tough girl, a bad girl. There was a tough part of her, they all agreed, but it was a small part that lived inside her, preferring not to show itself unless it was seriously provoked. And then it terrorized whoever had the audacity to have brought it out. (adapted from Cottle, 1997, p. 1)

Middle Sections - Suggestions

You could use all four strategies, to make your writing more interesting. Do not include large sections of raw data with no discussion or explanation for including them. Data is not usually self-evident – just presenting raw data or quotes is really a cop out.

Discussion

Discussion

Incisively restate your main claims, and explain the linkages and connections between them. Explain the significance of your research. Remind readers that this is just a small-scale research project, and explain other limitations. Suggested directions for future research. You could finish with a final story.

References

References

Please use APA: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

Example - Book:

Robson, C., & Bernard, H. R. (2002). Real World Research (5th ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. Example - Book Chapter:

Knox, B., & O’Neil, J. M. (2010). The art of fandom. In B. B. Wyte (Ed.), Fandom in Japan (pp. 101-123). New York: Springer. Example - Journal Article:

James, P. (2012). Fundamentals for preparing reports. Journal of Comparative Writing, 55(1), 3-15.