The assignments that you write at the university should be answers to research questions. Therefore, arguing convincingly for your answer is totally essential when writing an assignment. This applies to assignments that are primarily of an empirical nature (such as ‘Do men earn more than women?’; ‘Why do people with criminal records face high barriers to employment?’) as well as more theoretically oriented ones (such as ‘Is the concept of “habitus” too deterministic?’; ‘What are the differences between Marx’s and Weber’s theories on the growth of capitalism?’), and whether you have been supplied with an assignment or have chosen the topic yourself.
The answer that you give to the assignment question is called the assignment’s assertion. It is essential to keep in mind that you will make an assertion and provide arguments for it in your assignments (descriptive assignments are never given). In other words, your assignment should be read as an argument in favour of an assertion (e.g. ‘Men earn more than women’; ‘The concept of “habitus” is not too deterministic’; or ‘Prejudices among employers constitute a barrier to employment of people with criminal records). For the reader to be convinced that your assertion is correct, the necessary information to support your argument should be presented in a specific order, i.e. you need to structure your assignment in a specific way.
1. Introduction
In the introduction you present the assignment’s research question and its background, so as to show why it will be interesting to find the answer. Is it important to answer this research question because it concerns a controversial issue? Is it important because this may bring knowledge that can prevent people from injuring themselves or help achieve a more equitable distribution of resources? Is it important because this social phenomenon has been widely misunderstood in previous research? The issue may be interesting for many reasons; what is important is that you should not just assume this, but show the readers your reasons at the very start of the assignment.
In the introduction you should also indicate the main points of your line of argumentation. Their nature obviously depends on how you will address the assignment’s research question – this could involve conflicts between various ‘schools’ of thought or specific researchers, possible objections to different aspects of a theory, various interpretations of a key text or a social phenomenon.
In the introduction you should also hint at your conclusion, the assertion that you argue in favour of in your assignment. Your success in delivering a convincing line of argumentation will make your text interesting to read. In other words, do not make a secret of your assertion initially – your assignment should not ask the question first and provide an answer at the end. You can make your assertion clear by starting a sentence with ‘I will therefore assert that...’ or ‘I will argue that...’. During the writing process you should keep your assertion in mind, even if it may change as the work progresses.
If you follow this recipe for an introduction – the research question, reasons why the question is important, main points and an assertion/answer to the research question – you present the reader with your assignment in miniature. If you just list these using one sentence for each point, your introduction will be informative, but very schematic. Keep in mind that the introduction should draw the readers into the text, not just inform them about what is coming. You can experiment by moving the sections around – perhaps it is appropriate to open the entire assignment with an assertion (‘No matter how we measure it, men earn more than women’), or as a reformulation of the research question (‘Do men really earn more than women, or are there other gender differences that may explain this well-known wage gap?’)
2. Background
The purpose of the background description is to provide the reader with the premises for the remainder of the assignment, i.e. the basic information that the reader needs to be able to follow and assess your arguments. After the introduction you should therefore provide an account of key problems, concepts, theories and empirical findings. For example, if you intend to compare and contrast two alternative theories about a social phenomenon, you need to give an outline of the phenomenon that these theories set out to explain, followed by some relevant basic aspects of how these theories explain this phenomenon. If you notice that you need to provide comprehensive explanations of theories and previous research when writing the discussion, this indicates that you have written too little about this in the background.
In your background section you need to include what is relevant for the assignment’s research question and the answer that you will argue for. You should therefore provide an account of previous research that demonstrates why this is relevant to your research question. You can ask yourself ‘why should I include this?’ for all content of the background section: Is it because this previous research forms the basis for the research question? Will I argue against this interpretation of the data or this theory? Are there any gaps in previous research that this assignment sets out to fill? For example, if you are to investigate why people with criminal records have difficulties in finding a job, the background section needs to show that previous research has actually established that former prison inmates have difficulty finding a job – otherwise, it will be meaningless to investigate why. In other words, the background section is not a review of everything that has been written about the assignment topic – you should not just list a series of previous theories and findings.
Most assignments will not require any biographical information on the researchers that have produced the studies that you include in your account (e.g. that he studied theology in Christiania and suffered from depression and similar information).
In many cases, the background section will help emphasize the importance of finding an answer to the research question. For example, if you intend to compare two theories about a social phenomenon, the background section might well emphasize possible contradictions/conflicts between these theories. If there are any deficiencies in previous studies that you will discuss in a later section, these should be at least hinted at here, in order to provide a direction for the background outline.
3. Discussion
After having introduced the reader to the research question and the fundamental premises for being able to answer it, you deliberate your way to a conclusion regarding what will be the most reasonable answer to the research question. In doing so, you assess the aspects that corroborate your answer as well as those that undermine it – for and against. In other words, you use the discussion section to provide the line of argumentation for your assignment, but making a clear assertion in the text is not necessarily the same as being dogmatic. It is fully acceptable to state that there is no unambiguous answer to the research question; for example, you can argue for the assertion that we do not fully know why men earn more than women.
It is important to have a clear structure in the discussion to permit the reader to follow the line of argumentation. For example, if you set out to assess two theories about a social phenomenon, you can first discuss the strengths and weaknesses of one theory, followed by the strengths and weaknesses of the other. An alternative solution is to address various elements or stages of the social phenomenon, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of both theories with regard to each element. A discussion can be structured in numerous ways, and often one will be as good as the other. The way in which you structure your discussion will partly depend on the matters to be discussed, although this may often be a matter of style.
The discussion should be dominated by clear points, each of which supports your assertion in a different way. Each such point should have its own section/indent/paragraph, and vice versa: each section should include only one point. This applies to the background as well as the discussion sections, and makes the text orderly and easy to read. The point presented in a section should thus have an obvious relevance for the assertion that you argue for in the text.
For example: If you compare and contrast two theories, you can, for example, argue that one of the theories has the advantage of explaining variations over time more adequately than the other. If so, you should include a section that has the sole purpose of corroborating the claim that one theory explains variation over time better than the other. This point is thus part of the general line of argumentation for the assignment’s assertion (the answer to the research question).
Another example: If you set out to discuss the assertion that ‘men earn more than women’, you can include a section making the main point that ‘the gender difference in wage levels is not only a result of differences in education’ and another about how ‘the gender difference in wage levels is not only a result of differences in rates of sickness absence’. Each of these sections should focus exclusively on the point that you wish to elucidate in that section.
A simple way to make the text easily readable is to state the main point in the first sentence in each section. For example, a section that sets out to show that ‘gender differences in wage levels is not only a result of differences in education’ could start with the phrase ‘even when researchers take into account differences in educational choices between men and women, they find that the gender differences in wage levels persist’. In the remainder of the section you provide evidence for this assertion by referring to specific studies, avoiding reference to other points.
To provide a convincing argument, all relevant objections must be treated seriously. Your argument will not be more convincing if you just ignore or minimize relevant objections. To identify possible objections, you may often need to be creative and imagine how a critical reader might perceive your argument. If you can provide clear answers showing that such objections are irrelevant, you will have strengthened your assertion. If you have no clear answer, it might be important to address such objections towards the end of your discussion as possible weaknesses of your argument. Often, the major objections should be addressed close to the end of the discussion, so as not to let the assignment start with too many reservations before you have the opportunity to present good arguments in support of your assertion.
If you identify many relevant objections that you cannot respond to, this is a sign that your discussion is insufficiently thorough. You may need to restructure your discussion and/or find another and more moderate answer to the research question.
4. Conclusion
In the conclusion you can emphasize your findings. Nothing new should be added at this point. You may nevertheless formulate your assertion with more certainty, now that the discussion has shown the reader why this is the most reasonable answer to the research question. If you wish to indicate something about further research and so on, you should keep it brief.