chapter 1 research paper contents

How to Write a Research Paper: Parts of the Paper

• Choosing Your Topic
• Citation & Style Guides This link opens in a new window
• Critical Thinking
• Evaluating Information
• Parts of the Paper
• Writing Tips from UNC-Chapel Hill
• Librarian Contact

Parts of the Research Paper Papers should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Your introductory paragraph should grab the reader's attention, state your main idea, and indicate how you will support it. The body of the paper should expand on what you have stated in the introduction. Finally, the conclusion restates the paper's thesis and should explain what you have learned, giving a wrap up of your main ideas.

1. The Title The title should be specific and indicate the theme of the research and what ideas it addresses. Use keywords that help explain your paper's topic to the reader. Try to avoid abbreviations and jargon. Think about keywords that people would use to search for your paper and include them in your title.

2. The Abstract The abstract is used by readers to get a quick overview of your paper. Typically, they are about 200 words in length (120 words minimum to  250 words maximum). The abstract should introduce the topic and thesis, and should provide a general statement about what you have found in your research. The abstract allows you to mention each major aspect of your topic and helps readers decide whether they want to read the rest of the paper. Because it is a summary of the entire research paper, it is often written last. 

3. The Introduction The introduction should be designed to attract the reader's attention and explain the focus of the research. You will introduce your overview of the topic,  your main points of information, and why this subject is important. You can introduce the current understanding and background information about the topic. Toward the end of the introduction, you add your thesis statement, and explain how you will provide information to support your research questions. This provides the purpose and focus for the rest of the paper.

4. Thesis Statement Most papers will have a thesis statement or main idea and supporting facts/ideas/arguments. State your main idea (something of interest or something to be proven or argued for or against) as your thesis statement, and then provide your supporting facts and arguments. A thesis statement is a declarative sentence that asserts the position a paper will be taking. It also points toward the paper's development. This statement should be both specific and arguable. Generally, the thesis statement will be placed at the end of the first paragraph of your paper. The remainder of your paper will support this thesis.

Students often learn to write a thesis as a first step in the writing process, but often, after research, a writer's viewpoint may change. Therefore a thesis statement may be one of the final steps in writing. 

Examples of Thesis Statements from Purdue OWL

5. The Literature Review The purpose of the literature review is to describe past important research and how it specifically relates to the research thesis. It should be a synthesis of the previous literature and the new idea being researched. The review should examine the major theories related to the topic to date and their contributors. It should include all relevant findings from credible sources, such as academic books and peer-reviewed journal articles. You will want  to:

• Explain how the literature helps the researcher understand the topic.
• Try to show connections and any disparities between the literature.
• Identify new ways to interpret prior research.
• Reveal any gaps that exist in the literature.

More about writing a literature review. . .

6. The Discussion ​The purpose of the discussion is to interpret and describe what you have learned from your research. Make the reader understand why your topic is important. The discussion should always demonstrate what you have learned from your readings (and viewings) and how that learning has made the topic evolve, especially from the short description of main points in the introduction.Explain any new understanding or insights you have had after reading your articles and/or books. Paragraphs should use transitioning sentences to develop how one paragraph idea leads to the next. The discussion will always connect to the introduction, your thesis statement, and the literature you reviewed, but it does not simply repeat or rearrange the introduction. You want to: 

• Demonstrate critical thinking, not just reporting back facts that you gathered.
• If possible, tell how the topic has evolved over the past and give it's implications for the future.
• Fully explain your main ideas with supporting information.
• Explain why your thesis is correct giving arguments to counter points.

7. The Conclusion A concluding paragraph is a brief summary of your main ideas and restates the paper's main thesis, giving the reader the sense that the stated goal of the paper has been accomplished. What have you learned by doing this research that you didn't know before? What conclusions have you drawn? You may also want to suggest further areas of study, improvement of research possibilities, etc. to demonstrate your critical thinking regarding your research.

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Chapter 1 Research Papers: Titles and Abstracts

• First Online: 17 July 2020

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• Adrian Wallwork 3 &
• Anna Southern 3  

Part of the book series: English for Academic Research ((EAR))

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1 Whole paper: Concentrate above all on readability; grammar is generally less important.

mistake I have surveyed thousands of PhD students about what they consider to be the fundamentals of writing research papers in English. While some recognize that readability should be prioritized (i.e. minimizing long sentences and redundancy), most tend to focus on grammar and vocabulary. Few mention conciseness and even fewer mention ambiguity. In my opinion, it is a mistake to think that good grammar and appropriate vocabulary are the key to a good paper. There are other elements, including the ones listed below, that are much more likely to determine whether your paper will be accepted for publication, and which have a big impact on what a reviewer might refer to as ‘poor English’. This whole book is designed to help you understand what areas you should really be concentrating on.

Always think about the referee and the reader. Your aim is to have your paper published. You will increase your chances of acceptance of your manuscript if referees and journal editors (i) find your paper easy to read; (ii) understand what gap you filled and how your findings differ from the literature. You need to meet their expectations with regard to how your content is organized. This is achieved by writing clearly and concisely, and by carefully structuring not only each section, but also each paragraph and each sentence.

In your own native language, you may be more accustomed to write from your own perspective, rather than the reader’s perspective. To write well in English, it may help you to imagine that you are the reader rather than the author. This entails constantly thinking how easily a reader will be able to assimilate what you the author are telling them.

Write concisely with no redundancy and no ambiguity, and you will make fewer mistakes in your English. The more you write, the more mistakes in English you will make. If you avoid redundant words and phrases you will significantly increase the readability of your paper.

Read other papers, learn the standard phrases, use these papers as a model. You will improve your command of English considerably by reading lots of other papers in your field. You can underline or note down the typical phrases that they use to express the various language functions (e.g. outlining aims, reviewing the literature, highlighting their findings) that you too will need in your paper. You can also note down how they structure their paper and then use their paper as a template (i.e. a model) for your own.

If your paper is relatively easy to read and each sentence adds value for the reader, then you are much more likely to be cited in other people’s work. If you are cited, then your work as an academic will become more rewarding - people will contact you and want to work with you.

More details about readability and being concise can be found in Sections 31 - 56 .

2 Titles: Ensure your title as specific as possible. Delete unnecessary words.

mistake Titles are often written without too much thought. The result is vague titles that don’t give much information to the reader, and consequently dramatically decrease the chances of your paper being read. A paper might be rejected simply because the title and the content of the paper do not match. The title is the first thing that reviewers read, so you don’t want to mislead them. In fact the title tends to be the benchmark against which reviewers assess the content of the paper.

Example 1: The first 3-4 words of all these titles give no information. By deleting these no-info words, the key words (ABC and XYZ) are shifted to the beginning of the title.

Example 2: as a tool to could simply be replaced with to . In the YES example, the title has been reformulated into a statement / conclusion. This can be a really effective way to tell readers what your main finding is. But check other titles in your journal to see whether such statements are used by other authors (some editors don’t like this style).

Example 3: The NO example seems specific, but it isn’t. It doesn’t say how it affects quality and storage.

solution Before you write your title, make a list of all the key words associated with your paper and your key findings (i.e. what makes your research unique). Put these key words and findings in order of priority. Now try to put the most important key word(s) as close as possible to the beginning of the title. Next ensure that the resulting title contains a definite and concise indication of what is written in the paper itself and somehow includes your key finding. Consider avoiding acronyms and abbreviations ( Se = selenium, but Google Scholar and other indexes may not know this).

impact The title should contain as many key words as possible to help both the reader and search engines identify the key concepts. By including, if you can, your key finding(s) in your title you will have created a mini abstract that helps the reader to understand the importance of your paper.

You may find the following books helpful when writing a research paper:

English for Writing Research Papers

https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319260921

English for Academic Research: Writing Exercises

https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9781461442974

English for Academic Research: Grammar Exercises

https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9781461442882

English for Academic Research: Vocabulary Exercises

https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9781461442677

3 Titles: Avoid ‘clever’ titles.

Example 1: The NO example is correct, but the first words don’t really give an idea of what the paper is about. Moreover, no search engine is going to be looking for ‘hidden world’ as a key word. If you really want to use such a device, then put it at the end of the title. This creates a two-part title (second YES example) using a colon in the middle. This is a very useful means to shift key information to the beginning, but still retain a more fun or colloquial tone.

Example 2: The NO example is not a great title: i) it begins with a generic expression ( first insights ) and the second part contains a vocabulary mistake (it should be witch’s not wizard’s ) and what does a chance to explore mean? Making mistakes with vocabulary is typical when you try to write a non-technical title. The result is that you give readers an initial bad impression, which may discourage them from reading the rest of the paper. And how many non-natives are going to know what a witch’s cauldron is?

solution and impact Show your title to as many of your colleagues as you can. Ask them if they can improve it by making it more specific and so that it will immediately make sense to the editor and reviewers. Note: If you are particularly pleased with your title because to you it sounds clever or witty, consider rewriting or at least check that other people agree with you!

4 Abstracts: Be concise - especially in the first sentence.

mistake The style of an abstract likely reflects the style of the whole paper. Readers may find the NO! style confusing and thus the essence of the meaning is lost. They may also think that if the abstract is full of redundant words, then the rest of the paper is likely to be full of redundancy too. Readers may thus decide not to read the paper.

solution Only provide the reader with what is strictly necessary. Reducing the number of words will also help you meet the word count set by the journal (i.e. the maximum number of words that you can use in an abstract).

impact The YES! version is more concise, dramatic and memorable, but with no loss of information. It contains 30% fewer words - this will enable you to i) respect the journal’s word count requirements of the abstract; ii) free up more space for providing extra details. You want your Abstract to seem professional. If the English is poor and there is much redundancy the reader may see this as a sign of unclear thinking (as well as unclear English) and may then even doubt the whole research method.

5 Abstracts: Don’t begin the abstract with non key words.

mistake The first line of the abstract is likely to be the first sentence of your paper that the reader will read. If they see a series of words (in italics in the NO! example) that give no indication as to what you did and found in your research, they may stop reading.

solution Shift key words/info to the beginning. Reduce the number of non-key words, i.e. words that do not add value for the reader

impact If the reader sees the key words and key concepts immediately, they will be encouraged to read the rest of the Abstract, and hopefully the rest of the paper.

6 Abstracts: Make it clear why the purpose of your investigation is important.

mistake In the NO example the reader is told the purpose of the research, but not the reason why this purpose is important.

solution Don’t just tell the readers what you did, but also why you did it. Do this within the first three sentences of the abstract. Keep the sentences short - this will help to highlight the importance of what your research involves.

impact If you tell your readers near the beginning of the abstract why you carried out your research, they are more likely to continue reading. If you just give them background info or make them wait too long before they discover the rationale underlying your research objectives, readers may simply stop reading.

7 Abstracts: Clearly differentiate between the state-of-the-art and what you did in your research.

mistake In the abstract above, the authors were trying to describe their own work, i.e. what they did during their research. However, their style is confusing. In fact, in the NO version, the reader cannot be clear whether the authors are talking about their work or another author’s work. This is because they use the passive form, and they use the present tense indifferently whether they are talking about their work or other people’s work. By convention the past simple rather than the present simple is used to indicate what you did (as opposed to what is already known - present tense).

solution If your journal allows, use the personal form we . You can use it in combination with phrases such as in this work / paper / study , and this work / paper / study shows that ... Use the past simple ( were calculated , rather than the present is calculated or the present prefect has been calculated ) to indicate what you did.

There are two solutions shown in the YES column. The first YES solution is written in a personal style using we and the verbs that describe what the authors did are in the past form. The reader is thus certain that the authors are talking about their work.

The second YES solution is written in an impersonal style using the passive form. However, it is still relatively clear when the authors are talking about their work (they use the past tense) and when they are talking about other researchers (they use the present tense, e.g. CFD transient analyses which are commonly used in analysing racist statements).

impact If it is clear to the reader what your particular contribution is, he/she is more likely to continue reading the paper. This factor is even more important for the reviewers of your paper. If they don’t understand what you did and how you are filling the gap in the state of the art, then they will be less inclined to recommend your paper for publication.

8 Structured Abstracts - Background: Be careful of tense usage.

mistake This section is entitled Background, so you are not talking about what you did in your research, but about the state of the art, i.e. what we know at the moment. Thus ’has proved’ indicates the situation until now, whereas the past tense ( showed ) would imply that you made this discovery. Likewise, aging resulted implies that you are talking about your work, whereas leads to means that you are talking in general, i.e. what is already known. On the other hand has never been is correct because it means from the past until now, and it implies that in this paper this topic will be investigated for the first time.

solution For details on tense usage in Abstracts and background information see:

impact If you use the correct tenses, readers will not be confused between what other researchers have done and what you did.

9 Abstracts: When writing a single paragraph, write it like a ’structured abstract’.

mistake One of the biggest mistakes in writing an abstract is to forget that the abstract is a summary of the entire paper. The NO! example is little more than an introduction to the topic with some results. The author has forgotten to mention the methods, limitations and implications. Note however that not all journals require you to mention the limitations and implications in your abstract.

solution To avoid this problem, imagine that you are writing a structured abstract. If you answer the questions / headings typically used in a structured abstract, then you will remember to include everything. You will then produce an abstract like the YES example in the left-hand column.

example of structured abstract

Summary answer : CC therapy can... Furthermore,....

What is known already : CC treatment has been shown to....

Study design, size, duration : This was a randomized cross-over double blind controlled study (RCT) using...

Participants/materials, setting, methods : 21 out of the 24 enrolled men concluded the study. Inclusion criteria were:...

Main results and the role of chance : We observed that....

Limitations, reasons for caution : This study is the first to... However,...

Wider implications of the findings : CC is able to increase T production and should be considered as...

impact Readers read an abstract to understand what the whole paper is about. By using a structured abstract as a template you will provide readers and reviewers with all the standard information that is required.

10 Abstract and Introduction: Avoid the word ’attempt’ and avoid making bold statements beginning with ’this is the first …".

mistake The word attempt is a little misleading - it suggests that you tried to do something but doesn’t tell the reader whether you actually succeeded or not.

Saying this is the first time … may be dangerous because you can rarely be 100% sure that you are the first to do something.

solution Remove attempt . Precede this is the first time with one of the following: to the best of our knowledge … we believe that … as far as we are aware …

impact By removing attempt you clarify for the reader that you succeeded in your task. By adding to the best of our knowledge you protect yourself from possible criticism by the reviewers that in reality this is not the first time. If your overall tone is confident but not arrogant, you will gain the trust of your readers.

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Wallwork, A., Southern, A. (2020). Chapter 1 Research Papers: Titles and Abstracts. In: 100 Tips to Avoid Mistakes in Academic Writing and Presenting. English for Academic Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44214-9_1

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• Introduction to Problem Statements, Purpose Statements, and Research Questions

Worksheets and Guides

Chapter 1 playlist.

• Student Experience Feedback Buttons
• Narrowing Your Topic
• Problem Statement
• Purpose Statement
• Conceptual Framework
• Theoretical Framework
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Chapter 1 introduces the research problem and the evidence supporting the existence of the problem. It outlines an initial review of the literature on the study topic and articulates the purpose of the study. The definitions of any technical terms necessary for the reader to understand are essential. Chapter 1 also presents the research questions and theoretical foundation (Ph.D.) or conceptual framework (Applied Doctorate) and provides an overview of the research methods (qualitative or quantitative) being used in the study.  

• Research Feasibility Checklist Use this checklist to make sure your study will be feasible, reasonable, justifiable, and necessary.
• Alignment Worksheet Use this worksheet to make sure your problem statement, purpose, and research questions are aligned. Alignment indicates the degree to which the purpose of the study follows logically from the problem statement; and the degree to which the research questions help address the study’s purpose. Alignment is important because it helps ensure that the research study is well-designed and based on logical arguments.
• SOBE Research Design and Chapter 1 Checklist If you are in the School of Business and Economics (SOBE), use this checklist one week before the Communication and Research Design Checkpoint. Work with your Chair to determine if you need to complete this.

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Chapter 1: What is Research and Research Writing?

Write here, write now.

Developing your skills as a writer will make you more successful in ALL of your classes. Knowing how to think critically, organize your ideas, be concise, ask questions, perform research and back up your claims with evidence is key to almost everything you will do at university.

Writing is life

Solid writing skills will help you wow your family and friends with your well-articulated ideas, ace job interviews, build confidence in yourself, and feel part of a community of writers.

Beyond University

Whether you go on to graduate school, teach, work for the government or a non-profit, start your own business or your own heavy metal band, becoming a stronger writer will give you a solid foundation you can keep building on.

This chapter:

• Defines research and gives examples
• Describes the writing process
• Introduces writing using research
• Introduces simple research writing
• Prompts you to think about research and writing meaningful to you

 Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass : Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants . Milkweed Editions, 2013.

From “ Why Writing Matters “ .   Writing Place: A Scholarly Writing Textbook by Lindsay Cuff. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. 2023.

Reading and Writing Research for Undergraduates Copyright © 2023 by Stephanie Ojeda Ponce is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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13.1 Formatting a Research Paper

Learning objectives.

• Identify the major components of a research paper written using American Psychological Association (APA) style.
• Apply general APA style and formatting conventions in a research paper.

In this chapter, you will learn how to use APA style , the documentation and formatting style followed by the American Psychological Association, as well as MLA style , from the Modern Language Association. There are a few major formatting styles used in academic texts, including AMA, Chicago, and Turabian:

• AMA (American Medical Association) for medicine, health, and biological sciences
• APA (American Psychological Association) for education, psychology, and the social sciences
• Chicago—a common style used in everyday publications like magazines, newspapers, and books
• MLA (Modern Language Association) for English, literature, arts, and humanities
• Turabian—another common style designed for its universal application across all subjects and disciplines

While all the formatting and citation styles have their own use and applications, in this chapter we focus our attention on the two styles you are most likely to use in your academic studies: APA and MLA.

If you find that the rules of proper source documentation are difficult to keep straight, you are not alone. Writing a good research paper is, in and of itself, a major intellectual challenge. Having to follow detailed citation and formatting guidelines as well may seem like just one more task to add to an already-too-long list of requirements.

Following these guidelines, however, serves several important purposes. First, it signals to your readers that your paper should be taken seriously as a student’s contribution to a given academic or professional field; it is the literary equivalent of wearing a tailored suit to a job interview. Second, it shows that you respect other people’s work enough to give them proper credit for it. Finally, it helps your reader find additional materials if he or she wishes to learn more about your topic.

Furthermore, producing a letter-perfect APA-style paper need not be burdensome. Yes, it requires careful attention to detail. However, you can simplify the process if you keep these broad guidelines in mind:

• Work ahead whenever you can. Chapter 11 “Writing from Research: What Will I Learn?” includes tips for keeping track of your sources early in the research process, which will save time later on.
• Get it right the first time. Apply APA guidelines as you write, so you will not have much to correct during the editing stage. Again, putting in a little extra time early on can save time later.
• Use the resources available to you. In addition to the guidelines provided in this chapter, you may wish to consult the APA website at http://www.apa.org or the Purdue University Online Writing lab at http://owl.english.purdue.edu , which regularly updates its online style guidelines.

General Formatting Guidelines

This chapter provides detailed guidelines for using the citation and formatting conventions developed by the American Psychological Association, or APA. Writers in disciplines as diverse as astrophysics, biology, psychology, and education follow APA style. The major components of a paper written in APA style are listed in the following box.

These are the major components of an APA-style paper:

Body, which includes the following:

• Headings and, if necessary, subheadings to organize the content
• In-text citations of research sources
• References page

All these components must be saved in one document, not as separate documents.

The title page of your paper includes the following information:

• Title of the paper
• Author’s name
• Name of the institution with which the author is affiliated
• Header at the top of the page with the paper title (in capital letters) and the page number (If the title is lengthy, you may use a shortened form of it in the header.)

List the first three elements in the order given in the previous list, centered about one third of the way down from the top of the page. Use the headers and footers tool of your word-processing program to add the header, with the title text at the left and the page number in the upper-right corner. Your title page should look like the following example.

The next page of your paper provides an abstract , or brief summary of your findings. An abstract does not need to be provided in every paper, but an abstract should be used in papers that include a hypothesis. A good abstract is concise—about one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty words—and is written in an objective, impersonal style. Your writing voice will not be as apparent here as in the body of your paper. When writing the abstract, take a just-the-facts approach, and summarize your research question and your findings in a few sentences.

In Chapter 12 “Writing a Research Paper” , you read a paper written by a student named Jorge, who researched the effectiveness of low-carbohydrate diets. Read Jorge’s abstract. Note how it sums up the major ideas in his paper without going into excessive detail.

Write an abstract summarizing your paper. Briefly introduce the topic, state your findings, and sum up what conclusions you can draw from your research. Use the word count feature of your word-processing program to make sure your abstract does not exceed one hundred fifty words.

Depending on your field of study, you may sometimes write research papers that present extensive primary research, such as your own experiment or survey. In your abstract, summarize your research question and your findings, and briefly indicate how your study relates to prior research in the field.

Margins, Pagination, and Headings

APA style requirements also address specific formatting concerns, such as margins, pagination, and heading styles, within the body of the paper. Review the following APA guidelines.

Use these general guidelines to format the paper:

• Set the top, bottom, and side margins of your paper at 1 inch.
• Use double-spaced text throughout your paper.
• Use a standard font, such as Times New Roman or Arial, in a legible size (10- to 12-point).
• Use continuous pagination throughout the paper, including the title page and the references section. Page numbers appear flush right within your header.
• Section headings and subsection headings within the body of your paper use different types of formatting depending on the level of information you are presenting. Additional details from Jorge’s paper are provided.

Begin formatting the final draft of your paper according to APA guidelines. You may work with an existing document or set up a new document if you choose. Include the following:

• Your title page
• The abstract you created in Note 13.8 “Exercise 1”
• Correct headers and page numbers for your title page and abstract

APA style uses section headings to organize information, making it easy for the reader to follow the writer’s train of thought and to know immediately what major topics are covered. Depending on the length and complexity of the paper, its major sections may also be divided into subsections, sub-subsections, and so on. These smaller sections, in turn, use different heading styles to indicate different levels of information. In essence, you are using headings to create a hierarchy of information.

The following heading styles used in APA formatting are listed in order of greatest to least importance:

• Section headings use centered, boldface type. Headings use title case, with important words in the heading capitalized.
• Subsection headings use left-aligned, boldface type. Headings use title case.
• The third level uses left-aligned, indented, boldface type. Headings use a capital letter only for the first word, and they end in a period.
• The fourth level follows the same style used for the previous level, but the headings are boldfaced and italicized.
• The fifth level follows the same style used for the previous level, but the headings are italicized and not boldfaced.

Visually, the hierarchy of information is organized as indicated in Table 13.1 “Section Headings” .

Table 13.1 Section Headings

A college research paper may not use all the heading levels shown in Table 13.1 “Section Headings” , but you are likely to encounter them in academic journal articles that use APA style. For a brief paper, you may find that level 1 headings suffice. Longer or more complex papers may need level 2 headings or other lower-level headings to organize information clearly. Use your outline to craft your major section headings and determine whether any subtopics are substantial enough to require additional levels of headings.

Working with the document you developed in Note 13.11 “Exercise 2” , begin setting up the heading structure of the final draft of your research paper according to APA guidelines. Include your title and at least two to three major section headings, and follow the formatting guidelines provided above. If your major sections should be broken into subsections, add those headings as well. Use your outline to help you.

Because Jorge used only level 1 headings, his Exercise 3 would look like the following:

Citation Guidelines

In-text citations.

Throughout the body of your paper, include a citation whenever you quote or paraphrase material from your research sources. As you learned in Chapter 11 “Writing from Research: What Will I Learn?” , the purpose of citations is twofold: to give credit to others for their ideas and to allow your reader to follow up and learn more about the topic if desired. Your in-text citations provide basic information about your source; each source you cite will have a longer entry in the references section that provides more detailed information.

In-text citations must provide the name of the author or authors and the year the source was published. (When a given source does not list an individual author, you may provide the source title or the name of the organization that published the material instead.) When directly quoting a source, it is also required that you include the page number where the quote appears in your citation.

This information may be included within the sentence or in a parenthetical reference at the end of the sentence, as in these examples.

Epstein (2010) points out that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (p. 137).

Here, the writer names the source author when introducing the quote and provides the publication date in parentheses after the author’s name. The page number appears in parentheses after the closing quotation marks and before the period that ends the sentence.

Addiction researchers caution that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (Epstein, 2010, p. 137).

Here, the writer provides a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence that includes the author’s name, the year of publication, and the page number separated by commas. Again, the parenthetical citation is placed after the closing quotation marks and before the period at the end of the sentence.

As noted in the book Junk Food, Junk Science (Epstein, 2010, p. 137), “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive.”

Here, the writer chose to mention the source title in the sentence (an optional piece of information to include) and followed the title with a parenthetical citation. Note that the parenthetical citation is placed before the comma that signals the end of the introductory phrase.

David Epstein’s book Junk Food, Junk Science (2010) pointed out that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (p. 137).

Another variation is to introduce the author and the source title in your sentence and include the publication date and page number in parentheses within the sentence or at the end of the sentence. As long as you have included the essential information, you can choose the option that works best for that particular sentence and source.

Citing a book with a single author is usually a straightforward task. Of course, your research may require that you cite many other types of sources, such as books or articles with more than one author or sources with no individual author listed. You may also need to cite sources available in both print and online and nonprint sources, such as websites and personal interviews. Chapter 13 “APA and MLA Documentation and Formatting” , Section 13.2 “Citing and Referencing Techniques” and Section 13.3 “Creating a References Section” provide extensive guidelines for citing a variety of source types.

Writing at Work

APA is just one of several different styles with its own guidelines for documentation, formatting, and language usage. Depending on your field of interest, you may be exposed to additional styles, such as the following:

• MLA style. Determined by the Modern Languages Association and used for papers in literature, languages, and other disciplines in the humanities.
• Chicago style. Outlined in the Chicago Manual of Style and sometimes used for papers in the humanities and the sciences; many professional organizations use this style for publications as well.
• Associated Press (AP) style. Used by professional journalists.

References List

The brief citations included in the body of your paper correspond to the more detailed citations provided at the end of the paper in the references section. In-text citations provide basic information—the author’s name, the publication date, and the page number if necessary—while the references section provides more extensive bibliographical information. Again, this information allows your reader to follow up on the sources you cited and do additional reading about the topic if desired.

The specific format of entries in the list of references varies slightly for different source types, but the entries generally include the following information:

• The name(s) of the author(s) or institution that wrote the source
• The year of publication and, where applicable, the exact date of publication
• The full title of the source
• For books, the city of publication
• For articles or essays, the name of the periodical or book in which the article or essay appears
• For magazine and journal articles, the volume number, issue number, and pages where the article appears
• For sources on the web, the URL where the source is located

The references page is double spaced and lists entries in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. If an entry continues for more than one line, the second line and each subsequent line are indented five spaces. Review the following example. ( Chapter 13 “APA and MLA Documentation and Formatting” , Section 13.3 “Creating a References Section” provides extensive guidelines for formatting reference entries for different types of sources.)

In APA style, book and article titles are formatted in sentence case, not title case. Sentence case means that only the first word is capitalized, along with any proper nouns.

Key Takeaways

• Following proper citation and formatting guidelines helps writers ensure that their work will be taken seriously, give proper credit to other authors for their work, and provide valuable information to readers.
• Working ahead and taking care to cite sources correctly the first time are ways writers can save time during the editing stage of writing a research paper.
• APA papers usually include an abstract that concisely summarizes the paper.
• APA papers use a specific headings structure to provide a clear hierarchy of information.
• In APA papers, in-text citations usually include the name(s) of the author(s) and the year of publication.
• In-text citations correspond to entries in the references section, which provide detailed bibliographical information about a source.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Chapter 1: Introduction to Research Methods

Learning Objectives

At the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

• Define the term “research methods”.
• List the nine steps in undertaking a research project.
• Differentiate between applied and basic research.
• Explain where research ideas come from.
• Define ontology and epistemology and explain the difference between the two.
• Identify and describe five key research paradigms in social sciences.
• Differentiate between inductive and deductive approaches to research.

Welcome to Introduction to Research Methods. In this textbook, you will learn why research is done and, more importantly, about the methods researchers use to conduct research. Research comes in many forms and, although you may feel that it has no relevance to you and/ or that you know nothing about it, you are exposed to research multiple times a day. You also undertake research yourself, perhaps without even realizing it. This course will help you to understand the research you are exposed to on a daily basis, and how to be more critical of the research you read and use in your own life and career.

This text is intended as an introduction. A plethora of resources exists related to more detailed aspects of conducting research; it is not our intention to replace any of these more comprehensive resources. Keep notes and build your own reading list of articles as you go through the course. Feedback helps to improve this open-source textbook, and is appreciated in the development of the resource.

Research Methods, Data Collection and Ethics Copyright © 2020 by Valerie Sheppard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• Writing Tips

How to Structure the Table of Contents for a Research Paper

4-minute read

• 16th July 2023

So you’ve made it to the important step of writing the table of contents for your paper. Congratulations on making it this far! Whether you’re writing a research paper or a dissertation , the table of contents not only provides the reader with guidance on where to find the sections of your paper, but it also signals that a quality piece of research is to follow. Here, we will provide detailed instructions on how to structure the table of contents for your research paper.

Steps to Create a Table of Contents

• Insert the table of contents after the title page.

Within the structure of your research paper , you should place the table of contents after the title page but before the introduction or the beginning of the content. If your research paper includes an abstract or an acknowledgements section , place the table of contents after it.

• List all the paper’s sections and subsections in chronological order.

Depending on the complexity of your paper, this list will include chapters (first-level headings), chapter sections (second-level headings), and perhaps subsections (third-level headings). If you have a chapter outline , it will come in handy during this step. You should include the bibliography and all appendices in your table of contents. If you have more than a few charts and figures (more often the case in a dissertation than in a research paper), you should add them to a separate list of charts and figures that immediately follows the table of contents. (Check out our FAQs below for additional guidance on items that should not be in your table of contents.)

• Paginate each section.

Label each section and subsection with the page number it begins on. Be sure to do a check after you’ve made your final edits to ensure that you don’t need to update the page numbers.

• Format your table of contents.

The way you format your table of contents will depend on the style guide you use for the rest of your paper. For example, there are table of contents formatting guidelines for Turabian/Chicago and MLA styles, and although the APA recommends checking with your instructor for formatting instructions (always a good rule of thumb), you can also create a table of contents for a research paper that follows APA style .

• Add hyperlinks if you like.

Depending on the word processing software you’re using, you may also be able to hyperlink the sections of your table of contents for easier navigation through your paper. (Instructions for this feature are available for both Microsoft Word and Google Docs .)

To summarize, the following steps will help you create a clear and concise table of contents to guide readers through your research paper:

1. Insert the table of contents after the title page.

2. List all the sections and subsections in chronological order.

3. Paginate each section.

4. Format the table of contents according to your style guide.

5. Add optional hyperlinks.

If you’d like help formatting and proofreading your research paper , check out some of our services. You can even submit a sample for free . Best of luck writing your research paper table of contents!

What is a table of contents?

A table of contents is a listing of each section of a document in chronological order, accompanied by the page number where the section begins. A table of contents gives the reader an overview of the contents of a document, as well as providing guidance on where to find each section.

Find this useful?

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What should I include in my table of contents?

If your paper contains any of the following sections, they should be included in your table of contents:

●  Chapters, chapter sections, and subsections

●  Introduction

●  Conclusion

●  Appendices

●  Bibliography

Although recommendations may differ among institutions, you generally should not include the following in your table of contents:

●  Title page

●  Abstract

●  Acknowledgements

●  Forward or preface

If you have several charts, figures, or tables, consider creating a separate list for them that will immediately follow the table of contents. Also, you don’t need to include the table of contents itself in your table of contents.

Is there more than one way to format a table of contents?

Yes! In addition to following any recommendations from your instructor or institution, you should follow the stipulations of your style guide .

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Chapter 1. Introduction

“Science is in danger, and for that reason it is becoming dangerous” -Pierre Bourdieu, Science of Science and Reflexivity

Why an Open Access Textbook on Qualitative Research Methods?

I have been teaching qualitative research methods to both undergraduates and graduate students for many years.  Although there are some excellent textbooks out there, they are often costly, and none of them, to my mind, properly introduces qualitative research methods to the beginning student (whether undergraduate or graduate student).  In contrast, this open-access textbook is designed as a (free) true introduction to the subject, with helpful, practical pointers on how to conduct research and how to access more advanced instruction.  

Textbooks are typically arranged in one of two ways: (1) by technique (each chapter covers one method used in qualitative research); or (2) by process (chapters advance from research design through publication).  But both of these approaches are necessary for the beginner student.  This textbook will have sections dedicated to the process as well as the techniques of qualitative research.  This is a true “comprehensive” book for the beginning student.  In addition to covering techniques of data collection and data analysis, it provides a road map of how to get started and how to keep going and where to go for advanced instruction.  It covers aspects of research design and research communication as well as methods employed.  Along the way, it includes examples from many different disciplines in the social sciences.

The primary goal has been to create a useful, accessible, engaging textbook for use across many disciplines.  And, let’s face it.  Textbooks can be boring.  I hope readers find this to be a little different.  I have tried to write in a practical and forthright manner, with many lively examples and references to good and intellectually creative qualitative research.  Woven throughout the text are short textual asides (in colored textboxes) by professional (academic) qualitative researchers in various disciplines.  These short accounts by practitioners should help inspire students.  So, let’s begin!

What is Research?

When we use the word research , what exactly do we mean by that?  This is one of those words that everyone thinks they understand, but it is worth beginning this textbook with a short explanation.  We use the term to refer to “empirical research,” which is actually a historically specific approach to understanding the world around us.  Think about how you know things about the world. [1] You might know your mother loves you because she’s told you she does.  Or because that is what “mothers” do by tradition.  Or you might know because you’ve looked for evidence that she does, like taking care of you when you are sick or reading to you in bed or working two jobs so you can have the things you need to do OK in life.  Maybe it seems churlish to look for evidence; you just take it “on faith” that you are loved.

Only one of the above comes close to what we mean by research.  Empirical research is research (investigation) based on evidence.  Conclusions can then be drawn from observable data.  This observable data can also be “tested” or checked.  If the data cannot be tested, that is a good indication that we are not doing research.  Note that we can never “prove” conclusively, through observable data, that our mothers love us.  We might have some “disconfirming evidence” (that time she didn’t show up to your graduation, for example) that could push you to question an original hypothesis , but no amount of “confirming evidence” will ever allow us to say with 100% certainty, “my mother loves me.”  Faith and tradition and authority work differently.  Our knowledge can be 100% certain using each of those alternative methods of knowledge, but our certainty in those cases will not be based on facts or evidence.

For many periods of history, those in power have been nervous about “science” because it uses evidence and facts as the primary source of understanding the world, and facts can be at odds with what power or authority or tradition want you to believe.  That is why I say that scientific empirical research is a historically specific approach to understand the world.  You are in college or university now partly to learn how to engage in this historically specific approach.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe, there was a newfound respect for empirical research, some of which was seriously challenging to the established church.  Using observations and testing them, scientists found that the earth was not at the center of the universe, for example, but rather that it was but one planet of many which circled the sun. [2]   For the next two centuries, the science of astronomy, physics, biology, and chemistry emerged and became disciplines taught in universities.  All used the scientific method of observation and testing to advance knowledge.  Knowledge about people , however, and social institutions, however, was still left to faith, tradition, and authority.  Historians and philosophers and poets wrote about the human condition, but none of them used research to do so. [3]

It was not until the nineteenth century that “social science” really emerged, using the scientific method (empirical observation) to understand people and social institutions.  New fields of sociology, economics, political science, and anthropology emerged.  The first sociologists, people like Auguste Comte and Karl Marx, sought specifically to apply the scientific method of research to understand society, Engels famously claiming that Marx had done for the social world what Darwin did for the natural world, tracings its laws of development.  Today we tend to take for granted the naturalness of science here, but it is actually a pretty recent and radical development.

To return to the question, “does your mother love you?”  Well, this is actually not really how a researcher would frame the question, as it is too specific to your case.  It doesn’t tell us much about the world at large, even if it does tell us something about you and your relationship with your mother.  A social science researcher might ask, “do mothers love their children?”  Or maybe they would be more interested in how this loving relationship might change over time (e.g., “do mothers love their children more now than they did in the 18th century when so many children died before reaching adulthood?”) or perhaps they might be interested in measuring quality of love across cultures or time periods, or even establishing “what love looks like” using the mother/child relationship as a site of exploration.  All of these make good research questions because we can use observable data to answer them.

What is Qualitative Research?

“All we know is how to learn. How to study, how to listen, how to talk, how to tell.  If we don’t tell the world, we don’t know the world.  We’re lost in it, we die.” -Ursula LeGuin, The Telling

At its simplest, qualitative research is research about the social world that does not use numbers in its analyses.  All those who fear statistics can breathe a sigh of relief – there are no mathematical formulae or regression models in this book! But this definition is less about what qualitative research can be and more about what it is not.  To be honest, any simple statement will fail to capture the power and depth of qualitative research.  One way of contrasting qualitative research to quantitative research is to note that the focus of qualitative research is less about explaining and predicting relationships between variables and more about understanding the social world.  To use our mother love example, the question about “what love looks like” is a good question for the qualitative researcher while all questions measuring love or comparing incidences of love (both of which require measurement) are good questions for quantitative researchers. Patton writes,

Qualitative data describe.  They take us, as readers, into the time and place of the observation so that we know what it was like to have been there.  They capture and communicate someone else’s experience of the world in his or her own words.  Qualitative data tell a story. ( Patton 2002:47 )

Qualitative researchers are asking different questions about the world than their quantitative colleagues.  Even when researchers are employed in “mixed methods” research ( both quantitative and qualitative), they are using different methods to address different questions of the study.  I do a lot of research about first-generation and working-college college students.  Where a quantitative researcher might ask, how many first-generation college students graduate from college within four years? Or does first-generation college status predict high student debt loads?  A qualitative researcher might ask, how does the college experience differ for first-generation college students?  What is it like to carry a lot of debt, and how does this impact the ability to complete college on time?  Both sets of questions are important, but they can only be answered using specific tools tailored to those questions.  For the former, you need large numbers to make adequate comparisons.  For the latter, you need to talk to people, find out what they are thinking and feeling, and try to inhabit their shoes for a little while so you can make sense of their experiences and beliefs.

Examples of Qualitative Research

You have probably seen examples of qualitative research before, but you might not have paid particular attention to how they were produced or realized that the accounts you were reading were the result of hours, months, even years of research “in the field.”  A good qualitative researcher will present the product of their hours of work in such a way that it seems natural, even obvious, to the reader.  Because we are trying to convey what it is like answers, qualitative research is often presented as stories – stories about how people live their lives, go to work, raise their children, interact with one another.  In some ways, this can seem like reading particularly insightful novels.  But, unlike novels, there are very specific rules and guidelines that qualitative researchers follow to ensure that the “story” they are telling is accurate , a truthful rendition of what life is like for the people being studied.  Most of this textbook will be spent conveying those rules and guidelines.  Let’s take a look, first, however, at three examples of what the end product looks like.  I have chosen these three examples to showcase very different approaches to qualitative research, and I will return to these five examples throughout the book.  They were all published as whole books (not chapters or articles), and they are worth the long read, if you have the time.  I will also provide some information on how these books came to be and the length of time it takes to get them into book version.  It is important you know about this process, and the rest of this textbook will help explain why it takes so long to conduct good qualitative research!

Example 1 : The End Game (ethnography + interviews)

Corey Abramson is a sociologist who teaches at the University of Arizona.   In 2015 he published The End Game: How Inequality Shapes our Final Years ( 2015 ). This book was based on the research he did for his dissertation at the University of California-Berkeley in 2012.  Actually, the dissertation was completed in 2012 but the work that was produced that took several years.  The dissertation was entitled, “This is How We Live, This is How We Die: Social Stratification, Aging, and Health in Urban America” ( 2012 ).  You can see how the book version, which was written for a more general audience, has a more engaging sound to it, but that the dissertation version, which is what academic faculty read and evaluate, has a more descriptive title.  You can read the title and know that this is a study about aging and health and that the focus is going to be inequality and that the context (place) is going to be “urban America.”  It’s a study about “how” people do something – in this case, how they deal with aging and death.  This is the very first sentence of the dissertation, “From our first breath in the hospital to the day we die, we live in a society characterized by unequal opportunities for maintaining health and taking care of ourselves when ill.  These disparities reflect persistent racial, socio-economic, and gender-based inequalities and contribute to their persistence over time” ( 1 ).  What follows is a truthful account of how that is so.

Cory Abramson spent three years conducting his research in four different urban neighborhoods.  We call the type of research he conducted “comparative ethnographic” because he designed his study to compare groups of seniors as they went about their everyday business.  It’s comparative because he is comparing different groups (based on race, class, gender) and ethnographic because he is studying the culture/way of life of a group. [4]   He had an educated guess, rooted in what previous research had shown and what social theory would suggest, that people’s experiences of aging differ by race, class, and gender.  So, he set up a research design that would allow him to observe differences.  He chose two primarily middle-class (one was racially diverse and the other was predominantly White) and two primarily poor neighborhoods (one was racially diverse and the other was predominantly African American).  He hung out in senior centers and other places seniors congregated, watched them as they took the bus to get prescriptions filled, sat in doctor’s offices with them, and listened to their conversations with each other.  He also conducted more formal conversations, what we call in-depth interviews, with sixty seniors from each of the four neighborhoods.  As with a lot of fieldwork , as he got closer to the people involved, he both expanded and deepened his reach –

By the end of the project, I expanded my pool of general observations to include various settings frequented by seniors: apartment building common rooms, doctors’ offices, emergency rooms, pharmacies, senior centers, bars, parks, corner stores, shopping centers, pool halls, hair salons, coffee shops, and discount stores. Over the course of the three years of fieldwork, I observed hundreds of elders, and developed close relationships with a number of them. ( 2012:10 )

When Abramson rewrote the dissertation for a general audience and published his book in 2015, it got a lot of attention.  It is a beautifully written book and it provided insight into a common human experience that we surprisingly know very little about.  It won the Outstanding Publication Award by the American Sociological Association Section on Aging and the Life Course and was featured in the New York Times .  The book was about aging, and specifically how inequality shapes the aging process, but it was also about much more than that.  It helped show how inequality affects people’s everyday lives.  For example, by observing the difficulties the poor had in setting up appointments and getting to them using public transportation and then being made to wait to see a doctor, sometimes in standing-room-only situations, when they are unwell, and then being treated dismissively by hospital staff, Abramson allowed readers to feel the material reality of being poor in the US.  Comparing these examples with seniors with adequate supplemental insurance who have the resources to hire car services or have others assist them in arranging care when they need it, jolts the reader to understand and appreciate the difference money makes in the lives and circumstances of us all, and in a way that is different than simply reading a statistic (“80% of the poor do not keep regular doctor’s appointments”) does.  Qualitative research can reach into spaces and places that often go unexamined and then reports back to the rest of us what it is like in those spaces and places.

Example 2: Racing for Innocence (Interviews + Content Analysis + Fictional Stories)

Jennifer Pierce is a Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota.  Trained as a sociologist, she has written a number of books about gender, race, and power.  Her very first book, Gender Trials: Emotional Lives in Contemporary Law Firms, published in 1995, is a brilliant look at gender dynamics within two law firms.  Pierce was a participant observer, working as a paralegal, and she observed how female lawyers and female paralegals struggled to obtain parity with their male colleagues.

Fifteen years later, she reexamined the context of the law firm to include an examination of racial dynamics, particularly how elite white men working in these spaces created and maintained a culture that made it difficult for both female attorneys and attorneys of color to thrive. Her book, Racing for Innocence: Whiteness, Gender, and the Backlash Against Affirmative Action , published in 2012, is an interesting and creative blending of interviews with attorneys, content analyses of popular films during this period, and fictional accounts of racial discrimination and sexual harassment.  The law firm she chose to study had come under an affirmative action order and was in the process of implementing equitable policies and programs.  She wanted to understand how recipients of white privilege (the elite white male attorneys) come to deny the role they play in reproducing inequality.  Through interviews with attorneys who were present both before and during the affirmative action order, she creates a historical record of the “bad behavior” that necessitated new policies and procedures, but also, and more importantly , probed the participants ’ understanding of this behavior.  It should come as no surprise that most (but not all) of the white male attorneys saw little need for change, and that almost everyone else had accounts that were different if not sometimes downright harrowing.

I’ve used Pierce’s book in my qualitative research methods courses as an example of an interesting blend of techniques and presentation styles.  My students often have a very difficult time with the fictional accounts she includes.  But they serve an important communicative purpose here.  They are her attempts at presenting “both sides” to an objective reality – something happens (Pierce writes this something so it is very clear what it is), and the two participants to the thing that happened have very different understandings of what this means.  By including these stories, Pierce presents one of her key findings – people remember things differently and these different memories tend to support their own ideological positions.  I wonder what Pierce would have written had she studied the murder of George Floyd or the storming of the US Capitol on January 6 or any number of other historic events whose observers and participants record very different happenings.

This is not to say that qualitative researchers write fictional accounts.  In fact, the use of fiction in our work remains controversial.  When used, it must be clearly identified as a presentation device, as Pierce did.  I include Racing for Innocence here as an example of the multiple uses of methods and techniques and the way that these work together to produce better understandings by us, the readers, of what Pierce studied.  We readers come away with a better grasp of how and why advantaged people understate their own involvement in situations and structures that advantage them.  This is normal human behavior , in other words.  This case may have been about elite white men in law firms, but the general insights here can be transposed to other settings.  Indeed, Pierce argues that more research needs to be done about the role elites play in the reproduction of inequality in the workplace in general.

Example 3: Amplified Advantage (Mixed Methods: Survey Interviews + Focus Groups + Archives)

The final example comes from my own work with college students, particularly the ways in which class background affects the experience of college and outcomes for graduates.  I include it here as an example of mixed methods, and for the use of supplementary archival research.  I’ve done a lot of research over the years on first-generation, low-income, and working-class college students.  I am curious (and skeptical) about the possibility of social mobility today, particularly with the rising cost of college and growing inequality in general.  As one of the few people in my family to go to college, I didn’t grow up with a lot of examples of what college was like or how to make the most of it.  And when I entered graduate school, I realized with dismay that there were very few people like me there.  I worried about becoming too different from my family and friends back home.  And I wasn’t at all sure that I would ever be able to pay back the huge load of debt I was taking on.  And so I wrote my dissertation and first two books about working-class college students.  These books focused on experiences in college and the difficulties of navigating between family and school ( Hurst 2010a, 2012 ).  But even after all that research, I kept coming back to wondering if working-class students who made it through college had an equal chance at finding good jobs and happy lives,

What happens to students after college?  Do working-class students fare as well as their peers?  I knew from my own experience that barriers continued through graduate school and beyond, and that my debtload was higher than that of my peers, constraining some of the choices I made when I graduated.  To answer these questions, I designed a study of students attending small liberal arts colleges, the type of college that tried to equalize the experience of students by requiring all students to live on campus and offering small classes with lots of interaction with faculty.  These private colleges tend to have more money and resources so they can provide financial aid to low-income students.  They also attract some very wealthy students.  Because they enroll students across the class spectrum, I would be able to draw comparisons.  I ended up spending about four years collecting data, both a survey of more than 2000 students (which formed the basis for quantitative analyses) and qualitative data collection (interviews, focus groups, archival research, and participant observation).  This is what we call a “mixed methods” approach because we use both quantitative and qualitative data.  The survey gave me a large enough number of students that I could make comparisons of the how many kind, and to be able to say with some authority that there were in fact significant differences in experience and outcome by class (e.g., wealthier students earned more money and had little debt; working-class students often found jobs that were not in their chosen careers and were very affected by debt, upper-middle-class students were more likely to go to graduate school).  But the survey analyses could not explain why these differences existed.  For that, I needed to talk to people and ask them about their motivations and aspirations.  I needed to understand their perceptions of the world, and it is very hard to do this through a survey.

By interviewing students and recent graduates, I was able to discern particular patterns and pathways through college and beyond.  Specifically, I identified three versions of gameplay.  Upper-middle-class students, whose parents were themselves professionals (academics, lawyers, managers of non-profits), saw college as the first stage of their education and took classes and declared majors that would prepare them for graduate school.  They also spent a lot of time building their resumes, taking advantage of opportunities to help professors with their research, or study abroad.  This helped them gain admission to highly-ranked graduate schools and interesting jobs in the public sector.  In contrast, upper-class students, whose parents were wealthy and more likely to be engaged in business (as CEOs or other high-level directors), prioritized building social capital.  They did this by joining fraternities and sororities and playing club sports.  This helped them when they graduated as they called on friends and parents of friends to find them well-paying jobs.  Finally, low-income, first-generation, and working-class students were often adrift.  They took the classes that were recommended to them but without the knowledge of how to connect them to life beyond college.  They spent time working and studying rather than partying or building their resumes.  All three sets of students thought they were “doing college” the right way, the way that one was supposed to do college.   But these three versions of gameplay led to distinct outcomes that advantaged some students over others.  I titled my work “Amplified Advantage” to highlight this process.

These three examples, Cory Abramson’s The End Game , Jennifer Peirce’s Racing for Innocence, and my own Amplified Advantage, demonstrate the range of approaches and tools available to the qualitative researcher.  They also help explain why qualitative research is so important.  Numbers can tell us some things about the world, but they cannot get at the hearts and minds, motivations and beliefs of the people who make up the social worlds we inhabit.  For that, we need tools that allow us to listen and make sense of what people tell us and show us.  That is what good qualitative research offers us.

How Is This Book Organized?

This textbook is organized as a comprehensive introduction to the use of qualitative research methods.  The first half covers general topics (e.g., approaches to qualitative research, ethics) and research design (necessary steps for building a successful qualitative research study).  The second half reviews various data collection and data analysis techniques.  Of course, building a successful qualitative research study requires some knowledge of data collection and data analysis so the chapters in the first half and the chapters in the second half should be read in conversation with each other.  That said, each chapter can be read on its own for assistance with a particular narrow topic.  In addition to the chapters, a helpful glossary can be found in the back of the book.  Rummage around in the text as needed.

Chapter Descriptions

Chapter 2 provides an overview of the Research Design Process.  How does one begin a study? What is an appropriate research question?  How is the study to be done – with what methods ?  Involving what people and sites?  Although qualitative research studies can and often do change and develop over the course of data collection, it is important to have a good idea of what the aims and goals of your study are at the outset and a good plan of how to achieve those aims and goals.  Chapter 2 provides a road map of the process.

Chapter 3 describes and explains various ways of knowing the (social) world.  What is it possible for us to know about how other people think or why they behave the way they do?  What does it mean to say something is a “fact” or that it is “well-known” and understood?  Qualitative researchers are particularly interested in these questions because of the types of research questions we are interested in answering (the how questions rather than the how many questions of quantitative research).  Qualitative researchers have adopted various epistemological approaches.  Chapter 3 will explore these approaches, highlighting interpretivist approaches that acknowledge the subjective aspect of reality – in other words, reality and knowledge are not objective but rather influenced by (interpreted through) people.

Chapter 4 focuses on the practical matter of developing a research question and finding the right approach to data collection.  In any given study (think of Cory Abramson’s study of aging, for example), there may be years of collected data, thousands of observations , hundreds of pages of notes to read and review and make sense of.  If all you had was a general interest area (“aging”), it would be very difficult, nearly impossible, to make sense of all of that data.  The research question provides a helpful lens to refine and clarify (and simplify) everything you find and collect.  For that reason, it is important to pull out that lens (articulate the research question) before you get started.  In the case of the aging study, Cory Abramson was interested in how inequalities affected understandings and responses to aging.  It is for this reason he designed a study that would allow him to compare different groups of seniors (some middle-class, some poor).  Inevitably, he saw much more in the three years in the field than what made it into his book (or dissertation), but he was able to narrow down the complexity of the social world to provide us with this rich account linked to the original research question.  Developing a good research question is thus crucial to effective design and a successful outcome.  Chapter 4 will provide pointers on how to do this.  Chapter 4 also provides an overview of general approaches taken to doing qualitative research and various “traditions of inquiry.”

Chapter 5 explores sampling .  After you have developed a research question and have a general idea of how you will collect data (Observations?  Interviews?), how do you go about actually finding people and sites to study?  Although there is no “correct number” of people to interview , the sample should follow the research question and research design.  Unlike quantitative research, qualitative research involves nonprobability sampling.  Chapter 5 explains why this is so and what qualities instead make a good sample for qualitative research.

Chapter 6 addresses the importance of reflexivity in qualitative research.  Related to epistemological issues of how we know anything about the social world, qualitative researchers understand that we the researchers can never be truly neutral or outside the study we are conducting.  As observers, we see things that make sense to us and may entirely miss what is either too obvious to note or too different to comprehend.  As interviewers, as much as we would like to ask questions neutrally and remain in the background, interviews are a form of conversation, and the persons we interview are responding to us .  Therefore, it is important to reflect upon our social positions and the knowledges and expectations we bring to our work and to work through any blind spots that we may have.  Chapter 6 provides some examples of reflexivity in practice and exercises for thinking through one’s own biases.

Chapter 7 is a very important chapter and should not be overlooked.  As a practical matter, it should also be read closely with chapters 6 and 8.  Because qualitative researchers deal with people and the social world, it is imperative they develop and adhere to a strong ethical code for conducting research in a way that does not harm.  There are legal requirements and guidelines for doing so (see chapter 8), but these requirements should not be considered synonymous with the ethical code required of us.   Each researcher must constantly interrogate every aspect of their research, from research question to design to sample through analysis and presentation, to ensure that a minimum of harm (ideally, zero harm) is caused.  Because each research project is unique, the standards of care for each study are unique.  Part of being a professional researcher is carrying this code in one’s heart, being constantly attentive to what is required under particular circumstances.  Chapter 7 provides various research scenarios and asks readers to weigh in on the suitability and appropriateness of the research.  If done in a class setting, it will become obvious fairly quickly that there are often no absolutely correct answers, as different people find different aspects of the scenarios of greatest importance.  Minimizing the harm in one area may require possible harm in another.  Being attentive to all the ethical aspects of one’s research and making the best judgments one can, clearly and consciously, is an integral part of being a good researcher.

Chapter 8 , best to be read in conjunction with chapter 7, explains the role and importance of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) .  Under federal guidelines, an IRB is an appropriately constituted group that has been formally designated to review and monitor research involving human subjects .  Every institution that receives funding from the federal government has an IRB.  IRBs have the authority to approve, require modifications to (to secure approval), or disapprove research.  This group review serves an important role in the protection of the rights and welfare of human research subjects.  Chapter 8 reviews the history of IRBs and the work they do but also argues that IRBs’ review of qualitative research is often both over-inclusive and under-inclusive.  Some aspects of qualitative research are not well understood by IRBs, given that they were developed to prevent abuses in biomedical research.  Thus, it is important not to rely on IRBs to identify all the potential ethical issues that emerge in our research (see chapter 7).

Chapter 9 provides help for getting started on formulating a research question based on gaps in the pre-existing literature.  Research is conducted as part of a community, even if particular studies are done by single individuals (or small teams).  What any of us finds and reports back becomes part of a much larger body of knowledge.  Thus, it is important that we look at the larger body of knowledge before we actually start our bit to see how we can best contribute.  When I first began interviewing working-class college students, there was only one other similar study I could find, and it hadn’t been published (it was a dissertation of students from poor backgrounds).  But there had been a lot published by professors who had grown up working class and made it through college despite the odds.  These accounts by “working-class academics” became an important inspiration for my study and helped me frame the questions I asked the students I interviewed.  Chapter 9 will provide some pointers on how to search for relevant literature and how to use this to refine your research question.

Chapter 10 serves as a bridge between the two parts of the textbook, by introducing techniques of data collection.  Qualitative research is often characterized by the form of data collection – for example, an ethnographic study is one that employs primarily observational data collection for the purpose of documenting and presenting a particular culture or ethnos.  Techniques can be effectively combined, depending on the research question and the aims and goals of the study.   Chapter 10 provides a general overview of all the various techniques and how they can be combined.

The second part of the textbook moves into the doing part of qualitative research once the research question has been articulated and the study designed.  Chapters 11 through 17 cover various data collection techniques and approaches.  Chapters 18 and 19 provide a very simple overview of basic data analysis.  Chapter 20 covers communication of the data to various audiences, and in various formats.

Chapter 11 begins our overview of data collection techniques with a focus on interviewing , the true heart of qualitative research.  This technique can serve as the primary and exclusive form of data collection, or it can be used to supplement other forms (observation, archival).  An interview is distinct from a survey, where questions are asked in a specific order and often with a range of predetermined responses available.  Interviews can be conversational and unstructured or, more conventionally, semistructured , where a general set of interview questions “guides” the conversation.  Chapter 11 covers the basics of interviews: how to create interview guides, how many people to interview, where to conduct the interview, what to watch out for (how to prepare against things going wrong), and how to get the most out of your interviews.

Chapter 12 covers an important variant of interviewing, the focus group.  Focus groups are semistructured interviews with a group of people moderated by a facilitator (the researcher or researcher’s assistant).  Focus groups explicitly use group interaction to assist in the data collection.  They are best used to collect data on a specific topic that is non-personal and shared among the group.  For example, asking a group of college students about a common experience such as taking classes by remote delivery during the pandemic year of 2020.  Chapter 12 covers the basics of focus groups: when to use them, how to create interview guides for them, and how to run them effectively.

Chapter 13 moves away from interviewing to the second major form of data collection unique to qualitative researchers – observation .  Qualitative research that employs observation can best be understood as falling on a continuum of “fly on the wall” observation (e.g., observing how strangers interact in a doctor’s waiting room) to “participant” observation, where the researcher is also an active participant of the activity being observed.  For example, an activist in the Black Lives Matter movement might want to study the movement, using her inside position to gain access to observe key meetings and interactions.  Chapter  13 covers the basics of participant observation studies: advantages and disadvantages, gaining access, ethical concerns related to insider/outsider status and entanglement, and recording techniques.

Chapter 14 takes a closer look at “deep ethnography” – immersion in the field of a particularly long duration for the purpose of gaining a deeper understanding and appreciation of a particular culture or social world.  Clifford Geertz called this “deep hanging out.”  Whereas participant observation is often combined with semistructured interview techniques, deep ethnography’s commitment to “living the life” or experiencing the situation as it really is demands more conversational and natural interactions with people.  These interactions and conversations may take place over months or even years.  As can be expected, there are some costs to this technique, as well as some very large rewards when done competently.  Chapter 14 provides some examples of deep ethnographies that will inspire some beginning researchers and intimidate others.

Chapter 15 moves in the opposite direction of deep ethnography, a technique that is the least positivist of all those discussed here, to mixed methods , a set of techniques that is arguably the most positivist .  A mixed methods approach combines both qualitative data collection and quantitative data collection, commonly by combining a survey that is analyzed statistically (e.g., cross-tabs or regression analyses of large number probability samples) with semi-structured interviews.  Although it is somewhat unconventional to discuss mixed methods in textbooks on qualitative research, I think it is important to recognize this often-employed approach here.  There are several advantages and some disadvantages to taking this route.  Chapter 16 will describe those advantages and disadvantages and provide some particular guidance on how to design a mixed methods study for maximum effectiveness.

Chapter 16 covers data collection that does not involve live human subjects at all – archival and historical research (chapter 17 will also cover data that does not involve interacting with human subjects).  Sometimes people are unavailable to us, either because they do not wish to be interviewed or observed (as is the case with many “elites”) or because they are too far away, in both place and time.  Fortunately, humans leave many traces and we can often answer questions we have by examining those traces.  Special collections and archives can be goldmines for social science research.  This chapter will explain how to access these places, for what purposes, and how to begin to make sense of what you find.

Chapter 17 covers another data collection area that does not involve face-to-face interaction with humans: content analysis .  Although content analysis may be understood more properly as a data analysis technique, the term is often used for the entire approach, which will be the case here.  Content analysis involves interpreting meaning from a body of text.  This body of text might be something found in historical records (see chapter 16) or something collected by the researcher, as in the case of comment posts on a popular blog post.  I once used the stories told by student loan debtors on the website studentloanjustice.org as the content I analyzed.  Content analysis is particularly useful when attempting to define and understand prevalent stories or communication about a topic of interest.  In other words, when we are less interested in what particular people (our defined sample) are doing or believing and more interested in what general narratives exist about a particular topic or issue.  This chapter will explore different approaches to content analysis and provide helpful tips on how to collect data, how to turn that data into codes for analysis, and how to go about presenting what is found through analysis.

Where chapter 17 has pushed us towards data analysis, chapters 18 and 19 are all about what to do with the data collected, whether that data be in the form of interview transcripts or fieldnotes from observations.  Chapter 18 introduces the basics of coding , the iterative process of assigning meaning to the data in order to both simplify and identify patterns.  What is a code and how does it work?  What are the different ways of coding data, and when should you use them?  What is a codebook, and why do you need one?  What does the process of data analysis look like?

Chapter 19 goes further into detail on codes and how to use them, particularly the later stages of coding in which our codes are refined, simplified, combined, and organized.  These later rounds of coding are essential to getting the most out of the data we’ve collected.  As students are often overwhelmed with the amount of data (a corpus of interview transcripts typically runs into the hundreds of pages; fieldnotes can easily top that), this chapter will also address time management and provide suggestions for dealing with chaos and reminders that feeling overwhelmed at the analysis stage is part of the process.  By the end of the chapter, you should understand how “findings” are actually found.

The book concludes with a chapter dedicated to the effective presentation of data results.  Chapter 20 covers the many ways that researchers communicate their studies to various audiences (academic, personal, political), what elements must be included in these various publications, and the hallmarks of excellent qualitative research that various audiences will be expecting.  Because qualitative researchers are motivated by understanding and conveying meaning , effective communication is not only an essential skill but a fundamental facet of the entire research project.  Ethnographers must be able to convey a certain sense of verisimilitude , the appearance of true reality.  Those employing interviews must faithfully depict the key meanings of the people they interviewed in a way that rings true to those people, even if the end result surprises them.  And all researchers must strive for clarity in their publications so that various audiences can understand what was found and why it is important.

The book concludes with a short chapter ( chapter 21 ) discussing the value of qualitative research. At the very end of this book, you will find a glossary of terms. I recommend you make frequent use of the glossary and add to each entry as you find examples. Although the entries are meant to be simple and clear, you may also want to paraphrase the definition—make it “make sense” to you, in other words. In addition to the standard reference list (all works cited here), you will find various recommendations for further reading at the end of many chapters. Some of these recommendations will be examples of excellent qualitative research, indicated with an asterisk (*) at the end of the entry. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. A good example of qualitative research can teach you more about conducting research than any textbook can (this one included). I highly recommend you select one to three examples from these lists and read them along with the textbook.

A final note on the choice of examples – you will note that many of the examples used in the text come from research on college students.  This is for two reasons.  First, as most of my research falls in this area, I am most familiar with this literature and have contacts with those who do research here and can call upon them to share their stories with you.  Second, and more importantly, my hope is that this textbook reaches a wide audience of beginning researchers who study widely and deeply across the range of what can be known about the social world (from marine resources management to public policy to nursing to political science to sexuality studies and beyond).  It is sometimes difficult to find examples that speak to all those research interests, however. A focus on college students is something that all readers can understand and, hopefully, appreciate, as we are all now or have been at some point a college student.

Recommended Reading: Other Qualitative Research Textbooks

I’ve included a brief list of some of my favorite qualitative research textbooks and guidebooks if you need more than what you will find in this introductory text.  For each, I’ve also indicated if these are for “beginning” or “advanced” (graduate-level) readers.  Many of these books have several editions that do not significantly vary; the edition recommended is merely the edition I have used in teaching and to whose page numbers any specific references made in the text agree.

Barbour, Rosaline. 2014. Introducing Qualitative Research: A Student’s Guide. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.  A good introduction to qualitative research, with abundant examples (often from the discipline of health care) and clear definitions.  Includes quick summaries at the ends of each chapter.  However, some US students might find the British context distracting and can be a bit advanced in some places.  Beginning .

Bloomberg, Linda Dale, and Marie F. Volpe. 2012. Completing Your Qualitative Dissertation . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.  Specifically designed to guide graduate students through the research process. Advanced .

Creswell, John W., and Cheryl Poth. 2018 Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five Traditions .  4th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.  This is a classic and one of the go-to books I used myself as a graduate student.  One of the best things about this text is its clear presentation of five distinct traditions in qualitative research.  Despite the title, this reasonably sized book is about more than research design, including both data analysis and how to write about qualitative research.  Advanced .

Lareau, Annette. 2021. Listening to People: A Practical Guide to Interviewing, Participant Observation, Data Analysis, and Writing It All Up .  Chicago: University of Chicago Press. A readable and personal account of conducting qualitative research by an eminent sociologist, with a heavy emphasis on the kinds of participant-observation research conducted by the author.  Despite its reader-friendliness, this is really a book targeted to graduate students learning the craft.  Advanced .

Lune, Howard, and Bruce L. Berg. 2018. 9th edition.  Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences.  Pearson . Although a good introduction to qualitative methods, the authors favor symbolic interactionist and dramaturgical approaches, which limits the appeal primarily to sociologists.  Beginning .

Marshall, Catherine, and Gretchen B. Rossman. 2016. 6th edition. Designing Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.  Very readable and accessible guide to research design by two educational scholars.  Although the presentation is sometimes fairly dry, personal vignettes and illustrations enliven the text.  Beginning .

Maxwell, Joseph A. 2013. Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive Approach .  3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. A short and accessible introduction to qualitative research design, particularly helpful for graduate students contemplating theses and dissertations. This has been a standard textbook in my graduate-level courses for years.  Advanced .

Patton, Michael Quinn. 2002. Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.  This is a comprehensive text that served as my “go-to” reference when I was a graduate student.  It is particularly helpful for those involved in program evaluation and other forms of evaluation studies and uses examples from a wide range of disciplines.  Advanced .

Rubin, Ashley T. 2021. Rocking Qualitative Social Science: An Irreverent Guide to Rigorous Research. Stanford : Stanford University Press.  A delightful and personal read.  Rubin uses rock climbing as an extended metaphor for learning how to conduct qualitative research.  A bit slanted toward ethnographic and archival methods of data collection, with frequent examples from her own studies in criminology. Beginning .

Weis, Lois, and Michelle Fine. 2000. Speed Bumps: A Student-Friendly Guide to Qualitative Research . New York: Teachers College Press.  Readable and accessibly written in a quasi-conversational style.  Particularly strong in its discussion of ethical issues throughout the qualitative research process.  Not comprehensive, however, and very much tied to ethnographic research.  Although designed for graduate students, this is a recommended read for students of all levels.  Beginning .

Patton’s Ten Suggestions for Doing Qualitative Research

The following ten suggestions were made by Michael Quinn Patton in his massive textbooks Qualitative Research and Evaluations Methods . This book is highly recommended for those of you who want more than an introduction to qualitative methods. It is the book I relied on heavily when I was a graduate student, although it is much easier to “dip into” when necessary than to read through as a whole. Patton is asked for “just one bit of advice” for a graduate student considering using qualitative research methods for their dissertation.  Here are his top ten responses, in short form, heavily paraphrased, and with additional comments and emphases from me:

• Make sure that a qualitative approach fits the research question. The following are the kinds of questions that call out for qualitative methods or where qualitative methods are particularly appropriate: questions about people’s experiences or how they make sense of those experiences; studying a person in their natural environment; researching a phenomenon so unknown that it would be impossible to study it with standardized instruments or other forms of quantitative data collection.
• Study qualitative research by going to the original sources for the design and analysis appropriate to the particular approach you want to take (e.g., read Glaser and Straus if you are using grounded theory )
• Find a dissertation adviser who understands or at least who will support your use of qualitative research methods. You are asking for trouble if your entire committee is populated by quantitative researchers, even if they are all very knowledgeable about the subject or focus of your study (maybe even more so if they are!)
• Really work on design. Doing qualitative research effectively takes a lot of planning.  Even if things are more flexible than in quantitative research, a good design is absolutely essential when starting out.
• Practice data collection techniques, particularly interviewing and observing. There is definitely a set of learned skills here!  Do not expect your first interview to be perfect.  You will continue to grow as a researcher the more interviews you conduct, and you will probably come to understand yourself a bit more in the process, too.  This is not easy, despite what others who don’t work with qualitative methods may assume (and tell you!)
• Have a plan for analysis before you begin data collection. This is often a requirement in IRB protocols , although you can get away with writing something fairly simple.  And even if you are taking an approach, such as grounded theory, that pushes you to remain fairly open-minded during the data collection process, you still want to know what you will be doing with all the data collected – creating a codebook? Writing analytical memos? Comparing cases?  Having a plan in hand will also help prevent you from collecting too much extraneous data.
• Be prepared to confront controversies both within the qualitative research community and between qualitative research and quantitative research. Don’t be naïve about this – qualitative research, particularly some approaches, will be derided by many more “positivist” researchers and audiences.  For example, is an “n” of 1 really sufficient?  Yes!  But not everyone will agree.
• Do not make the mistake of using qualitative research methods because someone told you it was easier, or because you are intimidated by the math required of statistical analyses. Qualitative research is difficult in its own way (and many would claim much more time-consuming than quantitative research).  Do it because you are convinced it is right for your goals, aims, and research questions.
• Find a good support network. This could be a research mentor, or it could be a group of friends or colleagues who are also using qualitative research, or it could be just someone who will listen to you work through all of the issues you will confront out in the field and during the writing process.  Even though qualitative research often involves human subjects, it can be pretty lonely.  A lot of times you will feel like you are working without a net.  You have to create one for yourself.  Take care of yourself.
• And, finally, in the words of Patton, “Prepare to be changed. Looking deeply at other people’s lives will force you to look deeply at yourself.”
• We will actually spend an entire chapter ( chapter 3 ) looking at this question in much more detail! ↵
• Note that this might have been news to Europeans at the time, but many other societies around the world had also come to this conclusion through observation.  There is often a tendency to equate “the scientific revolution” with the European world in which it took place, but this is somewhat misleading. ↵
• Historians are a special case here.  Historians have scrupulously and rigorously investigated the social world, but not for the purpose of understanding general laws about how things work, which is the point of scientific empirical research.  History is often referred to as an idiographic field of study, meaning that it studies things that happened or are happening in themselves and not for general observations or conclusions. ↵
• Don’t worry, we’ll spend more time later in this book unpacking the meaning of ethnography and other terms that are important here.  Note the available glossary ↵

An approach to research that is “multimethod in focus, involving an interpretative, naturalistic approach to its subject matter.  This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them.  Qualitative research involves the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical materials – case study, personal experience, introspective, life story, interview, observational, historical, interactional, and visual texts – that describe routine and problematic moments and meanings in individuals’ lives." ( Denzin and Lincoln 2005:2 ). Contrast with quantitative research .

In contrast to methodology, methods are more simply the practices and tools used to collect and analyze data.  Examples of common methods in qualitative research are interviews , observations , and documentary analysis .  One’s methodology should connect to one’s choice of methods, of course, but they are distinguishable terms.  See also methodology .

A proposed explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation.  The positing of a hypothesis is often the first step in quantitative research but not in qualitative research.  Even when qualitative researchers offer possible explanations in advance of conducting research, they will tend to not use the word “hypothesis” as it conjures up the kind of positivist research they are not conducting.

The foundational question to be addressed by the research study.  This will form the anchor of the research design, collection, and analysis.  Note that in qualitative research, the research question may, and probably will, alter or develop during the course of the research.

An approach to research that collects and analyzes numerical data for the purpose of finding patterns and averages, making predictions, testing causal relationships, and generalizing results to wider populations.  Contrast with qualitative research .

Data collection that takes place in real-world settings, referred to as “the field;” a key component of much Grounded Theory and ethnographic research.  Patton ( 2002 ) calls fieldwork “the central activity of qualitative inquiry” where “‘going into the field’ means having direct and personal contact with people under study in their own environments – getting close to people and situations being studied to personally understand the realities of minutiae of daily life” (48).

The people who are the subjects of a qualitative study.  In interview-based studies, they may be the respondents to the interviewer; for purposes of IRBs, they are often referred to as the human subjects of the research.

The branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge.  For researchers, it is important to recognize and adopt one of the many distinguishing epistemological perspectives as part of our understanding of what questions research can address or fully answer.  See, e.g., constructivism , subjectivism, and  objectivism .

An approach that refutes the possibility of neutrality in social science research.  All research is “guided by a set of beliefs and feelings about the world and how it should be understood and studied” (Denzin and Lincoln 2005: 13).  In contrast to positivism , interpretivism recognizes the social constructedness of reality, and researchers adopting this approach focus on capturing interpretations and understandings people have about the world rather than “the world” as it is (which is a chimera).

The cluster of data-collection tools and techniques that involve observing interactions between people, the behaviors, and practices of individuals (sometimes in contrast to what they say about how they act and behave), and cultures in context.  Observational methods are the key tools employed by ethnographers and Grounded Theory .

Research based on data collected and analyzed by the research (in contrast to secondary “library” research).

The process of selecting people or other units of analysis to represent a larger population. In quantitative research, this representation is taken quite literally, as statistically representative.  In qualitative research, in contrast, sample selection is often made based on potential to generate insight about a particular topic or phenomenon.

A method of data collection in which the researcher asks the participant questions; the answers to these questions are often recorded and transcribed verbatim. There are many different kinds of interviews - see also semistructured interview , structured interview , and unstructured interview .

The specific group of individuals that you will collect data from.  Contrast population.

The practice of being conscious of and reflective upon one’s own social location and presence when conducting research.  Because qualitative research often requires interaction with live humans, failing to take into account how one’s presence and prior expectations and social location affect the data collected and how analyzed may limit the reliability of the findings.  This remains true even when dealing with historical archives and other content.  Who we are matters when asking questions about how people experience the world because we, too, are a part of that world.

The science and practice of right conduct; in research, it is also the delineation of moral obligations towards research participants, communities to which we belong, and communities in which we conduct our research.

An administrative body established to protect the rights and welfare of human research subjects recruited to participate in research activities conducted under the auspices of the institution with which it is affiliated. The IRB is charged with the responsibility of reviewing all research involving human participants. The IRB is concerned with protecting the welfare, rights, and privacy of human subjects. The IRB has the authority to approve, disapprove, monitor, and require modifications in all research activities that fall within its jurisdiction as specified by both the federal regulations and institutional policy.

Research, according to US federal guidelines, that involves “a living individual about whom an investigator (whether professional or student) conducting research:  (1) Obtains information or biospecimens through intervention or interaction with the individual, and uses, studies, or analyzes the information or biospecimens; or  (2) Obtains, uses, studies, analyzes, or generates identifiable private information or identifiable biospecimens.”

One of the primary methodological traditions of inquiry in qualitative research, ethnography is the study of a group or group culture, largely through observational fieldwork supplemented by interviews. It is a form of fieldwork that may include participant-observation data collection. See chapter 14 for a discussion of deep ethnography. 

A form of interview that follows a standard guide of questions asked, although the order of the questions may change to match the particular needs of each individual interview subject, and probing “follow-up” questions are often added during the course of the interview.  The semi-structured interview is the primary form of interviewing used by qualitative researchers in the social sciences.  It is sometimes referred to as an “in-depth” interview.  See also interview and  interview guide .

A method of observational data collection taking place in a natural setting; a form of fieldwork .  The term encompasses a continuum of relative participation by the researcher (from full participant to “fly-on-the-wall” observer).  This is also sometimes referred to as ethnography , although the latter is characterized by a greater focus on the culture under observation.

A research design that employs both quantitative and qualitative methods, as in the case of a survey supplemented by interviews.

An epistemological perspective that posits the existence of reality through sensory experience similar to empiricism but goes further in denying any non-sensory basis of thought or consciousness.  In the social sciences, the term has roots in the proto-sociologist August Comte, who believed he could discern “laws” of society similar to the laws of natural science (e.g., gravity).  The term has come to mean the kinds of measurable and verifiable science conducted by quantitative researchers and is thus used pejoratively by some qualitative researchers interested in interpretation, consciousness, and human understanding.  Calling someone a “positivist” is often intended as an insult.  See also empiricism and objectivism.

A place or collection containing records, documents, or other materials of historical interest; most universities have an archive of material related to the university’s history, as well as other “special collections” that may be of interest to members of the community.

A method of both data collection and data analysis in which a given content (textual, visual, graphic) is examined systematically and rigorously to identify meanings, themes, patterns and assumptions.  Qualitative content analysis (QCA) is concerned with gathering and interpreting an existing body of material.    

A word or short phrase that symbolically assigns a summative, salient, essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute for a portion of language-based or visual data (Saldaña 2021:5).

Usually a verbatim written record of an interview or focus group discussion.

The primary form of data for fieldwork , participant observation , and ethnography .  These notes, taken by the researcher either during the course of fieldwork or at day’s end, should include as many details as possible on what was observed and what was said.  They should include clear identifiers of date, time, setting, and names (or identifying characteristics) of participants.

The process of labeling and organizing qualitative data to identify different themes and the relationships between them; a way of simplifying data to allow better management and retrieval of key themes and illustrative passages.  See coding frame and  codebook.

A methodological tradition of inquiry and approach to analyzing qualitative data in which theories emerge from a rigorous and systematic process of induction.  This approach was pioneered by the sociologists Glaser and Strauss (1967).  The elements of theory generated from comparative analysis of data are, first, conceptual categories and their properties and, second, hypotheses or generalized relations among the categories and their properties – “The constant comparing of many groups draws the [researcher’s] attention to their many similarities and differences.  Considering these leads [the researcher] to generate abstract categories and their properties, which, since they emerge from the data, will clearly be important to a theory explaining the kind of behavior under observation.” (36).

A detailed description of any proposed research that involves human subjects for review by IRB.  The protocol serves as the recipe for the conduct of the research activity.  It includes the scientific rationale to justify the conduct of the study, the information necessary to conduct the study, the plan for managing and analyzing the data, and a discussion of the research ethical issues relevant to the research.  Protocols for qualitative research often include interview guides, all documents related to recruitment, informed consent forms, very clear guidelines on the safekeeping of materials collected, and plans for de-identifying transcripts or other data that include personal identifying information.

Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods Copyright © 2023 by Allison Hurst is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

This paper is in the following e-collection/theme issue:

Published on 8.5.2024 in Vol 26 (2024)

Characteristic Changes of the Stance-Phase Plantar Pressure Curve When Walking Uphill and Downhill: Cross-Sectional Study

Authors of this article:

Original Paper

• Christian Wolff 1 , MSc   ; 
• Patrick Steinheimer 2 , MSc   ; 
• Elke Warmerdam 3 , MSc, PhD   ; 
• Tim Dahmen 1 , MSc, PhD   ; 
• Philipp Slusallek 1 , MSc, PhD   ; 
• Christian Schlinkmann 1 , MSc   ; 
• Fei Chen 1 , MSc   ; 
• Marcel Orth 2 , MD, PhD   ; 
• Tim Pohlemann 2 , MD, PhD   ; 
• Bergita Ganse 2, 3 , MD, PhD  

1 German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Saarbrücken, Germany

2 Department of Trauma, Hand and Reconstructive Surgery, Departments and Institutes of Surgery, Saarland University, Homburg/Saar, Germany

3 Innovative Implant Development (Fracture Healing), Departments and Institutes of Surgery, Saarland University, Homburg/Saar, Germany

Corresponding Author:

Bergita Ganse, MD, PhD

Innovative Implant Development (Fracture Healing)

Departments and Institutes of Surgery

Saarland University

Kirrberger Straße 1

Building 57

Homburg/Saar, 66421

Phone: 49 684116 ext 31570

Email: [email protected]

Background: Monitoring of gait patterns by insoles is popular to study behavior and activity in the daily life of people and throughout the rehabilitation process of patients. Live data analyses may improve personalized prevention and treatment regimens, as well as rehabilitation. The M-shaped plantar pressure curve during the stance phase is mainly defined by the loading and unloading slope, 2 maxima, 1 minimum, as well as the force during defined periods. When monitoring gait continuously, walking uphill or downhill could affect this curve in characteristic ways.

Objective: For walking on a slope, typical changes in the stance phase curve measured by insoles were hypothesized.

Methods: In total, 40 healthy participants of both sexes were fitted with individually calibrated insoles with 16 pressure sensors each and a recording frequency of 100 Hz. Participants walked on a treadmill at 4 km/h for 1 minute in each of the following slopes: −20%, −15%, −10%, −5%, 0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%. Raw data were exported for analyses. A custom-developed data platform was used for data processing and parameter calculation, including step detection, data transformation, and normalization for time by natural cubic spline interpolation and force (proportion of body weight). To identify the time-axis positions of the desired maxima and minimum among the available extremum candidates in each step, a Gaussian filter was applied (σ=3, kernel size 7). Inconclusive extremum candidates were further processed by screening for time plausibility, maximum or minimum pool filtering, and monotony. Several parameters that describe the curve trajectory were computed for each step. The normal distribution of data was tested by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests.

Results: Data were normally distributed. An analysis of variance with the gait parameters as dependent and slope as independent variables revealed significant changes related to the slope for the following parameters of the stance phase curve: the mean force during loading and unloading, the 2 maxima and the minimum, as well as the loading and unloading slope (all P <.001). A simultaneous increase in the loading slope, the first maximum and the mean loading force combined with a decrease in the mean unloading force, the second maximum, and the unloading slope is characteristic for downhill walking. The opposite represents uphill walking. The minimum had its peak at horizontal walking and values dropped when walking uphill and downhill alike. It is therefore not a suitable parameter to distinguish between uphill and downhill walking.

Conclusions: While patient-related factors, such as anthropometrics, injury, or disease shape the stance phase curve on a longer-term scale, walking on slopes leads to temporary and characteristic short-term changes in the curve trajectory.

Introduction

Long-term monitoring of gait patterns and plantar-pressure distributions via insoles are increasingly popular ways to study behavior and activity in the field and in the everyday lives of people and patients, including healing, personalized prevention, and treatment or disease progression [ 1 - 3 ]. In recent years, the usability of instrumented insoles for gait analyses has increased. Several technical issues could be resolved, including calibration, hysteresis and drift, durability, usability, limited energy supply and battery life, data storage capacity, and the restriction to low sample frequencies associated with higher error rates, that is, when force peaks are missed [ 3 - 5 ]. The usability of instrumented insoles is currently still limited by difficulties in data analysis. Advanced algorithms and tools are needed and currently developed to be able to draw meaningful conclusions from such insole gait data [ 6 , 7 ]. When analyzing long-term field data and developing smart health care innovations, automated data annotation is desirable to determine and quantify the activities a person has conducted. Ideally, the activity type can be determined algorithmically from the plantar pressure data alone.

Characteristic gait changes have been reported for walking on slopes, such as changes in the contribution of the ankle joint to leg work [ 8 ]. In addition, uphill walking on a treadmill increases hip and knee flexion angles during the stance phase, as well as the forward tilt of the thorax [ 9 ]. Furthermore, a decrease in dorsiflexion was observed during downhill walking at initial contact, in midstance, and during the second half of the swing phase [ 9 ]. During uphill walking with increasing inclination, more positive joint work was identified for the ankle and hip joint, while negative joint work increased during downhill walking [ 10 ]. Older individuals were shown to have a disproportionate recruitment of hip muscles and smaller increases in activity of the medial gastrocnemius muscle with steeper uphill slopes than younger adults, resulting in difficulty walking on steep slopes [ 11 ].

The M-shaped curve of ground reaction forces or plantar pressure during the stance phase is mainly defined by the loading and unloading slope, 2 maxima, 1 minimum, as well as the force during defined periods [ 12 ]. When monitoring gait continuously via insoles, walking uphill or downhill on a slope could affect the gait cycle curve in characteristic ways. If these typical changes were known, one could correct for such confounders when analyzing insole data. We hypothesized that walking on a slope generates typical changes in the plantar pressure stance phase curve that vary between uphill and downhill walking.

Study Design

This study is part of the project Smart Implants 2.0—Weight-bearing and Gait Observation for Early Monitoring of Fracture Healing and Individualized Therapy after Trauma, funded by the Werner Siemens Foundation. It was registered in the German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS00025108).

Ethical Considerations

Ethical approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board of Saarland Medical Board (Ärztekammer des Saarlandes, 30/21).

Data Collection

Inclusion criteria were the ability to walk on a treadmill, and aged 18 years and older. Exclusion criteria were aged under 18 years, use of walking aids, inability to give consent, pregnancy, immobility, and previous injury of the lower legs or pelvis. The aim was to collect data from healthy volunteers.

The healthy participants of both sexes (none of them identified as diverse) were fitted with individually calibrated OpenGO insoles (Moticon GmbH) with 16 pressure sensors in each insole to be used in regular running shoes. Calibration to the individual body weight was conducted using the Moticon OpenGO app by letting the participants walk and shift their body weight in a standardized way. The insole size was selected to fit the individual participant’s shoe size. Measurements were conducted with a recording frequency of 100 Hz in the record mode of the device. Raw data were exported for analyses. The participants walked on a treadmill at 4 km/h (Mercury, HP Cosmos) for 1 minute while insole data were collected with 3-minute breaks for recovery. Recordings were obtained for slopes of −20%, −15%, −10%, −5%, 0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%. The participants were asked to walk for 1 minute straight, and recording was only commenced when the walking was already in progress to avoid bias by including altered steps upon gait initiation.

Data Processing

The pressure readings of the force sensors in the insole device yield a weighted sum as a total vertical ground reaction force reading. To compute the force, every summand is weighted by its sensor area and a respective scaling factor accounting for the sensor’s surrounding area, as well as gaps between sensors that depend on the insole size. This process is conducted by the Moticon software as an automated processing step before file export. Insole data were exported as described previously [ 13 , 14 ]. A custom-developed data platform was then used for further processing and parameter calculation, in which step detection was conducted as follows. The stance phases were identified and extracted from the time series data by considering any activity with consecutive force readings above 30 N. A tolerance of up to 3 missing values was implemented to account for possible recording issues. Any activity with a duration of less than 300 milliseconds or more than 2000 milliseconds was discarded. Both the force and time axes were normalized. Force readings were transformed from Newton to a proportion of the body weight of the respective participant. Of note, as plantar pressure was measured instead of weight, due to acceleration, values regularly exceeded the body weight for peak load-bearing instances. Normalizing the time axis was more complex, as the lack of a fixed cadence resulted in varying step lengths and thus differing numbers of true measurement points for each step. Therefore, a natural cubic spline interpolation was conducted on the original raw data. Based on the resulting curve for each stance phase, 100 equidistant samples were taken, resulting in an interpolated force measurement point for every 1% of the overall stance phase length. This approach accounted for the lower recording frequency and higher sensor noise inherent to the insoles when compared with other gait measuring devices, such as sensor-equipped treadmills or force plates. Parameters that describe the trajectory of the stance phase curve are usually based on or derived from the characteristic local extrema, that is, the first and second force peak and the local minimum in-between force peaks. These maxima and the minimum are used as parameters themselves to describe the curve trajectory [ 13 ]. Sensor jitter may lead to the existence of multiple ambiguous candidates for the named extrema. As a solution to this, a Gaussian filter was applied to the original raw data in a repetition of the normalization process. The applied filtering strategy (σ=3, kernel size 7) was chosen to prioritize the elimination of extrema ambiguity at the expense of signal precision. This can result in overcorrection in areas with higher signal volatility, mostly at the start and end of the stance phase. Hence, to avoid loss of high-frequency detail, the filtered and normalized curve was not used for parameter analysis, but only to determine unambiguous time-axis positions (indices) for the extremum candidates. These indices were then reapplied to the nonfiltered, normalized data to identify the corresponding plantar pressure measurement closest to the original raw data. In case the use of the filtered data still led to inconclusive extremum candidates, the following additional detection strategies were applied in the named order: (1) time plausibility: extremum candidates occurring within the first or last 10 indices (first/last 10% of overall time span) were eliminated; (2) maximum or minimum-pool filtering: should multiple extremum candidates occur within a pool size of 5 indices (equals to 5% of overall time span), the candidate with the highest or lowest force value was chosen; (3) monotony-check: in case of multiple remaining extremum candidates, candidates where the curve did not display a strict monotonous decrease or increase in both directions within 5 indices each were eliminated; and (4) monotony grace: in case the monotony check had eliminated too many candidates (less than 2 maximum candidates or less than 1 minimum candidate remaining), the eliminated candidates were reinstated in descending order of their highest achieved monotony distance until the target number of candidates was reached.

After applying these strategies, every stance activity that remained with an irregular amount of unambiguous extremum candidates was removed from the data set. In total, 585 load-bearing events were excluded as not fitting the strict parameter definitions.

For each participant, across the minute of walking all stance phase curves were extracted. The parameters illustrated in Figure 1 were calculated for each stance phase and used to analyze changes in the trajectory of the stance phase curve. To do so, data from both feet were pooled. The curve is mainly described by 2 maxima and a minimum in between the maxima, Fz2 (the first maximum), Fz3 (the minimum), and Fz4 (the second maximum). The mean force over the entire stance phase is referred to as Fmean stance . The mean force between the start of the loading phase and Fz2 is Fmean load . The mean force between Fz2 and Fz4 is Fmean mid . The mean force between Fz4 and the end of the unloading phase is Fmean unload . All these parameters have the unit percent body weight. In addition, the loading and unloading slope have the units percent body weight or percent stance phase duration. The loading slope was computed as the slope of the line defined by the start of the loading phase and the first force reading equal to or higher than 80% of Fz2. The unloading slope was calculated as the slope of the line defined by the first force reading in the unloading phase below 80% of Fz4 and the end of the stance phase event.

Statistical Analyses

Statistical tests were executed with SPSS Statistics (version 29; IBM Corp). Significance was defined as P <.05. The normal distribution of data was tested by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests. A linear regression analysis of variance was conducted for each of the gait parameters as the dependent variable, with the slope (−20% to 20%) as the independent variable. Mean values and SD are reported. Linear regression slopes are reported for comparability and to allow for correction, even though for some of the parameters other but differing regression types yielded higher R 2 values. The sample size of 40 was an estimate based on what is common in the field, and taking into account the aim to measure a very diverse group of volunteers. An a priori sample size calculation was not conducted due to a lack of comparable data.

Measurements were taken from 40 healthy participants (19 women and 21 men) with an average age of 43.90 (SD 17.30, range 18-87) years. Participant characteristics are summarized in Table 1 . Data were successfully recorded for all of the participants and slope levels, resulting in a complete data set ( Multimedia Appendix 1 ).

Data were normally distributed. Figure 2 visualizes the differences between the analyzed slope values on the stance phase curve. Figure 3 shows the normalized changes in the analyzed parameters with the slope of the treadmill. The analysis of variance revealed significant changes with the slope for Fmean load , Fmean unload , Fz2, Fz3, Fz4, loading and unloading slope (all P <.001). There was no significant correlation of the slope with Fmean stance ( P =.98) and Fmean mid ( P =.13). Other than the other parameters with significant changes related to slope, Fz3 had its peak at horizontal walking and values dropped when walking uphill and downhill alike. Thus, a simultaneous and short-term increase in loading slope and Fmean load combined with a decrease in Fmean unload , Fz2, Fz4, and the unloading slope indicates downhill walking, while the opposite indicates uphill walking. Fz3 is not a suitable parameter to distinguish between uphill and downhill walking, as its value decreases both when walking uphill as well as downhill. Mean values and the SD of the analyzed parameters for each treadmill slope level in absolute values are displayed in Table 2 . Table 3 indicates the linear regression slopes and R 2 -values for each of the curves shown in Figure 3 .

a Fmean stance : the mean force over the entire stance phase.

b Fmean load : the mean force between the start of the loading phase and Fz2.

c Fmean mid : the mean force between Fz2 and Fz4.

d Fmean unload : the mean force between Fz4 and the end of the unloading phase.

e Fz2: the first maximum.

f Fz3: the minimum.

g Fz4: the second maximum.

Principal Results

This study identified characteristic changes when walking with an uphill or downhill slope in insole plantar pressure data of healthy participants. The most pronounced changes with treadmill slope were found in the loading slope of the curve. A typical combination of changes in several parameters was reported that defines uphill and downhill walking and may be used for annotation and correction when analyzing such data. These changes in the trajectory of the force curve with different surface slopes relative to the force vector of Earth’s gravity are related to changes in plantar load distribution. When walking downhill, Fz2 was found to be higher compared to when walking uphill, which is caused by the more pronounced force transfer through the heel of the foot, followed by a lower second maximum due to the even lower surface at push-off.

While patient-related factors, such as curve characteristics related to body size, muscle power, degenerative disease, etc, would remain constant throughout an insole measurement, fatigue-related changes [ 15 ] may increasingly appear and then stay toward the later stages of a recording of a walking bout. Additionally, age, body height, body weight, BMI, and handgrip strength were shown to cause characteristic changes in the plantar pressure force curve, that would usually only change on a long-term scale [ 16 ]. In contrast, as shown in the present data set, walking on slopes leads to temporary and characteristic changes in specific properties of the stance-phase curve. Changes over time in the identified parameters should thus be considered and correctly interpreted when studying long-term field gait data collected via insoles. To analyze the healing process, that is, after an injury, slow changes in parameters would be expected, and a trend toward what is considered normal over several weeks [ 17 ]. Short-term changes over minutes or hours would thus not be explainable by the healing progress and should have a different cause. In addition, the asymmetry between the legs should slowly decrease throughout healing [ 18 ]. When walking on a slope, asymmetry could also be affected, if the injury causes increasing problems such as pain when walking uphill or downhill. It is also recommendable to identify the characteristics of walking with walking aids, such as crutches, to be able to classify the nature of the observed changes and the treatment stage better.

Limitations

Effects of walking speed were not analyzed in this study, even though it is known that lower extremity joint loading is affected by varying step length and cadence during graded uphill and downhill walking [ 19 ]. These parameters, however, do not seem to be necessary to successfully annotate gait data obtained by insoles. For participant or patient convenience, it would be desirable if insoles did not need to be combined with further devices or wearables. The present data suggest that at least the identification of walking on slopes does not require further sensors. It is also known that kinematic, kinetic, and electromyographic parameters differ between treadmill walking and overground gait, while spatiotemporal, kinematic, kinetic, electromyographic, and energy consumption outcome measures are largely comparable [ 20 ]. Another limitation of this study is that the parameters analyzed here can only be used when a regular gait curve is present. If this is not the case, other methods need to be applied, that is, machine learning for step detection and segmentation or the analysis of further parameters, possibly slopes and averages, or differences between individual sensors [ 21 ]. Differences between the 16 sensors embedded in each insole were not analyzed in this study and could be assessed in the future, for example, to distinguish between ground types (gravel, sand, etc). Another limitation is that the present characteristic changes that were assessed in healthy participants may differ for patients with gait disorders, depending on their disease or injury type. It will therefore be important to collect longitudinal data on different slopes from patients with defined diseases and injuries throughout the healing process or throughout different disease stages. These studies would serve to identify if the reported findings are valid also for patients, and for which patient groups this is true.

Use of Wearables in Patients

The insole technology and present data may be valuable in real-world settings when investigating changes in mechanical properties during walking, that is, in occupational health research, sport and exercise science, for urban planning, and to plan inclusive architecture. For instance, the global average slope of urban areas is about 3.70° [ 22 ]. Wearables such as pressure insoles are increasingly used to study gait and movement, as well as for fall detection, fall classification, and fall risk assessment in the daily life of patients, and furthermore for lifestyle and health monitoring [ 1 , 3 , 23 - 27 ]. Long-term monitoring, especially if combined with additional sensors, may produce large amounts of data that require advanced strategies for analyses. Apart from regression statistics, among the options is the use of machine learning algorithms trained with annotated data for pattern recognition [ 24 , 26 ]. For longer-term monitoring of patients, it would be desirable if such algorithms were trained to identify various key activities of daily life that might indicate the level of healing progress. For example, when a patient with a tibial fracture is capable of cycling again, this is likely an indication for advances in the healing process. It would also be of interest to identify risky behavior, possibly leading to excessive forces, and to warn the patient by giving, for example, an audible or haptic warning signal. To guarantee meaningful data interpretation, machine learning may be combined with conventional regression-based analyses, such as the ones proposed in this paper to best tackle data complexity. Furthermore, prediction algorithms could be implemented for falls and diseases that enable more refined individual recommendations. Ideally, such interventions would be based on live data analyses. Limitations in the computing power of small wearable devices can increasingly be mitigated by both algorithmic optimization techniques in machine learning, such as dimensionality reduction, reservoir computing, and network pruning, as well as hardware innovations [ 27 , 28 ]. In the near future, such advances will likely allow real-time feedback based on data from various sources combined [ 29 , 30 ]. Alternatively, extracting decision-making systems (symbolic artificial intelligence), such as threshold-based methods, might offer an immediate route to real-time feedback.

Sensors in Orthoses and Implants

Apart from insoles, very similar data might be collected from mechanical sensors embedded in orthoses [ 31 ] or implants [ 32 ]. Potentially, walking on a slope in these recordings changes the data in similar ways as described here. It would be highly desirable if patients did not need to use separate wearables such as insoles anymore, but if orthoses and implants had sensors embedded, not only to monitor healing progress but also to identify healing problems or complications and the need for surgical revision [ 33 ]. If similar load data could be collected by sensors in artificial hip or knee joints, or potentially even by plates or nails that stabilize bone fractures, recovery regimen could be monitored continuously and advice given on time [ 34 ]. Alarms could go off if forces exceeded certain thresholds or if live pattern analyses revealed unfavorable patterns known to be associated with exceeding forces or problems. As these developments seem to have a high potential with regard to rehabilitation and postoperative treatment, data analyses of insole data should be further studied and ideally, details such as algorithms and characteristics should be published to enable for the further development and widespread application of the named interventions.

Conclusions

Characteristic changes in the plantar-pressure stance phase curve were identified, which reflect uphill and downhill walking. Automated annotation and continuous analyses of gait data via wearables could enable improved rehabilitation and feedback systems for prevention and treatment. A combination of traditional regression statistics embedded in heuristics combined with artificial intelligence methods may yield the best results.

Acknowledgments

The Werner Siemens Foundation (project Smart Implants 2.0) funded this work. The authors would like to acknowledge the help of Aynur Gökten and Jacqueline Orth during the measurements, as well as the help of Lisa-Marie Jost in designing Figure 1 .

Authors' Contributions

CW contributed to the data processing platform, data analysis, methods, and Figure 2 . P Steinheimer conducted the measurements. BG contributed to the idea; ran the statistical analyses; interpreted the data; made the tables; and drafted, submitted, and revised this paper. TD, CS, and FC took part in the data platform implementation. EW, TD, P Slusallek, CS, FC, MO, and TP helped with data interpretation. All authors have contributed to this paper’s drafting and revision, and read and approved the submitted version of this paper.

Conflicts of Interest

TP is President and Board Member of the AO-Foundation, Switzerland, and Extended Board Member of the German Society of Orthopedic Trauma Surgery (DGU), the German Society of Orthopedic Surgery and Traumatology (DGOU), and the German Society of Surgery (DGCH). TP is also the speaker of the Medical Advisory Board of the German Ministry of Defence. The other authors do not have a conflict of interest.

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• Ganse B, Orth M, Roland M, Diebels S, Motzki P, Seelecke S, et al. Concepts and clinical aspects of active implants for the treatment of bone fractures. Acta Biomater. 2022;146:1-9. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]

Abbreviations

Edited by G Eysenbach, T Leung; submitted 24.01.23; peer-reviewed by M Kraus, S Okita; comments to author 21.12.23; revised version received 11.01.24; accepted 17.02.24; published 08.05.24.

©Christian Wolff, Patrick Steinheimer, Elke Warmerdam, Tim Dahmen, Philipp Slusallek, Christian Schlinkmann, Fei Chen, Marcel Orth, Tim Pohlemann, Bergita Ganse. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 08.05.2024.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.

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Discrimination Experiences Shape Most Asian Americans’ Lives

2. asian americans and the ‘forever foreigner’ stereotype, table of contents.

• Key findings from the survey
• Most Asian Americans have been treated as foreigners in some way, no matter where they were born
• Most Asian Americans have been subjected to ‘model minority’ stereotypes, but many haven’t heard of the term
• Experiences with other daily and race-based discrimination incidents
• In their own words: Key findings from qualitative research on Asian Americans and discrimination experiences
• Discrimination in interpersonal encounters with strangers
• Racial discrimination at security checkpoints
• Encounters with police because of race or ethnicity
• Racial discrimination in the workplace
• Quality of service in restaurants and stores
• Discrimination in neighborhoods
• Experiences with name mispronunciation
• Discrimination experiences of being treated as foreigners
• In their own words: How Asian Americans would react if their friend was told to ‘go back to their home country’
• Awareness of the term ‘model minority’
• Views of the term ‘model minority’
• How knowledge of Asian American history impacts awareness and views of the ‘model minority’ label
• Most Asian Americans have experienced ‘model minority’ stereotypes
• In their own words: Asian Americans’ experiences with the ‘model minority’ stereotype
• Asian adults who personally know an Asian person who has been threatened or attacked since COVID-19
• In their own words: Asian Americans’ experiences with discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Experiences with talking about racial discrimination while growing up
• Is enough attention being paid to anti-Asian racism in the U.S.?
• Acknowledgments
• Sample design
• Data collection
• Weighting and variance estimation
• Methodology: 2021 focus groups of Asian Americans
• Appendix: Supplemental tables

Asian Americans are often seen by others as foreigners, regardless of their citizenship status or how long they or their family have lived in the U.S. This is commonly known as the “forever foreigner” or “perpetual foreigner” stereotype.

In the survey, we asked Asian adults whether they had experiences where people likely treated them as if they were a foreigner. About eight-in-ten Asian Americans (78%) have experienced at least one of the following incidents in their day-to-day encounters with strangers in the U.S.:

• 68% of Asian adults say people have mispronounced their name.
• 39% say people have acted as if they didn’t speak English.
• 32% say people have told them to go back to their “home country.”
• 22% of Asian adults who can speak the language of their Asian origin country say people have criticized them for speaking a language other than English in public.

What is the ‘forever foreigner’ stereotype?

A common experience for Asian Americans (and some other groups with large immigrant populations) is being asked when meeting someone for the first time, “Where are you from?” with a follow-up question if the person asking isn’t satisfied, “Where are you really from?” While these questions may be asked with good intentions, some Asian Americans say it makes them feel like they do not belong in the U.S. , even though they may be longtime residents, citizens of the United States or even were born in the country.

Scholars have called this experience and the beliefs that may be behind it the “forever foreigner” or “perpetual foreigner” stereotype. This stereotype follows a long history of Asian Americans being excluded and treated as outsiders to American society and culture , and makes the group more likely to be affected by geopolitical tensions. The treatment of Asian Americans as proxies for foreign countries – including the incarceration of Japanese Americans after World War II, the murder of Vincent Chin, the backlash after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the spike in anti-Asian discrimination following the COVID-19 outbreak, among other examples – illustrates how “forever foreigner” narratives can be used to fuel discrimination.

Roughly two-thirds of Asian adults (68%) say a stranger has mispronounced their name during day-to-day encounters.

While majorities across most demographic groups say they have experienced this, there are some differences, including by origin, nativity, education, race and religion:

• Ethnic origin: 79% of Indian adults say a stranger has mispronounced their name, a higher share than among other ethnic origin groups.
• Nativity: 70% of Asian immigrants say they have had this experience, compared with 62% of U.S.-born Asian adults.
• Education: 75% of Asian adults with a postgraduate degree say strangers have mispronounced their name. Somewhat smaller majorities among those with a bachelor’s degree or less say the same.
• Race: Name mispronunciation is less common among Asian adults who identify with two or more races (those who identify as Asian and at least one other race), though about half (51%) say it has happened to them. By comparison, 70% of single-race Asian adults (those who identify as Asian and no other race) say the same.  
• Religion: Asian American Christians are less likely than Asian adults who are Hindu or Muslim to say people have mispronounced their name.

In their own words: Asian Americans’ experiences with having their name mispronounced

While having one’s name mispronounced is not always perceived as an incident of discrimination, names are strong indicators of other aspects of identity, such as ethnic origin, religion, gender and more. Having one’s name mispronounced can also have profound institutional and interpersonal impacts .

In our 2021 focus groups of Asian Americans, some participants talked about the experience of having their name routinely mispronounced. Additionally, many shared that they went by multiple names: their given name, which often reflected their origin or culture, and a second “easier to pronounce” Anglicized or American name.

“When you walk on the street, someone speaks to you like [in Korean or Japanese]. I am not Korean or Japanese, and this discrimination act is speaking this way when seeing Asian people. Another example [is that] average Americans actually can hardly read out my name. One day I went to see a dentist. He asked me how to read my name. After I told him, he said, ‘Are you sure you know how to read your name?’ He thought it was funny, but it was actually an offensive question, a kind of microaggression. There are many cases where others sort of praise you, but in fact it is indirect disrespect for your race.”

–Immigrant woman of Chinese origin in early 30s (translated from Mandarin)

“Nobody ever seems to be able to get my name right. And what is the number one thing that is your identity? It’s your name. So, the fact that nobody – even if I explain how to say it – people can’t say it. I have a list of over 200 names that I’ve been called, so it’s insane. Also, you go to a store and they have the names on magnets and keychains and your name is never, ever, ever going to be there. And as a kid I would always look and my mom would be like, ‘You know your name’s not going to be there, so what are you doing?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah but I like to, you know, just look anyway.’ … Versus like you go to India and [my name is very common] so you see it on the street.”

–U.S.-born woman of Indian origin in late 20s

“Being Lao, my name is very strange [to Americans]. People don’t know what I am or what gender I am, like I share the same name with a bunch of different girls at my schools. But when they see my name, they’re not sure if it’s like Muslim, African, or whatever, and I feel like that hurts my job experiences. Even my friends tell me, ‘That’s your name? You don’t have like a normal name?’ They don’t know what to expect. They don’t know me [so they say things] like, ‘You speak good English,’ or whatever, stuff like that.”

–U.S.-born man of Laotian and Chinese origin in mid-20s

In their daily lives, 52% of Asian Americans say they have experienced at least one of three discrimination incidents in which a stranger treated them like a foreigner.

Whether Asian adults have had these experiences varies across some Asian ethnic origin groups:

• 49% of Korean Americans say strangers have acted as if they didn’t speak English in day-to-day encounters, compared with smaller shares of Chinese (40%), Filipino (37%), Indian (32%) and Japanese (26%) adults.
• About three-in-ten or more Korean, Chinese, Indian and Vietnamese adults and those who belong to less populous origin groups (those categorized as “other” in this report) say someone has told them to go back to their “home country.” About one-quarter of Filipino and Japanese adults say the same.

Regardless of nativity , similar shares of U.S.-born Asian adults (48%) and immigrants (54%) have experienced at least one of these three incidents.

Experiences, however, vary by immigration generation to some extent:

Qualitative research findings on how Asians are often seen by others as foreigners

An August 2022 report explored Asian Americans’ experiences with the “forever foreigner” stereotype. Here are some key findings related to the survey:

• Many Asian Americans shared a common experience of being asked where they are “really from,” implying that strangers see them as foreigners or that they do not fit their idea of what an “American” is supposed to look like.
• Whether participants were immigrants or U.S. born, many said they experienced this even if they or their families have lived in the country for decades or generations. Speaking fluent English also does not prevent others from asking them this question.
• Some U.S.-born participants said they avoided talking about their ethnic origin because it often led to misunderstandings and assumptions that they are immigrants.
• Japanese American participants shared their stories of being incarcerated with their families during World War II and being forced to leave their homes behind.
• Among immigrants, those who came to the U.S. as children (1.5 generation) are more likely than those who came as adults (first generation) to say someone has told them to go back to their “home country” (44% vs. 26%). And among the U.S.-born children of immigrant parents (second generation), 37% say they have had this experience.
• A higher share of 1.5-generation immigrants say strangers have acted as if they didn’t speak English than first-generation immigrants (47% vs. 38%).

Among immigrants, naturalized U.S. citizens are more likely than noncitizens to say they have encountered some of these incidents:

• 34% of naturalized citizens say someone has told them they should go back to their “home country,” compared with 26% of noncitizens.
• Among those who can speak the language of their Asian origin country, 24% of citizens say they have been criticized for speaking a non-English language in public, higher than the share of noncitizens who say the same (17%).

Asian Americans’ experiences with being treated like a foreigner by strangers vary by education:  

• 46% of Asian adults with a high school degree or less say strangers have acted as if they didn’t speak English, higher than the shares among those with at least some college experience.
• On the other hand, Asian adults with higher levels of education are more likely to say that a stranger has told them to go back to their “home country.” About one-third of those with a bachelor’s degree or more say they have had this experience, compared with smaller shares of those with some college experience or less.

Asian Americans’ perceived racial or ethnic identity is also associated with whether they are treated as foreigners in day-to-day encounters:

• Asian adults who are perceived as Chinese, Asian, or Hispanic or Latino are more likely than those who are perceived as some other non-White race or ethnicity to say strangers have acted like they didn’t speak English. 17

In the 2021 qualitative study of Asian Americans, we asked participants what they would do if someone told a close friend who just immigrated to the U.S., “Go back to your country, you don’t belong here!” We asked participants what they would say if their friend called them and asked, “Is this normal? What should I do?”

Participants answered with a variety of responses, including saying they would offer emotional support and offer strategies that could be summarized as “walk away,” “record and report” and “speak up.”

For those who suggest their friend walk away , some see it as rational and best for their friend’s safety.

“I personally have had a similar experience. This is a free country so you can’t stop other people from saying anything. … The main thing is to ensure your own personal safety.”

–Immigrant woman of Taiwanese origin in mid-20s (translated from Mandarin)

Participants also suggest their friend record the conversation if they can and report it to either an authority where the incident took place or the police.

“I also agree that whatever happens, we should calm down, and [if] I feel like I’m being attacked, I have to call the police for protection. That is my freedom. Other people can’t invade me, yell at me like that. But unfortunately it happens more often than I thought. I also have some friends or acquaintances who have been in the same situation.”

–Immigrant woman of Vietnamese origin in early 40s (translated from Vietnamese)

Immigrant participants are more likely to mention reporting the incident, while U.S.-born participants tend to express more doubt about whether police involvement would be helpful in the situation if there was no physical violence.

A number of participants would suggest their friend to speak up . Some see this as a chance to educate the aggressor:

“I’m a bit of a smartass and I would just tell them unless you’re [an] Indigenous [person], you should go back too. … [And] if you don’t like Chinese then you can’t have Chinese food. Things like that where they don’t realize that it’s already a part of their lives and kicking them out is going to take a piece of their own life with them.”

–U.S.-born man of Japanese origin in early 60s

“I would say, the answer would be that it is not your country either. It is a country of immigrants. … [I]t’s not you but your father or grandfather who came here. So, you too have to go to your country. Then it is everyone’s country.”

–Immigrant man of Bangladeshi origin in mid-50s (translated from Bengali)

Among U.S.-born participants who advocated for speaking up, some compared their response to how their parents might react:

“My parents would say, ‘Don’t say anything. Keep your eyes down and keep walking.’ … because they don’t know their rights and they don’t know the language, so they live in a different kind of fear of not being understood. But we growing up here know how to stand our ground.”

–U.S.-born man of Pakistani origin in early 30s

And while some Asian immigrants echo this sentiment, others elaborate on why they would encourage their children to speak up:

“If that happened to my child, the meaning is different from the situation when the same thing happened to me. They were born in this country and were supposed to be recognized as an American, but I think people say that to them because they look Asian. I would tell them that not everyone is like that, then they should protect themselves. If this happens, they can take [their] cellphone [to record the incident] and bring it to the police, or I would give them pepper spray for self-defense.”

–Immigrant woman of Japanese origin in mid-30s (translated from Japanese)

Many participants also said their suggestions to their friend in the scenario would ultimately depend on the situation.

“I guess if there is any kind of Asian association or something, that could help us in higher levels. That would help. But I don’t know. It’s hard because you can talk. You can tell that person back if that person’s not very bulky and acts like he’s going to hit you.”

–U.S.-born woman of Chinese origin in early 20s

“I would say ‘You can go home if you hate it.’ I don’t know what that person moved to the U.S. for, but if you have something you want to do, you should do it without being discouraged by such situations, so if you don’t like it, you can leave, and if you can do it, you can stay.”

–Immigrant man of Japanese origin in mid-20s (translated from Japanese)

• A 2021 Pew Research Center survey of U.S. Hispanic adults asked similar questions about whether they had experienced some of these incidents in the last 12 months . About one-in-five Hispanic adults (21%) said someone made a remark that they should go back to their home country. Additionally, among those who can carry on a conversation in Spanish – both understanding and speaking – at least a little, 23% of Hispanic adults said they had been criticized for speaking Spanish in public. ↩

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