OK it's time to get started with the introduction section and in this lecture I'm going to give you
an overview of what's gonna happen. So earlier, I discussed with you that in the introduction section you
show your reader why your research question is interesting and worth answering.
But now we're going to zoom into this a little bit more and we're going to split up what we mean by
"interesting".
So the goal of the introduction section is to show that your research is: first, IMPORTANT, which means
that it helps to solve a general problem or that it helps to advance our understanding of some interesting
phenomenon.
Another thing you want to show is that your research question is NOVEL. That it hasn't been answered
before by previous research.
And finally you want to show that your research question is TIMELY, which means that it's the logical
next step after the research that has already been conducted.
And if you can achieve these three things - show that your research question is important novel and timely -
then your readers will be very intrigued by a research question.
OK so these are the goals.
Now let's have a look at the structure of the introduction section.
So here are the essential parts that you usually find in an introduction section. At the very beginning, you
usually start with the importance of your general topic. And then, from there you go into a literature review
in which you discuss the research that has already been conducted and in which you point out whether
there are conflicts in the literature or whether there are gaps.
And this is very important because the goal of your literature review is actually not to give a full
review of the whole literature but to lead towards your research question.
So the story you're going to tell there is basically that: "this is what we already know and this is what
we don't know
and my research is going to fill the gap".
Okay.
And then after the literature review you state your research question.
So the question that you want to answer with your research.
And finally you give an outline of your paper. So you give your reader a little idea of what's going
to happen in the rest of the paper.
And these are the essential parts of pretty much every introduction section.
And as a general rule of thumb the introduction section starts broad,
so it starts with the importance of the general topic, and then step by step you narrow it down, narrow
it down until you arrive at your research question.
Okay.
I know that this is a lot of information so let's go through a little example to make this more vivid.
So let's say that you have done research on depression.
So in this case you could start your paper by saying a little bit about why this is an important societal
problem.
For example: "It is well known that depression can severely impair people's well-being and ability to
function". And that way the reader immediately understands "oh OK, so there's a problem that we want to
solve".
Then comes the literature review and what I'm gonna say now is a little bit made up.
So just take it as an illustration.
"Research has shown that depression is not caused the way originally assumed.
However there is no validated treatment that fits our current understanding of depression."
So this is a really short example to just give you a general idea how the literature review works.
So it's not just an endless review but it's a review that leads toward the research question and
in this case the research question could be can treatment X - and treatment X maybe following the the
more current understanding of depression - can treatment X reduce depression? And then you would give an
outline of your paper. So you would say something like: "To answer this question, we performed four studies..."
or whatever you did. and hopefully you can see that in this example all three goals are reached.
It's clear why the topic is important.
It is also clear that the research question is novel because "there is no validated treatment that fits
our current understanding."
So it's a novel research question. And the question also feels timely.
This is a little bit more implicit but the question feels as the logical next step after the research
that has already been done.
And that's the ideal case.
You want to lead to your research questions such that it feels important, novel, and timely.
Okay so hopefully you can see now how an introduction generally works.
Now the question is: how can you construct such an introduction yourself?
And I want to walk you through the process in the next lectures and the first step is going to be a
literature search.
You need to find the research that has already been conducted. So let's look at that in the next lecture.