The next step will be to create the outline of your introduction section based on the overview that
you already created.
So hopefully after you've created that overview you have something that looks a little bit like this.
This is a fictional overview of a fictional depression literature and it consists of statements and
for each statement
I have a number of references that support that statement. And to create my introduction outline
I have a little template here and that template is simply consisting of three headings: importance, literature
review, and research question. And the one thing that I already know is my research question so I'm gonna
write that down first.
"Does my depression treatment work?"
And we said that it's a cognitive treatment so we could call this maybe the "re-focus" treatment.
So this could be a treatment that trains people to be more focused on the positive for example. And our
goal will be to organize our citations in such a way that it creates a story that leads towards this
research question. That makes it appear as an important, novel, and timely question.
Okay so how do we do that?
Well, the first thing we need is something that signals that our topic is important.
So what I'm simply going to do is I'm gonna have a look what I have here to achieve that.
So one thing I have here is that depressive people are less productive or even completely unable to
work.
So that's definitely something that I can use to make the point that the topic is important.
So I'm going to copy paste this and just put it here.
And let me have another look.
So here, this one is also useful:
"Depression impairs immune system."
And that's true by the way.
Depression actually impairs the immune system.
So I'm also gonna copy paste that and also put it under "importance". And we can use that to start our
article later.
All right.
Now, I need to continue with the literature review and ideally the literature review should start broad
and then narrow it down, narrow it down and go from things that we already know to things that we don't
know.
So that in the end our research question appears as the hero that fills the gap in the literature.
So let me have a look what we have here.
"Treatment of depression often involves revisiting negative experiences."
No that's about treatment. That is already way too specific.
The refocus treatment has been developed.
No that's way too specific. "Treatments."
No. "Depressive people tend to pay more attention to negative things."
Well that's more broad.
And also, here we have: "Depressive people tend to have better memory for negative things."
That's something that could work at the beginning of our literature review.
So I'm gonna put it here.
And now, from there, we somehow need to narrow it down and lead towards our question.
So what more do we have?
"Treatment of depression often involves revisiting negative experiences to better process these experiences."
That kind of connects to what I already put there. "Refocus treatment..."
No, this is probably gonna be at the very end and therefore... actually what I'm gonna do is I'm already
gonna put it here towards the end and then I'm gonna figure out how I can fill this gap.
Okay.
"Treatments that involve revisiting negative experiences do not work very well." Well, that connects
directly to this first point that treatment of depression often involves revisiting negative experiences.
So these belong together.
So I put them together here and then we also have that" "Researcher X suggested that revisiting negative
experiences may train patients even more to focus on the negative."
Well, that's a point that we can add to this point.
"Treatments that involve revisiting negative experiences do not work very well."
So I'm just gonna put it here and now I'm gonna take the whole chunk, copy-paste, and put it here.
Now, let's see how it goes.
So now we have: "Depressive people tend to pay more attention to the negative."
They have better memory for the negative and treatment of depression often involves revisiting negative
experiences.
Well, that might be a problem.
Treatments that involve revisiting negative experiences do not work very well. That very nicely connects
to what we already said. And a researcher suggested that it may actually train people to focus even more
on the negative.
So we make more or more the point that the existing treatment is problematic in light of what we know
about depression and it may even make things worse.
And so now the reader should really be thirsty for a better treatment.
And hey, here we have it! "The refocus treatment has been developed which trains people to focus more
on the positive."
So I'm gonna put that here and there.
I pretty much already have a story and it already nicely connects to the research question.
The only thing that I am personally missing here is that I haven't explicitly said yet that this treatment
hasn't been tested yet and that is very important because we want to make the point that our research
question is important, NOVEL, and timely.
And so, I'm just going to add a point here - it doesn't need a reference - that the refocus treatment
has not been tested yet. And there I pretty much have an outline of my introduction section. So I start
with the general importance.
Then I talk about the things we know. Then I narrow it down,
I talk about treatments,
,I talk about how old treatments are problematic and lead towards the new treatment.
I mentioned that it hasn't been tested.
Major gap in the literature.
Very important that we test it.
It is something novel and it is very timely. So perfect.
Now of course I prepared this example a little bit and that's why I could construct in like five minutes.
In reality it takes longer of course to create such an outline.
But this is the way how I create an outline. And sometimes I realized during the outline that there is
a gap in the story.
And then I go back to the literature and see whether I can fill the gap. Or sometimes I realize that
in my story I actually don't even need all the research that I put in my overview.
And that's also OK because it's not necessary to have a full literature review.
You just need to make clear how your research connects to the existing research and why it is interesting.
Okay.
So that's how you create an outline and in the next lecture I'm going to show you how to turn this into
text.