Writing an academic journal article

Guidelines on writing a first quantitative academic article

Theuns Kotz?

Department of Marketing and Communication Management University of Pretoria

theuns.kotze@up.ac.za

2nd edition

2007

Table of Contents

1 INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................1 2 THE STRUCTURE OF AN ACADEMIC JOURNAL ARTICLE......................................1 3 ARTICLE TITLE............................................................................................................3 4 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................4 5 KEYWORDS.................................................................................................................6 6 INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................7

6.1 THE SIX ELEMENTS OF AN INTRODUCTION..................................................7

6.2 EXAMPLES OF WELL-WRITTEN INTRODUCTIONS ........................................8 6.3 ADDITIONAL COMMENTS ON DRAFTING AN INTRODUCTION ...................12

7 LITERATURE REVIEW ..............................................................................................19 7.1 THE PURPOSE OF A LITERATURE REVIEW.................................................20

7.2 FINDING APPROPRIATE LITERATURE..........................................................21

7.3 MANAGING INFORMATION.............................................................................24

7.4 COMPILING A LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................25

7.4.1 7.4.2 7.4.3 7.4.4

Which aspects should I include in a literature review? .................................25 How should I go about to synthesise information in a literature review? ......26 How should I structure a literature review?...................................................34 What writing style should I use when compiling a literature review? ............41

8 METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................................44 8.1 SAMPLING........................................................................................................44

8.2 DATA COLLECTION.........................................................................................48

8.3 MEASURES ......................................................................................................49

9 RESULTS ...................................................................................................................53 9.1 GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR REPORTING RESEARCH RESULTS .............53

9.2 REPORTING DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS ......................................................55

9.2.1

9.2.2 9.2.3 9.2.4

Univariate descriptive statistics for variables at a nominal or ordinal level of measurement ...................................................................................56 Univariate descriptive statistics for rating scales ..........................................59 Univariate descriptive statistics for ratio-scaled variables.............................62 Other descriptive statistics............................................................................63

9.3 REPORTING THE RESULTS OF HYPOTHESIS TESTS.................................65

10 DISCUSSION .............................................................................................................72 11 THE LIST OF REFERENCES OF AN ARTICLE ........................................................79 12 WRITING THE ARTICLE............................................................................................79

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13 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................80 14 REFERENCES ...........................................................................................................81

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Guidelines on writing a first quantitative academic article

Theuns Kotz? Department of Marketing & Communication Management

University of Pretoria theuns.kotze@up.ac.za

1 INTRODUCTION

Most post-graduate students cringe at the thought of having to distil a whole year's research work into a single journal article of 20 A4-pages. "It's impossible!", "I will never be able to do it", "7000 words ... you must be mad!" are typically how students react when first confronted with the challenge of writing an academic article.

However, as Summers (2001:410) points out, you do not have to be an award winning novelist or rousing poet to report the results of a well-conceptualised and executed study. You only need to be organised, accurate, clear and concise in your writing. And you have to keep your eye on the details, because, when writing an academic article, "the devil is in the details" (Feldman, 2004:1).

The purpose of this document is to guide you in writing a first academic article in which the results of an empirical research study are reported. We will specifically focus on reporting the results of survey-based research involving the statistical testing of hypotheses.

There is no single correct way to write an academic article. While the framework, principles and examples presented here are based on articles that have appeared in leading academic journals, you may have to adapt it to comply with the requirements of a specific journal, academic department or study leader. It would also be worth your while to read the original articles by Feldman (2004:106), Bem (2003), Perry, Carson and Gilmore (2003:652-667), Summers (2001:405-415), Calfee and Valencia (2001), and Varadarajan (1996:3-6), as these authors provide valuable additional advice that have not been incorporated here.

The rest of this document is structured as follows: The first section provides an overview of the structure of an academic journal article. This is followed by a detailed discussion of each of the major sections in an academic article, namely the title, abstract, keywords, introduction, literature review, methodology, results and the final discussion section. The document concludes with brief remarks on writing the various drafts leading to a final article.

2 THE STRUCTURE OF AN ACADEMIC JOURNAL ARTICLE

The success or failure of an academic article is determined long before the first word is written or the first letters are typed. It all begins with the initial conceptualisation and design of a study. This is confirmed by Summers (2001:405-406) who lists four main reasons why articles are rejected by leading academic journals:

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? The research does not make a sufficiently large contribution to the "body of knowledge" (i.e., to the literature) in a specific discipline. The study is purely descriptive or merely replicates previous research without adding anything new.

? The conceptual framework (i.e., the literature review) is not well developed. It lacks precise definitions of the core constructs and compelling theoretical motivation for the stated hypotheses.

? The methodology used in the study is seriously flawed (e.g., the sample is too small or the reliability and validity of the measures used are questionable).

? The author's writing style is disorganised and the article is not structured properly.

The focus of our discussion will primarily be on addressing the last reason mentioned above - a disorganised writing style that leads to a poorly structured article. We will, in other words, assume that the study has been properly designed to address the other three problems.

Articles in most academic journals are roughly 20 to 25 A4 pages (1? line spacing) or 4000 to 7000 words in length. An academic journal article in which the findings of quantitative research are reported will typically have the structure outlined in Table 1.

Table 1: Typical structure of an academic article reporting the findings of a quantitative study

Title

8 ? 15 words

Abstract

200 ? 250 words

Keywords

6 ? 8 keywords

Introduction

500 ? 1 000 words

Literature review (Alternatively: Background, development or conceptual framework)

conceptual 1 000 ? 2 000 words

Methods (Alternatively: Methodology)

? Sampling Target population and research context Sampling Respondent profile

? Data collection Data collection methods

? Measures (Alternatively: Measurement)

500 ? 1 000 words

Results (Alternatively: Findings)

1 000 ? 1 500 words

? Descriptive statistics (Alternatively: Preliminary analysis) ? Hypothesis testing (Alternatively: Inferential statistics)

Discussion ? Summary of findings ? Managerial implications ? Limitations ? Recommendations for future research

1 000 ? 1 500 words

Total

4 000 ? 7 000 words

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