Writing an Academic Journal Article - UP
嚜澶uidelines on writing a first quantitative academic article
Theuns Kotz谷
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
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
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
Which aspects should I include in a literature review? .................................25
7.4.2
How should I go about to synthesise information in a literature review? ......26
7.4.3
How should I structure a literature review?...................................................34
7.4.4
What writing style should I use when compiling a literature review? ............41
8
9
METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................................44
8.1
SAMPLING........................................................................................................44
8.2
DATA COLLECTION.........................................................................................48
8.3
MEASURES ......................................................................................................49
RESULTS ...................................................................................................................53
9.1
GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR REPORTING RESEARCH RESULTS .............53
9.2
REPORTING DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS ......................................................55
9.2.1
Univariate descriptive statistics for variables at a nominal or ordinal
level of measurement ...................................................................................56
9.2.2
Univariate descriptive statistics for rating scales ..........................................59
9.2.3
Univariate descriptive statistics for ratio-scaled variables.............................62
9.2.4
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
-i-
13 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................80
14 REFERENCES ...........................................................................................................81
- ii -
Guidelines on writing a first quantitative academic article
Theuns Kotz谷
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:
-1-
?
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 每 15 words
Abstract
200 每 250 words
Keywords
6 每 8 keywords
Introduction
500 每 1 000 words
Literature review (Alternatively: Background,
development or conceptual framework)
conceptual
1 000 每 2 000 words
Methods (Alternatively: Methodology)
? Sampling
? Target population and research context
? Sampling
? Respondent profile
? Data collection
? Data collection methods
? Measures (Alternatively: Measurement)
500 每 1 000 words
Results (Alternatively: Findings)
1 000 每 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 每 1 500 words
Total
4 000 每 7 000 words
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