The Craft of Research, Fourth Edition

question? How might they respond to your argument? Will they trust your evidence? Will they have other evidence in mind?

I’m working on X because I want to find out Y, so that I (and you) can better understand Z

Data are inert, however, until you use them to support a claim that answers your research question. At that point, your data become evidence. If you don’t have more data than you can use as evidence, you haven’t collected enough.

There’s no point researching a topic unless you have a good chance of finding the right kind of evidence.

research question worth investigating that will lead to a research problem worth solving.

They will think you’ve fulfilled your side of the social contract only when you treat them as who they think they are: scholars interested in greater knowledge and better understanding.

You establish your side of the relationship with your readers when you adopt one of those three roles—I have information for you; I can help you fix a problem; I can help you understand something better.

you’ll be expected to find (or create) a community of readers who not only share an interest in your topic (or can be convinced to), but also have questions about it that you can answer.

give her reason to want to know it.

writers can’t avoid creating some role for themselves and their readers, planned or not.