HOW TO WRITE THE

INTRODUCTION
• Introductions can be tricky. Because the
introduction is the first portion of your paper that
the reader encounters, the stakes are fairly high
for your introduction to be successful. A good
introduction presents a broad overview of your
topic and your thesis, and should convince the
reader that it is worth their time to actually read
the rest of your paper. Here are some tips that
will make writing an introduction a little less
daunting, and help us all to write papers that
don’t make our professors want to bang their
heads against the wall.
Start your introduction broad, but not
too broad
• Your introduction should provide the reader with a sense
of what they should expect out of your essay, not to
expound upon every piece of knowledge ever developed
by man. Go ahead and start relatively broad, then narrow
to your thesis, but make sure you’re still on topic.
• When I first started writing formal essays, I didn’t really
know how broad to go with my intros. A brief paragraph on
Hamlet would suddenly include irrelevant details about
Shakespeare’s childhood, then grow out to be a history of
Western literature, and then a history of the universe itself.
Do not write an introduction like this; this kind of intro is
confusing and makes the reader wonder where exactly
you’re going with your essay.
 Provide relevant background, but
don’t begin your true argument
• It’s fine to give a bit of context to your essay in
the introduction, but the real meat of your
argument should be located in your body
paragraphs. A good test to see if information
should go in a body or introductory paragraph is
to ask yourself a few questions. Is this providing
context or evidence? Does this introduce my
argument, or try to prove it? True evidence or
proof deserves a body paragraph. Context and
background most likely belong in your
introduction.
 Provide a thesis
• The majority of the time, your thesis, or main
argument, should occur somewhere towards the
end of your introduction. It is a typical convention
to put your thesis as the last sentence of your
first paragraph. My personal opinion is that it can
sometimes be awkward to shove your thesis in
one specific place if it doesn’t necessarily fit, but
if your thesis works in that position, that is the
best place for it. That being said, if you absolutely
can’t include your thesis in that location, go
ahead and stick it somewhere else.
 Provide only helpful, relevant
information.
• Anecdotes can be an interesting opener to your essay,
but only if the anecdote in question is truly relevant to
your topic. Are you writing an essay about Maya
Angelou? An anecdote about her childhood might be
relevant, and even charming. Are you writing an essay
about safety regulations in roller coasters? Go ahead
and add an anecdote about a person who was injured
while riding a roller coaster. Are you writing an essay
about Moby Dick? Perhaps an anecdote about that
time your friend read Moby Dick and hated it is not the
best way to go. The same is true for statistics, quotes,
and other types of information about your topic.
 Try to avoid clichés
• Some types of introductions may have once
been successful, but have been used so often
that they have become tired and clichéd.
Starting your essay with a definition is a good
example of one of these conventions. At this
point, starting with a definition is a bit boring,
and will cause your reader to tune out.
 Don’t feel pressured to write your
intro first
• Sometimes it can be difficult to figure out exactly
what information is relevant to your introduction
until you’ve written the piece itself. Personally, I
find that my writer’s block is always strongest
when writing the introduction. If you are having
trouble with your intro, feel free to write some,
or all, of your body paragraphs, and then come
back to it. You might find it a bit easier to write
your introduction once you’re more comfortable
with the essay as a whole.
Convince the reader that your essay is
worth reading
• Your reader should finish the introduction
thinking that the essay is interesting or has some
sort of relevance to their lives. A good
introduction is engaging; it gets the audience
thinking about the topic at hand and wondering
how you will be proving your argument. Good
ways to convince your reader that your essay is
worthwhile is to provide information that the
reader might question or disagree with. Once
they are thinking about the topic, and wondering
why you hold your position, they are more likely
to be engaged in the rest of the essay.
• Basically, a good introduction provides the
reader with a brief overview of your topic and
an explanation of your thesis. A good
introduction is fresh, engaging, and
interesting. Successful introductions don’t rely
on clichés or irrelevant information to
demonstrate their point. Be brief, be concise,
be engaging.
HOW TO WRITE THE BACKGROUND OF
THE STUDY
• Conduct preliminary research in the beginning
stages of formulating a thesis, when many issues
are unclear and thoughts need to be solidified.
Conducting preliminary research on your area of
study and specific topic will help you to formulate
a research question or thesis statement that will
lead to more specific and relevant research. Visit
your library, the internet and electronic databases
to find preliminary sources, such as books and
scholarly journals, for your background study.
• Read the information and develop a research
question or thesis statement that will guide your
thesis. You will need to take notes and keep
accurate track of the sources that you used up to
this point. Many people use note cards, but with
current technology there many electronic note
taking programs available. Use a method of
recording source information that you are
comfortable with. Be sure to cite the source of
the information on each note so you don't forget
where each piece of information came from,
should you decide to use it in your thesis.
• Write a thesis statement or research question.
Think about what you've read and look for
issues, problems or solutions that others have
found and determine your own opinion or
stance on the issue. Write out your opinion as
a authoritative statement on the issue,
problem or solution. At this point, you can do
more detailed research and find sources that
are more relevant to your thesis or research
question.
• Complete your research using your thesis
statement and research question as your
guide. You will find relevant sources that will
provide insight into your specific thesis issue
or problem. Make sure that your sources
provide details on the history and past
research related to your research question.
• Create relevant sections as you write the
background study. As you evaluate your
research and begin to write the background
study, create five separate sections that cover
the key issues, major findings, and
controversies surrounding your thesis, as well
as sections that provide an evaluation and
conclusion.
• Conclude by identifying any further study that
needs to be done in that area, or provide
possible solutions to the issue that haven't
been considered before.
• Revise and edit your background study.
Complete several drafts of your work, revising
and filling in information as you go. Each time
that you read over your work, try to leave it
better than it was before. It's also a great idea
to have someone else look it over as well.
• RESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND HYPOTHESES
FORMULATION
 How To Write A Problem Statement
• A problem statement is a clear concise
description of the issue that needs to be
addressed by a problem solving team. It is
used to center and focus the team at the
beginning, keep the team on track during the
effort, and is used to validate that the effort
delivered an outcome that solves the problem
statement.
• It has a specific form:
 Vision
• what does the world look like if we solve the
problem
 Issue Statement
• one or two sentences that describe the
problem using specific issues. It is not a "lack
of a solution" statement. For example, our
problem is that we don't have an ERP system.
 Method
• the process that will get followed to solve the
problem. For example, DMAIC or Kaizen
 How to get started
• The 5 'W's - Who, What, Where, When and
Why - is a great tool that helps get pertinent
information out for discussion. From
the [poem] from Rudyard Kipling's "The
Elephant's Child" which opens with:
• I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
 Who
• Who does the problem affect? Specific
groups, organizations, customers, etc.
 What
• What are the boundaries of the problem, e.g.
organizational, work flow, geographic,
customer, segments, etc. - What is the issue? -
What is the impact of the issue? - What
impact is the issue causing? - What will
happen when it is fixed? - What would happen
if we didn’t solve the problem?
 When
• When does the issue occur? - When does it
need to be fixed?
 Where
• Where is the issue occurring? Only in certain
locations, processes, products, etc
 Why
• Why is it important that we fix the problem? -
What impact does it have on the business or
customer? - What impact does it have on all
stakeholders, e.g. employees, suppliers,
customers, shareholders, etc. Each of the answers
will help to zero in on the specific issue(s) and
frame the Issue Statement. Your problem
statement should be solveable. That is, it should
take a reasonable amount of time to formulate,
try and deploy a potential solution.
 Example
• Consider a software development and hosted
data services company that supplies products
and services to wireless carriers. They had
issues deploying new software releases into
the production environment. Deployment in
this case is the work necessary for taking a
production ready binary and installing, testing
and releasing it into the production
environment. The company failed to deploy
the releases on-schedule over 50% of the time
 Problem Statement:
• We want all of our software releases to go to production
seamlessly, without defects, where everyone is aware and
informed of the outcomes and status. (Vision)
• Today we have too many release failures that result in too
many rollback failures. If we ignore this problem; resources
will need to increase to handle the cascading problems, and
we may miss critical customer deadlines which could result
in lost revenue, SLA penalties, lost business, and further
damage to our quality reputation. (Issue Statement)
• We will use our Kaizen Blitz methodology in evaluating the
last release to help us improve our processes. (Method)
 SUMMARY
• A problem statement is a clear description of
the issue(s), it includes a vision, issue
statement, and method used to solve the
problem.
• The 5 'W's can be used to spark the discussion
about the problem.
• A problem statement expresses the words
that will be used to keep the effort focused
and it should represent a solveable problem.
 WHAT IS A RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
• In general, research objectives describe what we expect to achieve by a project.
• Research objectives are usually expressed in lay terms and are directed as much to the client as to
the researcher. Research objectives may be linked with a hypothesis or used as a statement of
purpose in a study that does not have a hypothesis.
• Even if the nature of the research has not been clear to the layperson from the hypotheses, s/he
should be able to understand the research from the objectives.
• A statement of research objectives can serve to guide the activities of research. Consider the
following examples.
– Objective: To describe what factors farmers take into account in making such decisions as whether to adopt
a new technology or what crops to grow.
– Objective: To develop a budget for reducing pollution by a particular enterprise.
– Objective: To describe the habitat of the giant panda in China.
• In the above examples the intent of the research is largely descriptive.
– In the case of the first example, the research will end the study by being able to specify factors which
emerged in household decisions.
– In the second, the result will be the specification of a pollution reduction budget.
– In the third, creating a picture of the habitat of the giant panda in China.
• These observations might prompt researchers to formulate hypotheses which could be tested in
another piece of research. So long as the aim of the research is exploratory, ie to describe what is,
rather than to test an explanation for what is, a research objective will provide an adequate guide
to the research.
 TYPES OF RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
• Objectives can be general or specific.
Difference between the specific objectives
and the general objective of a research
• General Objective:
– of your study states what you expect to achieve in
general terms
– much broader statement about what the study
aims to achieve overall.
Difference between the specific objectives
and the general objective of a research
• Specific objectives:
– break down the general objective into smaller,
logically connected parts that systematically
address the various aspects of the problem. Your
specific objectives should specify exactly what you
will do in each phase of your study, how, where,
when and for what purpose.
– detailed objectives that describe what will be
researched during the study
 DESCRIPTIVE VS INFERENTIAL
• What’s the Difference?
– In a nutshell, descriptive intend to describe a big hunk of data with
summary charts and tables, but do not attempt to draw conclusions
about the population from which the sample was taken. You are
simply summarizing the data you have with pretty charts and graphs–
kind of like telling someone the key points of a book (executive
summary) as opposed to just handing them a thick book (raw data).
– Conversely, with inferential, you are testing a hypothesis and drawing
conclusions about a population, based on your sample. In this case,
you are going to run into fancy sounding concepts like ANOVA, T-Test,
Chi-Squared, confidence interval, regression, etc., but we’ll save those
for another day.
– To understand the simple difference between descriptive and
inferential, all you need to remember is that descriptive summarizes
your current dataset and inferential aims to draw conclusions about an
additional population outside of your dataset.
 Descriptive

• Let’s say you’ve administered a survey to 35 people about their favorite ice cream
flavors. You’ve got a bunch of data plugged into your spreadsheet and now it is
time to share the results with someone. You could hand over the spreadsheet and
say “here’s what I learned” (not very informative), or you could summarize the
data with some charts and graphs that describe the data and communicate some
conclusions (e.g. 37% of people said that vanilla is their favorite flavor*). This
would sure be easier for someone to interpret than a big spreadsheet. There are
hundreds of ways to visualize data, including data tables, pie charts, line charts,
etc. That’s the gist of descriptive statistics. Note that the analysis is limited to
your data and that you are not extrapolating any co
• Descriptive statistic reports generally include summary data tables (kind of like the
age table above), graphics (like the charts above), and text to explain what the
charts and tables are showing. For example, I might supplement the data above
with the conclusion “vanilla is the most common favorite ice cream among those
surveyed.” Just because descriptive statistics don’t draw conclusions about a
population doesn’t mean they are not valuable. There are thousands of expensive
research reports that do nothing more than descriptive statistics.nclusions about a
full population.
 Inferential
• let’s continue with the the ice cream flavor example. Let’s say you wanted to know the favorite ice
cream flavors of everyone in the world. Well, there are about 7 billion people in the world, and it
would be impossible to ask every single person about their ice cream preferences. Instead, you
would try to sample a representative population of people and then extrapolate your sample
results to the entire population. While this process isn’t perfect and it is very difficult to avoid
errors, it allows researchers to make well reasoned inferences about the population in
question. This is the idea behind inferential statistics.
• As you can imagine, getting a representative sample is really important. There are all sorts
of sampling strategies, including random sampling. A true random sample means that everyone in
the target population has an equal chance of being selected for the sample. Imagine how difficult
that would be in the case of the entire world population since not everyone in the world is easily
accessible by phone, email, etc. Another key component of proper sampling is the size of the
sample. Obviously, the larger the sample size, the better, but there are trade-offs in time and
money when it comes to obtaining a large sample. There are some nice calculators online that help
determine appropriate sample sizes. That’s enough on market research sampling techniques for
now.
• When it comes to inferential statistics, there are generally two forms: estimation statistics and
hypothesis testing.
 HYPOTHESES
• DEFINITION:
– A supposition or explanation (theory) that is
provisionally accepted in order to interpret certain
events or phenomena, and to provide guidance for
further investigation. A hypothesis may be proven
correct or wrong, and must be capable of refutation. If
it remains unrefuted by facts, it is said to be verified
or corroborated.
– is an explanation for a set of observations
– an educated guess, based on observation. It's a
prediction of cause and effect
 EXAMPLES OF HYPOTHESES
• If you see no difference in the cleaning ability of
various laundry detergents, you might
hypothesize that cleaning effectiveness is not
affected by which detergent you use. You can see
this hypothesis can be disproven if a stain is
removed by one detergent and not another. On
the other hand, you cannot prove the hypothesis.
Even if you never see a difference in the
cleanliness of your clothes after trying a
thousand detergents, there might be one you
haven't tried that could be different.
 FUNCTION OF AN HYPOTHESIS

The function of the hypothesis

is to give structure to the
process of understanding how
the world works.
 Identification
• A hypothesis is an educated guess, based on the
probability of an outcome. Scientists formulate
hypotheses after they understand all the current
research on their subject. Hypotheses specify the
relationship between at least two variables, and
are testable. For a hypothesis to function
properly, other scientists must be able to
reproduce the results that prove or disprove it.
• Two types of hypotheses exist:
– a descriptive hypothesis asks a question,
– a directional hypothesis makes a statement.
 Scientific Method
• The scientific method is the process by which
hypotheses function. Scientists use the scientific
method to, over time, form an accurate picture of the
world. The scientific method attempts to remove the
scientist's bias from the research. The four parts of the
scientific method are observation and description,
formulation of a hypothesis, use of the hypothesis for
prediction and performance of testing of the
hypothesis. Scientists use the scientific method to
disprove hypotheses, rather than prove them. It they
cannot be disproved, the hypotheses over time
become accepted theories.
 Experiments
• The most important function hypotheses perform is
providing the framework for testing and experimentation.
Scientists formulate a hypothesis, or ask a question, about
a certain phenomenon and how it relates to other aspects
of the world. Then they devise ways to try to disprove their
theory as to the answer. For instance, if a scientist made a
hypothesis that what goes up must come down, he would
test it by throwing many items in the air to see if they do
come down. Because scientists cannot test every single
possible item for this theory, hypotheses are never proven.
However, after many scientists have experimented with the
hypothesis, it becomes accepted scientific theory
 Formulating Hypotheses
• Scientists make a hypothesis by comparing the
phenomenon being studied to another phenomenon.
For instance, in the real world, a person might decide
that her house is cold because a window is open. She
would test this theory by checking the windows. If the
windows are closed, then that hypothesis is proven
false, and another is formed when the person decides
that her house is probably cold because the furnace
isn't working properly. The process of forming and
disproving hypotheses continues until a person makes
a hypothesis that cannot be disproved.
 NULL HYPOTHESIS
• The null hypothesis sometimes is called the "no difference"
hypothesis. The null hypothesis is good for experimentation
because it's simple to disprove. If you disprove a null
hypothesis, that is evidence for a relationship between
the variables you are examining
• The null hypothesis is the proposition that implies no effect
or no relationship between phenomena or populations.
Any observed difference would be due to sampling error
(random chance) or experimental error. The null
hypothesis is popular because it can be tested and found to
be false, which then implies there is a relationship between
the observed data. It may be easier to think of it as
a nullifiablehypothesis or one the researcher seeks to
nullify.
 How to State a Null Hypothesis
• There are two ways to state a null hypothesis.
– to state it as a declarative sentence,
– to present it as a mathematical statement.
 EXAMPLES OF HOW TO STATE A NULL
HYPOTHESIS
• a researcher suspects that exercise is correlated to weight loss, assuming a diet remains
unchanged. The average length of time to achieve a certain weight loss is an average of 6 weeks
when a person works out five times a week. The researcher wants to test whether weight loss takes
longer if the number of workouts is reduced to three times a week.
• The first step to writing the null hypothesis is to find the (alternate) hypothesis. In a word problem
like this, you're looking for what you expect as the outcome of the experiment. In this case, the
hypothesis is "I expect weight loss to take longer than 6 weeks.“
• This can be written mathematically as: H1: μ > 6
• In this example, μ is the average.
• Now, the null hypothesis is what you expect if this hypothesis does not happen. In this case, if
weight loss isn't achieved in greater than 6 weeks, then it must occur at a time equal to or less than
6 weeks.
• H0: μ ≤ 6
• The other way to state the null hypothesis is to make no assumption about the outcome of the
experiment. In this case, the null hypothesis is simply that the treatment or change will have no
effect on the outcome of the experiment. For this example, it would be that reducing the number
of workouts would not affect time to achieve weight loss:
• H0: μ = 6
EXAMPLES OF A NULL HYPOTHESIS
• Hyperactivity is unrelated to eating sugar.
• All daisies have the same number of petals.
• The number of pets in a household is
unrelated to the number of people living in it.
• A person's preference for a shirt is unrelated
to its color.