Why do people write research briefs?
– Summary
– Usually pretty dense
– To make scholarly material accessible to a larger audience (b/c not everyone has the resources to read these scholarly articles)
How does “Engaging Health:
Health Research and Policymaking in the Social Media Sphere” do this?
– The author followed ‘the public health model’
– A lot of definitions
– There are important things in bold
– They highlight the key findings of the report
– Delve deeply in explaining what each concept meant
– Written for a person who did not do any of the research, so they build it from the ground up
– The ‘key findings’ are presented in such a way that each paragraph following it describes the points
– The introduction is very explicit and clear on what the text is about ‘the purpose of this paper is…’
– Introduction includes rhetorical questions
Class Notes:
– An abstract is the piece of text that tells the reader if the text is worth their time to read
– An executive summary is common in fields other than academia… where ppl need info quickly but they don’t have time to go do all the research… so they use research briefs
– Research briefs are commonly written for decision makers who are going to do something based on the info in that brief
– Research briefs are sometimes called policy briefs.
– Readers usually don’t read scholarly articles in their entirety, so you need to make sure your research brief is good and concise.
– Having a brief that is aesthetically pleasing is helpful in having your reader actually read the whole thing
– There’s an expectation for what should be in your brief and even the order it’s in
Structure:
What’s the issue?
What’s the background?
What are the key findings?
What are the implications?
FOR TONIGHT (3/2):
– Quotation sandwich
– Article notes
FOR MONDAY (3/7):
– Printed Research Brief draft
– Printed scholarly article