Telling a Story

I greatly appreciate this week's lab reading, Chapter 8 in Sternberg's Guide to Publishing in Psychology Journals. I particularly like the part of this chapter (written by Peter Salovey) that in the context of advocating authors 'tell a story' discusses how presentation/discussion of quantitative findings can really squelch the story if not written mindfully. When we write our statistical findings using solely statistical terminology with no 'prose' (p. 125) or verbiage to provide context for those tests and statistics - we may lose the reader.

This takes effort on the author's part as it is much easier to simply dump all of the statistics out there for the reader, assuming he/she will adequately understand.

I appreciate these comments by Salovey. It is my opinion that providing reader with appropriate context is vital to academic writing and yet is very challenging for students who are trying to learn how much/how little is needed in order for the context provided to be adequate.

Providing the appropriate context for our reasoning, for our results/statistics not only enhances readability but gives us a better sense of the particular story we are trying to tell in the study at hand. I like this as I find academic writing that is less focused on prose and providing context far less compelling.

This is what I try to encourage in my students, when I remind them that each chapter of the dissertation is a story unto itself - in service of the overall one being told via the dissertation. Our goal in both dissertation and academic writing of any kind is to tell the precise story at hand in such a way that we win the reader over with our academic argument.

In this sense when, as we are currently doing, we want to combine findings from both qualitative and quantitative work, this emphasis on the overarching story – can help us consolidate the work of these two diverse approaches.

AES

Salovey, P. (2000). Results that get results: Telling a good story. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Guide to Publishing in Psychology Journals (pp. 121-132). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.