Discussion of common features and difference in academic papers in statistics

discipline

Bowen Duanmu

University of California, Santa Barbara

Professor Valentina

Writing 2

December 6th ,2019

 Discussion of use of sources and evidence in academic papers in the same

discipline

As college students, we will write academic papers to share our opinions and findings with peers

or professors. One of important approaches to make our ideas more persuading is to cite theories

or findings from other scholars’ articles to support our own arguments. When we read about

articles about a certain topic, we find that scholars in different disciplines use distinct types of

evidence to support their points and form each unique style in organizing their papers. Melzer

said that a discipline is a community whose members share the similar ways of doing researches

and writings papers to exhibit their outcomes but in the same discipline, the ways people discuss

points in their articles are always the same. (Melzer, 2011, p270). Melzer’s point makes me want

to dig deeper into common features and differences in the same discipline. I will analyze two

statistical articles to look into how scholars in statistical areas generally organize their papers to

present their ideas and the effects of difference in use of evidence to demonstrate their ideas on

readers. I think that both articles use experiments and data analysis to present their ideas, but the

quotations of authoritative data analysis standards, the specific explanation of design of

experiment and image presentation of statistics make the second article more convincing.

I choose the topic about the relationship between college students’ management of their free time

and the quality of their lives. I found two papers both using statistical way in researching this

topic. The first one is Take a Selfie of Life: A Qualitative Exploration of College Students’ Self-

Reflections on Free Time Use by Chen et al and the second one is Personal Values and Free

Time Management Contributes to Better Quality of Life: A Study of Undergraduate Students in

Taiwan by Wang et al. The first common feature of the two papers is the introduction to their

topic. They both introduced papers by quoting or generalizing the findings from other articles to
present based assumptions or significance of their own research. Like in Chen’s paper, it quoted

Chickering’s point that “These decisions about how to allocate time for various activities affect

students’ college experiences, development, and time use (Chickering, 1974)” and in Wang’s

paper ,it said that “In the research of Caldwell et al. (2004), students who participated in

curriculum on the use of free time reported being better able to restructure boring situations into

something more interesting. (Wang et al, 2011, p.563).” These quotations told the findings of

previous researchers related to free time management and its potential effects on people’s life.

By stating these findings, the authors showed that the experiments they designed to investigate

this topic were based on previous study. This makes researches in their papers reliable, supported

by findings of other experts. The other effect of such quotations is that it makes authors’

researches related to readers’ daily life. They implied that their investigations would focus on the

specific effects of time management and their findings would benefit their audience’s life. This

makes their experiments have significance to real life and draw the attention of readers.

The other common feature of these two statistical papers is that both articles used professional

data analysis to draw conclusion of their researches and generalized their findings in descriptive

words without numbers. This means that some technical terms in analysis process may be

difficult for readers who are not expert in statistical field to understand. But most audience will

be able to understand what they have found from their experiments. Like in Wang’s paper, it said

“Because confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) is particularly useful in the validation of scales for

the measurement of specific constructs and with the confirmatory CFA, (Wang et al ,2011,

p.566)”. If readers haven’t heard of CFA before, it will be hard for them to understand why CFA

is useful in measurements how the numbers are analyzed in CFA. This confusion may cause

audience to lose in the analysis part and raise doubts on the conclusion in papers. In order to
compensate for this defect, both articles presented easily-understood conclusion and limitations

of the research, by translating numeric context into generalization of a big picture reflected by

numbers. For example, in the same paper, it said “our study showed that many undergraduate

students perceived high values towards free time management but did not take it in action or did

not know how to deal with free time well(Wang et al. ,2011, p.571).”This explicit conclusion

will give audience a clear idea about their findings after data analysis even if they may not

completely understand the how they operate such analysis.

These two common features make reader to have a clear mind in reading statistical articles.

Authors organize statistical articles by introducing research projects or investigations and then

analyzing data collected from research. At last, they summarize their conclusions by describing

phenomenon or relationships from data analysis. This writing style meets their goal to use

statistical way to analyze evidence and prove their findings when explore their topic. Such goal

requires their audience to have some background information about statistics to help them better

understand the whole articles. But explicit conclusions of research make articles still accessible

to most readers.

Although two articles have lots of common characteristics, they still have differences in the way

how authors use and analyze evidence. Such distinctions cause the different degree to which

readers believe in the reliability of researches and conclusions in the papers. I think the Wang’s

paper is more reliable for three reasons. The first reason is that I think it quoted authoritative data

analysis standards. For example, in the article, it said “The Quality of Life scale developed by

the World Health Organization (WHOQOL-BREF) was adapted and used for measuring. (Wang

et al. ,2011, p.566).” As we know World Health Organization is quite authoritative, the use of its

scale to evaluate authors’ data makes relationship of time management and quality of lives
achieved from data analysis more accurate. In this way, audience understand that authors’

outcomes are achieved by professional analysis through authoritative process. This makes ideas

in the paper trustworthy. However, in another paper, it simply said that authors would develop

codes and find patterns to analyze data. It missed part to introduce what the code was and how

patterns were found. If this code was developed only by themselves, readers will have doubts

that is this code reliable as no other detailed information is included. Such obscure

generalization makes data analysis process, the most important part in statistical discipline, quite

subjective. This makes conclusions in this paper unreliable.

The second reason is that the design of experiment and its explanation. In the first article, it

collected the feedback of test subjects in the form of writing paragraph reflecting their free time

management personally. Then, in the article, author just mentioned that they made judgements

on these writings and synthesized these feedbacks into analytical data.( Chen et al. ,2016)” They

didn’t contain the detailed method about how they would translate literary expression into

numbers to be evaluated and what scale they took to judge these reflection papers. Concerning

that self-reflection of college students is itself individual without certain standards, the loss of

specific explanation of their method makes it much less reliable. Compared with the Chen’s

article, Wang’s paper made comprehensive explanation of their experiment. In their method part,

authors first said that individual’s perceptions of quality of life were multidimensional and then

said they used 15 items in 4 dimensions including goals, attitudes and other aspects to make

investigations. (Wang et al. ,2011, p.566). They first provide evidence that there were lots of

aspects to evaluate the quality of life and then they made specific investigation scale according to

different dimensions. Such organization from evidence to their action makes audience to

understand how their research was operated and makes their paper persuasive.
The last reason is that in the second article, it applies graph to illustrate ideas, which is a creative

approach and effective as well. The graph contains some arrows to show the relationship

between the different factors of free time management and different index on quality of life. It

also has some analyzed data for each factor. This acts as a concise generalization of outcomes of

data analysis. Besides, such vivid visual expression of casual and effect relationship guides

readers to combine the numbers from research and their analysis to get the same conclusion.

With such guide for readers, the argument of authors become more convincing. However, in

another paper, it just combined the data in the sentence to demonstrate their findings, which will

cause it hard for readers to understand the main points. This is because readers have to make

sense of their findings and connect data evidence with their arguments at the same time.

In conclusion, I think statistical articles have a similar writing style focus on research

explanation and data analysis. This meets the goal of discipline to explore topics by translating

numerical evidence into explicit phenomenon and relationship conclusions. But the difference

use of evidence influences credence of articles, which is quite important for academic papers.

The second article is better in use of evidence in statistical field as it successfully applied other

research project to justify its own research and used professional data analysis and detailed

explanation and limitation reflection. All of these make the paper more reliable and acceptable

for audience. The exploration of academic papers in the same discipline helps me generally

understand how to write articles in a certain discipline by identify their common features and pay

attention to specific use of evidence to make my arguments and papers trustworthy.

 Works cited

Melzer, D. (2011). Exploring college writing : Reading, writing and researching across the

curriculum (Frameworks for writing). Sheffield ; Oakville, CT: Equinox Pub.

Chen, H., Yarnal, C., Hustad, J., & Sims, D. (2016). Take a Selfie of Life: A Qualitative

Exploration of College Students' Self-Reflections on Free Time Use and Personal Values.

Journal of College and Character, 17(2), 101-115.

Wang, W., Kao, C., Huan, T., & Wu, C. (2011). Free Time Management Contributes to Better

Quality of Life: A Study of Undergraduate Students in Taiwan. Journal of Happiness Studies,

12(4), 561-573.