Thank you for the information. The writing portion has been my biggest mental block. Ironically, during my undergrad one of the most difficult courses was a 200 level writing - only because the professor had a similar approach and was brutal about limiting word count. He had a nearly 50% dropout rate. One of my favorite courses, and taught me a lot about communicating instead of trying to get a certain number of words.
I will absolutely keep in mind using those-smarter-than-me approach. Thank you
Are you good with lit searches and article review? Because I'm noticing among my classmates that literally none of them have been taught how to do this properly and efficiently.
They're constantly searching for articles to support their ideas instead of letting the literature generate the ideas. I find the ones who struggle the most with efficient writing don't know how to let the literature guide their writing.
Most of my lit search and journal search was using the the "google scholar" filters. Any recommendations?
I use google scholar a lot for smaller references, but not for a lit review for a major paper because it doesn't give me access to full articles. I have to have access to full articles to do a proper lit review. So I use my school library, which is unfortunately quite limited, but that isn't an issue because of how I work.
I'm in counselling psychology and I had a course on CBT and had to write a group paper and presentation exploring in detail some current issue regarding CBT and the treatment of anxiety disorders. Most of my classmates made the huge mistake of picking their topic first and then hunting for supporting articles. I always do the opposite. I used my school library and did a very vague search for CBT and anxiety within the last 5 years.
I skimmed the titles of the articles and looked for current themes in the research. Research trends happen in cycles, so if you want a lot of current research, you have to pick a topic that's currently trendy. I saw a few common topics, skimmed them a bit and picked the one I thought I could most effectively write about. I chose CBT and hypochondriasis, because it was recently split into two different categories so there's a TON of current research on it.
I downloaded about 12 articles on this topic and reviewed each of them, noting interesting points in their introductions and discussions, because that's where the interesting takes are. That lead me to focus on the very serious problem that hypochondriacs are primarily treated in the medical system, not the psychology system, and doctors don't really know how to identify it or how to appropriately treat or refer so they get endless tests, but no treatment, so they aren't helped and they cost the medical system a fortune. This stood out as a really interesting angle compared to every other anxiety disorders.
The papers explored whether patients should be immediately referred, if doctors and nurses should be educated in basic CBT methods, if screening tools work, which contexts CBT works best in.
I summarized it all in a document with specific quotes and lumped the articles together into themes, I then organized those themes into a flow that made sense, and voila, there's the skeleton of my paper. From there, it was easy just to write an intro that explained the big picture I was seeing in all of the papers, and paragraphs that describe what each group of themed articles says on the issue, and then a conclusion of what's missing from the research and what should be most useful to study next.
The 12 articles made up the bulk of my points and perspectives, and then I used Google Scholar to hunt for specific references, like healthcare spending figures, references about the lack of mental health training for doctors and nurses, political initiatives to increase mental healthcare spending, etc, ect. The little points that need a backup citation, but I don't need to read an entire paper to get the point.
My classmates were scrambling to figure out what to say specifically about CBT and their chosen anxiety, and to find sources for it that weren't over 10 years old, because so much research on specific anxiety disorders was trendy in the past, meanwhile, all I had to do was understand what other people have written, and explain what I read. No hunting, no trying to figure out what to say.
The final product is my classmates produce clunky papers that mostly parrot what they learned from the textbook with a few citations littered throughout as backup, while my paper actually covers something current and interesting and digs into the real life issues related to this topic today with TONS of current, relevant references, and a really good understanding of the current gaps in the knowledge. They often struggle to find the minimum 6-10 references, my papers typically have 30.
I never, ever start with an idea, I always let the current research tell me what to write about, and the sources just offer themselves to me.
Another example, I have to write a paper about PTSD and have to use a fictional character in a book, show, or movie to write a paper about. Again, my classmates are all asking what characters they should pick, one woman said she was interested in childhood sexual trauma and eating disorders, so she's looking for a character who fits that description. She's not an expert, so she is going to seriously struggle finding good sources for describing the behavioural impacts and treatment options. She's going to try and learn very advanced concepts and treatments before even understanding the basics. It's just a bad idea.
I am again letting the literature tell me what to write about. I did a library search for "PTSD" within the last 5 years and overwhelmingly the articles are about soldiers and CBT. Well okay, I guess that's my topic. So then I looked for a movie that thoroughly portrays soldier PTSD and am currently watching "Born on The Fourth of July" and taking notes based on the symptoms described in the articles I found.
For the treatment section, I'll go back to the articles and do the same kind of summary, looking for treatment themes and current issues and themes that the authors discuss, and then I'll formulate an overview from there.
With this approach, you not only write more effectively, but you learn a lot more when you let the research teach you what the world of academia currently thinks is interesting rather than looking for papers to support what you believe is interesting. That's what I mean by the fact that I don't know anything and no one cares what I think. I start research for each paper from the position that I know NOTHING, and I depend on the actual experts to tell me what I should be finding important.
Experts need to come up with ideas, junior grad students just have to demonstrate that they can read and understand the good ideas of the experts.
