12 - Reading and writing research publications

Summary

Reading for analytic logic

An important preliminary skill to be learned, if only to improve one's writing, is the acquired ability to read research publications for their underlying analytic logics (see, especially, Glaser 1978, pp. 129–30). Of course, everyone reads publications for their ideas, substantive findings, and perhaps, for useful data. But not everyone knows how to examine them for the analytic structures embedded in them. What is meant by “underlying analytic logics” is whether the publication is organized around proof or causality or concern for consequences, or a setting out of strategies or of topologies, or. … Some researchers are quite explicit about the foci of their publications, others are not; and sometimes they themselves are not clear about their analytic purposes.

So, it is very good practice for fledgling analysts to be able to read and think in terms of the logic of analysis. Having learned this skill, it helps them to think more clearly about their own writing, to organize it with more facility, and to give critical attention to the presentation of its underlying analysis. It also contributes to the novice researcher's understanding of how grounded theory is developed, and how its presentation often looks quite different from others written in different “qualitative” styles. So the students are presented very early in the seminar with examples of underlying analytic logics; then must practice finding these by themselves.

We shall give several examples of such analytic logics, briefly discussed, since once the idea is grasped it only takes a bit of practice to carry out these examinations.