Sharing your Research
85 Deciding What to Share and With Whom to Share It
When preparing to share our work with others we must decide what to share, with whom to share it, and in what format(s) to share it. In this section, we will consider the former two aspects of sharing our work. In the sections that follow, we will consider the various formats and mechanisms through which social scientists might share their work.
Sharing it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly
Because conducting sociological research is a scholarly pursuit and because sociological researchers generally aim to reach a true understanding of social processes, it is crucial that we share all aspects of our research—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Doing so helps ensure that others will understand, be able to build from, and effectively critique our work. From an ethical standpoint, it is important to share all aspects of our work for ethical reasons and for the purpose of replication. In preparing to share your work with others, and in order to meet your ethical obligations as a sociological researcher, challenge yourself to answer the following questions:
- Why did I conduct this research?
- How did I conduct this research?
- For whom did I conduct this research?
- What conclusions can I reasonably draw from this research?
- Knowing what I know now, what would I do differently?
- How could this research be improved?
- What questions, if any, was I unable to answer fully, partially, or not at all?
Understanding why you conducted your research will help you be honest—with yourself and your readers—about your own personal interest, investments, or biases with respect to the work. This means being honest about your data collection methods, sample and sampling strategy, and analytic strategy. The third question in the list above is designed to help you articulate who the major stakeholders are in your research. Of course, the researcher is a stakeholder. Additional stakeholders might include funders, research participants, or others who share something in common with your research subjects (e.g., members of some community where you conducted research or members of the same social group, such as parents or athletes, upon whom you conducted your research). Professors for whom you conducted research as part of a class project might be stakeholders, as might employers for whom you conducted research. We’ll revisit the concept of stakeholders in Chapter 17 “Research Methods in the Real World”.
The fourth question should help you think about the major strengths of your work. Finally, the last three questions are designed to make you think about potential weaknesses in your work and how future research might build from or improve upon your work.
Knowing your audience
Once you are able to articulate what to share, you must decide with whom to share it. Certainly, the most obvious candidates with whom you will share your work are other social scientists. If you are conducting research for a class project, your main “audience” will probably be your professor. Perhaps you will also share your work with other students in the class. Other potential audiences include stakeholders, reporters and other media representatives, policymakers, and members of the public more generally. While you would never alter your actual findings for different audiences, understanding who your audience is will help you frame your research in a way that is most meaningful to that audience.
Presenting your research
Presenting your research is an excellent way to get feedback on your work. Professional sociologists often make presentations to their peers, as a way to prepare for more formally writing up and eventually publishing their work. Presentations might be formal talks, either as part of a panel at a professional conference or to some other group of peers or other interested parties; less formal roundtable discussions, another common professional conference format; or posters that are displayed in some specially designated area. We’ll look at all three presentation formats here.
When preparing a formal talk or presentation, it is very important to get details well in advance about how long your presentation is expected to last and whether any visual aids such as video or PowerPoint slides are expected by your audience. At conferences, the typical formal talk is usually expected to last between 15 and 20 minutes. While this may sound like a torturously lengthy amount of time, you will be amazed the first time you present formally by how easily time can fly. Once a researcher gets into the groove of talking about something they hopefully still have a passion for, it is common that they become so engrossed in it that they forget to watch the clock and end up going over the allotted time. To avoid this all-too-common occurrence, it is crucial that you repeatedly practice your presentation in advance—and time yourself. Another tip is to keep a watch or other means of checking the time at your fingertips to keep an eye on the time.
One stumbling block in formal presentations of research work is setting up the study or problem the research addresses. Keep in mind that with limited time, audience members will be more interested to hear about your original work than to hear you cite a long list of previous studies to introduce your own research. While in scholarly written reports of your work you must discuss the studies that have come before yours, in a presentation of your work the key is to use what precious time you have to highlight your work. Whatever you do in your formal presentation, do not read your paper verbatim. Nothing will bore an audience more quickly than that. Highlight only the key points of your study. These generally include your research question, your methodological approach, your major findings, and a few final takeaways.
In less formal roundtable presentations of your work, the aim is usually to help stimulate a conversation about a topic. The time you are given to present may be slightly shorter than in a formal presentation, and you will also be expected to participate in the conversation that follows all presenters’ talks. Roundtables can be especially useful when your research is in the earlier stages of development. Perhaps you have conducted a pilot study and you would like to talk through some of your findings and get some ideas about where to take the study next. A roundtable is an excellent place to get some suggestions and also get a preview of the objections reviewers may raise with respect to your conclusions or your approach to the work. Roundtables are also great places to network and meet other scholars who share a common interest with you.
Finally, in a poster presentation you visually represent your work. Just as you would not read a paper verbatim in a formal presentation, avoid at all costs printing and pasting your paper onto a poster board. Instead, think about how to tell the “story” of your work in graphs, charts, tables, and other images. Bulleted points are also fine, as long as the poster is not so wordy that it would be difficult for someone walking by very slowly to grasp your major argument and findings. Posters, like roundtables, can be quite helpful at the early stages of a research project because they are designed to encourage the audience to engage you in conversation about your research. Do not feel that you must share every detail of your work in a poster; the point is to share highlights and then converse with your audience to get their feedback, hear their questions, and provide additional details about your research.
Writing up research results
Reports of findings that will be read by other scholars generally follow the format outlined in the discussion of reviewing the literature in Chapter V, “The Literature Review.” As you may recall from that chapter, most scholarly reports of research include an abstract, an introduction, a literature review, a discussion of research methodology, a presentation of findings, and some concluding remarks and discussion about implications of the work. Reports written for scholarly consumption also contain a list of references, and many include tables or charts that visually represent some component of the findings. Reading prior literature in your area of interest is an excellent way to develop an understanding of the core components of scholarly research reports and to begin to learn how to write those components yourself. There also are many excellent resources to help guide students as they prepare to write scholarly reports of research (Becker, 2007; Johnson, Rettig, Scott, & Garrison, 2009; Justice Institute of British Columbia, 2018; Sociology Writing Group, 2007).
Reports written for public consumption differ from those written for scholarly consumption. As noted elsewhere in this chapter, knowing your audience is crucial when preparing a report of your research. What are they likely to want to hear about? What portions of the research do you feel are crucial to share, regardless of the audience? Answering these questions will help you determine how to shape any written reports you plan to produce. In fact, some outlets answer these questions for you, as in the case of newspaper editorials where rules of style, presentation, and length will dictate the shape of your written report.
Whoever your audience, do not forget what it is that you are reporting: social scientific evidence. Take seriously your role as a social scientist and your place among peers in your discipline. Present your findings as clearly and as honestly as you possibly can; pay appropriate homage to the scholars who have come before you, even while you raise questions about their work; and aim to engage your readers in a discussion about your work and about avenues for further inquiry. Even if you will not ever meet your readers face-to-face, imagine what they might ask you upon reading your report, imagine your response, and provide some of those details in your written report.
Finally, take extraordinary care not to commit plagiarism. Presenting someone else’s words or ideas as if they are your own is among the most egregious transgressions a scholar can commit. Indeed, plagiarism has ended many careers, even many years down the road (see Plagiarism Costs Degree for Senator John Walsh). Take this very, very seriously. If you feel a little afraid and paranoid after reading this warning, consider it a good thing—and let it motivate you to take extra care to ensure that you are not plagiarizing the work of others.
Disseminating findings
Presenting your work, as discussed in the section “Presenting Your Research,” is one way of disseminating your research findings. In this section, we will focus on disseminating the written results of your research. Dissemination refers to “a planned process that involves consideration of target audiences and the settings in which research findings are to be received and, where appropriate, communicating and interacting with wider policy and…service audiences in ways that will facilitate research uptake in decision-making processes and practice” (Wilson, Petticrew, Calnan, & Natareth, 2010, p. 93). In other words, dissemination of research findings involves careful planning, thought, consideration of target audiences, and communication with those audiences. Writing up results from your research and having others take notice are two entirely different propositions. In fact, the general rule of thumb is that people will not take notice unless you help and encourage them to do so. To paraphrase the classic line from the film Field of Dreams, just because you build it does not mean they will come.
Disseminating your findings successfully requires determining who your audience is, where your audience is, and how to reach them. When considering who your audience is, think about who is likely to take interest in your work. Your audience might include those who do not express enthusiastic interest but might nevertheless benefit from an awareness of your research. Your research participants and those who share some characteristics in common with your participants are likely to have some interest in what you’ve discovered in the course of your research. Other scholars who study similar topics are another obvious audience for your work. Perhaps there are policymakers who should take note of your work. Organizations that do work in an area related to the topic of your research are another possibility. Finally, any and all inquisitive and engaged members of the public represent a possible audience for your work.
Where your audience is should be fairly obvious once you have determined who you would like your audience to be. You know where your research participants are because you have studied them. You can find interested scholars on your campus (e.g., perhaps you could offer to present your findings at some campus event), at professional conferences, and via publications such as professional organizations’ newsletters (an often-overlooked source for sharing findings in brief form) and scholarly journals. Policymakers include your state and federal representatives who, at least in theory, should be available to hear a constituent speak on matters of policy interest. Perhaps you are already aware of organizations that do work in an area related to your research topic, but if not, a simple web search should help you identify possible organizational audiences for your work. Disseminating your findings to the public more generally could take any number of forms, including a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, or a blog.
Finally, determining how to reach your audiences will vary according to which audience you wish to reach. Your strategy should be determined by the norms of the audience. For example, scholarly journals provide author submission instructions that clearly define requirements for anyone wishing to disseminate their work via a particular journal. The same is true for newspaper editorials; check your newspaper’s website for details about how to format and submit letters to the editor. If you wish to reach out to your political representatives, a call to their offices or, again, a simple web search should tell you how to do that.
Whether you act on all these suggestions is ultimately your decision. But if you have conducted high-quality research and you have findings that are likely to be of interest to any constituents besides yourself, it is your duty as a scholar and a sociologist to share those findings. In sum, disseminating findings involves the following three steps:
- Determine who your audience is.
- Identify where your audience is.
- Discover how best to reach them
