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OK it's time to get started with the introduction section and in this lecture I'm going to give you

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an overview of what's gonna happen. So earlier, I discussed with you that in the introduction section you

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show your reader why your research question is interesting and worth answering.

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But now we're going to zoom into this a little bit more and we're going to split up what we mean by

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"interesting".

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So the goal of the introduction section is to show that your research is: first, IMPORTANT, which means

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that it helps to solve a general problem or that it helps to advance our understanding of some interesting

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phenomenon.

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Another thing you want to show is that your research question is NOVEL. That it hasn't been answered

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before by previous research.

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And finally you want to show that your research question is TIMELY, which means that it's the logical

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next step after the research that has already been conducted.

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And if you can achieve these three things - show that your research question is important novel and timely -

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then your readers will be very intrigued by a research question.

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OK so these are the goals.

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Now let's have a look at the structure of the introduction section.

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So here are the essential parts that you usually find in an introduction section. At the very beginning, you

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usually start with the importance of your general topic. And then, from there you go into a literature review

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in which you discuss the research that has already been conducted and in which you point out whether

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there are conflicts in the literature or whether there are gaps.

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And this is very important because the goal of your literature review is actually not to give a full

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review of the whole literature but to lead towards your research question.

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So the story you're going to tell there is basically that: "this is what we already know and this is what

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we don't know

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and my research is going to fill the gap".

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Okay.

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And then after the literature review you state your research question.

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So the question that you want to answer with your research.

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And finally you give an outline of your paper. So you give your reader a little idea of what's going

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to happen in the rest of the paper.

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And these are the essential parts of pretty much every introduction section.

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And as a general rule of thumb the introduction section starts broad,

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so it starts with the importance of the general topic, and then step by step you narrow it down, narrow

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it down until you arrive at your research question.

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Okay.

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I know that this is a lot of information so let's go through a little example to make this more vivid.

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So let's say that you have done research on depression.

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So in this case you could start your paper by saying a little bit about why this is an important societal

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problem.

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For example: "It is well known that depression can severely impair people's well-being and ability to

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function". And that way the reader immediately understands "oh OK, so there's a problem that we want to

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solve".

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Then comes the literature review and what I'm gonna say now is a little bit made up.

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So just take it as an illustration.

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"Research has shown that depression is not caused the way originally assumed.

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However there is no validated treatment that fits our current understanding of depression."

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So this is a really short example to just give you a general idea how the literature review works.

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So it's not just an endless review but it's a review that leads toward the research question and

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in this case the research question could be can treatment X - and treatment X maybe following the the

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more current understanding of depression - can treatment X reduce depression? And then you would give an

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outline of your paper. So you would say something like: "To answer this question, we performed four studies..."

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or whatever you did. and hopefully you can see that in this example all three goals are reached.

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It's clear why the topic is important.

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It is also clear that the research question is novel because "there is no validated treatment that fits

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our current understanding."

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So it's a novel research question. And the question also feels timely.

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This is a little bit more implicit but the question feels as the logical next step after the research

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that has already been done.

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And that's the ideal case.

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You want to lead to your research questions such that it feels important, novel, and timely.

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Okay so hopefully you can see now how an introduction generally works.

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Now the question is: how can you construct such an introduction yourself?

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And I want to walk you through the process in the next lectures and the first step is going to be a

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literature search.

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You need to find the research that has already been conducted. So let's look at that in the next lecture.