The Craft of Research

About this book

A thoroughly updated edition of a beloved classic that has guided generations of researchers in conducting effective and meaningful research.

With more than a million copies sold since its first publication, The Craft of Research has helped generations of researchers at every level – from high-school students and first-year undergraduates to advanced graduate students to researchers in business and government. Conceived by seasoned researchers and educators Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams, this fundamental work explains how to choose significant topics, pose genuine and productive questions, find and evaluate sources, build sound and compelling arguments, and convey those arguments effectively to others.

While preserving the book's proven approach to the research process, as well as its accessible voice and general structure, this new edition acknowledges the many ways research is conducted and communicated today. Thoroughly revised by Joseph Bizup and William T. FitzGerald, it recognizes that research may end in a product other than a paper – or no product at all – and includes a new chapter about effective presentations. It features fresh examples from a variety of fields that will appeal to today's students and other readers. It also accounts for new technologies used in research and offers basic guidelines for the appropriate use of generative AI. And it ends with an expanded chapter on ethics that addresses researchers' broader obligations to their research communities and audiences as well as systemic questions about ethical research practices.

This new edition will be welcomed by a new and more diverse generation of researchers.

Contents

Preface: The Aims of This Edition

Introduction: Your Research and Your Audience
      I.1. What Is Research?
      I.2. Connecting with Your Audience
      I.3. Understanding Your Role
      I.4. Imagining the Role of Your Audience
      I.5. How to Use This Book
      Quick Tip: A Checklist for Understanding Your Audience

Part I. Asking Questions, Seeking Answers
Prologue: Planning Your Project-An Overview
      Quick Tip: Sustaining a Writing Project Alone and in Groups
1. From Topics to Questions
      1.1. From an Interest to a Topic
      1.2. From Focused Topic to Research Question
      1.3. The Most Significant Question: So What?
      Quick Tip: Finding Topics
2. From Questions to a Problem
      2.1. Understanding Research Problems
      2.2. Distinguishing "Pure" and "Applied" Research
      2.3. Connecting Research to Practical Consequences
      2.4. Finding a Good Research Problem
      2.5. Learning to Work with Problems
      Quick Tip: Making an Opportunity of Inexperience

Part II. Sources and Resources
Prologue: Sources and Authentic Research
3. Finding and Evaluating Sources
      3.1. Understanding Three Types of Sources
      3.2. Making the Most of the Library
      3.3. Locating Sources Online
      3.4. Evaluating Sources for Relevance and Reliability
      3.5. Looking Beyond Predictable Sources
      3.6. Using People to Further Your Research
      Quick Tip: Using Generative Artificial Intelligence
4. Engaging Sources
      4.1. Recording Complete Bibliographic Information
      4.2. Engaging Sources Actively
      4.3. Reading for a Problem
      4.4. Reading for Arguments
      4.5. Reading for Data and Support
      4.6. Taking Notes Systematically
      4.7. Annotating Your Sources
      Quick Tip: Managing Moments of Uncertainty

Part III. Making Your Argument
Prologue: Assembling a Research Argument
5. Making Good Arguments: An Overview
      5.1. Argument as Conversation
      5.2. Assembling the Core of Your Argument
      5.3. Explaining Your Reasoning with Warrants
      5.4. Acknowledging and Responding to Anticipated Questions and Objections
      5.5. Planning Your Research Argument
      5.6. Creating Your Ethos
      Quick Tip: A Common Mistake-Falling Back on What You Know
6. Making Claims
      6.1. Determining the Kind of Claim You Should Make
      6.2. Evaluating Your Claim
      6.3. Qualifying Claims to Enhance Your Credibility
      Quick Tip: Make Your Claim Contestable
7. Assembling Reasons and Evidence
      7.1. Using Reasons to Plan Your Argument
      7.2. Distinguishing Evidence from Reasons
      7.3. Determining the Kind of Evidence You Need
      7.4. Distinguishing Evidence from Reports of It
      7.5. Evaluating Your Evidence
      Quick Tip: Assess Your Evidence as You Gather It
8. Warrants
      8.1. Warrants in Everyday Reasoning
      8.2. Warrants in Research Arguments
      8.3. Testing Warrants
      8.4. Knowing When to State a Warrant
      8.5. Using Warrants to Test Your Argument
      8.6. Challenging Others' Warrants
      Quick Tip: Reasons, Evidence, and Warrants
9. Acknowledgments and Responses
      9.1. Questions about Your Research Problem
      9.2. Questions about the Soundness of Your Argument
      9.3. Imagining Alternatives to Your Argument
      9.4. Deciding What to Acknowledge
      9.5. Framing Your Responses as Sub-arguments
      9.6. The Vocabulary of Acknowledgment and Response
      Quick Tip: Three Predictable Disagreements

Part IV. Delivering Your Argument
Prologue: Planning, Writing, and Thinking
10. Planning and Drafting
      10.1. Why a Formal Paper?
      10.2. Planning Your Paper
      10.3. Avoiding Three Common but Flawed Patterns
      10.4. Turning Your Plan into a Draft
      Quick Tip: Managing Anxiety as a Writer
11. Revising and Organizing
      11.1. Thinking Like a Reader
      11.2. Revising Your Frame
      11.3. Revising Your Argument
      11.4. Revising Your Organization
      11.5. Checking Your Paragraphs
      11.6. Letting Your Draft Cool, Then Revisiting It
      Quick Tip: Abstracts
12. Incorporating Sources
      12.1. Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Quoting
      12.2. Creating a Fair Summary
      12.3. Creating a Fair Paraphrase
      12.4. Using Direct Quotations
      12.5. Mixing Summary, Paraphrase, and Quotation
      12.6. Showing Readers How Evidence Is Relevant
      12.7. The Social Importance of Citing Sources
      12.8. Four Common Citation Styles
      12.9. Guarding against Inadvertent Plagiarism
      Quick Tip: Indicating Citations in Your Paper
13. Communicating Evidence Visually
      13.1. Choosing Visual or Verbal Representations
      13.2. Choosing the Most Effective Graphic
      13.3. Designing Tables, Charts, and Graphs
      13.4. Specific Guidelines for Tables, Bar Charts, and Line Graphs
      13.5. Representing Data Ethically
      Quick Tip: Look for Opportunities to Include Visual Evidence
14. Introductions and Conclusions
      14.1. The Common Structure of Introductions
      14.2. Step 1: Stating a Context
      14.3. Step 2: Stating Your Problem
      14.4. Step 3: Stating Your Response
      14.5. Setting the Right Pace
      14.6. Finding Your First Few Words
      14.7. Writing Your Conclusion
      Quick Tip: Use Key Terms in Titles
15. Revising Style: Telling Your Story Clearly
      15.1. Judging Style
      15.2. The First Two Principles of Clear Writing
      15.3. A Third Principle: Old before New
      15.4. Choosing between the Active and Passive Voice
      15.5. A Final Principle: Complexity Last
      15.6. Editorial Polish
      Quick Tip: The Quickest Revision Strategy
16. Research Presentations
      16.1. Presenting to Auditors
      16.2. Giving a Preliminary Presentation
      16.3. Giving a Final Presentation
      Quick Tip: Treat Your Presentation as a Performance

Part V. Some Last Considerations
17. The Ethics of Research
      17.1. Ethical Obligation to Yourself
      17.2. Ethical Obligation to Your Audience and Fellow Researchers
      17.3. Research and Social Responsibility
      17.4. A Final Thought
18. Advice for Teachers
      18.1. The Risks of Imposing Formal Rules
      18.2. On Assignment Scenarios: Creating a Ground for Curiosity
      18.3. Recognizing and Tolerating the Inevitable Messiness of Learning

Our Debts
Appendix: A Brief Guide to Bibliographic and Other Resources
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Wayne C. Booth (1921-2005) was the George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. His many books include The Rhetoric of Fiction and For the Love of It: Amateuring and Its Rivals, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Gregory G. Colomb (1951-2011) was a professor of English at the University of Virginia and the author of Designs on Truth: The Poetics of the Augustan Mock-Epic.

Joseph M. Williams (1933-2008) was a professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago and the author of Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace.

Joseph Bizup is an associate professor in the Department of English at Boston University. He revised the thirteenth edition of Williams's Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace.

William T. FitzGerald is an associate professor in the Department of English and Communication at Rutgers University-Camden and has published widely on writing and research pedagogy, the rhetoric of prayer, and style.