Planning the assignment:

The assignments that you write at the university should be answers to research questions. Therefore, arguing convincingly for your answer is totally essential when writing an assignment. This applies to assignments that are primarily of an empirical nature (such as ‘Do men earn more than women?’; ‘Why do people with criminal records face high barriers to employment?’) as well as more theoretically oriented ones (such as ‘Is the concept of “habitus” too deterministic?’; ‘What are the differences between Marx’s and Weber’s theories on the growth of capitalism?’), and whether you have been supplied with an assignment or have chosen the topic yourself. The answer that you give to the assignment question is called the assignment’s assertion. It is essential to keep in mind that you will make an assertion and provide arguments for it in your assignments (descriptive assignments are never given). In other words, your assignment should be read as an argument in favor of an assertion (e.g. ‘Men earn more than women; ‘The concept of “habitus” is not too deterministic’; or ‘Prejudices among employers constitute a barrier to employment of people with criminal records). For the reader to be convinced that your assertion is correct, the necessary information to support your argument should be presented in a specific order, i.e. you need to structure your assignment in a specific way.

Writing the  Introduction:

In the introduction, you present the assignment’s research question and its background, so as to show why it will be interesting to find the answer. Is it important to answer this research question because it concerns a controversial issue? Is it important because this may bring knowledge that can prevent people from injuring themselves or help achieve a more equitable distribution of resources? Is it important because this social phenomenon has been widely misunderstood in previous research? The issue may be interesting for many reasons; what is important is that you should not just assume this, but show the readers your reasons at the very start of the assignment. In the introduction, you should also indicate the main points of your line of argumentation. Their nature obviously depends on how you will address the assignment’s research question – this could involve conflicts between various ‘schools’ of thought or specific researchers, possible objections to different aspects of a theory, and various interpretations of a key text or a social phenomenon.

In the introduction, you should also hint at your conclusion, the assertion that you argue in favor of in your assignment. Your success in delivering a convincing line of argumentation will make your text interesting to read. In other words, do not make a secret of your assertion initially – your assignment should not ask the question first and provide an answer at the end. You can make your assertion clear by starting a sentence with ‘I will therefore assert that…’ or ‘I will argue that…’. During the writing process, you should keep your assertion in mind, even if it may change as the work progresses. If you follow this recipe for an introduction – the research question, reasons why the question is important, main points, and an assertion/answer to the research question – you present the reader with your assignment in miniature. If you just list these using one sentence for each point, your introduction will be informative, but very schematic. Keep in mind that the introduction should draw the readers into the text, not just inform them about what is coming. You can experiment by moving the sections around – perhaps it is appropriate to open the entire assignment with an assertion (‘No matter how we measure it, men earn more than women), or as a reformulation of the research question (‘Do men really earn more than women, or are there other gender differences that may explain this well-known wage gap?’)

Background The purpose of the background description is to provide the reader with the premises for the remainder of the assignment, i.e. the basic information that the reader needs to be able to follow and assess your arguments. After the introduction, you should therefore provide an account of key problems, concepts, theories, and empirical findings. For example, if you intend to compare and contrast two alternative theories about a social phenomenon, you need to give an outline of the phenomenon that these theories set out to explain, followed by some relevant basic aspects of how these theories explain this phenomenon. If you notice that you need to provide comprehensive explanations of theories and previous research when writing the discussion, this indicates that you have written too little about this in the background.

Writing Background of an Assignment:

In your background section, you need to include what is relevant to the assignment’s research question and the answer that you will argue for. You should therefore provide an account of previous research that demonstrates why this is relevant to your research question. You can ask yourself ‘why should I include this?’ for all content of the background section: Is it because this previous research forms the basis for the research question? Will I argue against this interpretation of the data or this theory? Are there any gaps in previous research that this assignment sets out to fill? For example, if you are to investigate why people with criminal records have difficulties in finding a job, the background section needs to show that previous research has actually established that former prison inmates have difficulty finding a job – otherwise, it will be meaningless to investigate why.

In other words, the background section is not a review of everything that has been written about the assignment topic – you should not just list a series of previous theories and findings. Most assignments will not require any biographical information on the researchers that have produced the studies that you include in your account (e.g. that he studied theology in Christiania and suffered from depression and similar information). In many cases, the background section will help emphasize the importance of finding an answer to the research question. For example, if you intend to compare two theories about a social phenomenon, the background section might well emphasize possible contradictions/conflicts between these theories. If there are any deficiencies in previous studies that you will discuss in a later section, these should be at least hinted at here, in order to provide a direction for the background outline.