How Social and Behavioral Scholarly Writing is Unique: A Literature Review and Best Practice Guidelines for Scholarly Writing in the Social Sciences
Introduction
The following essay will identify and comprehensively analyze how social/behavioral scholarly writing is unique. This will include a literature review that outlines some of the specific circumstances and ways that social and behavioral scholarly writing is unique.
This essay will further synthesize some of the current recommended best practice writing guidelines for the social behavioral researcher. Lastly, the essay offers a list of 30 recommended best practices applications to be applied to writing in the social sciences.
Analysis and Overview
It is widely known that when studying or researching in the social sciences, one must deal with phenomenon that is familiar. The aim of the behavioral sciences is for the researcher to gain an ability to stand back from these everyday things of the social world (media, relationships, families, social groups), and to develop a bird's eye view for examining common phenomenon with unobstructed eyes. Essentially, the social sciences encourage us to look at the ordinary as unfamiliar, to ask questions about the habits and attitudes that are normally taken for granted. Social science scholarly writing is a reflection of that goal, and this is one of the ways in which this form of writing is wholly unique to other modes of scientific expression.
Another purpose of writing in social/behavioral science is to create clear communication about these aforementioned phenomenon. At times this task can be quite complex, as we are attempting to hold scientific viewpoint within a subject matter that is qualitative and human. Other complexities of achieving clarity in social/behavioral writing occur because of the fact that the human experience is often a felt experience. It is difficult to quantify and remain distant when dealing with the complexity of human emotion...