What is Scholarly Research?
Getting started:
Scholarly? Peer reviewed? Research articles? Your professor may use any or all of these words to describe a type of sources that you'll need to use for your academic work. But when you're asked to find scholarly articles, what do professors really mean?
Learn more about the process of peer review by watching the 3 minute video from North Carolina State University below:
Types of Scholarly Research
Scholarly research articles in different subjects ask different types of questions and have different structures:
Arts and Humanities research articles
These articles focus on ideas, themes, that are often based in texts. Often, the articles can be similar to the structure of an essay: they begin with a review of scholarship on a specific topic, states a hypothesis, and supports that hypothesis with evidence from primary sources as well as secondary sources. See an example below:
- Pierman, C. J. (2005). Baseball, Conduct, and True Womanhood. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 33(1/2), 68–85.Notice how the author makes arguments about how feminism, baseball, and history intertwine during the existence of All-American GIrls Softball League
Qualitative Research
These articles focus on lived human experience. Information can be collected from interviews, focus groups, or other sources. Qualitative reseachers ask open-ended questions and try to answer questions that are how and why based (rather than correlations, how many, or what). These articles are often created by social scientists. These articles may have a similar structure to quantitative research articles (see below), or may use headings focused on research themes. You can find more information about qualitative research in this essay published by Tenny, Brannan, and Brannan on the National Library of Medicine site.
Curious to see an example qualitative article? Look below:
- A qualitative assessment of return to sport following ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction in baseball playersEven though this article has a structure similar to a quantitative paper, notice how the article focuses on human decisions and feelings, and how data is collected on a small level.
Quantitative Research
These articles focus on questions that are answered through Scientific Research articles (which will often propose a hypothesis, design an experiment, and gather data that either supports or disproves the hypothesis) are often quantitative articles. Take a look at the example below:
- Professional advancement, performance, and injury characteristics of baseball players entering the Major League Baseball draft after treatment for shoulder injuriesLook at the structure of the article, and then take a moment to see what statistical analysis was run (hint: you should find this data in the Methods section.)
Mixed Methods
These studies combine quantitative and qualitative approaches-- often times, for example, a researcher will do a survey and then follow up with interviews or focus groups to tease out unanswered questions. These articles will often have the traditional IMRD structure. See the example below:
- Factors and expectations influencing concussion disclosure within NCAA Division I athletes: A mixed methodological approachNote how the abstract explains how the authors followed up a survey with interviews.
Review articles
These are massive summary articles that are popular in the sciences and health sciences. Generally, researchers will try to summarize the current scholarship published on a topic. This might involve looking at tens or hundreds of articles to capture themes: for example, scientists might ask what we know about the impact of climate change on the ocean? They would also address what questions remain unanswered, and suggest future research. Review articles may not follow the traditional quantitative article structure.
- Pitching mechanics and performance of adult baseball pitchers: A systematic review and meta-analysis for normative dataThis review article has the IMRD structure, but notice how the methods are set up (initially 4048 papers were collected, but there was a thorough review of only 28 studies in the end.)
