Introduction

Your introduction is the section appearing after your abstract, and it's usually the first section you write in your paper. (Some researchers opt to write other sections first, like methods or results, and then come back to the introduction, but your mentor will discuss more on this with you.)

This part is notably important as it establishes your writing style, which you'll be using for the rest of the paper. Further, it gives a hint of the quality of your research, which contributes to how readers would see your credibility as a researcher. Just like the abstract, the introduction also needs to give a good impression on your reader.

Your introduction functions to give your research "background and context" about your topic, mainly to convey why you're doing what you're doing, i.e., the significance of the question you're trying to answer/the significance of your research. You need to make the reader understand the "relevance" of what you're doing. It's important that your introduction be engaging, clear, and logically structured so you can draw readers into your paper, while also clearly presenting your study's objectives, i.e., the problem you seek to solve.

You may consider your introduction as a "mental road map" that you need to answer these four questions through:

1. What are you studying?
2. Why is this topic important/relevant/significant?
3. What is the scientific community currently aware of about the topic? And thus, how is your research advancing new knowledge or understanding? (At this stage, you're trying to provide the reader what they need to know, i.e., set adequate background and context for them.)

<aside> 🗒️ Note: While presenting background, you need to only provide the most relevant background information, avoiding going too much in-depth. Later you'll learn there may be another section called "Literature Review," in which you may add more essential and in-depth background.

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How to structure your introduction?

While there are a number of valid ways you can structure your introduction, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) suggests that you may formulate your introduction through including the following five components, in order:

Component #1: In this component, you present the broader context of your topic to your readers, which would reveal its importance. In this step, you should include a general overview of the current research on the problem you're investigating.

Component #2: In this component, you essentially provide a more in-depth overview of existing research or "thinking" about your problem. Summarizing what's already known sets a foundation for introducing your unique contribution.

Component #3: In this component, you're trying to identify a gap or unresolved issues in the existing knowledge. This is the critical pivot point, given that you're trying to define the novelty of what you're doing.

The university gives the following examples:

• "The previous research has mistakenly assumed that..." or "Although most experts in the field believe..., they have overlooked..."
• "None of the previous research has examined..."
• "Despite prior observations of voter behavior in local elections in urban Detroit, it remains unclear why some single mothers choose to avoid..." and/or
• "Consequently, these factors need to be examined in more detail..." or "Evidence suggests an interesting correlation, therefore, it is desirable to survey different respondents..."

Component #4: In this component, you clearly state your research question and hypothesis. You need to position it as a response to the identified gap. In this section, readers should clearly understand the intent of your study. You may also outline your study's key characteristics, where you may very briefly describe results that you've found, or hope to find.