Scientific Writing

Some time ago this meme circulated on social networks, from the page Humor for intellectuals . Beyond the joke and the mixed feelings that it can cause to all of us who have gone through - or are going through - research processes, the meme refers to a problem that we commonly see students and teachers immersed in the realization or evaluation of projects and final research reports: the theoretical framework of the research becomes a mortar of poorly articulated concepts, phrases and ideas, Write my essay the reading of which is extremely laborious (or in the crudest words of Firulai, the leading dog of the meme, unpalatable). The above is not the product of a simple question of writing or style, but it is the evidence of a major underlying problem, of an epistemological type, related to the non-assimilation of the conceptual systems used to observe the object of study, which will redound in an incorrect methodological operationalization of the same and therefore will result in an investigation in which its four fundamental components (research problem, theoretical framework, methodology and results) will show significant degrees of dissociation. Put simply and quickly: a flawed investigation. The theses, as final exercises of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, essentially constitute rites of passage in which the student / applicant must demonstrate that they master the fundamentals that a given academic community has stipulated as the correct ones for the practice of research. That is why the discussion of the results obtained is sometimes less relevant than the "correct" use of research tools and the structuring of its parts. This article has a practical purpose: to present to students and researchers a group of strategies that facilitate the construction and articulation with the other parts of the investigation, of one of the most important, defining and also difficult moments of a study: the theoretical framework. The difficulties for the construction of the theoretical framework of an investigation do not lie only in the epistemological complexities that underlie the choice of a conceptual system, complementation of several or other alternatives, my premium essay which will condition the observation of real life phenomena. To this we must add that it is one of the elements that is least touched on in the research methodology courses and texts. A brief review of the books and articles used to teach research shows that the space devoted to explaining the methods, techniques and design of research instruments is much greater than to the process of building theoretical frameworks. In fact, many authors do not touch this moment. This may be due to the uniqueness that characterizes each theoretical framework or perhaps to the complicated relationship that we have in the Social Sciences with theories (LOYAL, 2013), or the preponderance of qualitative research characterized by emergent and recursive research designs (ÁLVAREZ; BARRETO, 2010), but the truth is that at this time, many times we find ourselves lacking the much-needed guides, especially when there is no accumulated experience turned into a trade. Therefore, in this article I propose that for the correct construction and articulation of the theoretical framework, three problems must be solved that I have called 1- definition problem, 2- distribution problem and 3- selection problem, which will be explained in the next sections, followed by a group of observations related to the correct integration of the theoretical framework with the remaining parts of the investigation. THE DEFINITION PROBLEM When we are faced with the construction of the theoretical framework of our research, we can meet or go through various states. One of them, and the least desirable -although frequent- is what I have called “aseptic state”. It generally corresponds to the phrases “I don't know where to start”, “I have nothing”, “I am blank”. This is a state that is characterized by ignorance of the state of the question regarding the subject to which the object to be studied belongs and may have its origin in the lack of definition of the object of study on the part of the student or in the lack of effort to overcome the ignorance and the cognitive limitations it presents. We can also find ourselves or go to a state of obfuscation, buy assigment online in which we "do not find" anything that serves us and in which we almost always think that this is because our topic is so new that it has never been investigated (which generally is very difficult at this point). The distinctive feature of this state is the difficulty in identifying the object of knowledge within which the object of study that we are going to build can be inscribed, which surely must already be part of research in multiple scientific traditions. It may have its origin or in the lack of definition of the object of study or in the restrictions imposed by our disciplinary training and the academic ghettos to which we restrict ourselves and that prevent us from thinking from a transdisciplinary perspective and objects of knowledge (VIDALES, 2017). Sometimes we also go through a state of saturation, that moment when we say “It's too much”, “I have so much that I don't know what to do”. This is a state characterized by an abundance of readings that fail to connect with each other or with the objectives of the study. It may have its origin in the fact that the object of study is not yet well defined, in the lack of epistemological cuts necessary to the object of study or in the non-identification of one or some conceptual reference systems that function as a basis and allow to establish an organic and orderly dialogue with other conceptual systems or propositions. One of the most dangerous and also frequent states - in which we have surely been or will be - is that of mirage. It is the moment when we think "I have everything ready," I finished my theoretical chapter and now I am going to start the methodological one. Then, the review of the tutors or the presentation in colloquia or pre-defense is in charge of showing us that this was not the case. The main characteristic of the state of mirage is the evident disjunction between research problem, objectives, buy thesis online theoretical framework and methodological framework. Its origin is either in an incorrect lack of definition of the object of study that can lead us to assume a theoretical framework that is not the one that corresponds to our research, or in the assumption of theoretical frameworks of research similar to ours, but that we have not assimilated critically. Finally we have the state of systematic progress, a time when there is awareness that "I have identified the central ideas and categories of the study and as I advance I am enriching and perfecting them." It is characterized by a dialectical process of knowledge construction in which reading contributes simultaneously to the different parts of the study, which are in dialogue and complement each other. Its origin lies in the correct definition of the object of study that makes it possible to enter the state of the question and identify the main conceptual and empirical supports that will facilitate and guide the study of the selected phenomenon. I must clarify that this is a state as desirable as it is unstable, since from it we can go at some point to states of mirage and even saturation. The objective of this long exposition on the different states is to point out that there is an element that is repeated in all of them: the object of study. And therein lies the first problem that we must overcome for the construction of the theoretical framework of an investigation: the correct definition of the object of study. As long as we do not have defined the object of study, we cannot definitively determine the content and structure of the theoretical framework of the research; although this does not mean that the object can be built apart from the conceptual work and the readings that will make up the theoretical framework. It is a dialectical, recursive process, a journey of constant twists and turns in which the readings of the identified theoretical sources help to build the object of study and as it is clarified, the concepts are screened, As the Cuban philosopher and academic Pablo Guadarrama points out, the theoretical framework: […] Constitutes the web of essential relationships that, buy argumentative essay online on a more generic level, not only conditions, but also characterizes and guides in some way the formulation of the type of problem under investigation and helps to clarify it. ( GUADARRAMA, 2009 , p. 74) This confirms the dialectical character that marks the relationship between the construction of the theoretical framework and the object of study. More mentioned than defined, several authors coincide in characterizing the object of study as a conceptual, abstract construction that represents the fragment of reality that the researcher is interested in understanding in a certain way (DOMÍNGUEZ; SÁNCHEZ DE APARICIO; SÁNCHEZ RUIZ, 2009). Mexican professors and researchers Guillermo Orozco and Rodrigo González (2012) point out that the construction of the object of an investigation implies the precise determination of the subjects, processes, scenarios and temporalities to be studied framed from specific theoretical and methodological relationships. In his research methodology workshops, Dr. Carlos Vidales from the University of Guadalajara insists on the construction of the object of study as a process that involves several moments of abstraction. I will use as an example an investigation already concluded (ROSABAL; GALICIAN, 2010) to explain how this process occurs. At first, we usually arrive at research by identifying a phenomenon in the social world, a specific problem that we are interested in studying. For example, that the topics most published by the press in Cuba are not the ones that most interest the majority of Cubans. This issue, buy assigment online thus posed in lay terms, is too broad and lacking in conceptual references to definitively guide an investigation, hence the need for a first movement of abstraction that allows naming the phenomenon from a theoretical tradition that defines it epistemologically, replaces it. the lay terms by conceptual constructs that locate the area of ​​interest of the study and provide guides to understand it, since any phenomenon of reality can be approached from multiple edges and perspectives. This moment is fundamental so that the student can move from a general and vague approach towards a more focused understanding that works as a map, as a guiding principle. In the case of the study taken as an example, the authors chose as the conceptual reference base the Agenda Setting Theory, which approached the phenomenon from the perspective of the relations between agendas and focused its interest on both the comparison of media and media agendas. public, as in the contingent conditions that affect said relationship. The phenomenon, now raised as a topic and framed in a conceptual tradition, would be formulated as "the study of the relationships between public and media agendas in Cuba." Here we are no longer referring directly to the phenomenon, but rather it is approached from the perspective of the conceptual construction that are agendas and their relationships, thereby opening up some analytical and interpretive possibilities, while others are discarded. However, this formulation is still too general and requires multiple annotations to be able to efficiently delimit the focus of the study towards which the resources and the techniques and instruments necessary to answer the research questions will be directed. The next movement of abstraction that leads to the determination of the object of study involves the selection of the specific question or analytical category to be investigated, the case study, the time frame and the objective of the investigation. In this way, the object of the research would be: analysis of the contingent conditions that affect the transfer of objects and attributes between the Cuban public agenda and the media agenda of the newspaper Granma in the period October-November 2009. As can be seen, not only were space-time constraints made, but here the broadest category of relationships between public and media agendas has been disaggregated into transfer of objects and contingent attributes and conditions, which are precisely two of the concepts that make it up and on which the investigation will focus. Once the fundamental components and relationships of the investigation are clear, it becomes much easier to specify the theoretical bases that should guide it. For this reason, when the object is correctly constructed, the main concepts and categories that must structure the theoretical framework are manifested in it. In such a way that an experienced tutor or teacher who encounters the object formulated above would know that the theoretical framework of this research should have as its fundamental nucleus the sections dedicated to the concepts of public and media agenda, to the processes of transfer of objects and attributes between them and the contingent conditions that may affect these processes. A good evaluative exercise, once the research has concluded its theoretical and methodological sections, is to compare the index of the theoretical framework with the dimensions and indicators from which the object of study was operationalized: The construction of the object of study, for all that it implies, is usually, if not the most, at least one of the most complex moments of the research process. It is normal that in graduate and postgraduate research the construction of the object of study requires a significant part of the total time available in the study program. It is common for students to complain to teachers about the time invested at this time, because they feel that they are falling behind, but the truth is that it is counterproductive to "move" towards other research tasks as long as it is not resolved; once that Gordian knot that is the construction of the object has been untied, the studio begins to “walk” much more quickly,