The following blog is for Master’s or doctoral level students writing research dissertations in the psychological therapies fields. The pointers are only recommendations—different trainers, supervisors, and examiners may see things very differently.
What does an Introduction do?
The aim of an introductory section is to help your reader understand what your dissertation is about and why it is important. It is also an opportunity to help them understand the context for your study so that they can understand where it is coming from and what it is trying to contribute to the wider field.
An Introduction will typically include the following sections, though not necessarily in this order:
Aims/objectives of the research
Research question(s)
Personal rationale
Contextual rationale
Background literature
Definitions of key terms
Outline of the dissertation
For a dissertation, an Introduction is often separate from a Literature Review. The former is often the place where you set out why you are asking this question(s), whereas the latter sets out what you already know in answer to this question(s).
Aims/Questions
What is the purpose of your research? Your Introduction is the place to try and state, as explicitly as possible, what your research aims and/or questions are (see pointers here).
Personal Rationale
So why are you doing it? Why is it important to you? In most therapeutic fields, it is entirely legitimate (if not essential) to say something of why you are coming to this question, at this point in time. And the deeper you can go into your own personal rationale, the more insightful and authentic your personal account is likely to be. So some questions you might want to ask yourself are:
Why this research question/topic area?
Why does it matter to you?
What does it mean to you?
Why now?
What was your personal journey towards this research question?
How do you feel about this research question? What emotions are generated in you when you think about it?
How does this research question connect to your:
life
personal history
identity
values and meanings
aspirations for the future?
Something you might find really helpful is to do this as an exercise with a partner. Ask them to interview you, say for 20 minutes, using these questions. Record it and then listen back once the interview is over. That can really free you up to talk honestly and openly about some of the concerns and motives that underpin why you are doing this work. And, of course, you don’t need to share it all in your Introduction: but knowing where you want to go and why is a critical part of conducting an informed, in-depth, and self-reflexive study.
As part of this reflexive work, you might also want to ask yourself the question, ‘Are there some particular answers that I, consciously or unconsciously, would “like” to find?’ When it comes to writing about your personal biases in relation to the research question, however, that may be more likely to go in your Methods section. Here, in the Introduction, the focus is more on biases and assumptions that may have led you to ask this question in the first places.
Contextual Rationale
Of course, it’s not all about you. There’s also got to be good reasons, for the wider field, in you asking these questions at this point in time. For instance, maybe there’s a lot of research on how young people experience acceptance and congruence, but not empathy; or perhaps there’s evidence of particular increases in mental health problems in young people of Asian origin, so we really need to know what can help them.
So your Introduction is also a place where you can say about why your research is of importance in the grander scheme of things. Use evidence wherever you can, though it might be historical or socio-political as well as psychological.
Again, it can be really helpful to explore these questions in a pair. Get interviewed by a colleague, but this time invite them to probe you on why they should care about what you are doing. Some questions that they might want to ask/role-play are:
Why should I (as a counsellor/psychotherapist/counselling psychologist/researcher/commissioner/policy-maker) care about what you are doing?
What is it going to teach me, as a counsellor/psychotherapist/counselling psychologist/researcher/commissioner/policy-maker?
Don’t people already know the answer to your question? How is it going to add to the literature out there?
Why is it worth anyone spending time on this?
How will it make a contribution to:
Society?
Clients?
Other therapists?
The people who took part in the study?
Have you convinced them it is worthwhile (indeed, have you convinced yourself)? If not, it may be worth spending some time thinking through what it is that you really want to do, and whether it really is important. It may be that you sense it, it’s just difficult putting it into words. But try and find that sense so that you have a really clear basis to underpin your research work.
Background literature
Your Introduction is also a good place to explain anything that the reader needs to know about to understand the context and meaning of your study. For instance, how many young people enter person-centred therapy every year, or how did the concept of ‘alliance ruptures’ emerge and what are it’s theoretical underpinnings.
Of course, you’re also going to be reviewing the background literature in your Literature Review chapter, so how do you know what goes where? Maybe the best way to think about this, as above, is that content for the Literature Review chapter provides preliminary answers to your questions, whereas content for the Introductory chapter helps you understand what the question is and why it’s important. So, for instance, in our study of young people’s experiences of empathy, literature on how Rogers defined empathy might go in our Introduction, as might literature on mental health problems in adolescents. But findings of, for instance, a quantitative study on how young people rated the importance of empathy would go in our Literature Review, because it’s providing us with some important initial answers to the question we are asking.
Defining Key Terms
Closely related to this, what we can also do in our Introduction is to define key terms: anything that the reader is going to need to understand to be able to make sense of our thesis; and also so that they know how we, specifically, are choosing to use certain terms. For instance, do we mean ‘empathy’ as Rogers defined it, or as neuroscientists have understood it, or in the Kohutian sense? That’s very important information for the reader in terms of understanding our work.
What about if we want to leave the definition(s) open to our participants rather than imposing on them a particular understanding? Indeed, maybe our research is about exploring what young people understand by empathy, or what alliance ruptures mean to clients.
Research questions of this type (‘What do people understand by x?’) can be great, particularly if we’re coming to our research from a very inductive, ‘grounded’ epistemological position. However, I would say that it is a case of either/or: that is, either ask about what something means, or ask about how it is experienced/what it does—but don’t try asking both of these questions at the same time. Otherwise, you’re essentially asking your participants to describe the experience/effects of lots of different things, and you’re not likely to come up with a particular coherent answer. If Person A, for instance, defines empathy as Z, and experiences it as V; and Person B defines empathy as Y, and experiences it as U; then we may have learnt about different definitions of empathy, but our findings of V and U don’t really mean much because they refer to different things (Z and Y).
Outline Structure
Finally, your Introduction is a place where you can say what your thesis is going to look like: leading the reader through the different chapters of your work so that they know what is to come. You don’t need to do too much detail, maybe just a page or so, but something that gives them a clear and coherent sense of the route ahead.
Conclusion
By the end of your Introduction, your reader should have all they need to embark on the journey of your thesis; and, ideally, be motivated and excited to travel forward. So do make sure, as you describe your reasons for doing this work, or what the work is about, that you also draw the reader in: interest them, compel them, make them want to know more. Think of it like a tourist guide preparing your traveller for a trip ahead. Tell them what they need to know, but also not everything. After all, you want them to experience it first hand, and to learn what you have learnt as you travelled into the heart of your research.
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