Thesis Statements in Research Writing
Teaching & Learning and University Libraries
Within an essay, poster, or term paper, the thesis is the researcher’s answer to the research question(s). So as you develop research questions, you are effectively specifying what any thesis in your project will be about. While perhaps many research questions could have come from your original topic, your question states exactly which one(s) your thesis will be answering.
They Say, I Say
Writers Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein encourage you to think about writing with sources as a “They Say/I Say” process. You first report what “they” say; “they” being published authors, prevalent ideas in society at large, or maybe participants in some kind of political or social debate. Then you respond by explaining what you think: Do you agree? Disagree? A little of both?
What kinds of theses (“I Say”) can count as an original claim and still be grounded in the sources (“They Say”)? Here are five common strategies:
- Combine research findings from multiple sources to make a larger summary argument. You might find, for example, that none of the sources you’re working with specifically claim that early-20th-century British literature was preoccupied with changing gender roles but that, together, their findings all point to that broader conclusion.
- Combine research findings from multiple sources to make a claim about their implications. You might review papers that explore various factors shaping voting behavior to argue that a particular voting-reform proposal will likely have positive impacts.
- Identify underlying areas of agreement. You may argue that the literature on cancer and the literature on violence both describe the unrecognized importance of prevention and early intervention in order to claim that insights about one set of problems may be useful for the other.
- Identify underlying areas of disagreement. You may find that the controversies surrounding educational reform—and its debates about accountability, curricula, school funding—ultimately stem from different assumptions about the role of schools in society.
- Identify unanswered questions. Perhaps you review studies of the genetic and behavioral contributors to diabetes in order to highlight unknown factors and argue for more in-depth research on the role of the environment.
Adapted in part from Amy Guptill’s “Listening to Sources, Talking to Sources.”
