"...the focus of social science study at undergraduate level, and particularly in the first two years of study, will be largely on the research of others. Generally, in preparing for writing your essays, the expectation will be that you will identify and evaluate evidence from existing research findings. However, the principle holds good: in writing social science essays you will need to find evidence for and against any claim, and you will need to evaluate that evidence.

"Theory is important in social scientific writing because the theoretical orientation of the social scientist will tend to inform the types of question she or he asks, the specific claims tested, the ways in which evidence is identified and gathered, and the manner in which this evidence is interpreted and evaluated. In other words, the theoretical orientation of the social scientist is liable to impact upon the forms of knowledge she or he will produce."

-- What is a Social Science Essay? (n.d.). Sage Research Methods Community. Retrieved June 25, 2025, from https://researchmethodscommunity.sagepub.com/blog/what-is-a-social-science-essay

'Cheat-Sheet' Flow Chart:

From: "What Kind of Study Is This?" by University of Texas Arlington Libraries licensed under a a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.