Guide to Scientific WritingIntroduction
How Do I Choose What Articles to Use?
You are typically told by your instructors that you need to use literature to provide background information for your introduction. Sometimes it is hard to tell what exactly background information is. A good way to look at it is to revisit your introduction. Hopefully you have already started spelling out what you want to say, and now you need to find support for your statements. For example:
Natural selection is the process by which populations adapt to their environment because environmental pressures favor the survival and reproduction of organisms better suited to that environment.
First you should consider whether your points or statements are common knowledge. Any ideas that you would have to explain to your grandmother or your roommate who is pursuing and political science major would not be considered common knowledge. In the statement above, the ideas of natural selection, environmental pressures, and adaptation would all likely require explanation, therefore you should have articles that address those topics and support your statement.
If you are still not sure about what points you are trying to make, go back to your hypotheses. Think about your reasoning for making your hypotheses. Why did you choose this particular hypothesis? What did you think would occur in your experiment, and why? Your answers to these questions are the statements you need to find support for using primary literature.