How to Write a Research Introduction

Your introduction answers three questions: what is this about, why does it matter, and what will you do? A good one moves from the broad context down to your specific study — like a funnel.

1. Move 1 — establish the territory

Open with the general topic and why it matters, and summarise briefly what is already known. This orients any reader and shows the field is active. (These three moves come from Swales' well-known CARS model of research introductions.)

2. Move 2 — establish the niche

Narrow to the specific gap, tension, or unresolved question in that literature — what is missing, contested, or untested. This is the justification for your study; without a clear niche, the reader asks "so what?"

3. Move 3 — occupy the niche

State what your study does: your aim, your research questions or hypotheses, and briefly your approach and contribution. This is the payoff the whole introduction has been building toward.

4. End with clarity

Make the aim and research questions explicit and easy to find — often in the last paragraph. In longer papers, add a one- or two-sentence outline of the structure that follows.

5. Avoid the common traps

Do not stay broad for too long, do not review every paper ever written (that is the literature review's job), and do not bury your aim. The reader should reach the end knowing exactly what you studied and why it was worth doing.

How ProSearch helps

Move 2 — naming the gap — is the hardest part. ProSearch maps the literature on your topic with cited sources, making it far easier to see, and articulate, exactly where the gap is.