Academic Writer

academic writer: evidence

Evidence
Evidence is the support for your statements and opinions from other sources. The quality of your evidence is in fact more important than your opinions. Without evidence your work does not belong in an academic environment.
Secondary Research
The most usual way of supplying evidence if you are doing a first degree is by referring to secondary sources that is to work that other people have done. This means putting a citation in your work, and at the end of your work in your reference section or bibliography including a full reference to your citation. Along with your a citation you may use quotations , statistics , examples or paraphrase. If you want to focus on one extended example you may want to present your evidence in a case study.
Primary research
If you are doing primary research you use your own data as the most important evidence. However in most academic papers this is usually done by placing your own work in the context of published academic work. At the end of longer papers you will use references and perhaps appendices to support your paper.
Being specific and using evidence is one of the most important characteristics of academic writing. A typical pattern of writing is assertion, evidence and then evaluation.

Academic Writer 2000