PB2A

Majd Kazzaz

04/19/15

PB2A

            The scholarly academic publication that I chose to discuss is “Exploring the influence of race relations and public safety concerns on public support for racial profiling during traffic stops” by George Higgins, Shaun Gabbidon, and Gennaro Vito. While going through and analyzing this document, it became very clear the essential elements of a scholarly academic paper. In fact, each of the conventions that I noticed felt important to the entirety of the paper.

            One of the most obvious conventions of the scholarly article is at the beginning of the paper in a section called the “Abstract”. In this part of the paper the authors provide a small introduction to the material that is being discussed throughout the paper, as well as allow the reader to know what to expect before they even begin. An example of this in the publication I found is, “The purpose of the present study was to explore hypotheses related to the influence of race relations and perceptions of safety on public opinion regarding racial profiling in traffic stops”. As one can tell, the abstract in this article was plain and straight to the point about the purpose. This is a very common convention among all the academic articles I examined as well as in the “SCIgen” genre generator program.

            After the “Abstract” the paper also has an introduction section that has more information about the topic. This introduction section gives the reader all the background information that is necessary to know. In this particular article the introduction discusses the history of racial profiling and how it has been handled throughout history. It even provides specific examples of particular legal actions that occurred in the past in regards to racial profiling. This demonstrates the importance of the issue at hand and how it has been an ongoing problem even in past years. The introduction is a convention of a scholarly paper and is also included in every paper that I generated through the “SCIgen” genre generator. It is a very important piece to ensure the understanding of the actual problem and to show the audience that there is a problem that needs to be solved.

            It is also very easy to notice how everything is organized and structured to provide very clear and concise information. There are different sections that are bold and contain very specific details, which allows for the reader to know exactly what they are looking for and see exactly where it is. One particular category that is a convention in itself is the method category. This category demonstrates what exactly took place to reach the results and demonstrates all the important pieces of the research. This is where the independent and dependent variables were discussed in the article that I analyzed. The method category is also present in the “SCIgen” genre generator where even though every paper had a different topic, the convention remained present throughout.

            Another very important convention that was present in the genre generator as well as in the particular scholarly paper that I looked at is the use of visual diagrams to represent information. In the paper on Racial Profiling there were two visual tables that represented important data. One table was “Descriptive statistics for the measures” and the other was “Logistic regression of testing the connection between race relations, perceptions of safety and perceptions that racial profiling is justified”. Tables and diagrams are very common conventions in a scholarly academic publication. Another very common convention that was present in the genre generator website and also in this document is the inclusion of references at the very bottom of the article.

            A specific aspect of the scholarly piece that I feel is the most important would have to be the abstract. This part of the article is where everything is simplified and made easy to understand. It allows the writer to portray the main purpose of the piece as well as for the reader to know what to expect. Without an abstract, the reader would have to spend more time trying to understand what the writer is attempting to say and that is why it is very convenient and important to have.