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64c. Understanding the kinds of evidence that writers in a discipline use

64cUnderstand the kinds of evidence that writers in a discipline use.

Regardless of the discipline in which you are writing, you must support your claims with evidence—facts, statistics, examples and illustrations, and expert opinion. Familiarize yourself with the kinds of evidence writers use to support claims in your field.

For an English paper that examines three types of parent-child relationships in Shakespeare’s King Lear, you would look closely at lines from the play.
For a psychology paper on the connection between certain medications and suicidal impulses, you might study the results of clinical trials.
For a nursing practice paper about the medical condition of a particular patient, you would review the patient’s chart as well as any relevant medical literature.
For a history paper on Renaissance attitudes toward marriage, you might examine historical documents such as letters, diaries, and church records.

The kinds of evidence used in different disciplines may overlap. Students of geography, media studies, and political science, for example, might use census data to explore different topics. The evidence that one discipline values, however, might not be sufficient to support an interpretation or a conclusion in another field. You might use anecdotes or interviews in an anthropology paper, for example, but such evidence would be irrelevant in a biology lab report. The following chart lists the kinds of evidence accepted in various disciplines.

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Writing in the disciplines > As you write: Examining the writing in a particular field

Evidence typically used in various disciplines

Humanities: literature, art, film, music, philosophy

Passages of text or lines of a poem
Details from an image or a work of art
Passages of a musical composition
Critical essays that analyze original works

Humanities: history

Primary sources such as photographs, letters, maps, and government documents
Scholarly books and articles that interpret evidence

Social sciences: psychology, sociology, political science, anthropology

Data from original experiments
Results of field research such as interviews, observations, or surveys
Statistics from government agencies
Scholarly books and articles that interpret data from original experiments and from other researchers’ studies
Primary sources such as maps and government documents
Primary sources such as artefacts

Sciences: biology, chemistry, physics

Data from original experiments
Scholarly articles that report findings from experiments
Models, diagrams, or animations