Tackling the Dreaded Question: Why is My Research Important?

Mar 9

Why is this important? So what? Why does this research matter?

These are questions that all scholarly writers face. They are also questions that can create a lot of anxiety for authors. So in this post, I share some tips about how to approach them.

These questions make us anxious because they are hard. They require more than simply figuring out what your research is about (which is difficult enough!). They also ask you to make an argument for why it matters beyond your own personal interest since, unfortunately, your passion for your subject is not enough to attract other readers (or at least many of them). Such questions can also be difficult because they require us to make broad arguments. It can be scary to explicitly state the importance of our research because it pushes us to make claims that someone could disagree with. This can be anxiety-producing, but making bold arguments is an important part of entering into and advancing scholarly conversations.

So some scholars respond to this question by simply not answering it. Try not to do this! Avoiding this question altogether, or answering it in too small of a way, risks diminishing the impact of your work. Fewer people will read it; fewer people will use it; fewer people will teach it.

Writers also do themselves a disservice by not fully answering this question. Thinking through the importance of your research pushes you to construct your work in relation to its broader significance. Doing so pushes you to deeply engage with what sits at the core of your research and helps you to conduct deeper and more nuanced analysis.

So how to answer it? A helpful way to approach this question is to rephrase it. “So what?”, after all, is so short that it doesn’t give us much to work with. Try starting instead by brainstorming about one or more of the below questions:

If we don’t answer this question, how will that prevent us from understanding something better than we currently do? (See The Craft of Research pp. 43-46 for a helpful discussion of this idea)
What about my argument will be generative for other scholars, helping them to think differently about something? (William Germano in On Revision has helpful thoughts on this topic; see pp. 86-87).
What is there in my work that other people can build upon that will help them further their own research and/or ask new questions?

By framing it this way—what about your work can others build upon?—you can more easily identify what aspects of your work might matter to others.

To me, that is the heart of this question: audience. Writers need to make a case for why others should care about your work. Because there is no inherent reason (unfortunately, perhaps) that they should. You need to make an argument to readers about why your work matters to them. If you don’t make this explicit, some readers may tease it out on their own, but there is no guarantee of this.

The notion of audience is connect to another reason why I think the “so what?” question is difficult: because it is often asked without being yoked to any notion of readership. This makes it challenging to answer because it is floating out there on its own without being clear to whom this research should be important.

So as you try to answer this question, I urge you to expand it to include the multiple audiences who you hope your book might reach. These would likely include specialists in your subfield, scholars in related disciplines, people in broader disciplines, undergraduates, and perhaps members of the general public. Keeping your audiences in mind helps you to think about this question more concretely.

So try expanding the question. Ask not, “Why does this research matter?” Ask, “Why does this research matter to [insert relevant audience here]?” It is likely, of course, that the answer will not be the same for all the audiences your work addresses so you are on the right track if you have multiple responses to this question.

To be honest, I didn’t do a good enough job of thinking about how my book could be important to multiple audiences (it was easier to think about how it mattered to the people most directly adjacent to my research), but as an example, here are some of the ways in which I might have answered this question in relation to different audiences:

My book (which focused on female slave descendants in Mauritania and how they used their economic activities to help build meaningful lives) is important because:

It provides an in-depth ethnographic look at an understudied population (female slave descendants) and thus provides insight into how they meaningfully shape their own lives and experiences (scholars studying this group, especially in Mauritania)
It demonstrates that these women exercise agency, sometimes in surprising ways, suggesting that we need to deepen our analysis of how contemporary and historic slave descendants assert and claim power in broader West Africa (scholars in slavery studies, focusing on Africa).
It suggests that people who can claim membership in multiple identity categories, while sometimes facing discrimination and broader marginalization, may strategically draw on varying identities to help them assert power and agency (anthropologists and other scholars of race, gender etc. more broadly).
It helps readers understand how race, gender, and socioeconomic class intersect, and how women are advantaged and disadvantaged by these and other identity categories, including religion (undergraduates in anthropology and gender studies).

You’ll note that these bullets proceed from the smallest audience (people studying slave descendants in Mauritania – not many!) to the broadest (anthropology undergraduates). The smaller audiences are important to advancing conversations within your disciplinary niche, but the broader audiences will bring your ideas into wider arenas and allow them to be used more broadly.

So expand these questions to include your target audiences and then keep the answers in mind as you write your manuscript. Remember that your responses are moving targets so modify them as your ideas and approaches change.

Finally, you don’t have to answer this question alone. Talk it out with friends and colleagues. Talk it out with members of different potential audiences. Talk it out with people who might not even read your book or be members of a target audience (sometimes these people have really illuminating insights to your work because they aren’t so deeply engaged in related work). And, remember, this is hard work. But taking the time to do it will be rewarding, not just because it will help you to bring out important elements in your writing, but because it will push you to get to know your writing better.

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