The shape of an hourglass can be used as a metaphor for organizing the structure of academic work. Accordingly, at the beginning of your academic writing you provide background information, historical background, or conceptual framework with other studies in literature from a broad perspective. Next, from a narrower perspective, your argument paves the way for the content of your work. Then the content of your study is presented, which is the narrowest and most specific in scope. This includes your findings and your interpretations of these findings. Then, with discussions, the scope starts to expand with the results of other studies in the literature. Conclusions and recommendations include the broadest conclusions to address the entire literature and suggestions for practitioners and other researchers.
At the beginning of academic writing, background information, historical background or conceptual framework from a broad perspective is presented. Then, from a narrower perspective, your argument leads to the content of your work. The content of your work is then presented, which is the narrowest and most specific in scope. This includes your findings and interpretations of those findings. Then, through discussions, the scope expands with the results of other studies in the literature. Conclusions and recommendations include the broadest conclusions to address the entire literature and recommendations for practitioners and other researchers. As can be seen from Figure 1, the hourglass moves from wide to narrow and then from narrow to wide. Each of your body paragraphs should be topic specific and focus on a single idea or point that supports your academic work. This is similar to the narrowest part of an hourglass. Conclusions are where you review all your main points and wrap things up.