IMRAD in the humanities and social sciences: constraint or organizing tool?

Researchers in the humanities and the social sciences, especially those trained in continental traditions, often hit a snag when a journal asks for an article in IMRAD form. The layout, Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion, grew out of the natural sciences. There a study usually starts from a defined hypothesis, follows a stated procedure and ends with results you can point at.

Knowledge in the humanities is often made differently. Less linear. More essayistic. Aimed at exploration as much as at conclusions.

Where the structure came from

The structure comes from medical journals, and it hardened slowly. It appeared there in the 1940s, covered 80% of original papers by the 1970s, and by the 1980s was the only pattern those journals used. 40 years turned a convention into a requirement, worth remembering when a reviewer treats it as a law of nature.

IMRAD is younger than most people assume. Luciana Sollaci and Mauricio Pereira surveyed 50 years of articles in the B¹ritish Medical Journal, JAMA, The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine. The structure appeared in those journals in the 1940s, passed 80% of original papers in the 1970s, and by the 1980s it was the only pattern they used.

So a convention took roughly 40 years to harden into a requirement. Worth remembering when a reviewer treats it as the natural order of things.

What the structure takes away

For an author used to narrative freedom, IMRAD can feel like a cage. It asks you to treat the article as a closed object moving toward one clear conclusion.

Humanities writing often puts its weight elsewhere: on the movement of thought, on the play between a text and an idea, on an argument that ends without a verdict. IMRAD imposes a rhythm and an order, and some of the complexity gets flattened in the process.

That cost is real. Pretending otherwise helps nobody.

What it gives back

In work built on empirical material, the structure pays for itself. It sorts your thinking and raises the questions you would otherwise leave until a reviewer raises them for you. It opens the article to readers who do not share your footnotes, and it puts a floor under perfectionism, because a fixed shape tells you when a section is finished.

In work grounded in empirical material, the structure earns its place.

It sorts your thinking, and it forces questions you would otherwise defer until a reviewer asks them for you. It also makes the article readable outside your own subfield, which matters if you want to be cited by people who do not share your footnotes.

There is a quieter benefit too. A fixed shape puts a floor under perfectionism. You stop rewriting the same paragraph forever, because the section has a job and at some point the job is done.

The questions each section has to answer

Take a topic from social anthropology: Ritual Economies and the Reconfiguration of Social Hierarchies in Rural South Asia. Here is what to ask yourself, section by section.

Introduction

The Introduction defines your terms and states your research question in one sentence. It says why the question matters and why you chose this site and this intellectual tradition rather than another, then places the study against existing approaches and names what it adds. Flag early the correction or the gap you will develop in the Discussion.

• What am I studying, and how do I define my main terms?
• What is my research question or hypothesis, stated in one sentence?
• Why does this matter, empirically and theoretically?
• Why this site, this group, this intellectual tradition and no other?
• What are the existing approaches, and what do they miss?
• What does my study add: new data, a new theoretical framing, a rereading of something familiar?

For the anthropology example: what counts as a "ritual economy" in rural South Asia? How do rituals rework local hierarchy? Why does the relation between ritual and power matter for the discipline, and for anyone trying to understand these communities now? How has the literature read ritual economies so far, and where are the gaps? What does my material add to the discussion of ritual and local power?

One move is worth making early: anticipate the interpretation you will develop in the Discussion. You can flag the correction you are about to propose, where the literature has assumed one thing and your material points somewhere else. Or you can name the gap in the literature that your study fills.

Methods

Methods records procedure: what data you collected, where and when, from whom, and how you analyzed the material. Justify the approach by what your research question needs, and state the limits of the study before a reviewer has to. Name the ethical commitments you worked under too, since in qualitative work they count as evidence.

• What data did I collect? Participant observation, semi-structured interviews, documents, statistics.
• Where, when, and under what social and cultural conditions?
• What methodological approach did I take, and why does it fit the question? Ethnography, grounded theory, case study.
• How did I recruit and select participants, and on what grounds?
• How did I analyze the material? Thematic analysis, discourse analysis, open coding.
• What are the limits of the study, and how might they bend the results?
• What ethical commitments applied? Consent, confidentiality, cultural sensitivity.

For the example: 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2023 and 2024 across 3 villages in southern Nepal, built on participant observation and 38 semi-structured interviews with residents from specified social groups, together with local chronicles and documentation of agricultural rituals. Analysis by open coding in a grounded-theory idiom, with informed consent and confidentiality protections in place.

Be precise about procedure: what, where, when, with whom, how. Justify the method by what your research question actually needs. Name the limits yourself, before a reviewer names them for you. And say what ethical standards you worked under, because in qualitative research that is part of the evidence.

Results

Results reports what the material shows and stops there: the observations and events you recorded, and the patterns that repeat across them. Order the findings by theme so a reader can follow, and give room to whatever cuts against your expectations. Interpretation belongs in the Discussion.

• What do the data actually show? Which facts, observations, statements or recorded events come out of the material?
• What patterns repeat? Do particular practices, motifs or social arrangements keep appearing?
• What surprised you? Is there anything that contradicts the hypothesis, forces a revision of your assumptions, or opens a new question?
• How should the material be ordered so a reader can follow it: thematic subsections, chronology, typology, analytic categories?
• Is the presentation neutral, with interpretation held back?

For the example: across harvest rituals observed in 3 villages in southern Nepal, in 18 of 24 cases the role of ceremony master went to young men returning from labor migration in the Gulf, in place of older men from higher castes. Respondents most often cited their ability to fund the event and their "modern approach" to organizing it. In 2 of the villages the same migrants were also the principal sponsors. Wives of migrants took part in ritual preparation more often than before. They took on duties once reserved for women from Brahmin families.

Keep interpretation out of this section; it belongs in the Discussion. Order the findings by theme and give room to the ones that cut against expectation. Short representative quotations are fine in qualitative work when they illustrate. Keep the tone flat and let the material speak.

Discussion

The Discussion answers the question you set in the Introduction and says what the results mean in a wider theoretical frame. State your contribution in plain terms and say what remains open, including how the limits you declared shaped the reading. Going over the methods and the findings again is the usual way this section fails.

• Do the results answer the question set in the Introduction? What was confirmed, refuted, or left open?
• What do the results mean in a wider theoretical frame? Do they support, extend or challenge existing accounts?
• What is the original contribution, and how does it move the conversation on?
• How did the limits named in the Methods shape the findings and their reading? How could later work handle them?
• What remains open, and what new questions follow from what you found?

For the example: the ritual economy in southern Nepal is a site where social status is negotiated and reset. That reading sits alongside Bourdieu on the social field and symbolic capital, and Appadurai on how materiality and migration reshape cultural practice. The study adds a link between labor migration and shifting ritual symbolism, and it points to social mobility as a driver of local ritual change. Gender roles in that process deserve their own study.

A good Discussion synthesizes everything above it. The common failure is repetition: restating methods and findings the reader has just read. Your job here is interpretation, and placing that interpretation in a wider theoretical and empirical frame. Say where the work should go next, and state your contribution in plain terms.

Why bother when the journal does not ask for it

IMRAD makes results easier to present clearly and easier to compare across studies. It also opens the article to readers outside your field, which in international scholarly exchange is most of your potential audience.

So a composition close to IMRAD is worth considering even when no journal requires it and the whole idea seems foreign to your discipline. Lluís Codina puts the case directly:²

"IMRaD does not impose any kind of research, neither quantitative nor experimental. The only thing it imposes is that the research must be traceable and evaluable and must have some data extraction and analysis procedure at its core."³

Whether you are interviewing some of the last Ainu speakers in Japan, reading medieval manuscripts or tracing the history of a concept, a clear line of argument helps. So does being open about your methods and sources. Readers can then see what your conclusions rest on and judge how carefully the work was done.

None of this requires treating IMRAD as doctrine. You can keep intellectual originality and analytic depth inside the frame, which in humanities and social science writing is the whole point. Interpretive freedom and an ordered presentation of findings can live together, and the argument usually comes out stronger for it.

What an editor should be checking

Whether the structure comes from the journal or from your own choice, a good editor looks past language and style to whether each section is doing its job.

Which brings you back to the questions above. Ask them of your own draft. The text usually comes out clearer and more internally consistent.

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