The genres, and what each one is actually for
Nine kinds of writing a psychotherapy student or clinician produces, and the mistake characteristic of each.
Most writing problems in this field are genre problems. A literature review written as an empirical paper reads as a set of findings with no argument; an empirical paper written as an essay buries the hypothesis; a case report written as a narrative leaves the reader unable to say what was learned. Knowing which thing you are writing settles most structural decisions before you start.
| Genre | What it must do | Characteristic failure |
|---|---|---|
| Critical appraisal of a paper | Judge whether a specific study supports its own conclusion | Summarising the paper instead of evaluating it |
| Narrative literature review | Make an argument about a body of work | Listing studies chronologically with no thesis |
| Systematic review / meta-analysis | Answer one question reproducibly, with a pre-specified method | Selective inclusion; no protocol; "systematic" as a label |
| Empirical paper | Test a stated prediction and report what happened | Hypotheses written after the results (HARKing) |
| Qualitative study | Produce a defensible interpretation of experience | Quotation as evidence without analysis; no reflexivity |
| Single case report | Show something instructive that group designs cannot | No consent; identifiable detail; no comparison to expected course |
| Case formulation / treatment plan (coursework) | Apply one theory rigorously to particular material | Naming constructs without using them |
| Research proposal / ethics application | Persuade that the question matters and the method can answer it | Method described; feasibility and harms not addressed |
| Reflective / personal-development writing | Examine your own practice honestly | Performance of insight; nothing at stake |
Two that get confused constantly
Narrative review
- An argument, supported by selected literature
- Selection is by relevance to the argument, and is not exhaustive
- No protocol required; the author’s judgement is the method
- Strength: synthesis, theory-building, identifying what is missing
- Weakness: unquantifiable selection bias
Systematic review
- A question, answered by a reproducible search
- Selection by pre-specified criteria, applied by two independent raters
- Protocol registered before the search (PROSPERO)
- Strength: reproducibility and reduced selection bias
- Weakness: garbage in, garbage out; heterogeneity may make pooling meaningless
Calling a narrative review "systematic" because you searched more than one database is a misrepresentation of method, and reviewers increasingly catch it. If you did not pre-specify and you did not screen in duplicate, it is a narrative review — which is a legitimate and useful thing to have written.