The New Forums title, Professors as Writers, has stood the test of time as an invaluable aid to scholarly writers. Author Robert Boice prepared this self-help manual for professors who want to write more productively, painlessly, and successfully. It reflects the author’s two decades of experiences and research with professors as writers — by compressing a lot of experience into a brief, programmatic framework.
In the innovative book lies the path for sustained, highly productive scholarly writing. Concerning a common problem, writers’ block, Boice had this to say in his introduction to the blocking questionnaire:
- The problem about most information on writing blocks, as Daly notes, is its basis in anecdotes. Daly’s own work on writing apprehension stands as the prototype for assessing writing problems with empirical grounding. In this section of the appendices I present a related effort at identifying inhibitions to writing.
- The Blocking Questionnaire (BQ) was standardized, in its present form, on two groups of academicians, 100 graduate students and 100 faculty members across a variety of disciplines in large universities. Its items, selected via factor analysis and criterion-related judgments (about writers with clearly diagnosed writing problems and their responses to the BQ), sorted themselves into the same seven categories of blocking identified in earlier research.
- I continue to use the BQ as a device to help individualize the treatment programs structured for the professional writers (and non-writers) with whom I work. I share the BQ in hopes of learning how well it discriminates and helps other populations of troubled writers. In the form presented here, the BQ works well as a self-administered diagnostic for writers. Material following the questionnaire explains scoring, interpretation, and application of the results.
- I strongly encourage you to “take” the BQ and to score your response patterns. I use the diagnostic categories throughout the manual to provide more individualized advice.
Boice’s subsequent prescriptions based on a scholar’s BQ results has helped thousands, maybe tens of thousands of academic writers become more productive, and satisfied, with their publishing efforts. Why not take the BQ now?
Take the Blocking Questionnaire
Download and take the writer’s Blocking Questionnaire free on this site, then read about the results, by going to our Resources Page. Also, sign up for our free newsletter for scholars involved in writing.
