Combining Ideas (Synthesis)

Learning Objectives

Identify ways to combine ideas to produce something new (synthesis)

While analysis usually considers one text at a time, synthesis considers multiple, related texts. Rather than looking at one text’s purpose, construction, and contents, you look at several texts’ purposes, construction, and contents. What do these texts say about their shared topic? Where do they agree and disagree? Do they neglect or omit a perspective or idea?

For many writers, synthesis can seem daunting or overwhelming—after all, the sources are hard enough to read alone, let alone in conversation with one another. Keep in mind, though, that we do this without really trying in our daily lives. Any time you’re considering multiple points of view at once, you’re thinking synthetically. Consider:

You and your friends want to meet up at a restaurant. But everyone has different requirements. Angela wants a place that’s quiet and is in the mood for spicy food. Jona wants to eat outside, and he wants something gluten-free. Lanora wants to go someplace relatively cheap, and wants to sit outside. We synthesize perspectives like this all the time intuitively; in a situation like this, we would probably start making suggestions that seem to meet the criteria: “How about the food carts on Division? It’s outside, and everyone can get what they want.” But if we want to approach this question systematically, we could create a synthesis matrix. Across the top, we put the different points of view. On the left, we put the criteria that have been suggested.

Angela Jona Lanora
Food Type Spicy Gluten-free –
Ambience Quiet Outside seating Outside seating
Price – – Cheap
Food carts

“Is opening a food cart a real opportunity or a false hope for entrepreneurs starting out in the restaurant industry?”

This might seem like overkill for a pretty simple situation like this, but it demonstrates a strategy that can be very effective with more complex sets of arguments.

Let’s imagine that, inspired by your trip to the food carts with Angela, Jona, and Lanora, you decide to write a paper about this new micro-restaurant phenomenon. Your preliminary research question is: “Is opening a food cart a real opportunity or a false hope for entrepreneurs starting out in the restaurant industry?”

You can list trends (ideas that are repeated or shared) and gaps (ideas about which sources seem to differ or conflict, or which are simply not addressed) in the left hand column. Then, you can list paraphrases or direct quotations from the sources in the following columns; this will enable you to “see” where these sources overlap or differ. (Be careful to use quotation marks correctly in your matrix; if you are directly quoting from the source, leave yourself those clues that the material should be paraphrased later when you incorporate the ideas into your Literature Review.)

It is important to remember that a trend does not exist unless two or more sources support it. Also, a gap cannot exist unless two or more sources disagree, report conflicting data, or fail to address a particular idea. For this reason, each body paragraph needs to represent one trend or gap in your research, and contain evidence from two or more sources to demonstrate that this trend or gap exists.

Synthesis matrix for sources on food carts
McClintock, Novie, and Gebhardt 2017 Williams 2013 Kapell et al. 2008
Sourcing of ingredients “the success of ethnic food carts in the Mighty Gastropolis depends not so much on the extent to which cart owners dish up locally sourced food (and how well they advertise as much), but instead on how
well they present what they serve as authentic ethnic food.” (14)
Economic prospects “Building upon this study, Chastain (2010) compared food carts to small fast-food take-out restaurants in the downtown and inner-core neighborhoods of the city, and found that food carts indeed have a lower-cost of entry for culinary entrepreneurs, operating at approximately half the cost of small brick-and-mortar establishments.” (2) “The combination of low start-up costs, the ability to prepare food while mobile, and the utilization of social media has contributed to food truck success. The estimated cost to start a food truck is significantly less than the estimated amount of capital necessary to launch a restaurant. By taking advantage of the relatively low costs, food trucks are able to sell inexpensive, yet creative foods. Furthermore, they have gained momentum through social media, announcing their current locations via Facebook and Twitter. Thus, the mobile food industry has become hip and innovative, with many upscale options.” (707) “The cost of doing business comparison indicates the differences in market-entry for push carts, stationary mobile carts, and small businesses. It clearly demonstrates the difficulty of moving from even a successful food cart into a more stable storefront. This study found only one case of a business making the transition, although several cart businesses are at various stages of realizing that goal.” (35)
Regulations An example of a city with regulations narrowly tailored to food truck operation is Portland, Oregon. The state and the city have been able to respond to the mobile food market and find ways to regulate effectively because modern food trucks first began to spring up in Portland in the late 1980s. According to one journalist, “[u]nlike other cities where obtaining a cart and the necessary permits is cost prohibitive or full of red tape and black-market pressure, here the city seems to encourage the proliferation of food carts.” (715) “Despite the persistent misconception that food carts are underregulated, the Multnomah County Health Department regulates carts in the same way that all businesses that prepare and sell food are regulated.” (10)

From this synthesis matrix, we can see that all three sources address the question of economic prospects, though here we also see a gap—or at least a different area of focus—in the coverage. One article (Kapell et al.) discusses the fact that food cart owners rarely make the jump from a mobile restaurant to a more stable storefront. The other two articles just emphasize the lower start-up cost of food carts. This could be an interesting area to do more research: do food cart owners intend (and fail) to switch to brick-and-mortar storefronts? Or is the cart an end unto itself? From this example, we can see how a synthesis matrix allows us to see gaps and trends in a group of sources.

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