This is an important piece of information, arguably more important than the entity that did the approving. Active: The ethics committee of the Institute of Gerontology approved this research.Īgain, in this case, the authors are emphasizing that their research was approved.Passive: This research was approved by the ethics committee of the Institute of Gerontology.Thus, their use of the passive voice is acceptable and appropriate. Again, as in Example 1, the authors of this article are emphasizing aspects of their methodology, one of which is their software choice. (Learn more about which person to use when writing.) Choosing the passive voice is an easy way to avoid having to make a decision about using the sometimes-questionable word “we.”Īctive option 2 – which uses the third person (“the researchers”) – is grammatically correct but sounds a bit awkward. The first option is grammatically correct, but some researchers/writers and journals prefer to avoid the use of the first person. In this case, the active options may be problematic for different reasons. Active option 2: The researchers used Atlas.ti software for qualitative data analysis.Active option 1: We used Atlas.ti software for qualitative data analysis.Passive: Atlas.ti software was used for qualitative data analysis.Therefore, the passive voice is an appropriate choice, although the active voice would not be incorrect. In this case, the authors want to emphasize the interviews – and how they were conducted – as an element of their research methodology. Active: Two people who had no relationship with New York City conducted the interviews.
This is called a “helping” or “auxiliary” verb because it helps to complete the sentence (you can’t say “My car stolen on Sunday night”). You’ll notice something about the two passive examples above: both use a form of the verb “to be” – in this case, the past form “was” (“was chased,” “was stolen”). She wants to emphasize that something bad happened to her. The active alternative would be “Someone stole my car on Sunday night.” But this is a case where the speaker probably wants to emphasize the action itself rather than the perpetrator. In this case, the speaker may not/does not know who stole her car, and this use of the passive is perfectly appropriate.