As you embark on your career as a student, it is very likely that you will be asked to prepare papers or essays that require you to do “research” or to conduct a “literature review” on a particular topic.
education
Description
Research
Article Summary – Due October 7, 2020
As you embark on your
career as a student, it is very likely that you will be asked to prepare papers
or essays that require you to do “research” or to conduct a “literature review”
on a particular topic. You may find information from many sources such as
books, textbooks, government documents, the Internet, and periodicals such as
magazines and academic journals. The purpose of this assignment is to
familiarize you with research articles that are published in academic journals.
Academic journals are
periodicals that are published on a regular basis and therefore contain the
latest findings in specific fields. Academic journals generally contain two
types of articles:
- Literature reviews provide an overview of the findings of research
on a specific topic. They are secondary information sources because they
report on the work of other people.
- Research articles report on the original research conducted by the
author(s) of the article. Research articles are primary information
sources that report on the original work of the authors. Authors will
provide a description of the research questions that were being asked in
the study (sometimes in the form of specific hypotheses), the sample and
method used to gather data, the method of data analysis, and the findings
and conclusions of the study.
For this assignment you
are required to prepare a summary of a research article published
in an academic journal that reports on original research. You are free to
choose research on any topic that is related to families. Journal of
Family Issues, Family Relations, and Journal of Marriage and
Family are journals that are commonly used to report on research in
the field of family studies. These journals are available online through the
University Library. However, you do not need to limit your search to these
journals. Many other appropriate journals may be found by searching through the
University Library. The limitation on your choice of articles is that
it must have been published within the last five years. Make sure there is a
methods section that describes how the authors conducted their research.
There are a few ways to
search for journal articles. If you are not particular about the topic of the
article that you summarize, you can simply browse through journals to pick an
article. You can access journals online by going to the University Library homepage
and searching by journal title. For example, you could type the title Journal
of Family Issues and then explore the journal and select an article.
If you would like to summarize an article on a particular topic,
you can search through the on-line databases available through the University
Library I like to search for articles through EBSCOhost, because so many peer
reviewed articles from academic journals are available through this database.
You do not need to use this database, but it will help you get started if you
are uncertain about the process. From the Libraries homepage, under
"Find" click "Databases A-Z". Next, look under “E” for
EBSCOhost Full Text. After you enter your ID and PIN number you will need to
choose a database from within EBSCOhost. I always use “Academic Search
Complete”, because it contains academic sources. Once you continue, you will be
on the search page where you can search by topic. You can limit your search to
peer reviewed journals from periodicals and you can also limit your search by
date of publication. More information on searching for research articles is
available through the University Library Finding an article will take some
time. It is best not to leave this for too long.
