REF 601 Detailed Assignment Instructions: Annotated Bibliography At this stage of the research process, your group has identified and finalized a general research topic. Now, it’s time to explore the literature on this topic to gain an understanding of what other researchers are discussing about the topic, what are the points of interest and of concern, what conclusions are being made about the topic, what recommendations are being made based on the findings from empirical research, and what gaps exist that further research needs to examine. What you will do? In this assignment, you will synthesize the literature on your topic through developing an annotated bibliography, individually, using five (5) articles that you retrieved on your topic. Why it is relevant? This step is important in the research process as it helps the researcher to further define their topic, research aim, what information should be collected, and most importantly, what information is missing (gap) that needs to be answered through their research. The information collected from your annotations will be useful in refining and defining your points of information in your Problem of Practice Statement (as needed). Also, it will provide useful insight into the relevance of your topic (problem of practice) and help you to identify key variables associated with your topic that have been examined by other researchers. How you will do it? Each student will submit an Annotated Bibliography which includes five articles related to the broad topic selected in their research groups. These articles will serve as references (later on) when writing the Draft of Introduction document (Group Assignment). You will use the criteria presented below when selecting articles. There is no word limit for the annotation, however, to earn full points, the annotations should include detailed information on all elements outlined below (and as described in the linked example). Be sure to use the sample annotated bibliography as a guide for including the relevant information. At the end of your annotations, include a short reflection that includes a discussion of (1) your overall experience reviewing the literature/articles (. the process itself, interesting findings/revelations, challenges faced, questions about the experience), (2) discuss which articles are relevant and/or provide good insight for defining your topic and which ones do not (if any) and why. This assignment will be graded individually and is worth 10 points. This assignment will be graded individually and is worth 10 points. Submit this assignment to Canvas. Criteria and What to Include: Criteria for selecting the 5 articles to include in the annotated bibliography: ? Published in 2010 or later ? At least four of the five articles should be in journals ? At least four of the five should be about a research study that was conducted (. results, findings, and conclusions, and recommendations for future research are discussed) ? At least three of the five articles must use quantitative methods (meta-analyses count as quantitative) ? Only one can either be a book, a dissertation (not considered peer-reviewed), an article that qualitatively synthesizes the literature or discusses the topic without any statistical analysis Elements that should be included (discussed) in the annotated bibliography: 1. What is the purpose (and problem) of the study? (Introduction) 2. What research method was used? – how was data collected? What sample was used (who were the participants)? What was the size of the sample? (Participants/Method) 3. What were the important/relevant findings from the study? (Summary of results) 4. What do the results tell us or how are they useful in practice/in the context of the copy? What implications do the findings provide for future research – what still needs to be examined or explored? (Conclusion/Discussion/Implications) 5. Reflection about the literature review experience and articles selected (at least 2-4 sentences)
