Annotated Bibliography Assignment Instructions

Annotated Bibliography Instructions for Research Methods

Overview: Develop a 1500-1800-word summary/evaluative annotated bibliography for 5 peer reviewed journal articles that use either a longitudinal method OR the case study method (all 5 articles must represent the same method). Note: you are required to use articles I have compiled for this class. I present the articles in another document.

This is a two-stage paper. Each stage is graded separately

Definition: College students who write research papers are familiar with the concept of the bibliography. A bibliography is a list of all cited sources in the research paper. In APA style papers, bibliographies are called “References,” and they consist of alphabetically ordered lists of sources cited in a paper. The annotated bibliography is a list of sources with summaries and commentary that you might use to develop a research paper, literature review, or rely on as part of your discipline’s knowledge base. Annotated bibliographies are excellent tools for sharing the results of research with peers, and for demonstrating your own competency at reading, interpreting, and evaluating the literature in your discipline or research area.

Formatting the Annotated Bibliography: The Human Services Program at FSCJ uses APA style for all research papers, manuscripts, projects, etc. Note that the American Psychological Association does not have strict guidelines for the annotated bibliography. However, we will rely on the APA manual for formatting the title page, the introduction, the citations (in-text, and complete end of text references).

Please be aware that there are many different types of annotated bibliographies—some are simple lists with one or two descriptive sentences, while others are more detailed. We will use the latter format for this paper.

Content of the annotated bibliography:

This annotated bibliography will include a title page, an introduction to the annotated articles, the articles with their annotations, and a reference page for all articles mentioned in the annotated bibliography. Because this is a methods class, the introduction must define and explain the importance of the method you choose (longitudinal or case study). When you annotate each article, you will identify the research question, the hypotheses, the methodology, why the authors chose that method, the findings, and the limitations of the study. You will find this information in the article in the introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections, respectively.

Note: the authors might not offer an explicit reason for choosing a method. If this is the case, then you must hypothesize why a method was chosen (think about the research question and research goals).

You should also identify the number of times the number of times the article has been cited by others and what that implies about the article’s impact on the field. Google Scholar is a good way to find out how many times an article has been cited. Articles that have been cited hundreds or even thousands of times have had a profound impact on other researchers. Citation frequency can be affected by how old or recent a publication is, as well, so keep that in mind. Finally, you will explain why the study is noteworthy to someone studying human services. Please do not mention the number of times an article has been viewed, shared, or Tweeted, etc. We are only interested in the number of times the article has been cited in other scholarly published papers.

Because this is a methods class, all articles selected for this project report on an original (primary research) study. Original research articles follow the IMRD format (introduction, methods, results, discussion).

Reminder: not all published research uses APA style. You will have to make whatever changes are necessary to the entry to make it fit APA style.

Stage 1: Submit an APA style title page, followed by a references page with the complete reference information for 5 peer reviewed articles from the list of journal articles in this document, in correct APA style (each entry must be correctly formatted, and the entries should be alphabetical order. 50 points

· You will add the introduction and the annotations later.

· Note: to earn full credit for the title page, the title CANNOT be generic. It must be highly specific and descriptive. This means you will NOT have a title like: “An Annotated Bibliography.” However, you should include the words “annotated bibliography” in the title, with additional information.

Stage 2. Write an introduction for the annotated bibliography. The introduction should be at least 250 words in length. The purpose of this project is to highlight how different methods are used to answer social-behavioral research questions, so you will need to use your book to define and explain the method you chose (longitudinal or case study). You must also identify strengths and weaknesses of this method. You will need to find at least one additional scholarly source to support your thesis.

Next, present the annotations. All annotations must:

1. Be in bulleted paragraph format. The content in each bullet MUST be in complete, grammatically correct sentences.

2. Each annotation should be at least 200 words. 

3. Not be copied from the abstract and should NOT contain any quoted material.

4. Be paraphrased using your words—do not use any paraphrasing tool. Usage of paraphrasing tools counts as academic dishonesty and will result in a zero for the project.

5. Be modeled after the sample I provide.