5 page literature review

This assignment is a 5 page literature review that is due April 12, 2020.

Assignment #4: Literature Review

A Literature Review is a coherent essay about a research topic. It is a review of the literature directly related to the topic or problem under study, followed by an explanation of how your research question grows out of that review. That is, showing how you identify your own research focus in term of a “gap” in the previous research. The purpose of the literature review is to know what others have discovered before you begin your investigation; and, to ground your study in a particular context of what is known about a subject in order to establish a foundation for the question(s) being researched. In a literature review, researchers often focus on: 1) what previous researchers have learned about a particular topic: what we already know about it, 2) what previous researchers have not learned about a particular topic: what we don’t already know, 3) the issues previous researchers agree on, and 4) the issues previous researchers do not agree on.

The purpose of this assignment is to facilitate your abilities to research a topic of study. In addition to growing your knowledge about the topic, writing a review article lets you develop and demonstrate three fundamental skills: Research, Analysis, and Synthesis.

(1) Research: The ability to find existing knowledge by scanning the literature efficiently using the databases common to scholars in the field of criminology and criminal justice, AND the ability to identify a set of useful sources (you’ve already done this with your annotated bibliographies in assignment 2)

(2) Analysis: The ability to identify significant findings or conclusions in the published literature on your topic.

(3) Synthesis: The ability to articulate connections, patterns, common themes and areas of disagreement within a range of studies (this is what draws attention to those 4 things listed above)

Assignment Description :

For this assignment you are asked to complete a literature review on your research topic. You are asked to locate at least 10 peer-reviewed, scholarly journal articles on your topic and write a 5 page literature review on the articles you have selected.

Before beginning, you will need to have a clear idea of your research question that specifically describes what would like to know about your topic (you can always refine/change your question after you know more about your area through reading the literature). This includes specific variables that you’ll want to pay extra attention to as you’re structuring your themes found in the past research.

Using the annotated bibliographies you completed for Assignment 2, sort and classify the articles according to some kind of meaningful way: maybe commonalities in the methodology, results, participant classifications; perhaps differences between self-report and official record data, theoretical approaches to explain behavior, etc. The possibilities for theme development here are endless. I suggest starting with the “take home message” section to get big picture ideas and find commonalities, then be able to break it down further within those new groups.

Once you have classified them and identified a few themes to discuss, you can write up each section by describing the research and what we know about that theme. Be sure you are properly crediting the original authors of the information through the use of in-text citations (and a references page), but remember the vast majority of the writing here needs to be your own words – NOT direct quotes taken from the other articles (even with proper citation – this is YOUR literature review, not theirs). The outline provided below will be useful to ensure you address each component necessary for a well-written literature review.

Outline for writing your literature review:

1. Introduction

Write an introduction paragraph for your review. In the introduction, you should provide any necessary context for your literature review. You can do this by answering the following questions, or by considering questions of your own: What is the specific research focus that guides your project? What general topics, issues or areas of concern motivate your research? What is the purpose of your literature review?

1. Thesis: Your thesis should define the overall trends you found in the research that has been published on your topic. It should pay particular attention to any significant conflicts, agreements, ambiguities or gaps in the conclusions that your sources make.

2. Body (without this heading)

Before you begin this section, be sure that you have sorted your articles into different themes based on the articles’ findings (sometimes called results) or methodology. After you sort your articles, it is important to give your sorted groups a descriptive name. The themes of the sorted articles will become your headings for each of the paragraphs that you write in the body of your review. The body of your literature review will include:

1. Theme 1: a paragraph or several paragraphs that describe the first theme that you identified and compare, contrast and/or connect the articles you’ve selected.

1. Theme 2: a paragraph or several paragraphs that describes the second theme that you identified and compare, contrast and/or connect the articles you’ve selected.

1. … and so on

The body of your literature review should be made up of a discussion of the trends you found in the research on your topic. Make sure that you assess the body of research as a whole, providing a detailed analysis of trends, points of similarity and disagreement, and a careful explanation of the overall significance of your findings.

Each paragraph in the body of your paper should make a specific point about the state of research on your topic. All articles should be discussed somewhere in the literature review, and need to be properly cited in APA format.

3. Conclusion

This is the last paragraph of your literature review. In your conclusion, review what the research is lacking: Where are there gaps in the research on your topic? What still needs to be studied, understood, argued? What don’t we know? What questions remain? Why? Explain why any further research is necessary - what do we stand to gain from filling that gap? And how such research might better help us understand the issue at hand (this is the problem that you’ll be addressing with your proposed study).

4. References

You will need a references page at the end of your literature review showing the 10 articles you’ve summarized, in proper APA formatting. You will also need to use in-text citations throughout your discussions of the articles to give credit for the ideas to the original authors. Referencing of both types is discussed in depth in the little green book and failure to properly cite is plagiarism.