Hate crime progression within the United States

Literature Review Instructions

What I envision for this assignment is a Five page paper that reviews the literature

regarding your topic. A literature review provides a summary for the reader of peer-

reviewed articles.

Things that you should be thinking about at this point are: What are the basic

findings of previous studies? What are some concepts or theories presented in the articles

that directly relate to my study? How will I tie the information in the articles to my study?

Organization

This section of the term paper is NOT meant to review all the information in prior

studies. It is just meant to review the information that pertains to your study-ie…your

variables. Whether that information is supportive of your hypothesis or not, you are testing

your hypothesis and ethically obligated to report all pertinent information. Make sure you

organize your literature review around the variables (Independents and Dependents) in the

study and not first article, second article, third article. Therefore, if my study is about

how poverty influences gang membership and how unemployment influences

property crime, I would have two sections. One of those sections would be labeled

Poverty and Gang Membership. I would list poverty first two remind myself that

poverty is the causal variable and make sure the information I was reviewing was

about the relationship were poverty causes individuals to join gangs. Second, I would

have a section labeled Unemployment and Property Crime. I would have a “tie-in”

section in between those sections about how they all “kinda” relate to each other (this

is the body of the study).

Content

Keep in mind that the best way to make an argument is to first introduce the

position of the article (make it a thesis statement), support it with a research finding,

explain the relationship between the variables in the research finding, and then tie it to your

paper. For example, each paragraph would look like

….According to Miller and Williams (2005) although poverty, in the general sense, does

not cause an individual to join a gang, being really poor does. Evidence for these claims is

supported by the fact that 75% of gang members only earned an average of 8,213 dollars the

year before joining the gang. The explanation for this is that joining a gang is not a whimsical

decision, and therefore, only the most desperately poor are willing to take all the risks that

gang membership brings. The current study (this is how you refer to your own study in a

research paper) specifically looks at data for communities below the poverty line, and Miller

and Williams (2005), use a similar data point for their analysis.

Although every article might not provide all of these points, look for them and get

the most out of the article. Also, if the article is lacking on a lot of this type of information,

then it is not a helpful source and you should move on.

Rules

This assignment is about working on your own writing. Therefore, you

should not be quoting. Quoting will result in heavy deductions in your grade,

especially if the five pages are really just a lot of quoting. Additionally, taking a sentence

and just changing a few words around is plagiarism and will also result in heavy penalties.

Work on summarizing information in your own words. If you have problems doing this, use

the zoom days, cell phone contact, or private zoom meetings to get advice.

Please Use either ASA, MLA, or APA citation style. I have included an ASA

citation style guide in an announcement on D2L. Use in-text citations and include a

reference page at the end of the review. If you have problems doing this, use the zoom

days, cell phone contact, or private zoom meetings to get advice. Make sure that you

download, and save, a PDF of the article and not merely use the

abstracts. Eventually I will ask you to produce the pdf’s, failure to do so will result

in heavy grade deductions.

Strategy

Read the last section of the article first. This section is typically called Discussion,

Conclusions, or Limitations. These sections typically provide the most direct information

about what the study is about. It is a quick way to “vet” studies. If the study looks good

after that, then start at the beginning. Pay special attention in the literature review and

analysis section of the article as that content is what you are writing about. Look at the

style of the writing for how to write literature reviews-it’s a technical style and you should

write yours in a technical way. You will notice that there are two basic ways to introduce an

article. People will introduce an article by saying….. According to Miller and Williams

(2005), x y and z or Miller and Williams (2005) contend….or argue….or find…..or state x y

and z. Pick up on some of those style points.

Submission

Please use 12pt font, times new roman style, double spaced. Please do not take

up space with things such as the date, the name of the class, etc. All I need is your name at

the top of the page. You can turn it in upload in D2L with the extension .doc (old MS Word

file) or .docx (new MS Word file). The assignment is due this Friday, April 9th at midnight

and will turn into a zero the following week.