at least 7 pages and ppt

2020/12/8 Notes on Literature Review and Research: SOC SCI 3A LEC A: COMP RES IN SOC SCI (70110)

https://canvas.eee.uci.edu/courses/29422/pages/notes-on-literature-review-and-research 1/3

Notes on Literature Review and Research Here are some important notes as we move forward.

The Literature Review

First, it seems like there may be some misunderstandings about the literature review. The assignment is not an exercise in paraphrasing, but paraphrasing is an important step in the process. As outlined and discussed in your lecture video for the assignment, you need to both paraphrase and put pieces of information together.

The goal of a literature review is to discuss what research has been done to understand something. Here’s an example:

Parenting in Immigration

The research on immigrants from Eastern European countries is very limited; therefore we will review studies on parenting in immigration conducted with various immigrant groups. One of the key issues for immigrant parents is guiding children in the new culture of the host country (Kwak, 2003). As immigrant families undergo the process of acculturation and adaptation to the new culture, their behaviors change, altering their parenting practices (Ochocka and Janzen, 2008). The impact of the changes on the family system depends on many factors: family structure, ethnicity, culture, reasons for immigration, socioeconomic status, and English proficiency (Booth, Crouter, and Landale, 1997; Portes and Rumbaut, 2006). Typically, immigrant children acculturate and become Americanized more rapidly than their parents (Berry, 2007; Falicov, 2003; Portes and Rumbaut, 2001). This disparity is often associated with a decrease in parental authority and control, especially if children become translators of the language and the culture to their parents (Bush, Bohon, and Kim, 2010). Communication difficulties and uncertainty of how to handle difficult situations in a new culture constitute common challenges for immigrant parents, even though immigrants with higher education report smaller acculturation gaps with their children (Buki, Ma, Strom, and Strom, 2003; Nesteruk, 2010; Ochocka and Janzen, 2008).

From: Nesteruk, O., & Marks, L. D. (2011). Parenting in immigration: Experiences of mothers and fathers from Eastern Europe raising children in the United States. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 42(6), 809-825.

2020/12/8 Notes on Literature Review and Research: SOC SCI 3A LEC A: COMP RES IN SOC SCI (70110)

https://canvas.eee.uci.edu/courses/29422/pages/notes-on-literature-review-and-research 2/3

Above the discussion is the “theme” of the discussion. This means that everything under the heading is going to discuss that specific thing. Your literature review is very short, so headings for specific themes will not be necessary. What is important to pay attention to, though, is what they are doing. They have taken major points from many different articles (as you can see with the citations) and put them together in a kind of “conversation.” How can we understand, in this instance, parenting in immigration based on work that has already been done in peer reviewed academic research?

Your version of this does not need to be this sophisticated! This is based on years of experience, training, and practice. The goal of the assignment is to have you practice this skill.

The Class Moving Forward

Additionally, I want to discuss your final project. I have received several emails and want to make sure that everyone knows what to expect moving forward. The course is set up in a very gradual way. We start with foundational information and move into application. With that in mind, after our break, we will be working more with direct application of ideas. This includes data collection!

What will I be analyzing?

As outlined earlier in the course, you will be collecting data from reddit. In particular, you may collect: numbers of participants, numbers of upvotes (we will cover this more again later), numbers of comments, content of comments themselves, and content of posts.

That sounds like a lot…

Kind of. That’s why I’m going to limit you to a very small or small sample size. This kind of research can become a lot of work very quickly. Because this is an introductory course, we will be doing a mini research project. This includes a short paper and small samples. It is not enough to give us clear conclusions, but it is enough to practice some skills!

What about hypotheses?

For a mini project like this, it is unlikely to be able to have the rigor necessary to develop clear hypotheses. With that said, it’s okay if you do! Maybe you look at some literature and guess that you might see some behavior based on it. That’s okay! But it is also okay if you do not have hypotheses. Not all research will and often qualitative work does not use hypothesis testing. We will be doing more of a grounded theory approach (though not exactly). This means you can find patterns in the data and let those guide your analysis. Again, we will go over this when we start to practice data collection and analysis.

2020/12/8 Notes on Literature Review and Research: SOC SCI 3A LEC A: COMP RES IN SOC SCI (70110)

https://canvas.eee.uci.edu/courses/29422/pages/notes-on-literature-review-and-research 3/3

What if I don’t have a question about cute animals or something?

That’s also okay. You do not need to have a question that relates directly to the subreddit content because often the site we collect data from is less about that site and more about something broader. For example, I may find literature that talks about the importance of social support. Do we see social support happening online? Can we learn anything about what that looks like online from a subreddit? Looking at r/aww, sure it is (usually) about cute animals, but it is also about how people interact, what they find important, how they approach each other, what norms develop in these spaces.

I know this is a lot, but hopefully it helps.