Annotated Bibliography

Summative Example

Summative annotations provide the reader with a solid sense of the content of the article or book being annotated. Summative information includes direct quotes as well as a summary of the source text.

View the sample Summative annotated bibliography below. Select each of the icons to learn more.

Jones, I. S., Blankenship, D., & Hollier, G. (2013). Am I cheating? An analysis of online students' perceptions of their behaviors and attitudes. Psychological Research, 3(5), 261-269. doi: 10.1080/105174.2011.5563

"…97.4% of the participants stated that they had never had anyone take an online exam for them and 94.5% considered this behavior to be serious cheating" (p. 266).

"Of the 194 participants in this study, 54% were seniors; 34% were juniors; 10% sophomores and only 1 was a freshman" (pp. 262-263).

Jones et al. (2013) used the 2010 McCabe Academic Integrity Survey Report to study the perceptions of online students related to academic honesty in paralegal and business courses. Both self-reported frequency of cheating and perceptions of cheating were studied by the authors. Perceptions of cheating versus "serious cheating" were measured. In the literature cited, Jones et al. called out McCabe and Bowers's 30-year perspective of academic honesty, showing no growth in cheating levels. Also, specific studies of tech colleges had shown high levels of cheating observed. They found that although 97.4% of participants had never observed anyone taking an online exam for another, their definitions of cheating very narrowly focused on that aspect.

Evaluative Example

Evaluative annotations include both a description and a critical assessment of the article or book being annotated. They are designed to give the reader a sense of the quality of the source and the argumentative position of the author relative to others in the field.

View the sample Evaluative annotated bibliography below. Select each of the icons to learn more.

Jones, I. S., Blankenship, D., & Hollier, G. (2013). Am I cheating? An analysis of online students' perceptions of their behaviors and attitudes. Psychological Research, 3(5), 261-269. doi: 10.1080/105174.2011.5563

The researchers studied perceptions of cheating behavior among online technical college students in paralegal and business courses. The article does not address the reliability or validity of the survey instrument, the 2010 McCabe Academic Integrity Survey. There may be limitations on validity with self-reported behaviors in the area of plagiarism. There was 100% participation, or survey response, indicating a possible course grade or incentive. This could have biased the responses. Only one freshman participated in the survey, giving an imbalanced portrait of behaviors across class levels.

The students' narrow definition of cheating in this study did offer a glaring contrast to the prevalence of cheating behavior they had witnessed. However, the study did not seem to use advanced qualitative protocol in classifying the open ended question in the survey. Further definition of their category selection process would have been valuable.

Conclusions and recommendations of the study seemed to overreach the results of the survey. Jones et al. (2013) concluded that faculty honor codes would fix issues of academic dishonesty, but they did not orient this study within the branch of research literature studying honor codes. None of the survey questions addressed honor codes, making their final conclusions invalid. This study may be of interest to a researcher pursuing contrasting definitions of online cheating, but it would not be helpful for those studying interventions to cheating behavior online.