Question

The Assignment:

Using the ‘Week 4 | Part 4’ section of your Academic Success and Professional Development Plan Template presented in the Resources, conduct an analysis of the elements of the research article you identified. Be sure to include the following:

Clearly identify the topic of interest you have selected.

Provide an accurate and complete APA formatted citation of the article you selected, along with link or search details.

Clearly identify and describe in detail a professional practice use of the theories/concepts presented in the article.

Provide a clear and accurate analysis of the article using the Research Analysis Matrix section of the template.

Write a 1-paragraph justification that clearly and accurately explains in detail whether you would recommend the use of this article to inform professional practice. Note: You can use the CARP method as presented in the Resources for this week on evaluating resources.

Write a 2- to 3-paragraph summary that you will add to your Academic Success and Professional Development Plan that includes the following:

Clearly and accurately describe in detail your approach to identifying and analyzing peer-reviewed research.

Clearly identify and accurately describe in detail at least two strategies that you would use that you found to be effective in finding peer-reviewed research.

Provide a complete, detailed, and specific synthesis of at least one resource you intend to use in the future to find peer-reviewed research.

Integrate at least one outside resource and 2-3 course specific resources to fully support your summary.

Answer 1

Ans)There are two main approaches to a literature review in psychology. One approach is to choose an area ofresearch, read all the relevant studies, and organize them in a meaningful way. An example of an organizingtheme is a conflict or controversy in the area, where you might first discuss the studies that support one side,then discuss the studies that support the other side. Another approach is to choose an organizing theme or a pointthat you want to make, then select your studies accordingly.Regardless of how you decide to organize your literature review, it will have two purposes: (1) to thoroughlydescribe work done on a specific area of research and (2) to evaluate this work. Both the descriptive andevaluative elements are important parts of the review. You can't do one or the other. If you just describe pastresearch without evaluating it, you are merely summarizing information without digesting it. If you just discussrecent theories in an area without describing the work done to test those theories, then your arguments lacksupporting empirical evidence.What to EvaluateAuthors of literature reviews evaluate a body of literature by identifying relations, contradictions, gaps, andinconsistencies in the literature and by suggesting the next step needed to solve the research problem. A literature review may compare studies in terms of assumptions about the researchquestion, experimental method, data analysis, and any conclusions drawn.Literature Reviews versus Research ArticlesLiterature reviews survey research done in a particular area. Although they also evaluate methods and results,their main emphasis is on knitting together theories and results from a number of studies to describe the "bigpicture" of a field of research.Research articles, on the other hand, are empirical articles, specifically describing one or a few related studies.Research articles tend to focus on methods and results to document how a particular hypothesis was tested. TheIntroduction of a research article is like a condensed literature review that gives the rationale for the study thathas been conducted.Published literature reviews are called review articles. The emphasis in review articles is on interpretation By surveying all of the key studies done in a certain research area, a review article interprets how each line ofresearch supports or fails to support a theory. Review articles are valuable, not only because they cite all theimportant research in the area surveyed, but also because they compare and evaluate all the key theories in aparticular area of research. Again, notice the companion goals of a literature review: to describe and to evaluate.Steps in Developing a Literature ReviewMost literature reviews by students present the highlights of a research area and are not truly exhaustive. Thereis no strict rule, but a short literature review generally requires about 7-12 research articles and is about 10-15pages long. There are three main steps: (1) select a research topic, (2) collect and read the relevant articles, and(3) write the review article. This straightforward-sounding process in fact requires quite a bit of work. Suitabletopics must be selected with care and discrimination. Finding the right articles can be a challenge. Finally, onceyou have selected your articles, you must read them and understand their implications before you can begin towrite. Each step is discussed in more detail below.

Selecting a topic, not writing the paper, is the hardest part of writing a competent literature review. Someresearch topics are much easier to write about than others. A fruitful topic covers a well-defined and well-studied area of research, and selecting such a topic will make your job much easier and the resulting paper muchmore satisfying to read as well as to write.Start early to select your topic and collect articles (not necessarily in that order). Don't underestimate the timeand effort required before you can start writing. Plan to budget at least half of your time choosing andresearching your topic, and the other half writing about it.Choose a Current, Well-studied, Specific TopicChoose a topic of current interest.Your goal is to summarize and evaluate current findings of a line of research.Pick a research topic about which articles are continuing to be published. Avoid defunct or little-known areas ofresearch. To find out what's "hot", browse through recent issues of APA journals, particularlyPsychologicalBulletin, which consists entirely of review articles. And don't forget that the topic should be personallyinteresting, not just of current interest in the scientific community.Choose a well-researched area.An area that is well defined and well studied will give you morelines ofresearchto choose from. A line of research is a series of studies by the same individual or laboratory. A line ofresearch may be initiated by a professor working with a graduate student (e.g., Carter & Chen, 1988). Laterstudies may be conducted primarily by the graduate student, followed by studiesdone by the graduate-student-turned-professor and her or his students. An areaof major research interest will have several lines of research as different labs approach a theory in differentways.Narrow your topic.The topic in a short review article has to be very narrow. A broad topic such as hypnosis,telepathy, or dreaming has literally thousands of articles on it, and you won't be able to adequately cover such atopic in a relatively short paper. It is far more satisfying, to both the writer and the reader, to restrict your topicand cover it in depth. Comprehensiveness and narrowness of topic go hand in hand.DON’T: Pick a broad topic (e.g., language production in early childhood) and present an article on different aspects ofit (e.g., one on syntax, one on semantics, one on individual differences), because your coverage of each area will betoo superficial.DO: Choose a narrower topic (e.g., production of passive constructions in English-speaking children ages 4-6 years)and explore in depth recent work done in this specific area.Unless you're already familiar with a research area, you usually cannot preselect a narrow enough topic. Go tothe library or start an online literature search with a general topic in mind, then scan the articles that you findwithin that subject area to identify lines of research.Write about what interests you. Contrary to popular opinion, instructors like students to write about topics thatthey care about. If you're interested in the topic, you're likely to already know something about it, which willmake it easier to gather information. As a result, you'll write a paper that is more fun to write and probably morefun to read, too.