Sociology 280.003, Fall 2006

Homework #3: Literature Review Assignment

Due: Friday, September 22 in class

 

This homework is designed to give you some hands-on experience of finding and reviewing research articles on a given topic. It will be graded and will count toward your group project grade. (You will receive a grade as an individual -- not as teams. Essentially this homework will be counted as part of your individual contribution to the team project.) TYPE your answers, staple everything together and make sure your name is on the front page before turning it in.

 

Assignment Part I: Literature Search

  1. Identify a research question related to your team's research topic that interests you (this question may be different for different individuals on the team).
  2. Based on your topic and research question, identify 4 "keywords" that you will use to search for scholarly articles (again, different team members will likely search on different keywords).
  3. Attend the workshop in Zimmerman Library Room 254 during our regular class time on Wednesday Sept. 13. Your keywords and search strategy will likely evolve based on trial and error. Keep notes on your search strategy and be prepared to discuss it in class on Friday.
  4. Using the skills learned in the workshop, FIND CITATIONS FOR 5 SCHOLARLY ARTICLES related to your topic and research question. If possible, it is good to especially focus on three major journals:

(1) American Journal of Sociology

(2) American Sociological Review

(3) Criminology

Once you have exhausted the possibilities in these journals and/or especially if your topic merits it, expand to other journals, including those in more specific arenas of social research (for example, Gender & Society, Social Problems, etc).

  1. Create a bibliography for your five articles, using the bibliographies from the Sherman & Berk or South and Spitze articles as examples of how to properly construct a bibliography (or "References" section).
  2. Using UNM's electronic databases, find and print the abstracts for each of the five articles.

 

Assignment Part II: Literature Review

Choose TWO ARTICLES (from the five in your bibliography) about which you will ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS. The two articles you select should be unique within your team (each team member should have 2 unique articles so there is no duplication). This way your team will produce reviews on a combined total of 8-12 separate articles (depending on whether your team has 4, 5 or 6 members). Note: Find articles that present original research -- empirical studies that collect and analyze data, not just literature reviews or discussions of others' research (although others' literature reviews might help you find the most important articles on your topic). Locate and print the full text of the two articles from electronic databases (or, if necessary and possible at Zimmerman, find the journals in hard copy and photocopy the full articles for yourself).

For each of the two articles, identify/answer the following. Respond to each item/question in 1-2 sentences.

  1. the research topic and research problem
  2. the specific research question
  3. what is the purpose of the study (explanatory, descriptive, etc) and why (how did you identify its purpose? what in the article indicates to you what kind of study it is)?
  4. regarding the literature review provided by the author(s) of the article:
    1. how do the authors "use" the prior literature on the topic (summarize the main ideas/themes they draw from the sources covered in their lit review)
    2. on the whole, what does the literature review suggest, predict or indicate with regard to the authors' area of inquiry?
  5. What theoretical framework is presented as the context for the research presented in the article?
  6. What ethical challenges did the study pose and how did the author(s) address them? (the readings, lectures and discussions in Week 5 will help with this)
  7. What were the authors' main hypotheses?
  8. What were the independent and dependent variables?
  9. Summarize the study's findings.
  10. Summarize the implications of these findings for the theoretical framework mentioned in #5 above and/or for social science generally.

 

Turn in:

Your research topic and a research question.

Your keywords.

An alphabetized (by author) and correctly formatted bibliography of the five articles you located, and an abstract for each of the five.

Your "reviews" (answers to the questions above) for two social science research articles related to your team's research topic that are unique within your team. At the top of each "review," put the bibliographic listing you have created for the article.