An annotated bibliography is a list of referenced articles. Each reference is followed by a brief descriptive and evaluative paragraph. The purpose of this paragraph, known as the annotation, is to inform the reader about the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the source. At the professional level, annotated bibliographies let you see what is current in the literature and where your own research or scholarship can fit.
Overview
An annotated bibliography is a list of referenced articles. Each reference is followed by a brief, descriptive, and evaluative paragraph. The purpose of this paragraph, known as the annotation, is to inform the reader about the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the source. At the professional level, annotated bibliographies let you see what is current in the literature and where your own research or scholarship can fit.
In this assessment, you will develop an annotated bibliography comprising research articles that are related to interventions in learning. In the fields of sports psychology, clinical psychology, educational psychology, I/O psychology, counseling psychology, ABA, and so on, we are asked to demonstrate the merit of our ideas. It is important for you to be competent in offering that support, as it will help with professional challenges such as securing grants, conducting effective treatment sessions, gaining parent cooperation, challenging school boards, or suggesting changes to existing policies.
Preparation
Using the Capella Library, locate four research studies related to the learning or psychological intervention of your choice. This intervention should be connected with your field in some way and should be intended to result in a change in behavior (learning). The range of possible interventions is endless, so if you have questions about the suitability of your choice of intervention, contact your instructor.
Be sure that the intervention you are choosing is related to a learning or psychological issue in which the goal is to address learning something new or to adjust previous learning.
There are different types of articles you will encounter while locating studies:
- Research articles present original research. This is the type that you will need for the assessment.
- Review articles discuss research already presented elsewhere. While you may use these for your next assessment, they will not work for this assessment where you are required to review research studies.
- Survey articles are comprehensive review articles that discuss an entire field or area of research, and may include meta-analyses. You can use a meta-analysis as one of your four articles as long as the methods of the analysis are clear.
- Theoretical articles explain an emerging theory. You may find one that is relevant for your next assessment on theory, but these will not work for this assessment unless it is testing aspects of the theory in research format and the design and methods are clear.
For this annotated bibliography assessment, you are required to use research articles (empirical). If you encounter an article you would like to review, but are not able to identify the features noted below, you probably do not have the right type of article and should keep searching.
Use the Sample Annotated Bibliography [PDF] document as a guide to structuring your APA-formatted annotated bibliography.
Instructions
Write an annotated bibliography that addresses the following:
- Analyze theoretical orientation in research across multiple studies.
- Locate the theoretical position or framework within each article.
- Explain which learning theory is being used as a framework for the research.
- Consider the current status of the learning theory in your analysis.
- Analyze the research methodology used to study psychological and educational interventions.
- Provide a complete analysis of the research methodologies common to the study of learning theory.
- Include subjects, hypotheses, methods, and instruments, if any. Look at the strengths and limitations of the study.
- Evaluate the results of the research.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the use of the intervention in practice.
- What did the research reveal about this intervention?
- How did the results of this research influence the field?
- Use paraphrasing and summarization to represent ideas from external sources.
- Interpret and synthesize credible sources.
- Apply APA style and formatting to scholarly writing.
- Exhibit adherence to stylistic conventions, document structure, and source attributions.
Develop an annotated bibliography of each article that includes:
- The APA reference for the study being reviewed. This will be at the top of the page. Because the reference leads your annotation, you do not need to use in-text citations to the reference. The annotation that follows is indented in its entirety under the reference line.
- An analysis of the article:
- The strengths and limitations of the study.
- An evaluation of the effectiveness of use of the intervention in practice.
- How the findings influenced the standing of the learning theory.
- What was discovered (results)?
- How it was studied (methodology), what instruments were used?
- What hypotheses were involved?
- Who/what were the subjects in the study?
- What was the theoretical position or framework of the researchers?
Additional Requirements
To achieve a successful assessment experience and outcome, you are expected to meet the following requirements.
- Written communication: Written communication should be free of errors that detract from the overall message.
- Tone: Write in the third person, adhering to conventions of academic tone.
- References: At least four scholarly research (empirical) articles (from peer-reviewed journals).
- APA format: References should be formatted according to current APA style. Refer to the Evidence and APA section of the Writing Center for guidance.
- Length of paper: Approximately 5–7 pages of content, in addition to a title page.
- Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point.
Note: This annotated bibliography is partially an assessment of your ability to interpret and summarize research. Thus, no direct quoting should be used.
Competencies Measured
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and scoring guide criteria:
- Competency 1: Apply learning theories, principles, and concepts to educational practices.
- Analyze theoretical orientation in research across multiple studies.
- Competency 2: Analyze the relationships between learning theories and research.
- Evaluate the results of the research in relationship to the effectiveness of an intervention.
- Competency 3: Analyze research methodology and findings in psychological and educational interventions.
- Describes the research methodology used to study psychological and educational interventions, including the strengths and limitations of the research.
- Competency 4: Communicate in a manner that is scholarly and consistent with expectations for professionals in the field of psychology.
- Use paraphrasing and summarization with correct spelling and grammar to represent ideas from external sources.
- Apply APA style and formatting to scholarly writing with few errors.