Annotated Bibliography

This week's Annotated Bibliography will feed into the Week 6 Literature Review assignment and the Week 7 Abstract/Introduction assignment.

What is it?

Simply, an annotated bibliography is an article summary. However, annotated bibliographies provide you with a wealth of information.

1. As you continue in your program, you will continue to conduct research. By doing annotations, you can easily group the research by topic/theme/etc.
2. By doing annotations, you can quickly find research that you may need for an assignment throughout your entire graduate program.
3. By doing annotations, you can begin to identify areas of interest, as well as lack of interest, to focus on for your final thesis paper.
4. By doing annotations, you can also begin to identify areas that are missing (i.e., gaps in the research) or under-researched.

An annotated bibliography is like a reference list "with benefits." That is, you will format the resource reference in proper APA style. Then, below the reference you will write a summary of the resource. It is important to note that a reference list is ONLY needed with an annotated bibliography if you use resources in your summary that are different from the article being summarized.

The summary should be 1-2 paragraphs and draw upon the points used in the Week 2 Article Analysis assignment:

• What did the author(s) hope to find (e.g., goals, objective, purpose, hypothesis, research questions)? What did the author(s) actually find (e.g., results, discoveries)?
• What investigative method(s) (e.g., qualitative research study, quantitative research study, review of research) did the author(s) use?
• How were data compiled, analyzed, and interpreted (e.g., methodology)?
• As presented by the author(s) (e.g., discussion, conclusion), what do the results mean? What are the implications of the results?
• What limitations were identified?

In short, the summary should be comprehensive enough that anyone should be able to read it and understand the "point" of the research.

Requirements

You are to identify a topic of choice that is germane to your graduate program. Having identified one topic, you are then to find 5 scholarly research articles; these research articles should be current (i.e., within the past 5 years). You will write annotations for these 5 articles.

The annotated bibliography should be submitted as a Word document and include the following: (a) title page, (b) annotations, (c) reference list (IF needed), and (d) a conclusory section superseding your bibliography that summarizes the the purpose and importance of the annotated bibliography.