This project is intended to develop skills in the location and critical reading of the professional literature, and will be described at greater length both in class and on the course website. Essentially it involves development of (3 page typed essay) summaries of five research articles in the literature on a topic of any of the “example related research articles needed” that is under the attachment file. ( to find 2 different research articles that is related topic you pick has to be related to the class PowerPoint attachment file( must be related to things that are in the PowerPoint when finding the articles of topic you pick also )
Basically start by being sure to choose research(academics) articles only ( these will always mention a group of people that are being tested). In research articles some hypothesis is being tested and the project summaries are geared to reporting on the outcome of this. With each article your summary answers 4 questions. (Its very important that when writing this paper :Use the simple, common words we use when we speak).
1. What is the general issue that is being investigated, (for example Attention Deficit Disorder is a serious problem because………….), and
2. What is the hypothesis of the authors of this paper (for example We believe that ADHD is due to a deficiency in Vitamin B so we are putting a group of ADHD kids on a vitamin enriched diet to see if………… etc. ) You will find the answers to these questions in the ‘Introduction’ section of the article (sometimes it is labelled ‘Introduction’, sometimes it is just the first page or two of the article, up to the next section which is usually labelled ‘Method’. You can skip the Method section and also the ‘Results’ section that follows it. Go directly to the last couple of pages to look for the ‘Discussion’ section of the article. There you will find the answers to the last two questions that you should answer in your report.
3. What were the findings of the study? You will find this in the ‘Discussion’ section of the article because that is where the authors are explaining their results. They talk about what they found and what they failed to find, and often why they believe that some of their tests worked and some did not. This information is what you are summarizing in your answer to the third question.
4. Finally for the fourth question, you report on what the authors conclude about their findings. What do they feel is the significance of what they have found? What are the implications of the findings for the issue being studied (For example: Now that we know that ADHD responds to vitamin B, at least for some children, etc., we can begin a vitamin enrichment program in city schools, etc.)* Note that this information is sometimes found in a section labelled ‘Conclusions’ or ‘General Conclusions’ at the end of the article, but it is also often found in the Discussion section.
So, in effect, if you have chosen a research article (and not a ‘theory article’ or ‘review of the literature’ which surveys dozens of research studies), you should only need to read 3 or 4 pages of it, regardless of its total length.
Remember that your summary is to be written at the level of a newspaper article that is about someone’s research. As such you should avoid “excess technical detail” but be sure to include enough explanation so that the reader who is not a technical expert will understand what was studied and what was found.
*All findings presented as examples in this note are entirely made up and are not related to any actual research findings*