Human Services: Cultural Issues Annotated Bibliography

As you grow in your academic and professional career it is important to know where to find legitimate research material to help you better understand the concepts and communities you are working with.  It is also important to be able to articulate your understanding of information in a thorough and professional way.  In health care and social service arena we use the APA style of writing to do that.

The purpose of this assignment is to grow your ability to read academic research and apply critical thinking to the information.  Creating an annotated bibliography calls for the application of a variety of intellectual skills: close reading, critical analysis, and concise writing.  You’ll be articulating your understanding using appropriate APA format and writing style. 

An annotated bibliography is a list of Reference entries for books, articles, and documents. Each APA Reference is followed by an annotation.  The annotation is a paragraph that briefly summarizes and analyzes the source. The purpose of the annotation is to inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.

For this particular assignment, you will be creating an 8-12 sentence paragraph for EACH of the four journal articles. An annotation should do two things:

1. SUMMARIZE the CONTENT of the source for the reader (think of this as the who, what, when, where of the article)
2. ANALYZE and EVALUATE the QUALITY of the source for the reader (this of this as a critique of the strengths and weaknesses of the article—explaining WHY)

Questions to answer in the summary:

• Who is the author? What are the author’s credentials? What organization or institution is the author affiliated with?
• Where was the article published? What do you know about the journal itself and who are its intended readers? (Hint: You may need to do a basic google search find the answers to some of these questions)
• When was the article published?
• What is the focus of the article? What are the main ideas explored? What are the significant findings?

Questions to answer in the evaluation:

• Is the author qualified to write about this subject? Is the author an expert in this field? Does the author’s background/training match the topic? Offer evidence to support your claim.
• Is the source/journal of publication trustworthy? Offer evidence to support your claim.
• Does the date of publication matter/make the article more or less relevant? Offer evidence to support your claim.
• Does the author write in an objective manner or is there obvious bias? Does the author base most of the article on facts/data or personal opinion? Offer evidence to support your claim.
• Does the research seem thorough or are there gaps/limitations of the study? Offer evidence to support your claim.
• If the article is a research study, does the study seem valid and are the conclusions well supported? If the author compiled outside research, do they cite those sources and are the outside sources credible? Offer evidence to support your claim.
• What could/should be added to the article, or what further ideas or areas should be studied?

Note:

• Do not be afraid to criticize the articles!  Pointing out gaps, limitations, biases, or areas that can be improved does NOT mean the article is bad—it just means that YOU have read with a critical/analytical eye. 
• When offering critiques, both praise and criticism, you MUST offer evidence to support your evaluation.
• Remember that the evaluation comments should NOT be specific to YOU. That means, you are NOT evaluating whether YOU like the article, whether YOU agree with the article, whether YOU enjoyed the article, etc. Your evaluation should be based on uniform standards of quality/credible research and writing—use the questions listed above as your guide.
• PLAGIARISM: Any projects containing plagiarism (copying wording from the articles or another student) will result in a ZERO and an automatic rewrite.

Draft 1

• Use Word to create your multipage document.
• Create a title page (in APA format) for your project.
• Create an APA Reference entry for each of the four sources.

SUBMIT DRAFT 1 to Keri Grokowsky for feedback (grokowskyk@westerntc.edu)

Videos and resources for completing Draft 1 are available on the Draft 1 page of this guide. 

Draft 2

• Make any/all revisions to Title page and Reference entries based on feedback
• Finalize your annotation for the Riley/Islam article that you worked on in class
• Read one of the three remaining scholarly articles on different cultural issues provided on Blackboard
• After reading the article in its entirety, write an annotation for the article...placing the annotation under the appropriate Reference entry

SUBMIT DRAFT 2 to Keri Grokowsky for feedback (grokowskyk@westerntc.edu)

Final Copy

• Make any/all revisions to Title page, Reference Entries, and first annotation based on feedback
• Read the two remaining scholarly articles on different cultural issues provided on Blackboard 
• After reading each article in its entirety, write an annotation for the article...placing the annotation under the appropriate Reference entry

OPTIONAL: You may submit your final copy to Keri Grokowsky for feedback (grokowskyk@westerntc.edu) but please allow at least 3-4 days for feedback.