Annotated Bibliographies

Review your articles In preparation for writing your annotated bibliography, go back and look at the 10 articles you submitted in week 3. It is likely that your project idea has evolved some in the past few weeks and it is also likely that those articles aren’t the only articles about your topic area. In order to make sure that you have a very thorough, solid sense of what has been studied in the past in your topic area, go back and do another literature search this week. Also, look at the reference sections of your original set of articles to see if there are any that you want to retrieve.

Refresh your memory This week you will read and summarize 10 journal articles of your choosing that relate to your topic. If you haven’t already read the PowerPoint entitled “Reading Journal Articles,” you should do that now. This will give you a sense of how the articles are structured and what things you should look for as you read.

Reading Read the 10 articles you have chosen. Remember to be an active reader: highlight, take notes, make an outline, but always BE VERY CAREFUL ABOUT PLAGIARISM. Again, the best way to do this is to NEVER have the article in front of you while you are writing your notes. Read, put the article away, and then take notes in your own words about what you read. As you choose articles for this assignment, you should only use empirical articles—those that have conducted a study or experiment. That is, do not use review articles that only describe what other people have done. You can usually tell empirical articles from the inclusion of sections called “Method” and “Results.”

What is an annotated bibliography? An annotated bibliography is a summary of the main points of the articles that you have read. It is important because it is the first step in writing the introduction section of your own paper. The annotated bibliography is different from what will ultimately be your introduction because it is written as a collection of summaries and not as an integrated literature review.

Annotated bibliographies vs. literature reviews Once you complete the annotated bibliography, you will take the information in it and integrate information across multiple articles, organizing it in a way that makes sense for your project, making connections between articles and theories, and evaluating the overall quality of the articles and what is known about your topic area. This will become what we call the literature review and will make up the major part of your introduction section.

Parts of the annotated bibliography You will be summarizing 10 articles, paying careful attention to the following points: What is the hypothesis? What is the rationale for the hypothesis? Who were the participants? What was the procedure? What were the main results? What is one limitation of the study? How is this article relevant to your own project?

The hypothesis State the hypothesis in one sentence (using your own words!). Then describe what led the author to that hypothesis. Example: “The hypothesis was that the onset of major depressive disorder in women would occur more often at the beginning of the menstrual cycle. The author’s hypothesis was based on previous research showing that hormonal changes correlate with depression in rats and that both PMS and post-partum depression are related to hormonal changes.”

The method In 1-2 sentences, describe the participants: how many were there and what were some of their important characteristics? In 2-3 sentences, describe the materials and procedure: what happened in the study? How was it carried out? Be sure to describe what type of study it was (survey, experiment, observation, interview, etc.).

Results and discussion In 2-3 sentences, describe the main results IN YOUR OWN WORDS. Don’t use statistics. Just summarize what the author found and whether it supported their hypothesis. From the discussion section or from your own critique of the article, what was one limitation of how the study was conducted? (A common error made by students here is to present a shortcoming of the findings. For example, “One limitation is that results were not significant and there were no differences between the groups.” Or “One limitation is that the results show that men are not as smart as women.”)

Discussion, continued What is important are limitations of the methodology, e.g.: Not enough subjects to make a solid case for their findings Subject pool too narrow: only women, only college students, only individuals from the east coast, etc. Problems with materials or procedure: wording of questionnaire was too complex for subjects, subjects’ experience in the study was affected by problems understanding the directions, different research assistants administered the study differently, procedure changed halfway through the project, et.

Relevance Write 1-2 sentences about how this study is relevant to your project idea. Example: “This study showed that women’s hormones are related to changes in their emotional state. This will be useful to my project because I want to look at the relationship between hormones and anxiety.”

Recap For each of your articles, you want to end up with 1-2 paragraphs comprised of: The hypothesis (1 sentence) Rationale leading to the hypothesis (1-2 sentences) The participants (1-2 sentences) The materials and procedure (2-3 sentences) The main results (2-3 sentences) One limitation of the study’s method (1-2 sentences) The relevance of this article to your project (1-2 sentences) PLUS, you need to include the APA-style reference for the study

Use your own words I cannot stress enough the importance of using your own words. It is easy to copy sentences and phrases from articles with the intention that you’ll change them later. Don’t fall into this trap. Start out putting in the effort to reword what you’ve read so you don’t accidentally plagiarize. Putting the information in your own words will also reinforce your understanding. If you can restate the results in your own words, for example, then you will have a better grasp of what was found.

Putting it down on paper The dropbox assignment should include summaries of 10 articles of your choosing. Either before or after your summary, include an APA style reference for the article. If you need a refresher in how to write APA style references, check Purdue OWL or the APA style manual. Your summaries will be graded on whether you included all of the points listed on slide 13, the clarity of your writing, and whether you used your own words.