UNIT 3 SEMINAR LS504: Applied Research in Legal Studies

Unit 3 Assignment: Problem Statement Checklist: A problem that can be solved through your research, analysis, and proposed solution; A problem that is addressed by at least 10 scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals; A problem about which you can gather and analyze data (statistics, surveys, focus groups); You will probably want to focus on a particular community, school, or other group.

Unit 3 writing assignment 1A. In your assignment, clearly state the problem and why there is a need for a resolution to the problem. What group/population/community is involved? Explain briefly why this is a problem that an individual researcher could reasonably tackle and what results you could reasonably expect from your efforts. This part of the assignment should be approximately one paragraph long.

Unit 3 Writing Assignment 1B. In a few additional sentences, explain your theory of causation regarding the problem. In other words, what factors are causing the problematic effect(s) that you wish to solve/alleviate with your project? (See page 26 in your textbook Research Methods in Practice for the explanation that “a theory provides a causal story of how things happen.”) In your discussion, indicate very briefly whether your preliminary research has shown that there has been scholarly research conducted regarding this problem.

Unit 3 Writing Assignment 2. For the second part of your assignment, you should explain your proposed solution to the problem: What is your basic problem-solving plan, and how might it be effective in helping to solve/alleviate the problem you have identified? This part of your assignment should be approximately one to two paragraphs. You are not required to use any sources for this assignment, but if you do use any words, ideas, or information from any sources, you must use APA citations to document your sources.

Looking Ahead: Literature Review Your literature review is due at the end of Unit 8, but you will start working on it in Unit 4. Your literature review should include a minimum of 10 sources on your specific topic and should include a range of sources from different credible databases and resources. A literature review is not an annotated bibliography; it is a synthesis of information around ideas and concepts related to a single topic (in this case, the problem statement for your applied research project). Cite sources within the body of your paper as well as at the end.

Unit 8 Assignment Your Literature Review should be a minimum of pages, not including the References or the summary of your topic and Problem Statement. Include an introduction to the topic as well as your Problem Statement. Explain what literature you reviewed, and point out the trends you see in the literature. Group your sources together based on similarities in method, conclusions, or chronology--whichever will best support your Problem Statement.

Unit 8 Assignment Address each of your sources individually as well as in comparison to the rest of the literature. Draft a conclusion in which you  Synthesize your results into a summary of what is known and what is not  Identify areas of controversy in the literature  Formulate questions that need further research Cite your sources in the body of the Literature Review as well as in a separate References section at the end. Be sure to use appropriate APA citation style (or Bluebook for cases and statutes).

Literature Review Tips Make use of the Purdue Online Writing Lab, or OWL. The site features an APA style guide. You can use general online sources to get basic information for your own knowledge, but you should be using scholarly articles in your research.

Literature Review Tips Make use of the KU online library. Search for electronic books on your topic. You can request that traditional books be sent to you! (You would pay shipping costs to return the book.) Search for electronic articles using the databases available online, including Academic Search Premier.

Next week’s Seminar Next week, during seminar, we will take a recorded guided tour of the KU library resources, with a KU librarian. You should login to seminar, as usual. Make sure you have a recent version of Adobe Acrobat, and can access this link, which you need to cut and paste into a new browser window:

Searching for articles: Simple and Advanced Searches First, let’s all go to the Kaplan library to practice finding articles. Open a new browser window, logon to KU, and click on Library, to the right on your KU start page (the one that shows current and previous courses).

Let’s identify the five steps of applied research, in Siewert’s study 1 Problem Identification 2 Literature Review 3 [Intervention] Data Collection 4 Analysis of the Data 5 Summary of Findings