Assignment: Information Literacy and Database Search Activity

Literature reviews are based on the identification and analysis of various academic journal articles related to a research topic. Since you will be completing a review of the literature as a major project in this course, it is important for you to develop and improve your information literacy skills, as well as your database search skills.

Information literacy, the ability to locate, evaluate, and use information effectively, is a core skill in being a successful student.

The goal with this activity is to encourage students to read critically, reason analytically, and to turn the selected information into relevant knowledge for a specific topic.

With this context in mind and considering your initial research topic, use the key words of your preliminary research questions to begin your search of the online databases for related research articles.

In your search, locate at least four empirical research journal articles related to your topic and questions. Try to identify empirical research articles, based on different designs (quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods design), though if that is not possible, just find empirical articles. [See APA, p. 10 for brief definitions of empirical articles, also defined in Creswell (2009), p. 4, and Fink (2010)].

Include in your introductory paragraph your purpose for writing this paper; this can be a simple statement of your strategies for this database search.

For example, a sample purpose statement for this assignment might look like this:

The purpose of this assignment is to describe the strategies used to navigate the databases, discuss the findings of the search process concluding with an identification of four relevant sources related to the initial research question.

Include a mapping statement following the purpose statement that briefly lists the key points sequentially of how you intend to organize the body of your paper. You can use the elements outlined in the assignment grading criteria as a guideline to create your mapping statement.

For example,

This paper will discuss the online library databases that were used and search strategies using Boolean connectors with the keywords that met with the best results. Results of the Proquest Digital Dissertations and Thesis database search will also be discussed, concluding with the identification of four scholarly articles that relate specifically to the previous questions.

Using the grading criteria elements to organize the content will help in structuring the paper logically and ensure completeness of your submissions.