Assignment:

Research scholarly literature related to the topic you selected in Week 1 using the Internet, Any Library, and other sources. This literature review informs your research.You should not attempt a literature review without consulting the tutorial provided. In planning your literature review, you should also look at literature reviews in academic sociology journal articles as examples (see the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Deviant Behavior,and so on).

Select five scholarly articles about research that is relevant to your topic. These articles have to incorporate qualitative or quantitative research methods.

Read each of the selected articles carefully, noting the findings, research methods, and important concepts and questions raised. The following should help you:

What is the main point, finding, and purpose?

What research methods were used, and why were those methods used? (For example, was it an ethnographic study, participation observation, or an in-depth interview? Did it use an experiment, was it a field study, or did it rely on a survey? Was it a stand-alone literature review?)

Can you tell whether the researchers used a deductive or inductive method to answer their research questions?

If the research is experimental in nature, what are the dependent and independent variables?

Was there previous research on the topic? What were the findings?

How is the article or research relevant to the topic you selected?

Write a 4- to 6-page literature review of the articles you selected. Your literature review should do the following:

Summarize and synthesize past research on the topic or closely related topics organized around themes in the literature.

Discuss common findings, themes, or arguments together, identifying two or three major factors (independent variables) that are related to or are determinants of the issue (dependent variable).

Note discrepancies between studies, as well as weaknesses in past research.

Remember to refer to the literature in general as the source of your information when introducing material. For example, "Prior research indicates that women who bear their first children as teens have poorer outcomes than their peers in the areas of educational attainment (Card and Wise 1978, Furstenberg, Brooks-Gunn, and Morgan 1987)."

Use APA writing style guidelines, including an APA-style formatted references page listing the articles you selected.