Summarizing Scholarly Sources for Research Question Exploration

Body Paragraphs

The purpose of this assignment is to increase your ability for summarizing, synthesizing, and integrating information acquired from scholarly resources to direct future goals. Your paper should begin with introducing the reader to your topic and your research question you are interested in exploring. In the body paragraphs, you will detail how others tackled your research question or a research question similar to yours and their results. These findings will inform your opinion and what future studies can further answer your research question, which you will describe in your summary/concluding paragraph.

For each source, you must include the following, in one paragraph per source:

1. Review the purpose of the study, and the methods the authors used to conduct the study- i.e., what were they investigating and how did they do it? This summary should be brief, outlining who the population was that they looked at (men, women, elderly, etc.), and how they conducted the study (surveys, experiment, etc.). You should summarize this information in your OWN words 

2. Explain the results of the study- what did the author(s) find and what do these findings mean? This explanation should be written in your own words, without utilizing statistical values (i.e., do not report things like “variable A was significantly related to variable B, p = 0.8”, explain what the results actually MEAN).

3. State how the findings of this source inform your research question. Meaning, what does it tell you about the research question you have? (Summary paragraph, indication of future direction (5pts); summary must include:

1. Summarize your literature review- what have the 5 sources taught you about your research topic and the research question you proposed?

2. Are there any inconsistencies (gaps) in the literature, or are the findings fairly consistent (be specific about where/how the literature is consistent or inconsistent)? In other words, do you see any opportunities or missing pieces? For example, a gap in the literature may be that people only ever  studied women. Or results may be inconsistent: some sources report significant results and others report non-significant results. Or is the literature fairly consistent and straightforward about this topic? 

3. Summarize the future directions on the research topic that have been suggested by the authors of your sources—what would be the next steps to research this topic?