DEADLINE:  Tuesday, March 2 at 2 pm CDT

This Assignment Helps You:

1. Practice finding peer-reviewed articles
2. Identify the components and methods used for academic studies

Instructions:

1. Ideally, focus on a topic that would relate to your future career.
2. Find an electronic version of a recently published study (2014 or newer) from a refereed academic journal (peer-reviewed). Studies older than 2014 will not be accepted.
   • For example, you can find a study on responsive web design, e-commerce, mobile application development, electronic media, network design, network robustness, changes in media audiences, or organizational use of information.
3. Create a blog post with the questions below in bold and your answers from the study in a regular type. Many questions depend upon a good explanation for your answer.
4. Save the article as a pdf and attach it to your post by using the “Add Media” option to upload it.
5. Label your blog post in a manner similar to APA Style’s in-text citations: “Author’s name(s), year of publication: short title or summary.”
   • In other words, if you happen to find a Patricia Devine article from 2015 discussing the impact of stereotypes on television, your post would be titled: “Devine, 2015: Stereotypes on TV.”
   • The quotation marks here are simply to help your comprehension. Your titles should not include quotations.
6. Be sure to categorize your post as “Week 6 Blog Post” and tag it with relevant keywords (no hash marks).

Pictures are encouraged, if they help the visual presentation, but not required for this blog post.

What to Include in your post:

1. Provide the citation and attach a pdf of the article (10 pts) Pro Tip: You can use ZotZero, but check the output against the APA Style online guidelines. 
2. What is the abstract of the article?  (10 pts)  Tips: This is usually a 200 word or less article summary. The abstract is your only cut and paste answer.
3. Was the study experimental or non-experimental? Explain, tell us what made that clear.  (10 pts)
4. Was the research qualitative or quantitative? Again, explain. (10 pts)
5. What was the population studied? (5 pts)
6. What sample was used for this study? (5 pts)
7. What was the method of measurement? (10 pts)
   • If the research was quantitative, was the measurement scale used, Nominal, Ordinal, Interval, or Ratio?
   • If the research was qualitative, what data was collected?
8. What was the method of analysis? (10 pts)
   • If the research was quantitative, what statistical tools were used to analyze the data?
   • If the research was qualitative, in what manner was the data analyzed?
9. What was the conclusion of the study? (10 pts)
10.  Why is this study useful to you? Explain in detail. (10 pts)
11. What would be the next logical step in extending this study? (10 pts)

Student Example:

If you review this submission, you will see that having a pdf of the article handy is imperative to understand a submission. You might also be a bit intimidated by the density of this article. Honestly, I was intimidated by it. Some research is easier to read than others. I would advise you to consider something a little easier to interpret for your first foray into academic research. As explained above, your post should have the same content but be in our standard blog format.

Other Tips:

Claire Nickerson’s video on basic searching and article review is above. Our class meeting on Friday about finding an article for this assignment is below. I’ll continue working in our Zoom classroom to provide a few more tips this week. I hope we will address proper APA Style and answering the questions for this post.
 

Zotzero

You might want to start checking our Zotzero now, too. It is an app installed in our learning community and available through Forsyth that will help you keep up with the references you collect. For now, I wanted to share the Zotzero documentation, that is on ZOTZERO’s HELP SITE. Additionally, I found an ONLINE HELP PAGE that deals specifically with the WordPress PlugIn, ZotPress.
You should NEVER rely fully on the app. But, you can use it to get the basic information and order for APA Style. Just be sure to check what Zotzero suggests against the online Grammar Guidelines from APA Style.

Correct Alexander and colleagues (2017) reference:

Alexander, R., Thompson, N., & Murray, D. (2017). Towards cultural translation
of websites: A large-scale study of Australian, Chinese, and Saudi Arabia design preferences. Behavior and Information Technology, 36(4), 351-363. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2016.1234646