DEADLINE:  Monday, February 28 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. Use the Forsyth library website to find an electronic version of a recently published study. The article you find MUST be:
   • Published in 2014 or after.
   • From a peer-reviewed academic journal. (Limit your search to peer-reviewed.)
   • Focus on one original, social scientific study. (No meta-analyses, see Part 6, no historical analyses, or articles that only review the literature.)
   • Relate to Informatics–and the majors in the department
   • Feel free to email me a pdf of your article to verify it’s appropriate. If you do not utilize an appropriate article, you will miss the main points of this assignment and not earn any credit.
3. Once you find your article, create a blog post with the questions below in bold and your answers from the study in a regular type. Keep in mind that for full or partial credit in many areas, you will need 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 with a few words based upon the article’s topic or title.
   • For example, if you used the article “Guilty by Association: Using Word Embeddings to Measure Ethnic Stereotypes in News Coverage” by Kroon, Trilling, and Raats (2020),  your post might be called, “Stereotypes and Guilt in the News.”
6. Be sure to categorize your post as “Week 6 Blog Post” and tag it only with keywords that relate to your article’s topic (no hash marks).

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? Why do you say that? (5 pts)
6. What sample was used for this study? Explain. (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)

Examples:

You can review an example I developed with students last semester and see our class periods developing and discussing the 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. Be sure to review the comments I included in the sample submission.

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. Before you use it, be sure to read this warning from Purdue OWL to ensure you understand its limitations.

If you choose to use it, you can review the Zotzero documentation on ZOTZERO’s HELP SITE and an ONLINE HELP PAGE that deals specifically with the WordPress PlugIn, ZotPress. To be clear, 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.

Did you read the full instructions and carefully check the links? Then you should have noticed that the example submission did not have the correct article citation.

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