Choose a topic that is interesting to you and relevant to social science (for example: self-esteem, online dating, cults, gender roles…there are MANY options. If you can’t think of one on your own, try googling for social science research topic ideas).

This activity requires you to search for three academic research articles on a social science topic of your choice and write a short paper, using correct APA citation.

Instructions:

1) Choose a topic that is interesting to you and relevant to social science (for example: self-esteem, online dating, cults, gender roles…there are MANY options. If you can’t think of one on your own, try googling for social science research topic ideas).

2) Once you have a topic, your next task is to find three research articles on the topic. Do this by searching on JSTOR (see the “Literature Review” lecture for step-by-step searching instructions; follow these instructions carefully). Make sure you choose three articles that look interesting and are all related to your topic. Also, make sure they are research articles that come from academic journals (NOT news articles or government reports). If you aren’t sure whether an article you choose fits the criteria, you may e-mail me the article title and author name and I would be happy to check for you. If the articles include “methods” and “findings” sections, you are probably on the right track.

3) Once you have your articles, write a short paper (at least five full paragraphs) following this outline:

-Begin with a paragraph introducing your topic.

-Summarize article #1 (describe the research question/goal, method used, and key finding(s)).

-Summarize article #2 (describe the research question/goal, method used, and key finding(s)).

-Summarize article #3 (describe the research question/goal, method used, and key finding(s)).

-Conclude with a summary statement regarding what we learn about the topic from these three studies.

4) Your paper must include proper APA citation (both in-text citations and in the references list at the end). See the “APA Style Guide” web site linked under the Week 6 module. The example literature reviews posted in this week’s module also use APA style, so you can follow them as a guide.

5) Make sure you are summarizing the articles in your own words. Don’t just copy the abstracts!

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