This activity will help students learn how to find, cite, analyze, and summarize a scholarly research article.
Use Google Scholar (or another database) to search for a published research study that interests you. The research study must be related to the topics covered in this course. The research article must include data collected from a survey or experiment.
Many types of research articles are published in scholarly journals, including quantitative studies, qualitative studies, and mixed methods studies. In general, research articles are original reports that include distinct sections reflecting the stages of the research process:
— Introduction: description of the purpose of the investigation and the issues being reported, review of the background literature, and study objectives and/or hypotheses
— Method: full description of each step of the study, including the materials used, procedures followed, research design, and flow of participants
— Results (quantitative article): report of the results of statistical analyses conducted
— Findings (qualitative article): report of the findings using natural language
— Discussion: summary of the study, including any interpretation, limitations, and implications of the results or findings and next steps
Questions to Answer In This Deep Dive
What is the topic of the article?
What is the study hypothesis (or hypotheses)?
What type of research was conducted (e.g., quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods empirical study or meta-analysis) or what was the paper type (e.g., literature review, replication)?
How many people participated in the study (i.e., sample size)?
Who were the participants? Describe from where they were recruited (e.g., college student subject pool) and all relevant personal characteristics (e.g., age, gender, race or ethnicity).
Where was the study conducted (e.g., online, lab, home, school, work, hospital, clinic)?
What tests or measures were collected (e.g., surveys, questionnaires)?
What analyses were conducted (e.g., correlation, t test, chi-square test, analysis of variance, thematic)?
What are the main results or findings from the study?
If there are tables and/or figures, what types of tables (e.g., demographic, correlation) and/or figures (e.g., bar graph, participant flow) are they? What important information do they convey?
What are the main conclusions of the research?
To whom do the results or findings apply? Can they be generalized to all people in all places, to certain subsets of people, or something else?
What are the strengths and limitations of the study?
What are areas for further investigation on this topic?
For the last part of this assignment, apply this research topic/findings to your own personal life. Perhaps you could use the study to reflect on your own relationship with communication technology. This could include how you are influenced by video games, advertisements, social media, etc. Consider how this study may have informed or raised questions about some aspect of your own technology usage. For example, have you had any revelations about how technology has affected you or someone in your life? What new thoughts has this study raised for you about your own technology usage?
