Assignment Overview – A critical part of research in any field is the ability to identify, collect, interpret, and synthesize research related to a specific topic. Reviews of scholarly literature allow researchers and practitioners to develop a more complete understanding of scholarship so as to better inform practice. This is one of the ways in which research builds on itself over time and develops a more complete understanding of a particular area of inquiry or type of practice. In class you will learn specific strategies for searching the scholarly literature using scientific databases, identify criteria for evaluating the quality of research, and understand ways in which research findings can be synthesized into a comprehensive review of literature. This assignment is indented to help you practice implementing what you learn.
Assignment Description – You will have the opportunity to identify a physical activity research topic for your literature review that interests you provided that it meets the criteria outlined below. The purpose of this assignment is to (a) help you apply literature search, review, and critiques strategies learned in class and (b) learn more about a particular area of research in which you are interested and that relates to your anticipated future career path. While multiple students in class may select the same topic for review, all students are expected to work independently on their literature reviews. As a result, it is anticipated that no two submissions will use the exact same articles.
Specific Criteria – Your literature review should focus on a topic of interest to you and related to your future career goals while also connecting to physical activity and/or kinesiology. Physical activity and kinesiology are defined broadly as including any areas of research that focus on the study of human movement (see examples of research areas on the Kinesiology and Community Health website). Your review should include six (6) original research articles (do not include systematic review with or without meta-analyses or review papers) published in scholarly research journals between 1993 and 2023. This means that the area of research needs to be relatively current and still relevant to the field. The format for the review is as follows: (a) introduction and rationale for the topic, (b) personal connection to the topic, (c) method/process for locating articles in the review, (d) results, (e) conclusion, and (f) references cited in the review paper. All papers should be approximately six pages double spaced, not including the reference page.
The introduction and rationale section should introduce the topic (i.e., what are you studying) as well as and rationale for how/why it is an important and worthwhile topic for review. Statement made in this section should be supported by references to the literature.
The personal connection to the topic section should explain why this topic is interesting and important to you personally. You could, for example, draw connections between the topic and your future career goals. Statements made in this section do not require any kind of citations to the literature because they are personal to you and your experiences.
The method section should overview the process for locating articles in the review. This should explain how you came across the articles you included in your review (i.e., search process). The process should describe different search engines that you use as well as any key terms that you used. The method section should also discuss the process through which you decided which six articles to include and which to exclude from your review (i.e., search criteria). Your searches will likely lead to numerous articles related to your specific topic, so how did you select the six that you included in your review. This just needs to be intentional and will test your ability to identify good, sound scholarship.
The results section should summarize what the six published studies you reviewed say about the topic. For this, you will need to read, critique, and summarize the six articles. It is recommended that you summarize key methodological information (i.e., who was included in the study, the procedures used, data collection strategies) as well as important findings for each of the six articles individually. This will demonstrate that you understand and can extract relevant information from published studies.
The conclusion section should overview the big picture things that you learned across the six studies reviewed. This should begin with a synthesis draws connections across and integrates findings from the six studies and then move into a discussion of the implications for theory, research, and/or practice.
Finally, the references section should include a list of all papers cited in the review paper. Research papers should be written completed in APA format. A brief guide overviewing APA citation style is posted on CANVAS (week 1). I have attached the APA citation guide below.
