Size: 4 full pages (minimum) – 6 full pages (maximum) (not including the title page and reference pages). You do not need an abstract for this assignment. There will be a 20-point automatic penalty if your mini-literature review falls short of the 4 full page minimum.
References: You must have a minimum of 10 peer-reviewed journal articles as sources on your topic. All sources listed on the reference page MUST be cited at least once in the paper. I am allowing you to use other sources if they are relevant to your topic, however other sources must be in addition to 10 peer-reviewed journal articles. The concept of a literature review is that you are reviewing published STUDIES on a topic, not reviewing current events. There will be an automatic 20-point automatic penalty if there are fewer than 10 peer-reviewed journal articles on your reference page and/or if you do not cite each source on your reference page at least once in the text of your paper.
Headings: Headings are required. Please see APA to structure your headings. For a paper of this size and depth, I doubt you will need any more than level 1 and level 2 headings. There will be a 10-point automatic penalty if you do not use headings.
Avoid: As discussed throughout this course, use of personal pronouns (I, me, my, etc.), contractions (don’t, won’t, can’t, etc.); the term “a lot” are inappropriate at the college level. An automatic 5-point penalty applies for any of these issues. I would suggest doing a search of your paper before you submit it to ensure you do not make any of these language errors in your paper.
Basic Structure of a Literature Review
Introduction
The introduction of your literature review should define or describe your topic and let the reader know why this is an important topic. If it is not an important topic, why are you going to propose a study on the topic? The introduction should let the reader know what to expect in the pages following the introduction and might even suggest an organization. Here is a quote from the end of the introduction to one of my literature reviews: “The following chapter will provide a thorough review of the existing literature regarding police stress and officer willingness to use interventions.” I am letting the reader know what to expect after the introduction. For the purposes of this paper, the introduction should be two paragraphs or less.
Main Body (use appropriate headings, do not call it Main Body)
The main body of your literature review will be the bulk of your paper. Out of the 4-5 page requirement, I would expect this to be at least three (3) pages long. In this section, I would expect to see the material broken down into some type of logical organization with level 1 and/or some level-2 headings. As this is a literature review, you are required to read, analyze and report study findings with appropriate citations. It would not be uncommon to see in-text citations after every other sentence or several sentences in a row. It would also not be uncommon to see citations of more than one study after a sentence is there is consensus on a finding. An example sentence from my study is as follows: “Police work involves repeated exposure to critical-incident stress, which researchers claim has a cumulative effect” (Anderson, 2008; Atkinson-Tovar, 2003: Dick, 2000). What that sentence shows is that these three professionals/researchers came to the same conclusion, repeated exposure to critical-incident stress has a cumulative effect on police officer stress. In other words, there are three professionals/researchers in the field that agree to this concept.
Conclusion
To reiterate, in a normal literature review, the researcher would segue into discussion of what is not known about the topic and then transition into a discussion into how their study is going to fill that gap in knowledge. As you are not going to actually conduct a study, your conclusion will summarize the findings. You may want to let the reader know what gaps in knowledge we still have and may even want to suggest an avenue of future study. For the purposes of this paper, the conclusion should be two paragraphs or less.
References
The reference page should start on the first page after the end of the text of the paper. See APA for proper formatting of a reference page. As you are required to have 10 peer-reviewed journal articles as sources (minimum), this section of your paper will probably be three (3) pages long.
My topic is going to be on Police Brutality/use of force by police
