Family Studies

 The purpose of this assignment is to assess each student’s: 1) ability to locate scholarly research articles, 2) understanding of the different components of a scholarly research paper, 3) application of APA formatting, 4) experience using formal writing conventions and techniques Use the lecture slides and other online guidelines from lecture unit 5 posted by Dr. Khaw for guidance to complete this assignment. Step 1. Pick a research topic Pick a topic that a) reflects a current trend in Family Studies (i.e., a hot topic) and b) you are particularly interested to learn more about. The topic must clearly address issues related to families or to the functioning and development of families. Feel free to e-mail me if you need help developing a research topic. Here are some ideas that past students had come up with: 1. Work and family balance 9. Families and technology 2. Fathering 10. Divorce 3. Same-sex marriage 11. Families in the military 4. Parenting by same-sex couples 12. The role of pets in families 5. Polygamy 13. Families and health 6. Adoption 14. Families and disability 7. Child abuse/ neglect 15. Families & children in poverty 8. Domestic violence 16. Grandparents Step 2. Gather scholarly sources Search for four scholarly sources that are specifically related to your research topic. Some guidelines: 1. A scholarly source only includes research or professional journal articles. It does not include popular websites (e.g., Wikipedia), newspapers, or popular magazines. Points will be deducted for including nonscholarly sources. 2. Sources should be current – no more than 5 years old unless approved by instructor in advance (thus, you should search for articles 2014 – present). 3. Save the abstract of each article. An abstract is the short summary that precedes the introduction and literature review of the article. 4. You will summarize ONE of the four scholarly research articles. Pick one article that is a research study (i.e., not a literature review) and complete the requirements for the Summary of a Research Article assignment (Step 3 below). Step 3. Complete the Summary of a Research Article assignment DUE ON CANVAS by 10 PM: 6/10/19 The requirements for the assignment are listed below. Parts 1 and 5 need to be on individual separate pages. Parts 2 – 3 can be in outline format, part 4 must be in essay format. 1. Include an APA-style cover page (5 pt.) 2. Guide me to locate this article online (5 pt.) a. I will search for your article using step-by-step instructions on how you found this article online, beginning with “Step 1: Open your search browser.” b. DO NOT give me the full URL (web link) of the article or ask me to search for the title of the paper. This is not how you found the paper in the first place and you will get an immediate 0 if you do this. 3. Locate these components of the article and give the actual page numbers (not the number of pages) (10 pt.) a. Literature Review b. Purpose of the Study or Hypothesis c. Methods/ Measures d. Results e. Discussion/Conclusion f. References 4. Complete this section using your own words (20 pt.) a. Explain the importance of the topic to families. You can cite some statistics or provide a definition to help establish the importance of the topic. e.g., Domestic violence affects one in five women (cite)  a statistic like this helps establish why this topic is important and why we should care. b. Summarize the study described in the article. Consider some of these questions: What is this study about? What is the population being researched? How did they conduct the study? What did they find? (Hint: Look towards the middle of article, under “Purpose of the Study,” “Methods/Measures,” “Results” and/or “Discussion/Conclusion”). To get full points for this section, you must paraphrase the information from the article. c. Explain one area where you think the research could have been improved OR other research questions on this topic that this study did not explore (Hint: Look towards the end of the article, under “Limitations,” “Discussion” or “Conclusion”). 5. Add an APA-style reference page that includes ALL FOUR SCHOLARLY ARTICLES you found in Step 2 (10 pt.) 6. Submit the 4 scholarly abstracts with your paper on Canvas (10 pt.) Attach screenshots, PDFs, or pictures of each scholarly abstract in your paper. The screenshots or pictures MUST be clearly visible.