Read ALL of the directions below carefully before you begin your paper. You are not writing a typical report-style essay for this assignment.
Review a description and sample of an APA style annotated bibliography. Save this link because you will be asked to write more annotated bibliographies in future modules.
1. Begin with an introduction that tells me what the hypothesis you developed for the Module 1 SLP is. If you received feedback asking you to improve it, please use the improved version.
2. Use ProQuest or Ebsco to search for 3 articles related to the area of interest you chose in the Module 1 SLP. They must be articles that would help you answer your research question. In other words, they have to be related to what you are trying to find out, as if
you were a researcher investigating this topic.
The articles must be from scholarly journals. They must be no more than 5 years old. Save the articles because you will use them in other assignments. Review the Background Information in this module regarding how to conduct a literature review.
3. Write an annotated bibliography for each article (not an essay). Before you begin, please review a description and sample of an APA style annotated bibliography at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/614/03/ Save this link because you will be asked to write more annotated bibliographies in future modules.
ASSIGNMENT EXPECTATIONS: Please read before completing the assignment.
Copy the actual assignment from this page onto the cover page of your paper (do this for all papers in all courses).
Assignment should be approximately 2 pages in length (double-spaced).
Please use major sections corresponding to the major points of the assignment, and where appropriate use sub-sections (with headings).
Remember to write in a Scientific manner (try to avoid using the first person except when describing a relevant personal experience).
Quoted material should not exceed 10% of the total paper (since the focus of these assignments is on independent thinking and critical
analysis). Use your own words and build on the ideas of others.
When material is copied verbatim from external sources, it MUST be properly cited. This means that material copied verbatim must be
enclosed in quotes and the reference should be cited either within the text or with a footnote.
Use of peer-reviewed articles is required. Websites as references should be minimal and must meet guidelines noted above.
Cite all references in APA style. Part I
METHODS OF DATA COLLECTION & THEIR STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
The ongoing struggle to avoid BIAS:
In every part of the enterprise of performing research in health science, a researcher needs to take great pains to avoid the dreaded
possibility of BIAS.
BIAS, or error, can come about in any number of ways during the process of defining the question, collecting the data and analyzing it.
It can also happen from random causes; what I like to refer to the “stuff happens” effect. But this is by definition beyond
the researcher’s control.
In every way that can possibly be anticipated, there is a need to control for known sources of bias. If the data is BIASED towards a
certain outcome that does not reflect reality, then a meaningful or useful answer to the original question has not been obtained.
Once the researcher has defined the question, the next step will be to find a way to obtain subjects that minimizes the potential for
creating bias through the selection procedure.
Obtaining subjects for study – data collection methods:
Data is the word we use for the information that we collect in order to do our research (the singular for this word is datum but we
rarely use it.)
(Click here for a Presentation on Types of Data)
Data collection is also known as sampling. It might not seem obvious, but HOW you go about obtaining your subjects can be as crucial to
the validity of your outcome as the question you ask and the type of statistical procedure you decide to use to analyze your data.
There are two broad categories of data collection in research:
Probability sampling
Non-probability sampling
Probability sampling is also called random sampling and is considered to be the most powerful and desirable method because
theoretically each member of the larger population from which the sample is drawn had an equal chance of being chosen.
Of course, it may occur to you that this can be very easy to imagine, but very hard to execute. Even if you have complete control over
the sampling procedure (let’s say you have 3,000+ experimental rats to test out your new cancer treatment) you can see right away that
any subjects you pull from this sample are NOT by definition random. They may be randomly chosen from your subject pool, but the fact
that they were in your pool to begin with makes them by definition NOT randomly selected. How can we randomly sample human beings in
similar studies? If they have the cancer we are trying to treat, they are also by definition NOT randomly selected.
Systematic sampling might get us around some (but not all) of these problems. In a more benign example, let’s say we are surveying
hospital patients to determine what factors cause them to perceive their interactions with the nursing staff as positive and
comfortable. If we surveyed all the patients in several hospitals, we would not be creating a random sample, however, if we chose every
ith (let’s say 10th) patient admitted to all 20 hospitals within 30 miles of our university, then we would come closer to obtaining
some of the advantages of a probabilistic selection without being truly probabilistic in our procedures. Every patient in all 20
hospitals had a 10% chance of being chosen – that’s still not random.
Stratified sampling is useful when we know that the larger population, to which we wish to generalize our conclusions, has two or more
subpopulations. For example, let’s say we are curious about whether or not nursing students feel adequately prepared for their
quantitative analysis studies by their high school mathematics coursework. It might occur to you that our population of nursing
students has a large female and smaller but still substantial male subpopulation. So we might want to stratify our sample relative to
the proportion of females and males at the school – if your school has 400 female and 180 male students, you might want to take 10%
from each group (40 females and 18 males.) Or, in this case, because mathematics education techniques and trends changes from
generation to generation, we might want to look at our 18 to 25-year-olds as contrasted with our 26-to-35 year olds as contrasted with
our 36-to-45 year olds etc. and we would take 10% of each group.
Non-probability sampling means that there will be no way to even approximate a chance to be selected, or that you don’t try to
approximate it.
Contrast the method of the quota sample with the stratified sampling described above. You decide to just find 5 nursing students – any
five – in each age group and ask them about their perceptions of how well-prepared by their high school math courses they feel to take
quantitative analysis, and not even bother with the relative proportions of age groups.
Or finally, the convenience sample is just what the name says: convenient. The subjects who just happen to be there and available. If I
want to know how my Introductory Psychology students at Santa Monica College like the Virtual Office Hours system for posting student
questions for faculty, I merely survey them at the end of the course. Perhaps you can tell me why this survey would not be very
informative. Think about these aspects:
Demand characteristics: The students are able to guess what my agenda in surveying them on this question is, and they either
deliberately answer in a way that will help me or hurt me. In either case, the information I get will be distorted or biased.
Experimenter bias: Any other impact that my behavior towards them might have on how they answer.
Representativeness of the sample: Will the fact that they are one small segment of the much larger population of students at the
college matter? How so?
Also please visit these links:
Statistics Glossary. Retrieved Jan 1, 2012 from http://www.stats.gla.ac.uk/steps/glossary/sampling.html
Trochim, W.K. (2006). Research Methods Knowledge Base. Retrieved Jan 1, 2012 from http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/contents.php
PART II
WAYS TO APPROACH YOUR LITERATURE REVIEW
The literature on health and medicine is extensive and always expanding and changing. The first time you go to the Online Library or to
your local “physical” university-level library, you may not feel like you know how to proceed and where best to direct your
energies.
There are two broad, general directions in which to go:
The “top-down” search
The “bottom-up” search
The “top-down” search begins with actual references from academic and scientific journals, in other words. The strategy
assumes that you already have a high level of familiarity with the research area and the issues and knowledge that relate directly and
indirectly to the area. As such, “top-down” searches tend to be less systematic than “bottom-up” searches, and for
a novice researcher, the omitted source material can translate into important missing information.
The “bottom-up” method is strongly suggested for those who are new to the process of investigating a research question. It is
the more effective strategy when one is still trying to build a general knowledge base in the field of interest, and it is the one that
I will recommend that you choose as a novice health sciences researcher. It will allow you to become more familiar with broad concepts

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