Assessment Description Successful completion of a doctoral dissertation requires significant amounts of independent, critical reading on the research topic. This allows the doctoral researcher to beco
College of Doctoral Studies
RES-820 Reading Research Assignment Instructions
Before beginning this assignment, view the video: RES-820 Reading Research https://www.loom.com/share/508147e1f912467782b4ece10c3a4002
A transcript of the video is available in Appendix A, below.
Note: Do not read the assigned articles for this topic until after you read these instructions completely.
Engage with this critical reading strategy by completing the tasks for all four parts of this assignment. Your work should be saved as a single document for submission.
Part 1 – Identifying Relevant Literary Artifacts by Reading an Abstract
Generally, students start reading an article at the beginning and read it straight through to the end. Reading in a linear fashion is not the most efficient approach to evaluate academic literature. Researchers take a more strategic approach in order to quickly sort articles and identify what sources are relevant to their project.
Read only the abstract of each of the five articles in the Study Materials for this topic. Using only the information from the abstract, choose the one article that is most relevant to your program and emphasis area. Address the following based solely on what you read in the abstract. Type your answers in this document to submit for grading. Save your document as a Word document with the file name in this format: LastName.FirstName.RES820.ReadingResearch
Provide the full APA reference for the article you chose.
Paraphrase the problem being addressed in the study.
Summarize the main points of the study.
State your initial thoughts about what you read. What ideas did it give you about the topic?
Describe how the abstract influences a researcher’s decision to delve deeper into the article.
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Part 2 – Reading Strategically to Improve Efficiency
Read the entirety of the article you selected in the order listed below. Take notes on the sections as you go being certain to answer the questions before moving on to read the next section. Include your notes and answers to the questions in this document for submission.
Findings and Conclusions: What are the main findings from the topic? Why are they important? How does reading the conclusion first help a researcher determine if a source is relevant enough to continue to read?
Methodology: What is the methodology (quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods)? Who/what comprised the population? What was the sample size? How was the sample determined? How did the researcher(s) collect data (instruments, surveys, interviews, etc.)? How does reading the methodology section help a researcher better understand the context for the study?
Literature Review: How does the literature review provide a logical discussion of the background of the problem being investigated? Did the author(s) do a good job of explaining the context you need to understand the problem being addressed? Explain. What seems to be the purpose of the literature review section of a study?
Introduction: How did the author(s) create an argument for why the study needed to be completed? What were the issues that led the author to investigate this problem?
Discussion: How do the author(s) address their research questions? Why might a researcher read this section last?
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Part 3 – Gathering Additional Resources
When researchers read academic literature, they have "a thumb on the back page." That is, they keep the reference section readily accessible while reading the article. This technique allows them to investigate the reference page of the study while reading the article. This is one way of gathering additional resources that could be used for their own research projects.
Complete the following steps for this part of the assignment and include your answers in this document for submission.
Return to the article you selected and find a source cited in the literature review. Then, find the corresponding reference on the reference page. Copy the full APA reference for the source to your document for submission.
Look up the article title in the GCU Library. Was the article available to read?
Look up the title in Google Scholar (scholar.google.com). Is the article available? Using Google Scholar, find two articles that cited this source. If the article is not available, identify two alternatives provided by Google Scholar.
How does this technique help you understand that the research process is ongoing? How does this technique help you to locate more current literature?
Part 4 – Reflection
Write a reflection (250-500 words) about your interaction with the reading strategy presented in this assignment. Address the following items and your reflection in this document for submission:
How is this approach different from your current reading strategy?
How was it uncomfortable?
How can you begin to incorporate into your practice?
Why is it important to read literature in this fashion?
Was there a moment when you had enough information about the article to stop reading and move on to another article?
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The following is a transcript of the video RES-820 Reading Research.
Welcome to discussion of our module to writing exercise reading research
The central objective of this exercise is to move away from a linear approach to reviewing articles start to finish, to an approach that provides an efficient means of identifying relevant information that potentially contributes to our own work.
To begin we've provided you five articles - but you're only going to read one of these articles from start to finish to complete the assignment.
After you've read through the abstracts of each of the five articles, we are identifying the single article that aligns with our field of study and degree program.
From there we are going to address questions in section one of the exercise.
Now, many researchers begin the process of identifying relevant research by reading through the abstract of an article.
The abstract typically falls at the beginning of a work.
The abstract specifically offers us a quick way to understand applicability in the study to our work or research by providing a clear concise summary of a research project.
Information we tend to see in the abstract includes the purpose of the research which generally speaking refers to “what the researchers wanted to know.”
We also sometimes find the method of collecting and analyzing data, as well as a brief statement of the research findings.
The second step in our process is going to be reading strategically, and specifically reading strategically to improve efficiency.
Now something important to keep in mind: researchers generally read differently.
This has to do with differences in academic background or methodological foundations.
Many of us are generally used to reading articles from start to finish: a thorough reading from Page 1 to the last page in to the references section.
Generally speaking, this isn't the best use of our time especially in the early stages of research project development.
Once you assemble your reading list from the reviews of article abstracts you want to begin your review process starting with the findings and conclusions sections frequently located at the end of an article.
This can help a researcher determine relevance of an article and whether or not you should even continue to read!
If the material looks promising, we can move to the Methods section to find out who or what provided the data.
From there we can move to the Literature Review section to better understand the context for the study.
Again keep in mind literature reviews may also appear differently.
Most often a literature review provides context for a study which may take a historical and longitudinal approach while others may take a more narrow approach focusing on contemporary studies.
Additionally, literature reviews should contain seminal works determining the foundation of the research position.
At this point more reading opportunities can be pulled from the literature review for examination which takes us to a practice of ‘keeping our thumb on the back page of the article’ - the references section - to gather additional resources we can use in our own research project
To this end we are going to go into our article that we selected; we are going to gather additional resources leveraging similar works in the literature review; we are also going to review and locate that source on both the reference page of the original article; and we are going to locate the article from the references section in the GCU library and within Google Scholar.
Those efforts help us to ascertain whether the article is even available to us.
It is one thing to locate the article in the references section of our original source. It is quite another then to gain access to that specific work.
At this point in our work we are also going to be identifying two additional articles that cite the source we pulled from the references section of our original research article.
You see that option here: cited by 43 other sources here.
Then those sources citing our secondary work.
Make note of the two references that we are identifying within this additional set of sources.
In this instance our first source might be this article from 2008 published in the NASPA Journal.
Two questions were also going to address when gathering additional sources ask us how this technique has helped us to understand that the research process is ongoing – (the research process) is not static, it is historical and longitudinal.
In other words we need to keep in mind research examining a topic and focus takes place over the course of many years in some instances.
This brings us to the second question of how our technique of identifying additional resources can help us to locate more current literature?
See who is citing this work and we see here a potential source published in 2017.
The last element of the exercise is the reflection portion of our work.
How has this new approach to reviewing literature different from the way we've previously or perhaps are currently still reading literature?
Was the adjustment in our process a comfortable one or were there areas we felt out of sorts of perhaps uncomfortable?
How can we begin to incorporate this new approach to reading articles into our review practice ongoing?
Why might this be an important way to review literature systematically and consistently; we are repeating this approach over and over remember reading for efficiency?
What means of organizing information will you employ as you build a list of reading material to address when you're ready to sit down and read each with more depth?
These questions and others will revisit and return to in the coming days and weeks.
