Assignment:
THE TOPIC: IMPACT INCARCERATION HAVE ON CHILDREN
The literature review is the part of the research report in which researchers evaluate the methods and findings of existing research related to that topic, determine what is already known about the topic and how what is known relates to what they are interested in, find support for their chosen methodologies and/or find ideas for drafting a methodology, and identify gaps in the literature that suggest that the research being conducted by the researcher will forever advance the knowledge in the field.
To prepare your literature review, you need to complete the following tasks:
A. Use an Online Library to find at least five peer review scholarly sources that are related to your topic (The sources should be no more than five years old)
a. When using an Online Library there are various databases that allow you to check a box that says you only want "peer-reviewed" sources. You will need to make sure you check this box to ensure that the sources you identify for your literature review are scholarly peer-reviewed sources.
b. If there is no research available on your topic, contact your instructor about how you should proceed in finding research for your literature review.
B. Begin your literature review with a very brief discussion of your research topic and related questions and/or hypothesis.
C. Briefly summarize
a) research focus,
b) research methodology, and
c) key findings of the scholarly sources that you identified for use in your literature review.
D. Critically evaluate the findings of each study in relation to your research topic, questions, and/or hypothesis. This can include comparing and contrasting each study's findings, a discussion of the weaknesses of the study's methodologies, and identification of the needs for future study as a result of the study's findings. The critical evaluation of the studies in relation to your research topic, questions, and/or hypothesis can either come at the end of each summary of the scholarly sources or it can come at the end of the literature review after all of the summaries of the scholarly sources have been provided. Note: The main purpose of the literature review is to:
a. discuss the available research related to your topic and
b. identify how that research relates to your topic and informs the methodology that you will use to conduct your study. Both of these elements must be present in the literature review. Thus, while you are not required to provide your research methodology in this assignment, the literature review should allow for an easy transition into your research methodology that you will present in Part 3 of the research report.
E. Cite all your sources in APA format, both in-text and in the reference list.
F. Ensure the assignment is a minimum of two (2) double-spaced pages.
To give you an idea of what is expected for this assignment, an example of an excerpt of a literature review is provided below.
Note: There are many ways to structure a literature review.
One Literature Review Example as follows:
Conducting research on special populations such as prison inmates continues to be a topic that is widely discussed among social science researchers in the field of criminal justice. The discussions around this topic center on two main issues: 1) what type of research is ethically appropriate, and 2) what entity should be responsible for ensuring that ethical protections are adhered to.
Wilfred (2015) interviewed the commissioner of corrections and directors of institutional research from 20 states. The purpose of the study was to determine whether or not there was agreement between practitioners and academics in the field of criminal justice about how research should be conducted on prison inmates. Findings suggest that there is general agreement that research should be conducted, but there is very little agreement about how the research should be conducted.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES WOULD BE SUMMARIZED IN A SIMILAR MANNER.
Research has demonstrated that there is general consensus that researching prison inmates is possible and that it should be done ethically. However, much of the available research on conducting research on prison inmates did not identify any consistency about which entity should be responsible for making sure that the ethical protections are not violated when conducting research on prison inmates. In addition, there is very little research that includes the voices of prison inmates regarding conducting print research on prison inmates. This study is designed to further explore what types of ethical research are appropriate on prison inmates and who should enforce those ethical protections. This study differs from existing studies on this topic in that prison inmates will be asked those questions...(Wilfred, 2015).
Reference
Wilfred, S. (2015). Researching prison inmates: Practitioner and academic perspectives. NoWhere, USA: Spurious Publications.