INFO 5000 - Information and Knowledge Professions Assignment: Systematic And Rigorous Deep Dive Analysis Of Information Professional Positions- University of North Texas
In this assignment you will systematically examine and analyze information professional positions you might be interested in seeking when you complete your master's degree. I intentionally choose words "systematic" and "rigorous" to characterize how you will do the analysis. I will introduce the research data analysis method called content analysis that you will learn and use. You will review critically the requirements for the positions and think about your choices of courses and what you need to learn for such positions. You will identify and discuss how the work of people in those positions have the opportunity to add value. This means you will need to use your understanding of the concept of value you gained in a previous assignment. This is not a group or team assignment.
This assignment is intended for you to:
1. Learn about knowledge and information profession jobs through a systematic analysis of postings.
2. Learn how to analysis qualitative data using content analysis, coding scheme, and spreadsheet.
3. Write a professional paper describing this research study and present position profile(s) based on your analyzed data. Include discussion of the activities these position can use to add value for the user.
Goals and Objectives
The goal of this assignment is to collect and systematically review job postings for information professional positions. I suggest you choose one, two, or a maximum of three very different positions you may be interested in applying for as you begin your job hunt later in your degree program.
The following are specific objectives that you will address through this assignment:
• Exercise your information seeking skills to find at least 10 current (or very recent) position postings for your analysis of one position type. If you choose to do two different position types, you will need to analyze 16 postings, 8 for each position type. If you choose to do three different position types, you will need to analyze 21 postings, 7 for each position type.
• Learn and implement a content analysis methodology to systematically analyze the postings you have collected.
• Use the knowledge you gain from the assignment on "value" to suggest how people in the positions you have analyzed can "add value" through the work they do and the functions the carry out.
• Produce a paper that presents the results of your analysis and critical thinking about these positions, and their ways of adding value.
What You Need to Do
1. Begin looking for job postings. Here are some resources to start with, but you are free to use any site that has positions in the knowledge professions as we have discussed them. These should help you get started.
a. American Library Association. Career Development Resources.
b. American Library Association. Library Careers.
c. American Library Association. JobLIST.
d. American Library Association. Employment.
e. Association for Information Science and Technology. Careers.
f. Association for Information Science and Technology. Jobs.
g. Library and Information Technology Association. Jobs.
h. Society of American Archivists. SAA Online Career Center.
i. Special Libraries Association. Career Center.
j. Special Libraries Association. Jobs.
k. Association of Research Libraries. Job/Residency/Internship Listings.
2. As you find positions of interest to you, download or print the entry to a file. I recommend you save as text files (.txt). You will need the complete text of each job posting for your analysis. Most of the sites will have a Save or Print option. Be prepared that almost every site will present the information in a different form and structure.
3. As you read each position, think about what items of information are important to you that you will want to remember. You may want to start making a list of "topics" that represent these items. For example, location may be really important to you. Certainly minimum and preferred qualifications will be import. This start you thinking about the "content" in a way that you will analyze across the positions you will work with.
4. For this analysis, you will use a spreadsheet rather than any content analysis software tool. This will allow you to work with the mechanics of content analysis and also get you acquainted to job sites you will want to return to as you approach the completion of your degree.
a. First, review a few resources related to content analysis, developing a coding system, and using spreadsheets for doing the content analysis and coding.
b. Here are some videos that can help you get started:
i. Keeping Track of Qualitative Research Data using Excel:
ii. Part 1 - Using Excel for Open-ended Question Data Analysis; Part 2 - Using Excel for Open-ended Question Data Analysis:
c. A few readings that will help with terminology and coding practices:
i. How to Do a Thematic Analysis of User Interviews:
ii. Themes don't just emerge?-?coding the qualitative data:
iii. Adding codes to your data?-?qualitative data coding tools review:
d. Coding for content analysis:
e. I want you to take some charge of your learning here, and so you will likely find other resources to help you prepare for and implement the content analysis using a spreadsheet. Please share resources you find in the discussion topic for this assignment.
5. Data coding and analysis is typically an iterative process. Once you have your data coded as completely as you think appropriate, the fun really starts.
a. You can sort and filter the data in your spreadsheet to look at instances of data that you used the same code for. For example, let's say you have listed the job duties in separate cells, and you coded each as "job duties", you can now look across the job duties from all the postings to see how many common duties there are and how many have unique duties. This will allow you to make some summary statement about common job duties for that particular position.
b. Use Excel Pivot Tables: this can be a new skill you can learn and use in the future.
c. If you are analyzing several different position types, you will want to sort and filter by that information to see what is common and unique for the different position titles.
d. You can begin drafting a profile for each of the positions types you have analyzed.
6. Your paper is a formal scholarly paper that describes what you have done from choosing the position types to analyze, the data collection activities (where did you go, how did you prepare and manage the data, etc.), your process for developing your coding scheme, and how you did the analysis. I think the structure of your paper will have these components:
a. Introduction to the Study: Include goals and objectives of the study. Include the research questions you wanted to answer. Good research questions do not have Yes, No, or a Number for the answer. An example of a good research question might be: What region of the U.S. are the positions?
b. Research Design: Describe the sources of your data, the methods of data collection, managing the data, setting up the tool for analysis, coding the data, and building the coding scheme.
c. Analysis: Describe the processes you used to analyze the data once you completed the coding.
d. Position Profile: For each of the different position types you analyzed, build a narrative position profile based on the analyzed data to paint a realistic and complete picture of the position. Imagine a colleague who wants to learn about one of the positions you analyzed. Your profile should provide your colleague with a clear picture of the position with lots of relevant data that you provide from the analyzed job posting. If you analyze only one position, you will have only one profile. If you analyzed two types of positions, you will have two profiles. Similarly if you analyzed three types of positions, you will have three profiles.
e. Value Adding by the Position: For each of the different position types you analyzed, and based on your understanding of the value-adding concept, describe several activities of adding value that such a position would be able to provide.
f. Summary and Conclusion: Write a closing section that summarizes what you have learned and presented in the paper. Draw any conclusions about the utility of systematic position analyses.
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
1. The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
2. The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
3. Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.
Attachment:- Assignment-Position-Analysis.rar