Research Report Gender differences in the Communication Skills of Parents Assignment | Get Paper Help

Unit 3: Research Report Assignment Dr. Susan Levasseur
COMM 299 Spring 2020
Task: Write a three-page research report using recent scholarly articles on some
aspect of the field of Gender Communication.
Purpose: To display your ability to SYNTHESIZE information gathered through
academic RESEARCH, both higher-level academic skills. For this assignment you
will explore recent research in an area of gender communication that interests you
and describe your findings in a clear, concise, and coherent report. A second
purpose should be to display your knowledge of academic ATTRIBUTION
practices: you will include a References list, in-text citations, and a Bibliography
of sources examined using APA format.
Audience: Please use a formal academic tone, as you would for most college
writing assignments.
Due Dates:
The final draft of your paper should be 3 pages long (plus your References list
and Bibliography) and is due on Blackboard at 8am on the day of our class’
scheduled final exam:
Section Y01 (8:00): Friday May 8, 8:00am.
Section Y02 (9:05): Wednesday May 6, 8:00am.
Clarifications:
Note that this paper simply reports on the research you have uncovered from
scholarly journals on your topic, you do not take a position or use personal
experience examples as you did in the papers for the first two Units.
Articles drawn exclusively from Scholarly Journals only will serve as your source
material and you must demonstrate an understanding of how one incorporates
information from the articles into your own work using the proper methods of APA
attribution.
Important Definitions
Scholarly Journal Articles: Scholarly or peer-reviewed journal articles are
written by scholars or professionals who are experts in their fields. In the
sciences and social sciences, they often publish research results. The best
way to find scholarly articles is to use an academic library: you are required
to use BSU’s own Maxwell library to complete your research. For more
explanation of “scholarly articles,” including how these articles differ from
“popular literature,” see this website: Academic versus General Interest
Articles
2
APA: APA (American Psychological Association) style is most frequently
used within the social sciences to cite various sources. This APA Citation
Guide, revised according to the 7th edition of the APA manual, provides the
general format for in-text citations and the references list:
Using APA Style in Research Papers
APA In-text citations: APA style follows the author-date method of in-text
citation. This means that the author’s last name and the year of publication
for the source should appear in the text, for example, (Jones, 1998), and a
complete reference should appear in the reference list at the end of the paper.
Again, please refer to the above Purdue OWL site for more about APA style.
References list: Pages at the end of your report which list the sources of the
citations incorporated into the paper. Please refer to the above Purdue
OWL site for more about APA style.
Bibliography: A bibliography is a list of all the sources you have used
(whether referenced or not) for researching a topic. The bibliography for this
assignment is not annotated. It should include only the bibliographic
information (i.e., the author, title, journal title, date of publication, etc.) as
well as the database you used from Maxwell Library to find your source.
Research Paper Assignment Process:
This paper reports on the findings of researchers in the field of Gender-Related
Communication. Choose a topic about which you can find a minimum of 8, peerreviewed, scholarly journal articles. After you have chosen your topic and located
8 articles in your selected area, write a 3-page report using a minimum of 5 of the
articles. Weave together the findings in a well-organized, easy-to-read
report. You may include hypotheses the authors sought to investigate, the
methodology used, or significance of the study, but your primary focus is
submitting a well-organized report on research findings on your selected topic.
Selecting your Topic:
Was there a topic in Gamble and Gamble which struck you as
interesting? Remember that at the end of Unit 1, for Discussion #4, you wrote
about what topic from the textbook most interested you. And don’t forget Tannen
for possibilities!
3
Finding Journal Articles for your Topic using the Gamble and Gamble text:
Go to the end of the chapter in which you were introduced to the topic and look
under the Notes section. Sources used by the authors of your text are listed so you
can look through and find those which seem pertinent. Find the articles themselves
using our BSU Maxwell Library databases, read the references at the end of
those articles, and add to your growing bibliography on the topic until you have a
minimum of 8 articles. It can be extremely useful to identify the subject headings
listed for found articles and then to search for those topics in databases.
Finding Journal Articles using the BSU Library (Maxwell Library)
• This paper requires you to use Maxwell library’s resources to complete
your research. As a writing intensive Core requirement, one of this course’s
goals is to help you develop your ability to use information technology to
find scholarly, peer-reviewed articles that will enrich your knowledge of a
gender communication issue. Please do not use other search engines (such as
Google Scholar) to find your articles.
• In a “typical” semester, we would use one of our class meetings to meet at
the library with a research librarian, who would teach you ways to use
Maxwell’s resources to find article. Due to the pandemic, this is impossible,
so a librarian has put together several videos to help you learn more
about best practices for conducting research for this report. Please
watch the ones that you most need. They can be found on our class
MaxGuide. To find it, go to the library’s main intranet page, look at the top
menu that runs across the page, and click on “Research & Assignments”
and, then, click on “Maxguides/Subject Resource Guides.” From there, go to
“Communication Studies” and then find our class’ Maxguide. I especially
recommend the Research Companion video tutorials found in the “How to
do Research” box, but there’s many helpful research skills guides listed
there.
• When ready to search for articles for your resport, start with a database
for listing articles by researchers in the Communication Field. Use our
class’s Maxguide. Search one of the databases listed there. This is the
easiest one to use for this class:
➢ Communication and Mass Media Complete
Use the databases to find articles by searching by topic or by the author(s) or
title of your article.
4
• If you want to find more articles, look at databases for Gender-Related
Communication Topics beyond the Communication Field: Use the below
databases by searching by topic or by the author of your article:
➢ Academic Search Premiere
➢ Gender Studies Collection
➢ Psychology & Behavioral Science Collection
• There are professionals, paid for by YOUR TUITION, whose job it is to
help you with research: Maxwell Library’s Research Librarians. If you
have any trouble finding articles, using the databases, thinking of subjects to
search for, or experience any other problems as you do your research (can’t
save an article or send it to your email? Can’t figure out how to cite an
article?), PLEASE ask for help. The librarians are very friendly and very
helpful. To contact them, please see the “Contacting Librarians Virtually”
box on our course MaxGuide. If you are new to BSU, or haven’t done
research using the databases before, I strongly suggest this step.
Writing the Report
• For research projects, it is important to shape your topic according to the
assignment. For this report, you are asked to find at least 8 articles, to pick 5
to report on, and to provide 3 pages of report plus a bibliography and a
references page. That is not much writing, so be sure to focus your topic
carefully. You will be evaluated on your ability to focus your report on one
interesting aspect of research in gender communication.
• This report resembles a literature review, a type of writing common to the
Social Sciences. A literature review can be just a simple summary of the
sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both
summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information
found in a source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of
that information. The focus of a literature review is to summarize and
synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new
contributions.
• Although much of your writing for this report will be summary, students
who want to do better on the assignment should also synthesize the
information they find in their articles. This means that beyond creating clear
summaries of articles, writers should identify related research findings from
different sources and combine the information together in a clear manner.
5
You should look for commonalities and relationships in the research
findings and organize your paragraphs carefully. When you synthesize
findings in this manner you produce a unique analysis of the information:
this is a high-level academic skill and will be required in your upper-level
courses.
• After you find the articles you want to examine closely, start the process by
reading them and taking notes. Sum up their content, write overviews of
their arguments, and note the results of research.
• Find connections between articles: can you group them together in a logical
manner? Try creating an outline of your report using your groupings.
• Following your outline, write the report.
• Your final step should be to write the introduction to your report. Your
introduction should clearly define your topic of research and state how it is
related to the field of gender communication. Please see The Gender
Communication Connection, pages 15-17, for detailed explanations of how
studies of gender and communication overlap. This research report, like the
other writing you’ve produced this semester, should have a focus that is
stated clearly in the introduction. That may take more than one sentence.
Citation
• An important part of your writing process for this report will be keeping
track of your sources and using APA style accurately. You should already
know that citing your sources is an important academic skill used to give
credit to fellow scholars and to avoid charges of plagiarism (considered a
serious breach of academic honesty). Why do I ask you to use APA style?
➢ APA style is the citation style used most frequently in the Social
Sciences. Although several different citation styles are used in the
field of Communication Studies, our topic is in the Social Sciences
field, and the research in it commonly uses APA style;
➢ APA style provides readers with cues they can use to follow your
ideas more efficiently and to locate information of interest to them;
➢ It allows readers to focus more on your ideas by not distracting them
with unfamiliar formatting;
➢ It establishes your credibility in the field by demonstrating an
awareness of your audience and their needs as fellow researchers.
• Be sure that if you use quotations in the body of your report, you use APA
style in-text citations to note where the material can be found in your source.
You also need in-text citations when you summarize important findings
6
from your articles. There are detailed guidelines about how to do this on
the Purdue OWL website:
Using APA Style in Research Papers
• Note that the 5 entries found on your References list (the ones you
summarized in your report) should be REPEATED on your Bibliography
(which contains the 8 articles you consulted during the research process).
References and Bibliography
• Your References page should appear after the body of your 3-page report in
your submission. It should contain at least 5 entries, all of which are articles
discussed and cited within your report. Remember that the in-text citations
and References page should work together to help any interested scholar to
find your sources.
• Your Bibliography should appear after your References page in your
submission. It should list 8 or more articles that you looked at during your
research process. In addition to the standard APA bibliographic
information, please make sure to include the Maxwell Database that you
used to find your article. One of the requirements of this assignment is
that you find high-quality, peer-reviewed articles in Gender and
Communication Studies using Maxwell Library’s sources. I will be
checking your bibliography to make sure you met this requirement.
Submission
• Be sure to proofread your report carefully. In any formal submission of
academic writing, it is important to improve your credibility with
grammatically correct and clear prose, as well as an attention to correct
punctuation and an appropriate tone.
• Submit your report to Blackboard, but also bring a hard copy to our final
exam time (see page 1 for specific dates and times). You are required to
submit both a Word file to Blackboard AND a hard copy in person
during the exam time.
• Make sure you have assembled your 1.)Research Report; 2.) References;
and 3.) Bibliography pages (in that order). Late submission may lead to an
“F” for the entire course as I have to submit my grades to meet the Registrar
Office’s deadline.