STEP 1: Describe your research topic (30% of HW grade)

In 3 – 11 sentences of carefully written prose, describe the broad topic that you want to investigate (not unlike “Homelessness and crime.”)

This topic can be your first stab at exploring an issue related to your capstone or it can just be something you are interested in.

STEP 2: Documenting Your Search Approach (70% of HW grade)

In this part of the assignment, you will make clear how you went about finding relevant scholarship. Remember all the sources you use should be academic–scholarly journals and credible reports

This part of your assignment should identify the research databases and portals you use, and explain what you have found to be the most useful or important databases for the topic

So, first, write a paragraph that explains your choice of both database and search terms. Why did you choose the database(s) your chose given your topic?

DO NOT USE “ONESEARCH” WHEN DOING THIS RESEARCH

Second, document your findings from your database searches using the attached table.

Include a table in this section in which you specify very precisely how you go about your searches for relevant scholarly information. Build this table as follows:

Column A: List search portals you used

Column B: Provide search terms and phrases for each portal, keeping in mind that different search engines will require different search phrases. Be sure to keep in mind the difference between full-text and subject search terms

Column C: Define Boolean limiters, phrases, and other search strategies you used so that each term and portal combination identified no more than 50 articles. (In short, how did you keep each search confined to the most relevant articles?)

Column D: List all the articles you retrieved as a result of the search term combination you used at a portal. This list might be a rather long one.

Below is an example of a row from such a table. The portal in question is a database of academic articles available through John Jay Library. Keep in mind that you are looking for academic sources, so not all databases are equally valuable. Some databases, such as EBSCO Complete, will contain both scholarly (peer-reviewed) and non-scholarly sources (e.g., magazines and newspapers). Google will provide plenty of information, but little of it will be academic; Google Scholar, on the other hand, is limited to academic books and articles.

STEP 3: Your Three Questions

Briefly describe each of the questions you identified and the answer specialists in the topic have settled on. Doing so should take about a paragraph for each question (so, three paragraphs total).

The more specific you can be in your paragraph, the better.

Be sure to identify the source you drew upon for your discussion of each question with a brief bibliography.   So, if—for example—you learned of Massey and Denton’s analysis of segregation from Conley’s Being Black, Living in the Red (see the example above; Conley quotes Massey and Denton at length in a block quotation), you would want to cite both Conley as well as Massey and Denton.

STEP 4: Documenting Your Sources

Wherever it is in your source that you learn of the question and its answer, take a screen shot (or photo) of the relevant passage.  (how to take a screenshot: pc ; mac)

Put each of your screenshots in the document you submit. Be sure to put the screenshots in the order.

Welcome to HON 301-H02, Fridays 3^rd and 4^th period