Week 2 Assignment 1: Literature Review

Week 2 Assignment 1: Literature Review

Overview:

Last week candidates had the opportunity to talk to colleagues regarding areas of concern that are pertinent to the field of counseling. This week candidates will conduct a search of the literature about their topic and write a small-scale literature review.

General Instructions

Using the following resources:

• Your reading from the textbook and discussion board posted chapter
• Research Proposal Template in the Resource section of the course
• Lamar library search program
• Google Scholar or another search program

1. Locate and download at least six peer-reviewed, empirical study articles on the topic of your chosen study that have been published within the last 10 years using the Lamar library search program, Google Scholar, or another search program.
2. Create an APA formatted reference document for the six articles. You must provide in-text citations for each of your articles.
3. Summarize/paraphrase each article in 3 to 4 sentences noting key points – findings and conclusions.
4. From the summaries, identify at least two themes or subheadings.
5. Finally, write your small-scale literature review following the outline below.

Outline for writing your small-scale literature review:

Introduction

The introduction is used to establish the context of your review to the reader. To establish the context, it is important to do the following in this opening paragraph:

1. Define the topic of your study and provide any background information that helps your reader to understand the topic.
2. Explain your reason (perspective) for reviewing the literature on this topic.
3. State your research question(s) for this review.

Body

This section of your small-scale review describes findings from articles that provide answers to your inquiry question. Before you begin this section, be sure that you have sorted your articles into different themes based on the articles’ findings (sometimes called results). After you sort your articles, it is important to give your sorted groups a descriptive name. The names of the sorted articles will become your headings for each of the paragraphs that you write in the body of your review. Be sure to provide in-text citations for each of your references. You should have a minimum of 2 subheadings with at least 2 references for each subheadings and each subheading should contain a minimum of 1 well-developed paragraph. (Note: One subheading may have 2 references and the other may have 4 references, or each subheading may have 3 references each. You must have a total of six references, with at least 2 reference for each subheading.)

Summary

This is the last paragraph of your small-scale literature review. In this paragraph, it is important to summarize the main findings from the articles that you reviewed and to point out the information that you found particularly important to know that answered the research question that you established in the first paragraph of your review. Try to conclude your paper by connecting your inquiry question back to the context of the general topic of study.

References

This is the last page of your review. It serves as a listing of all references that you mentioned in your paper. Please use APA style when completing this list.