Exercise 5

Due 02 May @ 11:59pm

You can work individually or in groups of 2 or 3. If you work in pairs/groups, you may submit one assignment for all of you.

There is no associated Exercise 05 Quiz.

Objectives

In short, Exercise 5 is about building readiness for Capstone 03. Essentially, I'm just making you do some of your Capstone 03 work in advance.

Specifically, the objectives are the following:

• To identify whether you will be working independently or in groups of 2-3 (and if in groups, w/ whom)
• To determine a topic and start to narrow it down
• To identify sources that you can use to write your policy brief

Because Capstone 03 can be done individually or in groups of 2 or 3, you can also do this for Exercise 5!

Is it okay if things change between now and Capstone 3? Of course.

Getting started

Start by reading the introductions to Capstone 03

Think about what you might want to do!

Part 1: Idea proposal

Write a short idea proposal of about 1 paragraph. It should include the following bits of information.

1. What is your topic and/or research question?

2. If not already embedded in the topic, what specific elements of public policies are related?

3. What is the data source you are going to use?

4. Who are you working with, if anyone?

    

Part 2: Annotated bibliography

Using the glory of the internet, plus the library databases, google scholar, etc., let's get started on the literature you need. You should prepare at least 4 sources total: at least 2 academic sources, and at least 2 non-academic sources.

Requirements

We will keep this simple:

• Identify at least four sources— at least two should be peer-reviewed academic journal articles— that will be useful to your policy brief.

  • If you find articles that are only marginally relevant/useful, I'd encourage you to keep digging - there's no reason to spend time on something that won't help you!

• For each article, write a short summary and/or bulleted list that includes the following information:

  • Summary of article (1 paragraph is fine) (see "Summarize" below)
  • Type of article (peer-review academic, non-peer reviewed academic, policy brief, news story, etc.)
  • How can you use this source in your brief (see "Reflect" below - noting that if it isn't helpful, don't bother annotating!)
  • Bibliographic entry (formatted in APA/MLA/Chicago). That way, you can copy and paste

Effectively, this is a short annotated bibliography! See Purdue OWL- Online Bibliographies, for more details on the power of annotated bibliographies.

For the following purposes:

• Summarize: Some annotations merely summarize the source. What are the main arguments? What is the point of this book or article? What topics are covered? If someone asked what this article/book is about, what would you say? The length of your annotations will determine how detailed your summary is.

  For more help, see our handout on paraphrasing sources.

• Assess: After summarizing a source, it may be helpful to evaluate it. Is it a useful source? How does it compare with other sources in your bibliography? Is the information reliable? Is this source biased or objective? What is the goal of this source?

  For more help, see our handouts on evaluating resources.

• Reflect: Once you've summarized and assessed a source, you need to ask how it fits into your research. Was this source helpful to you? How does it help you shape your argument? How can you use this source in your research project? Has it changed how you think about your topic?

  — Purdue OWL

Tips on working with academic journal articles

Please, please, please do not read long journal articles from start to finish to complete this assignment. (Of course, if you are rapt, don't let me stop you from reading!)

People come to papers for different reasons

1. Contextualizing new work: Need to know where my paper fits in intro/lit review are very important.
2. Extending/testing a model: Need to understand that model in detail Understanding whether I believe the evidence: Really need that methodology/results section in detail Using similar methodology: What robustness checks did she use? How am I doing things differently?
3. Refereeing a paper: I read every single thing in detail. Twice. Or more

We are mostly in the first category.

Recommendations for conceptualizing new work:

1. Screen w/ abstract by reading abstract thoroughly to determine (1) to what extent the paper might be relevant (ie you would cite it) to your topic and (2) what is the main point of the paper.
2. If it passes your screening, then read the introduction in it's entirety. Also read the conclusion. Note potentially relevant works that the paper cites to help you with other works
3. Write up your summary
4. If you have specific questions when doing this, dig into other parts of the paper - maybe you want to know what data they used, or how they empirically worked w/ the data. This may not be necessary for this stage.
5. Repeat! To find connected papers, you can also use Google scholar to find which papers cite the one you chose.

Submit

Write up and submit by May 02 @ 11:59pm