the research process

Literature Review Assignment: Article Summaries/Syntheses (part 2) You will be writing a mini literature review to address a research question of interest in the area of nutrition. For this assignment, you will gain some experience in 1) developing a research question, 2) searching for scientific literature using an online database, 3) reading, summarizing, and interpreting research articles, 4) synthesizing scientific literature in written form to answer a research question. This assignment will consist of three parts: 1) Research question and search strategy (Part 1) 2) Research article summaries/syntheses (Part 2) 3) Final paper (Part 3) This document provides instructions for part 2. Article Summaries/Syntheses Your search strategy will produce a list of articles that are related to your research question of interest. Take some time to review the list of articles that you retrieved from your search and then identify five articles that you plan to incorporate into your review. You may include more than five articles in your final literature review paper; however, for the purpose of this assignment (i.e. Part 2), please choose the five sources that you think contributes most to your understanding of your research question. These must be peer-reviewed journal articles that you found from your database searches. Articles should be based on original research studies. Your articles can be primary or secondary sources (e.g. systematic reviews and meta-analyses). Articles from popular press (e.g. magazines or newspaper articles, blogs, etc.) are not acceptable. You will summarize and synthesize each of the five research articles by answering the following questions (see below). Here are the questions you must answer for each article: Please provide the citation for each article (see example below) Article citation: Foster-Schubert KE, Alfano CM, Duggan CR, Xiao L, Campbell KL, Kong A, et al. Effect of Diet and Exercise, Alone or Combined, on Weight and Body Composition in Overweight-to-Obese Postmenopausal Women. Obesity. 2012;20(8):1628-38. Questions: 1. What was the purpose of this article? Page 2 of 2 2. What were the findings of this study? (please state in your own words) Note: You cannot use quotes and you must adequately paraphrase the findings in your own words to receive full credit. Please refer to your syllabus in the section on “Students responsibilities and resources” for resources on paraphrasing and avoiding plagiarism. All assignments will be run through Safe Assign, a plagiarism detection software. 3. Why is this paper relevant to your research question? Please address the following points: (must address all parts of this question: a-e) a. What is the quality of this study? Note: Please identify a method for assessing quality of the study. Although not required, you are highly encouraged to use a critical appraisal tool to aid you in this process. In a few sentences, provide your assessment of the quality of this study. I want to know what aspects of the study you assessed for quality [e.g. study design, internal validity (e.g. forms of bias), external validity, other considerations] and the conclusions you made for each study (e.g. how did you rate this study?). b. How does this paper contribute to your understanding of the research question? c. What are the limitations of this study that might impact your ability to draw conclusions from this research? [e.g. study design, internal validity (e.g. forms of bias), external validity, other considerations] d. How does this study or studies (in the case of a systematic review) fit within the larger body of evidence? e. Do you agree or disagree with the author’s conclusions? (be sure to tell me what the author’s conclusions are first and then discuss why you agree or disagree)