Annotated Bibliography
For this Assignment, you will write an annotated bibliography using a minimum of three different sources from the Library. An annotated bibliography includes a listing of citations for each source of information selected. With each citation provide: a brief description of the study and a critical analysis of the research report. The purpose of an annotated bibliography is to help the practitioner. Hopefully, you will begin to see this in your bibliography.
Specifically for the Unit 3 Assignment, you are to focus on one theory of workplace motivation from the psychological research literature and how it has been applied to I/O practice. To help you get started, you can use the different studies that you shared with the class on the Discussion Board and in Seminar this week. It is recommended that all of these articles be related to the topic that you will be doing for your formal Recommendation Report of Workplace Motivation Best Practices for Your Organization (in Unit 9). The articles annotated here can be those used as part of the background material in the Recommendation Report. Be sure to choose actual scientific studies (not a meta-analysis summary of research or a literature review on a topic) that provide a variety of perspectives on your topic.
Upon completion, an annotated bibliography helps the practitioner gain an understanding of the entire body of research on a particular subject (i.e., not just the information or perspective from one study). In other words, putting together an annotated bibliography helps the practitioner to get a broader sense of the results of many different studies on the same subject. In addition, an idea of how the different studies connect to one another and the important themes that are related to a topic often emerge in this process. This is an important first step to take when attempting to develop quality “best practices” for application in the field.
Assignment Directions
- Select a minimum of three and no more than five, different research studies from the psychological literature. Develop how the practice of I/O has made application of at least one theory of workplace motivation. Make sure that you are using scholarly sources in your bibliography (e.g., peer reviewed journal articles, academic books, etc.). In addition, make sure that your sources are current (within the last 5 years).
- At the beginning of the Assignment, please include a statement (one or two sentences) indicating what theory of workplace motivation you are focusing upon and what topic or concept connects the articles summarized.
- Start off with the full text citation for each study in boldface. Be sure to list your different sources in alphabetical order.
- Immediately after each full text citation, summarize the following details from the cited source:
- A brief description of the research questions and hypotheses
- The method and any criticisms you have found about the method
- The results
- The conclusions and concerns made by the authors regarding these conclusions
- A critical analysis of the quality and credibility of the study and author(s).
- How this study connects to or contrasts with other studies on this subject (especially those other articles in your annotated bibliography)
- An explanation of how your study will add to the psychological body of knowledge because of your topic.
- Make sure to provide enough details for the reader to get a clear sense of the study. Ideally you will have two “paragraphs:” the first covering the first four bullet points above, the second covering the remaining three.
- After the three to five articles have been listed and annotated, end the Assignment with a couple of paragraphs describing how the process of putting together an annotated bibliography helps practitioners to develop quality research questions and hypotheses.
Length: 3–4 pages.
The Assignment should:
- Follow Assignment directions (review grading rubric for best results).
- Use correct APA formatting per the APA Publication Manual, 6th Edition.
- Demonstrate college-level communication through the composition of original materials in Standard American English.
- Be written in Standard American English and be clear, specific, and error-free. If needed, be sure to use the Writing Center for help.