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Research Proposal and Annotated Bibliography Assignments
The following are the descriptions of two assignments: 1) the research proposal assignment and 2) an abridged version of the annotated bibliography that would have accompanied the long research paper. Completing these and revising the most recent version of your Paper 2 assignment will total 50% of the grade for the class.
Part 1: Research Proposal Assignment
1) Your name, class and section: __________________________________________________
2) The title for Paper 2 was “Have Past Predictions on the Future of ____________________________________ Been Accurate?” where the blank line represents the title of the specific job you have been studying for in college and plan to pursue after graduation. Fill in the blank with that specific job title, for example “Have Past Predictions on the Future of _Critical Care Nurses Been Accurate?
3) Thesis: Your thesis statement should both: a) outrightly state the answer to the essay’s title question mentioned in step 2 above, and b) list the topics covered throughout the essay as answers to that question. Below is a made-up example of a two-sentence thesis statement, (it’s perfectly fine to write a one-sentence thesis statement) where the topics that will be discussed in the essay are highlighted in green:
The past predictions on the future of Critical Care Nurses have been mostly accurate when it comes to education requirements, salary potential, and increased technology use in hospitals. However, the predictions that the demands for such nurses would remain the same were proven wrong as the onset of COVID-19 led to a significant spike in the immediate need for more of these types of nurses in a way no one could foresee.
Please fill in the blanks below with your own thesis statement, using as much space as you need. It should be a well-crafted thesis, even if it means re-thinking and revising the thesis you wrote for Paper 2: _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
4. List at least eight (8) topics and sub-topics you could cover in your essay to support your argument. In your thesis statement, you wrote some or all of the topics you could discuss regarding predictions sources have written about the future of your type of career. List those topics here, but also consider breaking some down into even smaller categories.
a) ______________________________________________
b) ______________________________________________
c) ______________________________________________
d) ______________________________________________
e) ______________________________________________
f) ______________________________________________
g) ______________________________________________
h) ______________________________________________
5) Target Audience. Research papers are NOT written for the general public/audience. Think of a professional or someone studying to become a professional in your field who would be interested in reading your research paper were it to be published in a scholarly journal. Would your research paper be best read by other professionals in that field? Would it be read by others who work alongside those in that profession, or those who educate or hire them? Knowing exactly who you are talking to in your writing shapes what kind of information you present to them.
Who is the target audience for reading your research findings and why? List, in the lines below, the types of people who would benefit from reading your research paper were it to be published: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
6) Search Strategy. List at least 4 scholarly databases you could use to find sources for your paper. For example, using the “Library & Databases” link on the Blackboard menu for this course, you could use some of the databases listed there to find information on nursing as a profession by searching through the following databases listed under the “Nursing” section:
AccessMedicine
CINAHL Complete: Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature
Healthcare Administration Database
Health Source Nursing/Academic Edition
Nursing and Health Professions (Ovid)
Below, please fill in each of the 4 blank lines with the names of databases you can search to find information about professionals currently working in your future field, or at least journals written with that profession in mind, using the “Library & Databases” link:
Scholarly database 1: ___________________________________________
Scholarly database 2: ___________________________________________
Scholarly database 3: ___________________________________________
Scholarly database 4: ___________________________________________
7) Using any of the databases you listed above, find one (1) peer-reviewed/scholarly article published in a journal written specifically for professionals in your intended field, that talks about the future of that profession. Please create an APA 7-formatted reference page entry here for the journal article, followed by your one- or two-sentence description of what that article states about the future.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
8) Rationale and context: Give at least one reason why it is important to not only ask the research question, but also to know the many answers to it. Why should someone reading your paper know or care about predictions on the future of your specific profession? What can you say or how can you say it to make the information feel very important to the intended reader? Please fill in the blank lines below with a paragraph written to hook your reader into wanting to know the answers to the title research question.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Part 2: Annotated Bibliography Assignment
For Paper 2, you were required to write your essay using only the sources I listed for the class, and to create APA 7 in-text citations with corresponding entries on the References page for the sources you selected. On the blank page that comes after this, you will re-create that page of References, but you will add an annotation paragraph to each entry describing the type of source, who the authors were and what makes them experts (or not) on the subject they wrote about, and what you used the source for in making your argument or counter-argument in your essay. This is how you convert an average References page into an Annotated Bibliography. In addition to converting the Paper 2 References page into this type of bibliography, you must also add the entry and annotation paragraph for the source you find on your own to answer step 7) in the Research Proposal Assignment above. Remember, APA 7 requires entries to be listed in alphabetical order, so don’t just add the source you find to the bottom of the list of entries unless it would be in that position alphabetically. Consult the rules for reference entries in the “APA 7 Rulebook” PDF in Blackboard. Also view the following video on how to create and correctly format your APA 7 Annotated Bibliography, entitled “ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY | APA FORMAT |” to help you correctly design your on the next page. On the bottom of this page continue your annotated bibliography.
NOTE: The annotation paragraphs are in your own words—summaries, evaluations and writings (see video tutorial)—about the sources you used in Paper 2 or have found for step 7 of the research proposal. Therefore, no two students should say things in the same way without raising the suspicion of cheating, even if they are writing about the same source(s). Treat this as you would a test and do not share your writings with one another to avoid Turnitin flagging your submission as possible plagiarism if it matches other students’ uploaded work.