Quantitative Journal Article Review
For this assignment, you need to find a peer-reviewed academic journal article that researches an electronic media topic with a quantitative research method using statistical analysis of the data. How to find a peer- reviewed academic journal article is covered on the first day of the course. The article you use must have been published within the past three years and this article must not be included in the annotated bibliography list from last semester (look this up on Blackboard). Every student must use a different article for this assignment. Please send an email containing a pdf file of the article (no URL links) to instructor to gain approval to use the article for the assignment.
This assignment is a basic exercise to see if you can follow the structure of conducting scholarly research as presented in an academic journal article. After reading and digesting the article a few times, write a paper outlining the following items:
1) Explain what is being researched in the article (the initiating issue or problem) and why the author(s) is/are researching this topic. Identify the topic under investigation and how the author(s) was/were attempting to progress mass media research.
2) How did the author(s) take the topic or issue and get to the research questions and/or hypotheses to guide the methodology of the study? Explain how the authors took the concepts from their initiating inquiry and created observable constructs using a theoretical perspective (theory).
3) Explain which research method is being used. (Note: statistics are tests of data, not a research method). Essentially, you are explaining what the authors observed and how the observed phenomena were measured (which should be explicitly stated as formal research questions and/or hypotheses). Explain how the data were collected.
4) Explain how the findings of the study progress the specific field of research. Since this article is published in a peer reviewed academic journal it is assumed that it has value to the field, explain that value. Do not get caught up in any limitations or suggestions for future research. Remember scholarly research rarely changes the world, but is a small step toward greater understanding of a small specific topic of the field. Identify what that small step was with this article.
This assignment should not summarize the article but analyze how the author(s) of the article went from a basic question of inquiry to an organized study with findings and conclusions. The point of this assignment is for you to demonstrate a basic understanding of what was done in the study and why the study was done this particular way to progress the field of mass media research. Do NOT make the assignment any more than that. Do NOT critique the merits or make judgments about the quality of the research.
This journal article review should not exceed five pages in length. The APA bibliographical reference for the article should be at the top of your essay. If you use other sources beyond the article in your review, then you must list the references at the end in the APA format. Outside sources are not required to complete the assignment.