Social Work

Professional Writing for Social Work Literature Review Assignment
(50% of Letter Grade)
The Assignment:

Using SocINDEX with Full Text and Social Work Reference Center—each hosted by EBSCO but offering different search results—locate 10 to 15 topically related, full-text journal articles or reports, published within the last three years, and analytically evaluate each work’s Introduction, Method, Evidence, Results, Discussion (IMRAD), Conclusion, References, Appendix and other Back Matter, as well as the document’s potential contributions to the field. Some articles not based on quantitative data and surveys or experimentation will be argumentative, and as such, will follow a thesis, evidence, and conclusion model.

After doing so, choose eight articles with which you will construct your literature review.

The document-wide formatting is APA, with a complete and properly formatted Title Page; the References page should use the Article in a Print Journal entry, with DOI, if included:

Ramirez, B. (2016). The value of psychoanalysis. Sociology Experiments, 21(4), 76-115. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy

Note the capitalization, the italics use, the punctuation, et cetera. (FYI, most journals use volume and issue numbers. The volume number is an annual number, while the issue number refers to each published issue. Thus, volume 25 is 2011, and volume 26 is 2012, and on. Most journals publish quarterly, so there are four issues per volume/year.)

The document will be double spaced, with Paragraph After set at 0, with 1-inch margins, and will be composed in Times New Roman 12-point font. The document will include running page numbers and properly formatted running head(s)—the Title Page and the rest of the document use differently formatted running heads.

Properly formatted and properly written, the document will be approximately 10 pages long.

See the sample Literature Reviews in APA Academic Writer for guidance when drafting the introductory and concluding paragraphs. The former introduces the document as a literature review and the cohesive theme among the documents reviewed, while the latter ties the reviewed documents together in theme or in importance or in another manner and then often looks forward after doing so. (APA Academic Writer is located in the library databases; open an account the first time you enter the site.)

The academic-style body/review paragraphs—one for each or the eight articles reviewed—will be approximately 100-150 words long, with topic sentences, evaluation of IMRAD or Thesis, Evidence and Conclusion, in-text citation, overall assessment of the document, and concluding sentence.

The document will utilize APA-style in-text citation—in paraphrases, not quotations.

(Paraphrasing and summary paraphrasing are skills that all sociology students must learn. So, let us start practicing proper APA-style paraphrasing now.)

The Format:

I. Title Page
II. Abstract Page
III. Literature Review
IV. References Page