In preparing your research report, you will use one of your sources, a journal article, as the format. To help you better visualize that format, our book can be useful with its general guidelines. For example, on pages 293-294 are outlines for both quantitative and qualitative reports. Depending on what type of research you are conducting, you can look use these outlines to guide your understanding of the journal article. How does it review the literature? How does it explain its methodology? And so on.

On another note, keep in front of you your research question and the data you wish to collect. Will the data answer the question? How will you collect the data? How will you present and interpret the data?

What do you do when the professor wants an electronic document in MS Word, but you don't have this program? Well, there are quite a few possibilities, but here are three.

1. The first thing you should check is if you can save your document as an .rtf (rich text format) in your program. Usually, when you click on "Save as", a dialog box comes up and close to where you click on "Save" is another box that lets you choose the "File Format." If that's possible, just choose .rtf (rich text format) and MS Word can open it.
2. Another possibility is to download the OpenOffice suite from the OpenOffice website. It's free. After installing, you can use it to create documents compatible with MS Word.
3. A third possibility is to open a free google account at Google Docs & Spreadsheets. You can type your document online and export it as an MS Word compatible document.

As there seems to be some confusion on the blog, Citation, and annotated bibliography, I'll try to clear it up here.

Citation is like a container with 3X5 cards. You keep everything there. You can put notes there: notes on your readings, notes on class information, notes on articles and books you read, notes on anything related to the class. You're required to make at least 3 entries a week in Citation.

The blog is our way of sharing with one another what we are doing and reading. In this way, we can learn from one another. Every week, you must make at least one post to your blog. Sometimes, I'll ask you to make a specific post on your blog. That counts for the one that is required. Where does the information for your blog post come from? Citation. Remember that you are putting everything into Citation. So, once a week, you look at your notes in Citation for that week, choose one of those notes, and post it to your blog.

The Annotated Bibliography is a list of sources, each source with an abstract or summary of the source. You will be putting the information for your sources into Citation. So, when Annotated Bibliography assignments are due, you simply Generate Bibliography from Citation (in MS Word) and email it to me. If you want, you could take one of those sources in the Annotated Bibliography and post it to your blog for the weekly posting.

What data you will need to collect will be determined by the questions you ask? After all, you have to answer your questions. Sometimes, however, it's not possible for you get the data you need. In such a case, you need to change the form of the question, or the question itself, in order to collect data.

Although there are many types of research, practially speaking, the types of research that we might be able to do in one semester in our class will likely be a phenomenologial study, content analysis (chapter 7), or some type of description research (chapter 9). Be sure to read carefully the guidelines for Method and The Research Report.

Tomorrow you should email me your research question and the type of research you might do.

One of the five articles needed in an annotated bibliography form for next Wednesday must come from a reference book. The other four must be scholarly journal articles.

The reference books in the library are a great starting place for finding information and articles on one's research problem. They provide keywords, academic vocabulary, and often point to the important issues on a specific topic. In addition, they may have a bibliography that contains the more important scholars and articles (or books) on this topic.

The journal articles may be difficult reading. Skim the article before reading it. Look at the introduction, then the conclusion, and then subtitles. Knowing the general idea of the article will make it easier to understand when reading it in its entirety.