Description
This assignment will familiarize you with critically reading and interpreting primary scientific literature and conducting a literature review. The assignment will involve the completion of a 10-page (max) double spaced report where you will (a) find a target journal article, (b) summarize the target journal article, (c) critically analyze the target article, and (d) analyze your target article in the context of other literature. More detail on each of the steps follows.
You will start by finding a peer-reviewed article from one of the following journals published in 2015 or later: 1. Find a target quantitative journal article on a topic relevant to your major from one of the following journals related to management:
• Administrative Science Quarterly
• Academy of Management Journal
• Journal of Applied Psychology – Our target journal is from here. – References:
Wang, H. , Lu, C. & Siu, O. (2015). Job Insecurity and Job Performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100 (4), 1249-1258. doi: 10.1037/a0038330.
• Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
• Personnel Psychology
You will then read the article carefully and summarize it in detail. You will then find at least ten other journal articles on the same broad topic. You will summarize the findings of the other articles in the context of your target article, and conclude with your own summary of the literature you reviewed in the relevant area.
2. Find ten additional journal articles directly related to your target journal article. These additional journal articles will help you to complete your literature review.
3. The literature review will consist of the following components:
a. Summary of your target journal article. Consider the following:
• What is the specific problem or research question addressed?
• What was the study design? Answer : correlational
• What were the “headline” findings?
• Who were the subjects? – We used 2-wave data (Study 1) from a sample of 140 Chinese employees and 3-wave data (Study 2) from a sample of 125 Chinese employees to test our hypotheses.
• What were the independent and dependent variables?
• How were these variables manipulated or measured?
b. Critical analysis of the target article. Was the study conducted carefully? What were the problems or flaws with the study? What did the study do particularly well? Some things in particular to consider:
• Internal validity. What conditions of causality did your study meet? What conditions of causality didn’t it meet? Why?
• External validity. Does the study general to other samples? Does it generalize to the “real world”? Does it offer any implications for practice?
c. Analysis of the target article’s findings in the context of other literature (i.e., your literature review). How do the results of the study in your target journal article compare with other studies? Some things you might want to consider:
• Reliability and convergent evidence. Is your target study consistent with other findings (i.e., is the finding replicable)? Are there other studies with the same or similar independent and dependent variable relationships? Is the quality of evidence strong or not in the other studies? Is the result shown across multiple different study designs?
• Are there any gaps in the knowledge? What don’t we know about the problem?
d. Summary and conclusion. Write a tentative conclusion based on your target article and your literature review. Is there strong evidence for the conclusions of your target article? Would you use this study to change your behavior or practice?
