Importance of Literature Essay Example for Free

Importance of Literature Essay 1 Introduction In this article we will talk about the importance of literature reviews as a way of summarsing the state of the art of a field. We will examine ways of constructing literature reviews and we will see in the links provided examples of literature reviews. 2 Definition of literature review A critical summary and an assessment of the current state of knowledge or current state of the art in a particular field. The ability to carry out a literature review is an important skill for any student. It will provide you with a context in which to place your assignments regardless of the module you are studying. Practically any assignment in any module you take will involve reading what other people have written on the subject of your assignment, gathering information to refute or support specific arguments, and writing about yourfindings. For small scale projects, (like module assignments), you will not be expected to provide a definitive account of the state of research in your selected topic. You will be required to provide evidence that you have read a certain amount of relevant literature in the topic, that you have understood that literature, and that you can summarize the material you have read in a coherent way. The literature review is precisely that summary. In order to do a literature review you will need to spend time reading the literature relevant to the topic you are researching. Understanding the literature in your research topic will prevent you from repeating previous errors, or redoing work which has already been done. It will also give you insights into aspects of your topic which might be worthy of exploration and future research. 3 Purpose of a Literature Review There are several purposes to writing a literature review. To provide the reader with an up to date account and discussion of the research findings in a particular topic. This might sound pretty esoteric but you will find that in writing a literature review you will learn about the ways other people have constructed their own research projects. Seeing what others have done might help you understand your own assignment. You might be able to see the methods that other more experienced researchers have used and you might decide to follow on their footsteps and copy their methodological approach. You might also be able to detect conflicting points of view expressed by different authors. These conflicting points of view might be the indicators of diverging theories within the same topic. You need to be aware of these conflicting theories as well as of the arguments supporting these theories in order for you to assess their value and make up your own mind on the topic. Being aware of the theories will help you later in your life as a student when you will have to design a larger research project like your dissertation. You might also be able to discuss relevant research carried out in the same topic. It is important to be able to discuss relevant research because very often it is very difficult (as students and as researchers) to keep abreast of everything that is published every year in a topic. The job of the writer of the literature review is to summarize and discuss the major documents published in that topic over a stated period of time. The discussion will take into account the methods and the results or findings of the most relevant research. The reviewer will assess whether the methodology is appropriate and whether the results seem valid. The reviewer therefore evaluates the quality of the research as opposed to merely listing documents. The reviewer may also discuss material published in other fields which are related to the main topic. This process is very important since very often research in the social sciences is multidisciplinary, i. e. knowledge gets generated from many disciplines and needs to be integrated. For example in order to be able to research and write a literature review on a question like ‘Why do teenagers smoke? ‘ The reviewer might need to read material from journals in psychology, medicine, and sociology. 4 Mechanics of Writing a Literature Review You need to read. You need to read because it will give you ideas, and because it might improve your writing style. You need to develop some basic reading strategies. You need to decide: †¢ where to read †¢ what to read †¢ whom to read †¢ how to find what you need to read. Your University or College library might be your first port of call in deciding where to read, but as you progress in your course you might need to read in other libraries. You might also chose to photocopy material from these libraries and read it at home. The advantage of using photocopies is that you can underline the material and make notes. The question of what to read is more tricky. Books, journals, reports, popular media, computer-based material, internal reports, letters, conference proceedings etc. You will probably need to read all these when you are constructing a literature review. When you try to determine whom to read you need to be aware that anyone can be mistaken in their interpretations or their opinions. It is therefore important that you can be able to ascertain how authoritative is the person that you are reading. You should also be able to ascertain their motivation in writing. This might help you determine if the person has a biased perspective on an issue. You should be guided on what to read (at least as a starting point ) by your module coordinator(s) and seminar tutors however, that is only initial guidance, after that you should be capable of finding your own material. Once you have set-up your basic reading strategies, you will need to be able to understand what you read. This is slightly more complicated than it seems because you will need to be able to develop tricks to scan a lot of documents very fast, and decide if a particular document is good enough to merit careful reading. It takes practice to be able to look at a document in the library and determine if it is good enough for you to spend serious time reading it. Have a look at the table of contents and index of the book. Look at the introduction and concluding chapter . Scan some of the topics from the index and determine if the material is adequate. These hints will give you a superficial knowledge about the content of a document, however you will not be able to write a literature review based on superficial knowledge. You will have to read enough to know enough about what has been written and summarize it in an intelligent fashion. In other words, you need to know enough to be able to be critical about it. Once you select a document for serious reading, you will need to summarize and criticize it.

Gay Marriage Essay -- Same-Sex Marriage Essays

A large majority of people in the United States will say that they are in favor of equal rights for homosexuals. They will all agree that homosexuals should have the same rights in housing, jobs, public accommodations, and should have equal access to government benefits, equal protection of the law, and other rights granted to US citizens. However, when the topic of marriage arises, all the talk of equality ceases. Over fifty percent of all people in the United States oppose homosexual marriage, despite the fact that most are otherwise supportive of homosexual rights. This means that many of the same people who are even passionately in favor of homosexual rights oppose homosexuals on this one issue. This is because there is a lot of misunderstanding about what homosexuality really is, as well as the erroneous assumption that homosexual people enjoy the same civil rights protections as everyone else. For the reasons of ending social injustice, the economic and social benefits of allo wing homosexuals to marry, and the constitution, homosexual marriages should be a legalized institution.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Homosexuals are often treated unjustly socially. Homosexual people and couples are treated as inferior to that of heterosexuals. The values that homosexual couples exhibit in their daily lives are often indistinguishable from those of their straight neighbors. They're loyal to their mates, and are devoted partners. Many of the reasons offered for opposing homosexual marriage are based on the assumption that homosexuals have a choice in which they can feel attracted to, and the reality is quite different. Many people actually believe that homosexuals could simply choose to be heterosexual if they wished. But the reality is that very few do have a choice; any more than very few heterosexuals could choose which sex to find them attracted to. Additionally, many people continue to believe the propaganda from right-wing religious organizations that homosexuality is about nothing but sex, considering it to be merely a sexual perversion. Homosexual relationships are just like heterosexual ones, and are much more about love and affection than they are about sex. And this is what homosexual relationships are based on: mutual attraction, love and affection. Sex, in a committed homosexual relationship, is merely a means of expressing that love, just the same ... ...o deny that the right to marriage whomever you may choose is constitutionally guaranteed. Homosexuals, targets of discrimination and social injustice, deserve to have equal opportunities and rights as every other person in America, homosexual or straight. Homosexual marriages are accepted already by the Constitution, and they offer nothing but economic and social benefits if legalized, therefore there is no real reason as to why homosexual marriages should not be legalized. Legg, Joshua. Interview. 17 May 2004. 23 Nov. 2004 . Cooperman, Alan. â€Å"Christian Groups Say They Won't Give Up.† The Washington Post. Jul. 15, 2004. . â€Å"Q&A: Same-Sex Marriage.† The Washington Post. Mar. 10, 2004. . Rauch, Jonathan. Gay Marriage : Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America. New York: Times Books, 2004. 1-224. Baird, Robert M., and Stuart E. Rosenbaum. Same-Sex Marriage: The Moral and Legal Debate. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1997. 1-242. Nieves, Evelyn. â€Å"Same-Sex Marriage Issue Fires Up Gays.† The Washington Post. Nov. 1, 2004. . Civil Rights: Brown v. Board of Education I (1954). 12 Jan. 2005. National Center for Public Policy Research. 24 Jan. 2005 .

Outline and evaluate explanations of conformity Essay

Normative social influence occurs when a person desires to be liked and accepted by a group. They will publicly conform and change their behaviour but they will still privately reject their views. This change in behaviour is often temporary as this type of social influence leads to compliance. Informational social influence is where someone conforms to the views and behaviours of the group because they both publicly and privately agree with them. This type of conformity is called internalisation and stems from the desire to be correct. It occurs when a person is in a new or ambiguous situation and doesn’t know what to do. Therefore, they look to the group for guidance as they assume they have better knowledge. Because of this, the change is often permanent as they believe their behaviours and actions are correct. AO2: One strength of this theory is that it has research to support it from Asch’s 1951 study into conformity. The interviews that were taken after the experiment had finished, stated that there were two main reasons that the participants conformed. The first reason was that they didn’t want to be ridiculed by the rest of the group from differing in opinions. They wanted to fit in so went along with the majority group, typical of normative social influence. The second reason was that they honestly thought that the rest of the group knew better than them and that their own judgements were incorrect, typical of informational social influence. Although some psychologists will argue that the two processes work in sync instead of two separate influences. For example, upon seeing a queue in a shop a person may join the end of it because that is what everyone else is doing but they may also be guessing at the same time that the people in the queue know that this is the queue that is needed to pay for their items.

Moral Disagreement By Kwame Anthony Appiah - 1391 Words

All around the world today, there is a lot of tension revolving around concepts of morality. In Moral Disagreement by Kwame Anthony Appiah, Appiah writes about differing values and morals around the world and within our society. He points out, â€Å"we aren’t the only people who have the concepts of right and wrong, good and bad; every society, it seems, has terms that correspond to these thin concepts† (658). However, these concepts are not always the same with each other in every society. In the same way that not everyone in our society believes in the same moral concepts. Unfortunately, it is these disagreements that often separate us as people. Forming different cultures, large and small, throughout the world. This is not a bad thing, but it does separate us as a race, leaving us to care more for one group of people rather than humanity as a whole. In Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism, by Martha Nussbaum, Nussbaum suggest that a way to fix this problem, and to become a cosmopolitan person, is to teach students in our education systems more of different cultures throughout the world. Yet not only should we learn to accept other cultures and their beliefs, but we should also educate ourselves to accept everybody we meet, giving respect to them as individuals, if we ever truly want to become a citizen of the world. Acceptance is a quality that is lacking within the world. Many people do not want to accept that, for example, not everybody thinks like the. In recognition of thisShow MoreRelatedThe Illusion Of Universal Morality1361 Words   |  6 PagesThroughout the chapter â€Å"Moral Disagreement† in his work Cosmopolitanism, Kwame Anthony Appiah analyzes the issues of morality. Appiah essentially presents his argument in a manner which questions the concept of what is ethically right and wrong. Furthermore, he believes that societies and individuals will inevitably experience moral disagreements. From the author’s perspective, â€Å"If we are to encourage†¦moral conversations between people across societies, we must expect such disagreements.†1 As demonstratedRead MorePoints of Disagreement1455 Words   |  6 Pages Points of Disagreement The â€Å"Golden Rule† is an ethical idea shared in various religious texts and different ancient philosophers’ statements around the world, and it was paraphrased as â€Å"What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others†. Kwame Anthony Appiah argues in the fifth Chapter (Moral Disagreement) of his book Cosmopolitanism that â€Å"the Golden Rule is not as helpful as it might at first seem†, and he gives several examples to support his argument. However, I don’t think these examplesRead MoreCultural Globalization: Fear of the Unknown950 Words   |  4 Pagesaround the world. The key here is to understand what another culture has to offer and accept what is appealing to you as an individual. As Kwame Anthony Appiah writes, â€Å"Yet even with values we do not take seriously, there is something to be hoped for; namely, understanding. Nor do you have to share a value to feel how it might motivate someone†. (Appiah, p.664) Many people would consider the United States as an example of how to promote diversity and tolerance of other cultures within oneRead MoreEssay on Gun Shooting on American Campus1373 Words   |  6 Pagesand shooting skills. Why some students are admitted to violence video games? What kind of feeling those games can bring to them? Will those games lead young people to commit mass murder in the real world? In the essay Moral Disagreement which is written by Kwame Anthony Appiah, it claims that â€Å"people everywhere have ideas about the responsibility to their children†. However, some of the parents, especially the homicides’ parents didn’t pay much attention to their children. They seldom care about