This blog calls you to think critically about some gaps you have noticed in the literature you have read thus far. If you think back to the student work we have read thus far, a major part of an inquiry based research project involves locating gaps in the conversation. For example, in the piece we read about Facebook disclosure, the author noticed a gap in the literature in recognizing there weren't any considerations for the Myers Brigs Type Indicator in research involving social behavior. The researcher noticed that the Five Factor Model was used exclusively, and she set out to occupy this gap by conducting her own study to see how the MBTI might add something interesting to help further understand Facebook disclosure.
At this point, you should be pretty well entrenched in your work, and it is now time to think critically about what might be missing from the conversation.
Your task for this blog is to deliver a very concise rendition of the research conversation, and then indicate some gaps in the current conversation. I'm sure there is a different angle you can look into that has yet to be explored. Think of this blog posting as a prequel to your literature review.
So far, I have read six of my academic articles, and all of these articles vary in a wide range of information. Because I am doing my project on how different female pop artists have influenced the idea of feminism to girls, each article is about a different artist. While they are each about a different artist, all of the authors talk about a message these artists have portrayed through their attitude, work, and style, but hardly any of the articles have mentioned how their songs have influenced these new ideas of feminism. I believe this is what I want to look more closely at, when conducting my primary research. I would look at how their songs have mirrored their message they try to convey to the audience through their lyrics.
ReplyDeleteThroughout my research, I have discovered a lot of articles pertaining to the wrongs of animal testing and new and more accurate techniques that can be used in replace of them. I have also discovered articles that describe how technology is advancing and what that means for the world of animal testing. While most of these articles I have come across focus on wrongs of animal testing for research, some articles I have found point out the increased violence that is associated with the increase of protests against animal testing, and the lack of voices heard because of this on the scientific side. However, the articles failed to mention how these increasingly violent animal rights campaigns have almost defeated the purpose in some cases of the campaigns themselves due to casualties of the lab animals. Moving forward in my research, I would like to express the controversy of using violence to fight for animal rights and why it is defeating the purpose, as compared to more peaceful campaigns, and what this means for the world of science.
ReplyDeleteThe academic conversation I have been researching discusses the effects television can have on family values. Throughout my articles I have noticed a wide range of methods executed for approaching this issue. Some researchers conducted focus groups and private interviews in an effort to collect qualitative data showing whether or not people thought typical family sitcoms portrayed negative aspects of family life. Other researchers analyzed survey data on the matter and even pulled conclusions from textual analysis of actual television show scripts. Overall, most of my articles, based on their different methods and conclusions, support the claim that family television shows have shown increasingly nontraditional families over the years that portray increasingly negative family values to viewers. One interesting gap I’ve found is that the actual ways in which people are affected by these negative portrayals is hardly mentioned in all of my research. It is simply concluded that television shows portray families in negative ways, and this therefore affects viewers’ family values. Very little research actually dives into how these television shows, through their scripts and images, are able to alter the perceptions and values of viewers. I find this a necessary gap to investigate, as it might show insight into how negative portrayals compete with positive portrayals of television families and how this competition can lead to the overall effects on viewers and their values.
ReplyDeleteWhen looking at seven different research studies on my topic of the effect of social media on businesses, I saw that it did not just focusing on what social media does to businesses. Instead, there is a lot of comparison of the social media differences in different countries and how the different cultures affect the way social media is used in marketing for businesses. There is also a lot of comparison of different businesses to one another and what works for them and their desired audience. There have also been more charts and analyzing than I expected. I expected a lot of statistics, but it is more complicated and intricate than the type of details I have come across like what percentage of people in a certain country use social media as a means of deciding items to purchase. When first choosing my topic, I assumed that the information I would find would be statistics on companies’ sales before and after using social media for products. The results are much more detailed information, but I have not really found any clear data of a company’s sales before and after social media use.
ReplyDeleteMy issue that I am researching is how television effect the development of children. This is an ever increasing problem due to advances in techniology, television becomes more and more appealing to everyone. As the effect it has had on our children has been studied since as early as the 1950s, there has always been holes in the research. A lot of times these holes are found in the age group that is being researched. If the children are any older than two years there are countless things that may be affecting their development including home life, friends, and health issues. Therefore many of the studies that have been done have other issues swaying the data making it unclear whether TV usage is the main contributing factor. There is also a very limited amount of qualitative research, almost all studies have been quantitative. Studying, how many children watch TV for how many hours and what their test scores are. Although this research is beneficial it doesn't have any findings on what exactly is causing these cognitive delays which could be very beneficial findings.
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ReplyDeleteWe currently have an insane amount of understanding about how the universe works. Despite that fact, there’s always going to be even more that we don't know. As you may say, every door opened leads to a hundred more doors to be opened. Therefore, any question raised about astronomy or cosmology will have underlying gaps in its understanding. When it comes to the search for life in the cosmos, the gaps in the information can be the most interesting part. The biggest gap in the literature comes with the nature of science though. Science is a great tool for understanding how things come about, such as what conditions might be necessary for life to evolve. However, it cannot tell us why things happen, or the intent behind certain aspects of nature. Such as why life starts, why there was a “big bang”, why anything exists at all, or why we ask these questions in the first place. With that conundrum aside, it can also be hard to pin point gaps in the literature because theories, whether substantially supported or not, will often fill the gaps momentarily. There are definitely some emerging gaps in the understanding of how our own life on this planet was first initiated. We simply don't know where these RNA molecules came from and congregated in order to begin building proteins. We also can’t exclude the possibility that life may be able to come about in completely different circumstances from our own.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the gap in my research is the exact problem I am trying to explore. There is a lot of data for fitness apps and connecting with people. There is a lot of research involving social media and connecting with people in the fitness community. The gap exists with Instagram in particular, and the fitness profiles. I want to examine those profiles and see if they have any effect on people's who follow them fitness routines. What I mean by that is there are a lot of "fitness" pages on instagram that post progress pictures, food recipes, workout routines, etc that people follow. I want to know if those are effective like real workout routines. The librarian told me to research the two different subjects mentioned above and see if I can combine my findings from both of those and then conduct a survey amongst the UCF community to support/deny my data.
ReplyDeleteIn every one of my articles, researchers study how the fine arts can actually help a students score better on tests like SAT and ACT. They al seem to have these numbers as evidence on how a fine arts education can help a student score better. There is also information on how fine arts can help a person socially as well, for example, helping a student become more confident, or practice more. But all of this information is mainly based off of schools that tend to be "wealthier." Many authors of articles written on this topic state that schools with a higher black/Hispanic population tend to be the schools where the arts are not involved and where the highest percentages of high school drop outs come from. There is a gap in the research because the researcher never talks about those students in that situation that have had an arts education. I want to find information that links how student's with an arts education, whether they live in a rich community or a poor one, have a better chance of going through all four years of high school.
ReplyDeleteI have read several academic articles about social media and culture’s affect on people who are doing it and or considering cosmetic surgery. Most of the articles I have read used similar methods of finding out their facts for research which was surveys and looking at data from other researcher. Most articles talked about the pros and cons of cosmetic surgery but didn’t advise to do it or not. Even though the articles were about factors affecting people to do cosmetic surgery they had different ways of approaching their research. For example, one article was trying to understand why younger people were doing it and others were focused on how social media was used to advertise cosmetic surgery. The gap in my research is the articles don’t really state what led them to pursue this research. I started this research project with the hope of gaining a deeper understanding of why people really doing this and how social media and culture affect this. Most my studies are reporting the data of people of the amount of people doing it and their age group or abut advertising but not a deeper insight in what will trigger a person to do this.
ReplyDeleteWith my topic, the gap I have been facing is mostly the timing in between each article and the wording of my searches. I find that some of the same articles appear on different databases and they don't always cover the information I'm looking for. Some of them mainly focus on just how technology changed the marketing of music instead of the industry as a whole. When I switch up my wording I still always seem to get technology as the main marketing mechanism of it all but I'm now finding more articles specific for my topic of research.
ReplyDeleteMy research topic is the effects of hip hip music on college students, and although this is an interesting topic, some of the articles are biased. I've also been having articles that pertain to this specific topic because most articles don't have the data that I need or have data that isn't important to my topic. Most of the articles mainly focus on hip hop and the background aspect of it. Also most of the articles that I do find focus on hip hop in the African American culture.
ReplyDeleteThe approach that I'm going at will include how hip hop shapes the way certain people or how it affects their thought process, not just how it affects behavior
DeleteThe main aspect in all of my articles involves makeup and the varying effects it can have on mental health. A gap I have found within these articles is that a test has not been conducted on makeup usage comparing it to where they feel the need to wear it. I find that a big part of the lack of confidence makeup users have may be related to the places they feel the need to wear their makeup to. For instance, a woman who only wears makeup on her nights out may have a higher amount of confidence than a woman who feels the need to put makeup on just to go to the grocery store. Most of the research I have collected discusses the types of makeup used, the amount that is worn, and the different psychological aspects it produces, but none have looked into location as being a major contributor. If I can produce tests comparing makeup to the locations it is worn to, I may help to fill in a gap in the data on this issue.
ReplyDeleteI have read several articles and case files about the death penalty. Some supporting it, and some calling for the abolishment of the death penalty. They each provide a wide array of information, ranging from concrete statistics to some pretty compelling logic. But I have yet to find an article on the perspective of the everyday person, most articles seem to come from experts who have been studying the subject for a while
ReplyDeleteI am researching the barriers between doctors and patients in our society today. I have read many articles about how communication is the most important thing but on certain issues that is hard to accomplish in the environment they are in. I found gaps in these articles because they don't explain much about how to fix this issue it is all just about how the problem exists. Finding articles that include the solution to the problem is hard and so I believe that is where the gaps are in my research.
ReplyDeleteI have read several academic articles pertaining to my research topic: the affect service dogs have on the psychological well-being of humans. However, most of the articles I found conducted similar studies where they had an experimental and control group, or people with service dogs and people without. The groups with service dogs were evaluated on their health and well-being, including anxiety and depressive symptoms, over the following years. One of the gaps in my research is that the studies only look at individuals who are adults. I think it would be beneficial to see the affect it has on children, because it may differ slightly. Also, all of the articles look at one-on-one service dog partnerships and I would like to see how other types of service dogs, specifically therapy dogs, influence the well-being of individuals, such as those in hospitals or retirement homes. I believe therapy dogs will have an impact on human well-being but one that differs from an everyday interaction with a personal service dog. I believe that researching therapy dogs and service dog impact on children would be a good angle for me to look into, however I am not sure how much previous research there has been done in these areas.
ReplyDeleteFor my research, I have read several scholarly articles that go very much in depth on what exactly the negative stigma surrounds mental health is. Most of the articles conduct similar experiment using methods like surveys and analyzing databases for information on their research. A constraint to this topic is that stigma and stereotypes are inevitable, and there is not much that one can do for it to go away completely. All the articles I have read through say that people avoid seeking help for their mental illness because they are afraid to be shamed, outcasted, discriminated against, or feel any other effects of stigma. However, they fail to go into why it is that people are so desperately willing to give up their health in order to stay away from the judgment of people. I believe if a couple of case-studies were done that were able to go into detail with the whole thought process and mentality of the individual with the disorder, it will be more clear to why people with mental illness make the sacrifice of remaining into silence when they could seek the help available.
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