Journal Analysis

-Identify the Articles
When going through the journal issues, don’t worry about letters to the editor, editorials, book reviews, advertisements and the like. In each issue, focus on the empirical research-based articles only.

-Organizing and Analyzing the Information
Go through the articles several times to be able to categorize them properly in order to answer questions for this assignment. Use Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Word tables to create separate charts for the following information (DO NOT COMBINE CHARTS). For the categories below, you will need to define what you find and provide one example. For example, if you find that x% of the articles use quasi-experimental design, you need to define what quasi-experimental mean first, and then give one example.

Categories

1. Topics: Generate a list of topics that these seem to be covering. Do not try to be too specific here. On this first chart, list the articles that fall under each category you generate. Listing the first three words of the title, the volume no. and the name of the journal (which you can abbreviate) is sufficient.

2. Research Methods: Go through the articles again. Organize the articles according to the research method used. For this chart, you will use the example article’s categories because research methods have not varied much in the last thirty years. The article gives excellent definitions of each method to help you determine which study goes where.

3. Data Collection Methods: Go through the articles a third time. For this chart, you again will use the example article’s categories.

4. Settings: Simply list where the study occurred in broad terms such as P-12, Higher Ed, Government, Hospital etc.

Create an excel sheet with at least five columns: Article Title, Topic, Research Methods, Data Collection, Setting (feel free to add more). After accumulating the data in a spreadsheet, you will proceed with your analyses.

Presenting the Information
Present the information in two ways:

1. Write up a brief summary in paragraph form, telling us what journal you selected and what the most common occurrence was for each of your charts. Tell what your journal demonstrated through analysis. What topics, research methods, data collection methods, and settings were most common in your journal?

2. Sharing the Charts: You need to create charts using the Google Spreadsheet and save all 4 charts or all 4 graphs. (4 charts on 1 page) Place those graphics into your document.

Here is a link to give you an example
http://itec8133.pbworks.com/w/page/75762551/Group%201%20Spring%202014