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 found many gaps in the articles that I have been reading. There is a definite lack of information on my subject, but this may be because I am studying something that is sort of new. I recently changed my question and one of the reasons was because my previous question had little to no helpful relevant academic articles. However, I remodeled my question because it now relates more to what is prevalent in the current news. My new question is ‘How has new technology and social media changed the reporting of current events?”, but because this is such a new question, there are not many academic conversations published yet. I feel as though it would be a loss for me to completely redirect my research just so it is easier to find more academic journals, because I truly do find this question extremely relatable, relevant, and interesting. The first gap that I found in the conversation about my topic, is the lack of conversation. The second gap that I found, is that many studies on this subject, look at adults instead of teens/young adults. Another gap, is the missing information about the large effect that social media has had on the way that young adults obtain news. Social media and new technology has played such a large role on the perception that we have on current events and current movements, but there seems to be a lack of conversation about this in the academic world. I expected to find many scholars writing about how Black Lives Matter gained the majority of it’s popularity from Twitter, and how people are now able to record real life issues on their cellular phones, and immediately post it to the web. However, from UCF’s database, and scholar.google, I have found very little conversation.
ReplyDeleteSubstantial research has been done in the field of relationship studies concerning gender roles. Thus far, research has mainly focused on the conformation to gender roles from married couples. Three subsequent studies have found that satisfaction in marriage is strongly connected to the degree each partner displays linking traits (Antill, 1983; Ickes, 1985; Kurdek & Schmitt, 1986). “Linking traits” are the personality traits usually associated with women; these include affection, devotion, gentleness, and kindness. Antill found that feminine roles do- in fact- increase happiness in relationships between married couples, stating, “the overall happiness of both husband and wife was even more highly related to their own perceptions of their spouse’s femininity.” Data from this study was collected through a questionnaire in a publication in an issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal in which women reflected on their own and their spouses’ gender roles as well as rating their personal satisfaction with various aspects of their relationship. I found that a majority of the studies that have been published focused on the female perspective of the relationship. Additionally, they focused mainly on married couples. I feel that since these studies were conducted over twenty years ago, it will be interesting to look into the changes in perceptions of traditional gender roles by college aged students. The focus of my study is to see if we live in a society that is “post traditional gender roles” and if so, what affect it has on the personal satisfaction levels in relationships between college students.
ReplyDeleteMost of the articles I have been reading have focused on exactly what I've been wanting to research. Due to the fact that I am conducting my own research study, I've taken a large interest in WHY classical music effects our memory. As in, what happens to our brain that produces this result. I found a couple of very useful articles that highlight the use of various types of music so I can compare with lots of background knowledge. At first, I was planning to research pediatric cancer until it was brought to my attention that I cannot necessarily add to the conversation without doing my own work with cancer cells in a lab. So I changed my question, but I am taking a similar scientific approach to how I will conduct my study and then compare it with scholar's journals about or seemingly about this topic. So far in all of the 6 articles I have read I have yet to see a gap within the conversation. The only minor gap I could possibly talk about is the controversy between styles of music being most effective associated with memorization. The more research I do the more prevalent one pattern will become and I can group those ideas together while also providing the conversation about other music styles that have been effective. I am excited to create my own research study and potentially make my own research paper with evidence that I can actually understand.
ReplyDeleteIn most of the articles I have read about Hollywood and politics show that there is a major factor of influence of political views portrayed in the entertainment business. I focused my study on seeing how much influence they actually have and what they are influencing. In the research study that I have been reading, it talks about what angle Hollywood’s elite take on political ideology: economic, social, and foreign policy. I have noticed some small gaps in the research. In one article of research I have been reading, I have noticed a gap within the research because the researchers are asking Hollywood’s elite about which party they support and not about how their backgrounds shape their views. If we focus on why they support these views it will show us how much influence they will give behind the issue. There was also another gap in this research article. The article states in the conclusion that even with this research they still don’t know to what extent is its influence checked but the need to produce entertainment acceptable to a mass audience. The focus of my personal study is to see how much Hollywood plays in our political views as the general public. These articles are very recent so they will show a more accurate indication of influence.
ReplyDeleteAlmost every article I have read about your mind's role in recovery from an injury has conducted a study on either amateur athletes or professional athletes exclusively. Since I have noticed this, I have changed my research question from "What role can one's mindset play in recovery from injury and sickness" to asking what factors help professional athletes recover from injuries faster than amateur athletes. Most often, it seems as though professional athletes have the ability to recover much more quickly than a person who just enjoys sports as a fun pass-time. This new question will provide me an opportunity to bridge the gap between the studies and hopefully find a connection between the mindset of a professional vs an amateur, and their respective recovery times from injuries. As a professional athlete, I think that I can also add to the conversation by providing my point of view and explaining my observations of other athletes around me recovering from injuries, both professional and amateur.
ReplyDeleteThere is an immense cache of information regarding the effect text messaging and social media on interpersonal relationships on the internet and subsequent databases. Thus far, studies have predominately focused on surveys and questionnaires received from sample groups. For example, a study by Katherine M. Hertlein and Katrina Ancheta of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, found that text messaging supports relationship development processes, relationship maintenance, and relationship enrichment strategies. However, participants in the study also identified ways in which technology complicates relationships through “distancing issues, trust issues, and lack of clarity of message and emotional meaning” (Hertlein, & Ancheta, 2014). The sample size was quite small in this study at only 410 participants. The study was conducted at one southwestern university in only one course which brings forth bias that is statistically significant. The biased small study trend is not unique to this particular scholarly article. Another example is the study by Heidi Hemmer, "Impact of Text Messaging on Communication". Hemmer takes a similar approach to Hertlein and Ancheta in that she asked four open ended questions to a specific sample population. However, her study only surveyed 10 participants. I believe the method of study is flawed in these experiments. Any statistician would agree that the sample sizes in these two example studies are far too small to get any significant data. I submit to this scholarly community a change in the way we look at the problem of texting and social media in regards to interpersonal relationships. We need to poll more people from diverse communities and discuss the differences in the background per subject per community. The focus of my study is to see if texting and social media does in fact hurt interpersonal relationships in collage age couples and I will do this through a large survey from various universities.
ReplyDeleteI've found several gaps in the articles I've read, I found one that stood out to me in the article, "directing technical change from fossil-fuel to renewable energy innovation", by Joel and Roger Smeets. In this academic article they mainly talk about how company's who have invested more into fossil fuels are less likely to change to renewable energy sources. In their study they learn that smaller businesses who are less invested in fossil fuels are more likely to switch. The gap I found in this is that in this journal they do not go into detail about pricing to switch. They just broadly say it is expensive to switch. I would enter this conversation by asking questions about how much it really cost to switch. Also, I would find out using actual numbers and data if it really is more expensive for bigger mixed companies to switch from fossil fuels to renewables. I would ask more questions like what sectors are most resistant to change from fossil fuels. Gaps like these two are good entry points to look farther into the argument and help gain more knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThrough my research into the various aspects of Bitcoin I have found a few re-occurring themes in my articles. For one, they all note that since Bitcoin is so new, we really can only speculate as to its uses in the future. Whether it be regulation, taxation, price stabilization, every article is mostly comprised of speculation of the currency's future. As such I believe a substantial gap could be in the current state of Bitcoin and where it is at now from a regulative and personal use standpoint. Another gap I have found is that none of the articles seem to discuss how the currency can be regulated. This is another topic in which I would like to look deeper into throughout my research. I believe these two gaps are great starting points for my research.
ReplyDeleteAfter creating my first initial question and researching information on it, I realized early that it would need some adjustments. As of now, my question has evolved to: to what extent are programs effectively helping firefighters deal with the psychological interpretations they are often exposed too? Luckily, I have been able to find other scholars who have conducted research that correlates well with my redefined question. In two different studies I have found, both utilized the Impact of Events Scale (IES), which assesses the experience of post-traumatic stress for any specific life event. In one study conducted by Chemtob, Tomas, Law, and Cremniter (1997), they found that post-traumatic intervention may have contributed to a "substantial reduction in hurricane-related distress" (Barboza). However, in a study by Cheryl Regehr and John Hill, they found that those individuals exposed to critical events who attended debriefing groups had significantly higher scores on the IES intrusion subscale than those who did not. I believe that even though this is only one discrepancy that I have found so far, it may potentially be a gap through which I am able to enter the conversation of evaluating the efficacy of crisis debriefing programs. Another potential gap I may have been able to discover is the fact that while a majority of firefighters claim that the intervention groups are helpful, statistics often tell otherwise. Why is it that the firefighters perceive to feel better, but in reality they still suffer from increased levels of stress and other symptoms? I believe that these two potential gaps will be helpful in conducting further research for the assignment.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first decided to write my topic on e-Sports, or competitive gaming, I thought it would be pretty easy. But I find that not to be the case as I do more research. One of the main problems, or gaps, if you will, is that most articles that I find only reference one specific game, rather than covering say, two or three. Its hard when you only take examples form one game because video games can be very different form each other, and its hard to find the aspects talked about in the scholarly articles in other games on my own. But I don't think that's something that is vital, its something that will certainly strengthen my research on the legitimacy of e-sports, as there are a variety of games in this competitive atmosphere. Another gap I keep running into is that I can't really seem to find any articles coming from players themselves. I find that articles coming from people who are apart of the experience are probably the most well-suited to express their opinions on the comparison between e-sports and "traditional" sports. I do not find these gaps, however, to be holding me back and hopefully I can fill these gaps with a least a little bit of information in the future.
ReplyDeleteThroughout my research I have found a few gaps in the articles I have been looking at. My topic is looking at the differences in living on-campus or off-campus during college, and many of the articles discuss these changes in other countries. A point could be made about how living arrangements in college could be different in other countries, and that some data could be invalid. It is a struggle for me to find research that comes from varying parts of the world. The gap in these articles is that there is a conclusion being formed about the area that is being studied, but the conclusion does not necessarily account for differences in living arrangements in other countries. Because of this, I am going to have to look for diverse articles that all have research from different areas and put them together to form my own general conclusion. This gap could also help with further research designed to compare colleges from around the world.
ReplyDeleteI am researching “How does having a communication disorder affect someone’s social life?” There have been multiple research studies conducted on this topic because people who suffer from speech disorders are often seen being bullied or made fun of, especially on TV where often speech disorders are shown as sort of a comedic relief. When I first started researching my question I noticed a few gaps in the research. For example, I found that most of the research was being conducted on children even though adults make up for a majority of the population affected by communication disorders. The elderly are especially affected because they are more prone to dementia and strokes which both greatly impact the ability to speak properly. Another gap I noticed was that most of the communication disorders that researchers were paying attention to were more serious such as Autism or Down Syndrome. Those disorders have too many other factors coming into play because people with Autism or Down Syndrome don’t only have communication problems, they also have problems cognitively, physically, and emotionally. Therefore, it is far too difficult to accurately research that when there are multiple variables that affect the question being studied. I am now leaning more towards researching the question of “What factors contribute to successfully overcoming communication disorders so that one can have a normal social life?” I can research multiple common communication disorders along with the therapies involved to help treat them. I will also look at the ways that family members and friends of the people affected by the communication disorders can help to ensure that they have a normal social life.
ReplyDeleteWith college enrollment rates rising over the past several decades, research on topics regarding students and college choices has become more abundant. My particular topic, which focuses on the motivating factors that propel students to choose their college major, has also been heavily researched. Because there is such vast and substantial information on this topic, locating any gaps was a a difficult task. The authors of the scholarly articles I read each seemed to contribute a unique characteristic to the topic. Several compared factors such as ages, races and ethnicities, and genders. Different variations in the methods used can be see as well when looking at different researchers. However, there is one major, notable gap I noticed throughout this research process. Very little has been discussed regarding which motivational factors produced the happiest and most successful adults in the future. One article goes deep into which factors lead to satisfaction and sense of belonging on campus, but none of them seem to go any farther into the future than that. Knowing that, for example, students who chose their college major based on an interest in the subject ended up being extremely happy and successful at the age of forty, may be very beneficial to the research. This research could be done over an extended period of time by following up with students twenty years later, although that may be tricky. Another possibility would be asking middle aged adults to recall their reasons for choosing a college major, and then documenting their success and happiness.
ReplyDeleteMany of the articles I have read have gaps but some articles fill in the gaps of the others. I am studying the effects of divorce on children. Most articles I have been reading only focus on one side. Some talk about the negative effects and some talk about the positive effects of divorce. Most articles only discuss the negative side effects and don’t even discuss the idea that there is a possibility of positive effects. Even the ones that only talk about one side don’t talk about both the emotional, mental, and physical, they only talk about one. One article will only talk about how it can lead to depression or cause people to be more or less emotionally guarded. Another will only talk about how the children will get worse or better grades. And another will just talk about the children’s relationship with their parents or siblings. None of them talk about all which would fill in the gaps. For the articles to not have gaps they would need to discuss the positive and negative effects and the emotional, mental, and physical elements of each side of the argument.
ReplyDeleteI've been pretty successful on finding research on my topic about the relationship between wealth inequality and current racial tensions in the United States. Some articles actually are asking more or less the same question I am, which is helpful because it'll show me what I need to look for when I conduct my own research. On the other hand, I've found that the articles specific to my paper are extremely lengthy, one even being fifty-two pages long. And these fifty-two pages were not easy to read; a lot of the research was data and economic numbers and figures that were beyond my comprehension. I also have to be careful about not taking ideas straight from these research studies, but to use them to help me shape my ideas. Other articles I've found are more broad, about the general consensus on racism currently or in the past. As I become more of an expert on my topic, I will be able to decipher what is important about the history of what I'm researching and use it to enhance my ideas in my paper. The gaps here are just knowing how exactly to use the information I'm reading. I hope that my research paper can be a perfect balance between articles directly about my topic, articles about the history of certain elements in my topic, and also my own research.
ReplyDeleteMy research is on how different types of biases that doctors have can negatively affect patient care. Most of the academic articles I’ve found have been created in an attempt to fill specific gaps, so I haven’t come across a lot of gaps. However, because this research is all conducted with information given by the patients, there are particular predispositions that can skew the data in favor of each author’s hypothesis. For example, in the academic article "Race, Gender, And Partnership In The Patient–Physician Relationship," all of the data was collected via telephone interviews between 1996 and 1998 and featured African American and Caucasian people describing their most recent doctor’s visits. Because all of the research collected was from the patient’s perspective, their own prejudices could have come into play and made them perceive differential treatment where none existed. In addition, the political climate in the mid to late nineties contained high racial tensions, which also could have affected the results of the survey. Also, research that deals with LGBTQ+ members is usually conducted by LGBTQ+ researchers and clinicians, who will try very hard to find as much prejudice as possible, so as to show the seriousness of the problem and send physicians on the path to treating other homosexual people as equals. While overall there hasn’t been many gaps in my research, there are traces of it in most of the articles I’ve come across.
ReplyDeleteWhen researching color’s impact on marketing I noticed a couple gaps. Studies conducted are often about emotion, associations and judgements. Very little research has been done on color’s economic impact on a global scale. We know how people in the U.S. feel when it comes to colors in different commercial settings but we less about it in other countries. For example in the United State black cats are considered of a sign of bad luck while in Japan and Britain. How have products from the U.S. preformed when introduced into other countries? Did it’s presentation have to be tweaked to better fit in with different cultural norms? Another gap I noticed is there hasn’t been any research on color preferences for children. As a child matures their favorite color changes, why is that and how does that effect what they purchase? What colors are chosen the most by kids. How have businesses taken advantage of this? Obviously blue and pink are popular colors when it comes to kids but why does their favorite color change as they get older? How do companies get children to buy blue and pink? How long did it take for colors to become this genderized?
ReplyDeleteI am conducting my research on the range of influences between western classical composition and jazz improvisation, and in turn compare similarities across multiple genres to the melodic influences of jazz and classical music. Although plenty of research has been conducted on influences in jazz music across sub-genres (cool jazz, be bop, hard bop), very little has been conducted of cross-genre influence, and some statements can be controversial since music is an art form and has different interpretations. One example of a controversial "gap" in the sources I have gathered is between "Pieces of music: The ontology of classical, rock, and jazz music." by Andrew Kania and "Upholding Standards…” by Julian Dodd. In Kania's article, classical music performance is portrayed as being strikingly similar to jazz. The author refers to classical music as "...an abstract object" with performance improvisation similar to jazz music. However, in Dodd's academic journal, the performance quality of classical music is regarded as a fundamental contrast to jazz music. "Second, in composing a work of classical music, a composer specifies a complex condition that a performance must fully meet in order to be a correctly formed (that is, accurate) performance of the said work." (Dodd 1). This is just one example of opposing interpretations of musical genre.
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ReplyDeleteAlmost every article I have read about my topic have a lot of research behind it, but most of them are missing information on why people in the deep web can't be stopped, which is something very important if don't have much background information on the topic. Most people don't know the level of anonymity on the deep web, and what precautions people take in order to not be found. Another thing I have noticed is that the articles that go really in depth about the topic don't give much information about the background of the deep web and it's guided towards people that already have a somewhat extensive knowledge about the topic, which can be hard to understand for people that haven't heard about it before. The articles that do provide information on the basics of the deep web don't really cover much information on how it affects us and why people don't hear about it much. I think articles should always provide at least a basic background on this so it can be easier to understand for those who don't know about it, and information on why it is so hard to track people down to prevent crimes and illegal trade.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the actual research articles I have been reading place a lot of focus on surveying people who have had concussions and relaying the results. What there hasn't been a lot of discussion on is the reaction to coaches and how they are handling the changes being brought to the game or changes that they are putting in themselves. I have also read a lot on suggestions being made for various sports but that there really isn't a lot of follow through especially since there are still individuals out there that deny the danger or argue that changes will ruin the game. There have been a lot of articles I have read that talk about the issues with what effects it has on a young child such as memory and depression. What I would like to try and look more into is what is being done to help youth that have already sustained one or more concussions and what type of control leagues are putting on the issue. I have read that at some levels coaches are holding players out because they know the player has received more than one concussion. What I hope to find is more restrictions being put in place by head officials such as possibilities of minimum sit out time or being held out indefinitely after a repeat concussion.
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