Unit 3 Discussion Board: Annotated Bibliography & Literature Review

This discussion board post delves into the significance of annotated bibliographies in academic research, emphasizing their role in critical thinking, effective literature reviews, and validating research. It highlights how annotated bibliographies aid in understanding sources, situating research, and enhancing research skills. The post then contrasts policy analysis with internet searches, stressing the importance of stakeholder perspectives, heuristic models, and policy tools. It further differentiates between annotated bibliographies and literature reviews, focusing on their distinct purposes, structures, and components. The post concludes with advice on transitioning to a literature review, advising against personal opinions and non-scholarly sources, promoting objective writing, and emphasizing the importance of unbiased research presentation. References from relevant academic sources are also provided to support the discussion.

Running head: UNIT 3 DISCUSSION BOARD
Unit 3 discussion board
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1UNIT 3 DISCUSSION BOARD
Annotated bibliography encourages one to think critically about the work content and its
place in wider field of study and related to one’s own research, ideas and assumptions. It helps in
effective literature review as it provides evidence for understanding sources as one read it
readily. A good annotated bibliography provides an opportunity to validate one’s own research
and review material present in literature. It helps to situates study and underlying research
problem in continuous professional conversation. In addition, annotated bibliography also
provides an opportunity for others for determining whether source cited are helpful for research
or not. Most importantly, a good annotated bibliography assists researchers in determining
whether one is interested in the topic as it provides background information. Annotated
bibliography provides an idea of various scholarly investigations that one performs in a
particular area of research or study. Research skills are also enhanced where critical reading and
identification of key points in a research can be done. The content can be synthesized effectively
and schematically helping readers to determine validity and its usefulness in relation to topic of
investigation and research problem that in turn help in composing an effective literature review
(Woodward, Elliot & Nagel, 2013).
The policy analysis cannot be done by internet search and gathering relevant data
regarding issues associated with the policy. The analysis of the issue needs to be done from
political and stakeholders’ perspective taking legislation and regulations into consideration.
Stakeholders include businesses, community groups, citizens and non-governmental
organizations where their influence and relative power and solutions are discussed. Heuristic
model or policy cycle can be used to analyse the policy problem from implementation state to
practice. Policy tools are used for the analysis and evaluation and various viewpoints can be
taken into consideration looking for effectiveness of policy, cost, money, outputs or outcomes.

2UNIT 3 DISCUSSION BOARD
Meta-policy is also contextual and system approach providing scope for problem interpretation
of policy from structural nature. Contextual factors like economic, political and socio-cultural
factors influence policy process. Problems arising due to political institution or economic system
(structural factors) that entail solutions for policy issue are also considered and simple internet
search would miss out on important details (Weimer & Vining, 2017).
While transitioning from annotated bibliography to literature review, one need to be
careful about purpose, structure and components as they differ greatly. For purpose, in annotated
bibliography, an ordered list of sources is provided with brief explanations about credibility of
source and relevancy of topic whereas in literature review, an overview of particular topic is
summarized and explained with most significant topics. In bibliography, there is separation of
sources from each other and arranged alphabetically, however in literature review, sources are
integrated into paragraphs depending upon progression of topic and can be repeated more than
once (Lester & Lester, 2015). For components, introduction explains topic, there is synthesis of
sources as topic is explained throughout the main body and summarizing overall background.
These are major points that one need to take into consideration during transition.
While writing literature review, one need to avoid using personal opinions and emotional
phrases and should demonstrate unbiased showcasing of existing research and thoughts about
topic. The writing should be objective and not subjective in literature review. One should avoid
using non-scholarly or non-authoritative sources while conducting research for the literature
review (Rowe, 2014).

3UNIT 3 DISCUSSION BOARD
References
Lester, J. D., & Lester Jr, J. D. (2015). Writing Research Papers: A Complete Guide
(paperback). Pearson.
Rowe, F. (2014). What literature review is not: diversity, boundaries and
recommendations. European Journal of Information Systems, 23(3), 241-255.
Weimer, D. L., & Vining, A. R. (2017). Policy analysis: Concepts and practice. Taylor &
Francis, pp.325.
Woodward, A., Elliot, D. L., & Nagel, K. C. (2013). Textbooks in school and society: An
annotated bibliography & guide to research (Vol. 6). Routledge, pp.157.