Medical Sociology
SYO 4400
Annotated Bibliography Instructions

    The purpose of this assignment is to give you the opportunity to become more familiar with research that has been done recently in some area of medical sociology. An annotated bibliography (AB) is a list of readings that have central importance to a particular area of study. An AB usually includes additional information on each entry, such as a summary or critical evaluation.

    Please select a topic of interest to you that is related to health or health care and has sociological relevance. Try to be as specific as possible. After selecting a topic of interest, submit a brief (1-3 sentence) summary of your topic to me via email so that I can approve your topic and assist in any necessary revision of it. Frequently initial topics are too broad or too narrow and require revision to make them feasible. Please feel free to talk with me about your topic during office hours, after class, or we can correspond via email.

    You will then conduct a systematic search of research done on your topic. Select 8-10 articles that you feel are important in some way to current research in the area you select. Please limit your search to articles that appear in peer-reviewed journals within the past 15 years. You will probably find it helpful to use the various abstract indexing services available through the library system (e.g., Medline, Sociological Abstracts). These services offer databases of published articles and provide you with a method of searching by topic, title, etc. They are available through the Databases selection from the library home page. The two that will probably be most helpful are Medline and Sociological Abstracts (although you may use any indexing service you think might be helpful). You can access these by typing the search engine name (e.g., "Medline") into the Quick Search field and clicking on "Search" then clicking on "Connect Now". Once you are connected to Medline or Sociological Abstracts, you can conduct keyword searches to locate articles on your topic of interest. Conduct searches in these databases will generate lists of articles. You can then use the article titles and summaries to decide which ones to look up in journals but please base your summaries on the full-text version (printed or electronic) of the article. If you have difficulty locating useful articles, please see me after class or during office hours.

    First, provide a brief introduction (1-2 pages) that identifies your topic and provides sufficient background for your AB. Next, compose a summary of each article that includes: (1) a full citation, (2) the objective(s) of the research, (3) the methodology used to conduct the research, (4) findings or results, (5) the author's conclusions, and (6) an evaluation of each article. The evaluation should indicate why you included this particular article (in other words, what important theme, concept or empirical finding does it represent in this area of research) and describe the sociological relevance of the research. Article summaries should generally not exceed one page in length.

Follow this link for an example summary.

    Please use a word processor to produce your work. All text should be double-spaced and use a reasonable font and margins.