Literature Review

Instructions:

The purpose of this assignment is to get you thinking about your term paper. You will submit drafts of your paper throughout the semester for brief feedback by the instructor to improve your final term paper. Based on the topic you selected in Week 1 and after beginning to review scholarly sources about your topic, provide a detailed outline of your paper. The outline should include the following sections:

1. Introduction

a. Brief summary of the problem and policy:

2. Literature Review

a. _________________

b. _________________

c. _________________

d. _________________

3. Theoretical Explanation for Policy

4. Recommendation(s)

5. References

Where your assignment will look different from your peers will be specific to parts 1a and 2a-2d.

Part 1a should provide a brief summary of the problem at hand and the policy specific to that issue. This can come verbatim from your paper selection and rationale assignment from week 1.

Parts 2a-2d should include subsections of what you will discuss related to your specific policy issue. While these sections may change as you begin writing your paper, it is important to have an outline of topics to keep your paper organized and ensure that it includes at least some of the main issues you will discuss.

For example: If I selected a paper topic on the death penalty I would preliminarily include the following topics to discuss in the literature review:

2. Literature Review

a. Creation and Brief History of the Death Penalty

b. Prevalence and Differences in the Death Penalty in the United States today

c. Research on the effectiveness of the death penalty

Issues related to the effectiveness with the death penalty including racial and sex differences

This assignment is meant to make sure you have explored your topic at least from briefly enough to know the policy, potential issues, and give me an opportunity to point out other factors that you might want to consider. Overall, this is a completion based assignment. However, you should still review the rubric below.