Murder

Annotated bibliography

Due date: Friday March 13

Length: 500 words

An annotated bibliography requires conducting independent research and evaluating different academic sources. Students will be required to find and assess 3 different academic sources (either 1 book and 2 peer-reviewed articles or 2 books and 1 peer-reviewed article), and write a short (150-200 word) summary and critical analysis of each. The total length of the assessment is 500 words.

What to do:

1) Select what type of offence you are planning to focus on in your research essay, for example, assault, murder, hate crimes, etc. (Note that you are able to change your chosen offence at a later stage if you want, although this may cost you time in doing additional research).

2) Start researching to find appropriate scholarly material about your chosen offence. The three ways that I would recommend to begin your research are:

a. A good old-fashioned library search. Start looking through the library here and at other universities to see if there are any books on your offence type that might be appropriate. Get any relevant books out on load and read. You can also borrow books from other libraries if you organise a Caval card – ask the librarians here at Macquarie how to set this up.

b. Google scholar – google scholar searches work similarly to regular google searches but results are generally (though not always)limited to academic sources (mostly journal articles). Once you have identified a useful looking source on google scholar you will likely have to access it through the library portal in order to avoid having to pay an access fee. Write down the name of the journal as well as the issue number, name of the article, and author. Put this info into a library search and go from there. Google searches are a great way to start researching. However, keep in mind that search results are not always comprehensive.

c. Search through library databases. These link directly to online criminology journals (e.g. the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, Policing & Society, Criminology and Criminal Justice, etc.). These represent arguably the best and most comprehensive academic resources available.

3) From your research, select material that seems to relate most directly to your topic, and that will help shed light on it in some useful way. Your research essay has to do with theories about crime causationfor your specific offence, so try and select articles with this in mind.

4) After you have chosen your 3 academic sources you are required to write an evaluation of each one. The evaluations are to be between 150-200 words each, and 500 words in total. In your evaluation you must:

a. Begin by providing the proper citation for your source

b. Describe the content of the source (what issue does it address? How was any research done? What does it conclude?)

c. Evaluate its validity and usefulness/relevance to your research (What are its strengths and weaknesses? Does it usefully inform your research? How?)

Important Points to Remember:

• All sources must be proper academic/scholarly texts. Academic texts are subject to much higher standards in terms of quality, objectivity and accountability than other sources available through the media and online. For the purposes of this assessment, appropriate scholarly sources are limited to either books or book chapters(preferably published by a university, e.g. Oxford University Press), or peer-reviewed journal articles. Peer-reviewed articles are those published in most academic journals (e.g. British Journal of Criminology, Criminology & Criminal Justice, etc.). Do not cite websites (e.g. Wikipedia) or news media (e.g. Sydney Morning Herald or ABC News). These can be used in some assessments but not this one!

• Use correct formatting. One of the primary purposes of this assignment is to get you used to proper scholarly conventions. Appropriate formatting is easy to get right and an easy way to attain easy marks. All it takes is some attention to detail. There are many different styles of academic formatting. For your PICT subjects the required style is SAGE Harvard.

Click on the following link for detailed information on appropriate referencing:

http://www.uk.sagepub.com/repository/binaries/pdf/SAGE_Harvard_reference_style.pdf

• Adhere to the word limit. In academia and in most work settings, it is important that you are able write to a brief, that is, to respond to set tasks in the way intended. With regard to the word limit, you must stay within a 10% range (i.e. between 450-550 words). Anything either over or under this will attract a penalty.

Useful Links

There are heaps of good resources available online to help you write an annotated bibliography. Check out the sample links below for some useful additional information:

http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/onlib/annotated_bib.html

http://www.canberra.edu.au/studyskills/writing/bibliography

https://academicskills.anu.edu.au/resources/handouts/writing-annotated-bibliography