Guidelines
Follow these guidelines for your literature review:
Required Sections: Title page; Topic Overview, Literature Review, Summary, Reference
Required formatting: APA style. see APA style https://apastyle.apa.org/
Title Page: see APA style formatting
Topic Overview section: provide a brief overview of your topic before your literature review. (about two paragraphs)
What is the area of interest?
Describe the scope of the problem or issue (i.e., How many individuals are affected by the problem?).
Why is this an important problem to study? Why is this an important area of research for the health education, sexuality education, or public health profession?
Literature Review section: the literature section contains only facts (e.g., data, stats). When writing this section assume the reader has limited knowledge of the topic. All statements made must be credited to the appropriate source(s). There is no such thing as generally accepted facts in this section.
In this section, you should synthesize and evaluate the information you have gained from reading the journal articles you chose.
Based on your research into the current literature about your topic, what is known about this topic? Where is the research on your topic weak? What is still unknown about this topic?
Summary section: Overall, what can you say is known about this topic? Why is it important? Summarize and integrate the knowledge in brief. Is there general agreement among the authors of these journal articles? If there is disagreement, what were some possible reasons for this? What is still unknown about your topic; how does this lead to your proposed study?
Reference section:
APA style
A minimum of ten (10) citations with eight (8) being research articles and a maximum of two (2) being websites or other peer-reviewed research.
All your sources must be cited and reviewed individually.
Your sources must be from 2015 or newer; be careful not to cite a website that has re-used sources that originally predate 2010.
Types of sources include journals, books, popular literature, and electronic resources.
Wikipedia and other similar websites/sources are not acceptable.
Your sources should be primary and secondary sources and academic; encyclopedia sources provide broad overviews and are thus not appropriate for a literature review.
Maximum Length: 5 double-spaced pages
The topic overview and literature sections should be four (4) pages.
The Summary section should be one (1) page.
This length requirement does not include the title page, charts, footnotes, or the reference section.
Your citations and reference list should follow the APA 6th edition style and formatting.
Writing Requirements
Literature reviews and academic writing is formal in nature. Do not use 1st person. (e.g., “this study was conducted…” rather than “we conducted this study…”)
Do not include any personal statements or anecdotes. e.g., “I was interested in studying abstinence-only education because …” does not belong in a literature review.
Verb tense – as a guideline use past tense (e.g., “the results indicated” rather than “the results indicate”) although there are exceptions; see the APA Publication Manual for any questions.
Contractions – do not use contractions! (e.g., “it does not follow” rather than “it doesn’t follow”). Spell out all words.
Citations include the author and year, not the title of the journal or the journal article.
Last Completed Projects
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