Annotate Bibliography: General Comments

In general [these comments to all students –may/may not apply to you in all cases:

  1. Etymology of the word must be included [brief] - Where did the word come from? How did it evolve?
    here is a great place to start:
  2. There was a general lack of depth to the resources & references used. These are not to be primarily health or nursing related [if you can help it] but reflect a broad background across disciplines and databases. This exercise is designed to be ‘foundational’ to the concept analysis paper to follow and intended to reflect a review of what you discovered.
  3. The aim of this exercise is to locate all language uses of your concept – looking in one or two dictionaries is not sufficient. Some of you did a little looking outside of nursing literature – some of you a lot, some of you none. Remember, these concepts are used in many ways to mean many different things – contextually, culturally. The point is to expand our understanding of the meaning of these terms – remember ‘ to cast your net widely’ – beyond medicine & healthcare – while it is possible that no one anywhere else but in nursing/medicine/healthcare may use the concept, you have to at least document that you looked – where you looked and how you looked –to verify this.
  4. Point about citations: You cannot quote a person directly from an article where they were directly quoted: example: If Smith quotes Jones, you cannot in your paper quote Jones directly and use Smith for the citation. You do not know that Smith is accurately quoting Jones. If you wish to use the original authors’ work/words, you must locate that reference & then cite as a primary reference.
    Just remember as you read your returned work with commentary that the purpose of this exercise was for you to explore and uncover ALL USES across as many disciplines as you could find [including nursing but not to the exclusion of others] which provides the basis for why a concept analysis is needed to clarify meaning & promote understanding of what needs to be done.
  5. When you write your concept analysis paper, be sure that you end the section Actual Analysiswith a definition of your concept. It is from this definition that you will construct your cases. Be sure to do the following:
  6. What does your concept ‘look like’? [critical attributes]
    Need to define these so that you can recognize presence of the concept & how to measure it – AND the critical attributes become the criteria for your ‘model case’.
  7. What has to happen, occur, or be present before the concept can occur? [antecedents]
  8. What happens as a result of the concept? [consequences]
  9. Make sure you are following APA 6th edition for the following:
  10. Running Head
  11. Title page
  12. Headers & subheaders
  13. Pagination
  14. Citations in text
  15. Reference page