Writing a bibliography is a hard task for many students, but an annotated bibliography becomes a real quest for those who have never written one before. So what is an annotated bibliography and why do we need it? An annotated bibliography is a short review of studies published by authors on the topic of the planned research. The purpose of an annotated bibliography, first of all, is to describe what was done on the topic at the time of the survey: concepts, approaches of different authors, the current state of the problem, and a range of unresolved problems in this field of science.
1. Conduct primary literature research on topical issues. The necessary literature is searched in monographs, articles, journals, reference materials, and on the internet.
2. Engage in primary reading of found literature. Conduct a superficial analysis of content. At this stage you will read, systematize the selected material, and select necessary data for your research.
3. Study the literature on your selected topic. For an annotated bibliography you should use only information that is relevant to the topic. The criterion for evaluating information is the possibility of its practical use in your research.
4. Draw up a short summary. After studying each source, it is necessary to note (quote, rephrase) the most important points to create an original data bank on a selected topic that can be useful in further research, such as interesting thoughts, facts, figures, different points of view, quotes, and abstracts.
5. Write the annotated bibliography. For your annotated bibliography you should select the most authoritative sources. It is desirable to find the latest materials, because science, technology, and culture are constantly changing.
6. Write the conclusion. The conclusion consists of a brief summary about the literature and the purpose of the planned research work.
7. Create a bibliography list. When writing a bibliography, you should know that the main purpose of its creation is to help the reader find the literature you have used.
The annotated bibliography should be analytical, and information disclosed in articles should be critically treated. The annotated bibliography should be built around a particular issue, not publications. It is necessary to emphasize practical results of studies and their concurrence with theoretical assumptions.
The following template was made for the list of articles published on the topic about children’s emotions. It is a part of a full paper and was written in accordance with APA style.
APA Annotated Bibliography Template: Psychology of Children’s Emotions
Cole P. (2004). Emotion regulation as a scientific construct: Methodological challenges and directors for child development research. Child Development. p. 75.
№ 2. P. 317–333.
This article is devoted to one of the most actively studied problems in modern child psychology – regulation of emotions. The author of the article argues that, having become a popular topic of research, the problem of emotion regulation still does not have clear scientific paradigms. The article gives the basic concepts related to this problem, gives examples for all cases identified by the author as systematic problems under study, and analyzes the basic techniques for regulating emotions. In addition, the author describes four main methods for fixing the desired phenomena related to the problem:
1. Activation of emotions and its purposeful regulation.
2. Analysis of time costs for the regulation of emotions.
3. Measuring the emotions opposite to the activated ones.
4. A variety of convergent methods of measuring emotions.
Eisenberg N., Spinrad T. (2004). Emotion-related regulation: Sharpening the definition. Child Development. pp. 334–339.
Referring to the proposal of the author from a previous article on the discussion about regulation of children’s emotions, the authors of this article express their own views on the issue. In particular, they believe that it is necessary to draw a line between the processes of regulating emotion and emotional impact on other people. In addition, they consider it necessary to clearly differentiate the individual’s behavior in the situation of regulating emotions, while highlighting the following:
- behavioral regulation under the influence from the outside and regulation carried out independently;
- targeted regulation and unintended (random) regulation;
- arbitrary and involuntary regulation.
In addition, the article provides descriptions of some emotion-like states and methods of their regulation, as well as similarities and differences of their regulation from the regulation of emotions.
Cole P., Martin.S., Dennis T. (2004). Differentiating emotion regulation and emotion, Challenges in the study of emotion regulation: In pursuit of models and methods. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/be52/2daf4e5f4f5898f02ce778666d9a37d8d601.pdf.
The development of emotional self-regulation during the first five years of a child’s life is a very important task. Emotions enable a person to assess what is happening to him as a favorable or threatening event and to react in time to changes of conditions in his or her life. At the same time, the processes of self-regulation force us to act under conditions of social pressure and the clash of different goals.
The idea of emotion regulation processes allows us to understand why emotional processes that are so adaptive cause psychopathology. The authors of the article attempted to draw a line between emotions (as the states we use to assess the circumstances of our existence at every minute of our life and decide on a particular action) and the process of their regulation (efforts undertaken for modification of such states). A combination of several research methods is needed to reliably say that an object of observation has a particular emotion, and the object’s attempt to regulate this emotion has reached the goal. (As a result, the original emotion has been modified.)
In the experimental part of the study, the authors used standardized situations that allowed them to evoke certain emotions; for example, if you take a toy from a toddler, this action usually causes anger or similar emotional states. Then they tried to prove that this emotion is active, so it provides a certain behavioral strategy for the child aimed at overcoming it. The presence of a regulatory process in this situation was recorded in the case when children have had self-undertaken efforts to overcome the emotional state. Where possible, the authors used a variety of research methods (observation, self-report, physiological indicators, etc.) and monitored self-regulation of subjects under contrasting conditions (for example, in the presence of a close adult and in his absence). This allowed the creation of a more accurate scheme, modeling the processes of self-regulation among children at early ages.
As you can see from the APA annotated bibliography template, annotation doesn’t only summarize, but also assesses the source. The first paragraph covers the main information about the author’s research presented in the article, covering the highlights of the study. The second paragraph discloses the main points and assesses the methods used in the research. Annotation in APA style doesn’t disclose the importance of a particular article or practical use for your own research.
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