Project: Course Project: Literature Review

A literature review is a written approach to examining published information on a particular topic or field. An author uses this review of literature to create a foundation and justification for his or her research or to demonstrate knowledge on the current state of a field.
—Walden University Writing Center (2015)

In your Topic Exploration and Analysis Assignment in Week 2, you selected a social issue, analyzed its background information, developed a problem statement, and provided an explanation about why the social issue is important to investigate. This week, you examine multiple perspectives regarding potential solutions to that social issue.

Note: Even though you may have selected an issue about which you have strong feelings, it is important to work from as neutral a perspective as possible and try not to let your personal values and perceptions cloud your objectivity. In writing a literature review, your goal is to present information about a topic that already exists in the scholarly literature – not to share personal opinions. You will be expected to use evidence to support your statements by citing resources from the Walden Library.

To prepare for this Project:

• Read the Black (2007) and Walden University Writing Center (2011) articles and review the Sample Literature Review in this week’s Learning Resources.
• Use the Walden Library to research multiple perspectives regarding potential solutions to the social issue you selected in Week 2.
• From this research, identify a minimum of two potential solutions to the social issue.
• Select a minimum of two scholarly resources from the Walden Library to support each of the potential solutions you identified.

Write a 2-page synopsis (not including the cover page or references) of your resource findings. Address the following in your review of the scholarly literature and be sure to use evidence to support your statements for each component:

Are there any conflicts among the various perspectives regarding potential solutions to the social issue? What are the conflicts that exist? If you do not believe there are any conflicts, explain how you arrived at this conclusion.

Be sure to include an introduction, body, conclusion, and reference page, using APA format to cite each of your sources in the body of your paper.

Running head: SOCIAL PROBLEMS

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SOCIAL PROBLEMS
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Animal Rights

Name

Institution

Animal Rights

Currently, the world is faced with a myriad of social issues that do not only affect human beings but also animals. Today, animals are faced with cruelty from the very people who are supposed to protect them. Researchers in the medical field are using animals for experimentation while hunters and poachers continue to hunt and kill animals causing the extinction of some species. This necessitated the birth and animal welfare movement to create scientific awareness of the suffering of animals (Sinclair & Philips, 2018). Just like other social justice movements, the current animal liberation movements focus on eliminating institutional and systematic oppression of animals. Several animals spend a significant part of their life standing on concrete floors while others are confined in crowded places with total disregard for their welfare. Animals too have feelings just like human beings. This paper provides a comprehensive view of animal rights as a social problem.

Problem Statement

Despite animals having rights just like human beings, it is unfortunate that medical research continues to use animals for experimentation ignoring the fact that doing so subjects animals to immense suffering especially when parts of their bodies are mutilated for experimentation. It is imperative that animal testing is put to a halt to avoid causing harm to different species of animals.

Symptoms of Animal Experimentation

Every year, thousands of animals are taken to laboratories for experimentation. This causes them to be tortured and killed under harsh circumstances because researchers want to experience amusements in medical breakthroughs they make. There are several symptoms associated with animal experimentation. For example, some animal parts are often unnoticed on animals being experimented. Some animals appear dizzy and immobile due to chemicals used to immobilize or disable them. Elsewhere, animals in the laboratories do not only suffer from the pain they experience. They equally suffer from stress caused by living in harsh conditions.

Existing Conflicts about Animal Experimentation

In animal testing or experimentation, ethical issues are often contested. There is often a contest on whether it is right to inflict avoidable harm or pain on members of a particular species in order to secure the benefit of other species (Garner, Lyons & Roberts, 2016). On the other hand, medical researchers assert that they only use animals as the last option because they cannot experiment using human beings. Regardless of the benefits of animal experimentation in the medical field that include a better quality of life, Animal experimentation is a social problem that has forced animal rights crusaders to consider it unnecessary and cruel to animals.

Potential Ethical Dilemma

Animal experimentation or testing is surrounded by several ethical dilemmas. One of the ethical dilemmas is experimenting with animals to develop pharmaceutical products to save lives and improve the quality of life while destroying different species of animals. An experiment that improves the quality of life of human beings while destroying animals should be reconsidered.

How the Social Problem has Developed

Animal testing as a social problem has developed from simple experimentation using animals to industrial experimentation where thousands of species are taken to laboratories and used for medical research with total disregard of their welfare (Garner et al., 2016). The desire to develop potential forms of treatment is among the chief reasons behind animal testing.

Why it is Important to Investigate the Social Issue

Several reasons make it necessary to investigate animal testing. For example, the need to protect animals from cruelty makes it interesting to study the issue. Each year, thousands of animals are pushed into laboratories for medical research and several of them do not make it. Some are left with permanent scars on their bodies.

References

Garner, R., Lyons, D., & Roberts, A. (2016). How to protect animal welfare. CASJ Policy Research Briefing.

Sinclair, M., & Philips, C. J. C. (2018). International Animal protection society leadership: The right people for the right issues. MPDI, 8(89), doi: 10.3390/ani8060089.

1� The New Social Worker Spring �007

Considerations in Writing a Literature Review
by Kathy Black, Ph.D.

Literature reviews are ubiquitous in
academic journals, scholarly reports, and
social work education. Students taking
social work courses throughout the cur-
riculum, including Human Behavior and
the Social Environment, Practice, Policy,
and

Research

classes, are frequently
asked to write literature reviews for a
variety of reasons. Literature reviews are
often done within the context of writing
a paper and sometimes done as a mini-
assignment, perhaps setting the frame
for a broader paper, exposing students
to the breadth of information available
on a topic area, or demonstrating skills
in critical thinking and writing ability.
However, there are some
general guidelines to follow
when writing a literature re-
view. This article will briefly
outline key points for you to
keep in mind when writing
literature reviews for social
work.

Getting Ready
To begin with, you
will need to ascertain the
purpose of the literature
review. At the very least, be
aware of the purpose, scope,
and length of the literature review, as
well as the writing requirements. This
requires clarifying the purpose (Is it to
simply overview a broad or specific area of
inquiry, or is it expected to be comprehensive
or systematic?), scope (How much informa-
tion is needed—three scholarly sources? Five
or 10 sources? Are there any limits to the
inquiry? Perhaps a focus on distinct ethnici-
ties or time periods?), and length (Is the
final review expected to yield one page or
10 pages of review?). You should also be
familiar with required writing styles, such
as American Psychological Association
(APA), and other expectations, such as
double spacing, font size, and so forth.
Once purpose, scope, length, and writing
expectations are ascertained, you can
embark on conducting your search for
literature.

The Search
Searching for literature is quite easy
these days. Today, much information
is available electronically, and you can
obtain literature just about anytime and

anywhere. To begin the search, take ad-
vantage of library resources available to
you through your college or university.
Libraries often offer group or personal-
ized training in accessing information,
and librarians are often available to help
on specific topic assignments, as well. If
you are a student, you will be exposed
to search engines and databases such as
Social Work Abstracts and procedures for
accessing or requesting books, journal
articles, and reports that relate to your
topic.
Although information is also widely
available through the World Wide Web,
not every site offers credible informa-

tion. You can learn from your library
about criteria to evaluate the legitimacy
of information. One increasingly popular
source of information is Google Scholar
(www.googlescholar.com). This site has ac-
cess to professional journal listings and,
sometimes, the articles can be download-
ed in full text. In searching for informa-
tion, you should be aware of key words
and advanced search features to facilitate
the process. Sources with titles of interest
and abstracts can be retrieved on the
spot in some cases, marked for subse-
quent retrieval, and oftentimes down-
loaded into software such as Refworks or
Endnote. Again, you should learn about
the resources available to you through
your library and take advantage of the
high technological services offered by
your school.
Once you have identified a number
of sources, you must decide whether
to retrieve the full text of each. You
will soon learn that there may be an
astronomical amount of information
published in any given subject area, and
therefore, refining the search is com-

mon. Similarly, it may take you hours
to thoroughly explore literature on your
topic. Most researchers will find the time
spent quite interesting, though. It is ex-
hilarating to be exposed to information
and the dynamic process whereby links
are availed that can connect you with
key authors and related works and other
cited references. Though time-consum-
ing, it is generally a satisfying process to
search the literature.

Synthesizing Information
After retrieving a given number of
references, the critical work of synthesiz-
ing the information begins. You should
be aware that a literature review is not
an annotated bibliography, or a simple
write-up of a few statements or so de-
scribing the information in each journal
article. Likewise, the literature review
is not simply a series of paragraphs de-
scribing each source separately. A good
literature review involves a higher level
of integrating the information, yielding
a more comprehensive analysis of the
content.
You should begin by reading each
article and starting to categorize the
areas or subtopics that each covers. For
example, in doing a literature review
about elder abuse, retrieved articles may
have focused on different types of abuse,
attributes of abused elders, or attributes
of perpetrators of abuse to older people.
You can largely focus your searching to
pre-determine the subtopics in which
you will structure your writing. How-
ever, that may depend on your previous
knowledge of the area and availability
of literature on the topic of interest. You
should structure the written review with
a topic sentence and paragraph high-
lighting the general importance of the
literature, setting the stage for the rest of
the review.
Writing should flow and combine
the findings of several sources, reinforc-
ing the importance of each subtopic area.
Resist simply regurgitating findings by
stringing quotes from separate sources;
instead, strive to synthesize the informa-
tion. The following illustrates a common
approach to reviewing literature:

In one study, over 900,000 elders were
found to have evidence of physical abuse
(author, year). Another study reported that

Research

The New Social Worker Spring �007 1�

“perhaps millions of elders are suffering physi-
cal abuse” (author, year, page number). The
National Center for Elder Abuse indicates
that there were 6,000 cases of abuse annually
including 4,000 physical, 1,500 financial,
400 emotional, and 100 sexual (year).

Instead, synthesize the multiple
sources:

Over a million cases of elder abuse were
reported to elder abuse hotlines nationally in
2005, and the majority of abuse reported was
physical (author, year; author, year; author,
year).

Citing research studies requires
specific considerations. In your literature
review, you should not only emphasize
the findings, but also comment on the

quality and importance of research pre-
sented. For example, what were the limits
to the study design? Was it representa-
tive? Do the findings support or refute
related theories? What gaps remain in
the literature?
It is not necessary to cite method-
ological details of studies, as citations of
the source are provided in the review.
Readers can refer back to the studies re-
ported in the review should they wish to
know more details. The point here is to
critically assess the findings in a compre-
hensive way, and not simply repeat the
study’s findings. Questions that critically
assess the research in your review include
attention to research design, sampling,
data collection, analysis, and conclusions.
Answers to the following questions reflect
critical analysis of the literature and dem-
onstrate skills in integrating content on a
variety of levels:

What is the research problem ad-
dressed in this article? Is the design
(qualitative, quantitative, or mixed)
appropriate for the question?
What are the variables in this study?
How are they operationally defined?
Are these definitions sensible and
appropriate?
What is the population of interest
in this study? What is the sampling

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•
•

frame? Are the subjects used in the
study representative of the popula-
tion of interest?
What, if any, are the potential prob-
lems with the data collection and
analysis procedures used?
Does the research problem apply to
diverse groups of people and popula-
tions at risk? Were the methods used
ethical and sensitive to the inclusion
of disenfranchised populations?
What conclusions does the author
make on the basis of the study?
Does the author discuss implications
for social work practice? Are the
conclusions and implications reason-
able, based on the findings of the
study? Why or why not?

Plagiarism
No discussion of writing a literature
review is complete without mention of
plagiarism. The word “plagiarize” is de-
fined by Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary as:
“to steal and pass off (the ideas or words
of another) as one’s own: use (another’s
production) without crediting the source;
to commit literary theft: present as new
and original an idea or product derived
from an existing source” (2006).
Plagiarism is a serious offense,
and colleges and universities have
strict policies to deal with it. In many
cases, unintentional plagiarism occurs
when students copy verbatim portions
of another’s work and fail to cite the
source of their information. Just to be
sure, all factual statements and key ideas
should always be credited, and key ideas
can almost always be paraphrased. Of
course, in all cases, references to the
original source of information should be
provided. Consult the Publication Manual
of the American Psychological Association,
or other appropriate style guide, for the
correct procedures for citing and listing
references for your literature review.
Unfortunately, other cases of plagia-
rism involve the intentional and delib-
erate copying of text that is presented
as original work by another. Today,
students may be tempted to either “cut
and paste” voluminous amounts of infor-
mation from a variety of sources or even
consult sponsors of “prepared papers”
in a variety of topic areas. Increasingly,
faculty use services such as TurnItIn
(www.turnitin.com), which checks papers
for evidence of plagiarism. Seriously
consider the ethical and academic con-
sequences of plagiarizing material, and
avoid the problem altogether by re-

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A Note on Plagiarism

Regardless of whether plagiarism
is intentional or not, it can get you in
big legal and ethical trouble.
Some of the most extreme ex-
amples I have heard or seen include
the following:

a student plagiarizing his or her
own professor
a student copying something from
a Web site in another language,
using Google Translate to translate
it into English, and then pasting
the translation “as is” (without
correcting the English) into a
research paper
a social worker submitting an
article for publication in which
several sections were written in
first person, but were obviously
not written by the submitter,
because some of them described
a male, some a female, some an
older person, some a younger
person, and so forth—with no cita-
tions to indicate that the passages
were quotes from others

Whether you are writing a paper
for school or an article for publica-
tion (or for your employer), it is your
responsibility to know what constitutes
plagiarism, so you can avoid it like the
plague!

Ed.

1.

2.

3.

sponsibly crafting your own papers and
literature reviews.
Students able to effectively search,
assess, synthesize, and properly write a
literature review are well on the way to
receiving a good grade for their efforts.
The skill is transferable to students
pursuing practice careers and particu-
larly beneficial to students considering
master’s and doctoral level education.
In all cases, conducting and writing
a good literature review is both person-
ally and professionally satisfying, as it
advances knowledge—for ourselves and
for our readers.

Reference

Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary.
(2006). Available: http://209.161.33.50/
dictionary/plagiarize

Kathy Black, Ph.D., is Hartford Geriatric
Social Work Faculty Scholar and Assistant
Professor at the School of Social Work, Uni-
versity of South Florida at Sarasota/Manatee.

Conducting and
writing a good

literature review
is both personally
and professionally

satisfying.

http://www.turnitin.com

http://209.161.33.50/dictionary/plagiarize