Literature Review Essay

Abstract The primary role of literature review in a quantitative research study to gain information on the subject of your research question and identify unbiased and valid studies connected with your research question. For instance, my quantitative research question is â€Å"all other factors being equal, do high school students reading popular fiction achieve better Language Arts test scores than high school students reading curriculum-required fiction? † My hypothesis is that high school students reading popular fiction will outperform the students who read curriculum-required fiction, because if you enjoy reading you will perform better. Then I need to do a literature review to discover if my question has already been answered and I may need to modify it or if there are related studies to my research question that can provide quantifiable research. Introduction Quantitative Research involves collecting numerical data though content analysis, performance tests, personality measures, questionnaires, etc. This type of research procedures include an objective/unbiased approach to collecting numerical data from a large number of participants and analyzes these numbers using statistics in order to answer a specific, narrow research question. As part of research, a literature review is required. A quantitative literature review is an extensive review of literature that may or may not influence the study and your research question (UOA 2013). The primary role of literature review in a quantitative research study to gain information on the subject of your research question and identify unbiased and valid studies connected with your research question. For instance, my quantitative research question is â€Å"all other factors being equal, do high school students reading popular fiction achieve better Language Arts test scores than high school students reading curriculum-required fiction? † My hypothesis is that high school students reading popular fiction will outperform the students who read curriculum-required fiction, because if you enjoy reading you will perform better. Then I need to do a literature review to discover if my question has already been answered and I may need to modify it or if there are related studies to my research question that can provide quantifiable research. Why This Research Question This research question â€Å"all other factors being equal, do high school students reading popular fiction achieve better Language Arts test scores than high school students reading curriculum-required fiction? † needs to be answered. There is a controversy over what types of literature is acceptable for students to have access. One of my favorite book series (Harry Potter) is a banned book in certain states. This research question would add to research already completed. Methodology in the Research Question This research question â€Å"all other factors being equal, do high school students reading popular fiction achieve better Language Arts test scores than high school students reading curriculum-required fiction? † is an experimental research question and a casual research question. An experimental research question tests the cause and effect and a causal research question that test for a cause and effect relationship between variables. The variables in this research question are the independent variable (IV), age, ethnicity, and gender, the dependent variable (DV), assigned popular fiction and curriculum-required fiction, and the covariant (CoV) socio-economic status. Additionally, this question has ratio data. Ratio data is continuous. Ratio data rank order, but also quantify and compare the sizes of differences between them. Ratio data has an absolute zero and allows for how many times greater. The research question can discover how many times greater or less are the test scores of high school students who read popular fiction than those who read curriculum-required fiction. Supporting Research My hypothesis of the research question is that high school students reading popular fiction will outperform the students who read curriculum-required fiction, because if you enjoy reading you will perform better. The other similar research found during the literature review relates to my research. Although, my specific research question has not been fully researched. Other research relates to my question. According to the article, Impact of Students’ Reading Preferences on Reading Achievement, middle school students in Canada found â€Å"The most significant indicators were reading novels or fictional texts, informative reading or non-fiction, and reading books or other texts from the school library. In-class reading and participation in discussions pertaining to school-related reading were also shown to enhance reading achievement. These results are somewhat surprising in that research documenting this subject mainly emphasizes the use of pedagogical material corresponding to the interests/needs of students to foster achievement in reading† (Bouchamma, et al. 2013). This research shows that reading achievement can come from both required and optional reading. Moreover, according to the article, Reading Attitude and its Effect on Leisure Time Reading, â€Å"gender, educational level, age, and amount of spare time have a positive effect on reading behavior† (Stokmans 1999). Additionally, there is â€Å"a positive relationship between time spent reading fiction and educational level† (Stokmans 1999). This research shows that reading fiction relates positively to reading level. Additionally, according to the article, Popular Publications May Help Students’ Reading Scores, â€Å"We are concerned about the struggle to increase scores that children are posting on state-required exams — not because of the scores themselves, but because they are strong indications that state students may not be gaining the thorough and analytical skills they need to become successful readers† (Michigan Chronicle 1997). This newspaper article shows that popular publications may help students on their reading score. Conclusion This research question â€Å"all other factors being equal, do high school students reading popular fiction achieve better Language Arts test scores than high school students reading curriculum-required fiction? † needs to be answered. This research question addresses the controversy over what types of literature is acceptable for students to have access to. Moreover, this research question would add to research already completed. It would allow  administrators and other educators to decide if certain books can be helpful in high school students learning environments. Bibliography Bouchamma, Y. , Poulin, V. , Basque, M. , & Ruel, C. (2013). Impact of students’ reading preferences on reading achievement. Creative Education, 4(8), 484-491. Retrieved February 6th, 2014 from: http://search. proquest. com/docview/1441488139? accountid=28844 Mia J. W. Stokmans, Reading attitude and its effect on leisure time reading, Poetics, Volume 26, Issue 4, May 1999, Pages 245-261, ISSN 0304-422X, Retrieved February 6th, 2014 from: http://dx. doi. org/10. 1016/S0304-422X(99)00005-4 http://www. sciencedirect. com/science/article/pii/S0304422X99000054 Popular publications may help students’ reading scores. (1997, Oct 01). Michigan Chronicle. Retrieved February 6th, from: http://search. proquest. com/docview/390200035? accountid=28844 University of Arkansas Libraries (2013, Oct. 30) Literature Reviews. LibGuides. Retrieved February 6th, 2014 from: http://uark. libguides. com/content. php? pid=110370&sid=1384703

Social Differentiation

Gender of human remains can show social differentiation in a variety of different ways. One such factor is damage on the bones may indicate the job of the deceased, for example, signs of osteoarthritis in the Canadian Inuits jaws and right hands indicate that they were sewing skins. In comparison, disease to the right shoulder and elbow in some cases show that the deceased used harpoons which have been interpreted as men who hunted.Social differences have been seen between male and female skeletons at Tell Abu Hureyra; grooves in the sides of women's teeth are thought to have been caused by drawing fibres through them before using the fibres in baskets and male skeletons had lesions and strain injuries to their arms which might be associated with spears. However, these lesions may have been created by post depositional factors. Another evaluative point is that these remains do not prove that all males hunted and all females sewed – it only proves that women had bad teeth.The l ayout of graves also show social differentiation as evidence at Skara Brae shows us; bodies of two females, interred in stone-built graves, were discovered beneath the right hand bed and wall. It was apparent that the females had been buried there before the house was constructed and their presence could have signified some sort of foundation ritual. However, this may also signify that this area was their domain in life. Social differentiation can also be identified through the age of the deceased.At West Kennet, DNA analysis on the bones has shown that 46 individuals were disarticulated into various transepts in the tomb. The bones were sorted into not only by gender, but also age; infant, young adult and elderly, suggesting that each age group had a specific role within the society. To a certain extent grave goods can tell us a lot about social differentiation based on gender. Rich male graves are often interpreted in terms of what he earned whereas when a woman is found which ric h grave goods they are often attributed to her father or husband.Women having their own status is not considered a lot within archaeology. In inhumations, if women over a certain age have certain grave goods, and the younger ones do not it can be argued that those goods represent the dowry exchanged in marriage. A reoccurring theme from the Bronze Age onwards is that women were regularly buried with pins, necklaces and bracelets however, the interpretation that this was a dowry is not always correct as DNA analysis [ARCH 2] at West Hazelton showed some females were buried with weapons and some males were buried with jewellery and so the grave goods may indicate achieved status.Until recently, the sexing of burials relied on grave goods. Jewellery without weapons was expected in female graves and so was used to define these graves. However, the problem with this method is that they might not be compatible with modern society’s biased view on male and female belongings such as the Birdlip Burial. Along with the deceased, this contained a mirror and jewellery and it was thought to be a rich princess’s grave or that of Boudicca herself, however, recent examination and CAT scans of the skull shows that it has masculine traits which contrasts with the original interpretation.The assemblage is also notable in that the artefacts had all been broken and a vessel had been placed over the face of the dead and so it is thought that it may have been a male shaman and not a princess. Grave goods can show achieved or ascribed status which is also shown with the age of the body. Vedbaek Bodbakken shows a child buried on a swans wing and other natural objects such as amber along with its mother. The age of the infant and the mother who was only believed to be about 18 has helped to interpret the grave as one of a wife or daughter of a chief.The grave is thought to be such high status because of the effort and time placed into the burial and ascribed status becaus e the child had not had time to earn it themselves. One problem with using the age is there is a lack of younger burials, high infant mortality rates and so are disregarded. For example the presence of 97 baby inhumations at a brothel at a Roman Villa in Thames Valley shows that the Romans did not consider children to be human until they reached a certain age.The layout of a settlement can help to show social differentiation through gender and age because of the views of modern archaeologists. For example at Skara Brae each of the eight dwellings found have the same basic layout – a large room, with a fireplace in the middle, a bed on either side and a dresser facing the entrance. However, the right hand bed is always larger that than the left hand bed which has led some archaeologists, including one of the site's main excavators, Gordon Childe, to speculate that the layout of the village is gendered – right being male and left being female.Beads and paintpots were als o found on some of the smaller beds – lending to the gendered theory. Also, House 7 in Skara Brae appears very much like the other houses in the community, however, several distinctive features have led archaeologists and historians to interpret that it played a unique part in village life. The house is isolated from the main part of the village and access is gained down a side-passage, it is also the only house in the village in which the door was barred from the outside, not the inside.The bodies of two females, interred in stone-built graves, were discovered beneath the right hand bed and wall. It was apparent that the females had been buried there before the house was constructed and their presence could have signified some sort of foundation ritual. Most theories on the subject involve confinement or separation from the rest of the community – they range from childbirth and menstruation to initiation through ritual and imprisonment.

Army Nurse Corps Essay

All women in the Army served then in either the Army Nurse Corps or the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). All Army nurses were officers, and were Direct Commissions. That is, they became nurses first and then attended a ten day or so Orientation Course at (Ft. Sam Houston, Texas) to teach them how to be officers, the rudiments of military life, who to salute and when, etc. (There were a small number of male nurses who went through the same program. ) Nurses were assigned to Army hospitals, both Stateside and overseas, and were billeted separately from male officers. In Vietnam, Army nurses served exclusively in rear-area hospitals at major bases. The Women’s Army Corps (WAC) provided all Army female enlisted personnel and also had its own officers. Most WAC officers exclusively administered WAC units, but a handful received assignments to staff positions and other rear-echelon duties. In Vietnam, enlisted WACs performed mostly clerical duties, although some worked as medical technicians. Whatever their duty assignments, all enlisted women, on any base, even in the ‘States, were billeted together as a single WAC Company in a guarded compound. (WAC officers had separate quarters, of course. ) Within this compound, in their barracks, WACs pulled their own guard, armed with baseball bats and whistles. (Neither WACs or nurses were issued weapons, and even those sent to Vietnam had only rudimentary firearms training. ) One tiny WAC unit (peak strength, 20 officers and 139 enlisted women) was assigned to Saigon, and nowhere else in-country. No WACs, even medical personnel, got any closer to combat than this. Eight US servicewomen died in Vietnam. Of these, four Army nurses and an Air Force flight nurse were killed in three separate, non-combat, plane crashes, and another died from disease. An older nurse died of a stroke. Only one woman, Army 1LT Sharon Ann Lane, was actually killed in a combat action, in a VC rocket attack on Chu Lai, in 1969. Besides nurses and WACs other American women would also go to Vietnam. TOD and China Beach covered most of the categories. American Red Cross girls, entertainers, civilian employees of the US government or contracting firms, newspaper correspondents, Christian missionaries, that about covers it. ARC girls made brief daylight visits (a few hours) to advance bases. The rest had rear-area jobs. (Christian missionaries were usually older, married women. ) American civilian women lived in major Vietnamese cities, which were off-limits to US troops, the exception being Saigon. Any women billeted on US bases also lived in guarded compounds. † Susan O’Neill served as an Army nurse in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970. â€Å"Don’t Mean Nothing† is her first book, written nearly thirty years after the experiences it depicts. O’Neill tells us that, (O’Neill, p. 15) â€Å"Before I went, I just assumed that war would involve injury and death; that’s why I was being sent there, after all. But it’s one thing to look at it from a distance, and form neat mental pictures. Once you step through the looking glass, as it were, into the reality of it–once your sneakers are full of somebody else’s blood–you look at the whole thing quite differently. The blood’s no longer a metaphor; it goes through to your socks and into the skin of your feet. Into your soul. † O’Neill gives us a clearer definition of what Vietnam was truly like. She offers that it wasn’t a place where you played around because people’s lives were at stake. The author goes on to tell us that, â€Å"Back in the states, when I so glibly thought I knew what Vietnam and war, in general, was about, I had opposed it on some cool-headed philosophical basis, from some distant notion of empathy. Gradually, in Vietnam, I became horrified at how callow my ideas had been.

See like a Scientist Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

See like a Scientist - Assignment Example In this case, the line length is equated to the product of the represented distance on earth and the distance on scale. In order to understand the linear and the logarithm scale, this paper explores the comparison of the linear and logarithm scales aligning them with clear differences and similarities. The number of fish killed as a human hearing can better be measured using the logarithm scale than the linear scale. This is so because a change between two values, on a linear scale, is considered being the difference between the given values. For instance, the change from 0 to 500 in the linear scale, is perceived to be similar to the change between 500 to 1000. Different from this, on a logarithm scale, the changes between two values is considered as a ratio of the two values. This implies that a change from 1 to 10 in the logarithmic scale (ratio of 1:10) is considered to be a similar quantity of increase as the change from 10 to 100 (also a ratio of 1:10). The hearing sense considers equal frequency ratios as the pitch differences (Kipp 34). Another difference between the two scale is that the logarithm scale can accommodate a great span in comparison to the linear scale. A logarithm scale operates like the case of zooming. For instance, accommodating 10000 fish killed by 1cm would need 10000cm for the linear scale. In a logarithmic scale each cm is taken to be tenfold hence accommodating 10000 fish killed in only 4cm. This means that in the case where the details over a small span should be visualized, linear scale will be appropriate, and in a case where the overall picture is on a large range like in the case of the number of fish killed, then, the logarithmic scale would be the most appropriate scale to be used (Parker 23). In this regard, using the value logarithms rather than the real value will minimize the wide range to form a size that is manageable. Linear scales cannot be used on the charts having the scales

Michelangelo Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Michelangelo - Essay Example culture of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe is represented as a repudiation of medieval values in favor of the revival of the culture of ancient Greece and Rome† (Campbell, 2004, v-vi). The period is characterized primarily by a renewed focus on the symbolism and skill represented in the artworks of the ancient world. To the people that faced these remnants every day, such as the people who lived in Rome and other parts of Italy, the remains of buildings and statuary from the ancient world represented a golden age of shared culture, reason and creativity throughout the region. This refocus on the classic styles, subjects and artistic knowledge are exemplified in the works of Michelangelo Buonarroti who learned his art in the capital of this flowering rebirth, the city of Florence. An understanding of his life helps to indicate the great sensitivity he had in undertaking his many works of art, including painting, sculpture and architecture. Michelangelo Buonarroti was actually born in the town of Caprese in 1475, but was moved to Florence soon after his birth when his father lost the governorship of Caprese one month after his birth. Because of his mother’s constitutional frailty, Michelangelo was given to a wet nurse who turned out to be the daughter and wife of stonecutters, giving the small Michelangelo his first introduction to the stone and tools that would one day make him famous, a beginning he would never forget. â€Å"If I have anything good in my talent, this has come to me from having been born in the purity of the air of your Arezzo countryside; and also from having received with the milk of my wet nurse, the chisel and hammer with which I make my figures,† Michelangelo told his friend and biographer (cited in Labella, 1990, p. 44). His mother died when Michelangelo was only six, and he remained distanced from the rest of his family throughout the remainder of his life as his brothers born bot h before and after him were raised

Commercial law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 6

Commercial law - Essay Example This explains the reasons why people in commercial undertakings consult legal minds2 on various ways through which they secure themselves as well as their businesses from unwarranted losses. In this case, protection takes different formats. The aim of taking protection measures is to make sure that the commercial person gets particular property and rights that will offer enough compensation to him or her just in case another member in the transaction fails in the obligations assigned to him or her by the contract for any reason. For instance, Arthur agreed to sell to David who resides in Paris five thousand tones of unrefined sugar imported from Jamaica. The fear in this context comes in two perspectives3. First Arthur would fear that David could not pay his money either in full, not all, or delay the payment. This is from the viewpoint of the supplier4. The second fear pertains to the receiver. David would fear that Arthur would fail to supply the right quality of sugar, pack less quantity, delay delivery, or fail to deliver completely5. The right ways of taking security including the receiver withholding payment until reception of the goods is one of the alternatives available to the receiver. On the other hand, the supplier would ask for payment before making any deliveries to take of uncertain eventualities6. To safeguard his rights, Arthur could stipulate in the contract that he remains the absolute owner of the sugar until payment is cleared. In case, Arthur has more needs for the money he could stipulate that the money goes to a specific agency before delivering the sugar to David7. However, in this case, David is one the receiving end because he was the receiver who received sugar8 outside the agreed time to a level that the market price is now half the officially estimated one. If one follows proper restructuring, trusts are the best means by which participants in commercial enterprises can take security. First, trusts work in dealings

Doing history essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Doing history - Essay Example Finally, a process of purification followed. The process also involved isolation of lepers from the society with the aim of ensuring purity. The plague, however, is a symbol of modern measures for ensuring a disciplined society. Response measures to a plague symbolize mechanisms and authorities for identifying and evaluating indiscipline for adequate corrective measures. Operation of similar forces to brand those who are not disciplined and to transform them towards an organized society is then discussed (Foucault 195- 199). Foucault also discusses Bentham’s panopticon, another symbol for the modern day authority. In the figure, each prisoner was placed in a room that could be watched from a centralized tower. Each room had two windows, one directed towards the tower and another in the opposite direction and open to light. The light would then illuminate prisoners and allow an observer at the tower to see whatever happened in the rooms. No communication is however possible bet ween prisoners or between prisoners and the observers. Unlike the previous approach to isolation, the panopticism model offered access to light and visibility and improved efficiency of discipline. It allowed for use of lesser personnel and effectiveness of administration (Foucault 200- 204). The author’s discussion of the two imageries, the plague and Bentham’s panopticon, are ways of seeing history and developed bases for the author’s exploration of history. Based on the images, the author explores many questions that form major themes of the article. The first question can be framed as follows, how is power attained and managed in ensuring discipline? The author uses both imageries to answer this question. From the plague imagery, the author reports that power is attained through mobilization of authority for extensive influence and through isolation of subjects. The panopticon approach is a replica of the approaches but