The purpose of this assignment is to introduce you to scientific peer reviewed journal information that is available to you as a dental hygiene professional. Dental hygiene care is evidence-based and this evidence is found in peer refereed studies and journal articles. You will do both a written and oral report based upon a review of the current literature.
Minimum Requirements | What is a Literature Review? | Finding Journal Articles in Dental Hygiene | Support
Minimum Requirements
Choose a current research topic in dental hygiene. Need help finding a topic? Link to our A-Z list of electronic journals, then click on the "Subject" tab. Page down the list to find "Medicine" and select the category for "Dentistry". Click on the links to the database for a particular journal and follow the links to browse or search current issues of each journal title.
Your literature review will need to include:
- A minimum of five peer-reviewed references, published from January 2003 to date.
- A minimum of four typed, double-spaced pages with one-inch margins.
- A copy of each of the peer–reviewed articles that you have chosen.
- A bibliography citing your references in MLA or APA format.
Place your
project in a report cover in the following order:
The oral presentation will provide the class with
- the name of the article
- the reference for the article
- a brief summary of the article
Grading
| Written report | 70 pts. |
|---|---|
| Report Cover and all required pages present | 20 pts. |
| Article summaries are complete | 20 pts. |
| References are cited | 20 pts. |
| Typed, double-spaced with 1 inch margins | 10 pts. |
| Oral presentation | 30 pts. |
| Information is presented in a concise manner in no more than 5 minutes. |
What is a Literature Review?
The literature
review provides your audience with relevant information about your
topic, as well as your synthesis and evaluation of the article. It
is not just a summary of the article. It is not possible to
provide all of the information on a topic with five articles. As you
locate articles, determine those that are the most relevant and that
give you the most information. Choose a minimum of five articles.
Before you begin, locate other literature reviews in your discipline,
such as this
article (*requires your library barcode for off-campus access).
There are several steps in writing a literature review:
- Choose a research area. For this assignment, you may choose any current topic in dental hygiene (see Minimum Requirements). Identify sources of information. This literature review will be limited to peer-reviewed research articles in journals only. Articles must have been published from 2003 to date. A list of sources is included with this guide below.Record citation information for your report and bibliography as you research. Review the MLA or APA guides before you start. Locate, read and evaluate potential articles. Take notes on your articles, and identify patterns as well as agreements or disagreements among the authors. The guides listed below contain excellent questions to consider as you read and evaluate each article.
- Write your review, including your own synthesis and evaluation of the articles you selected. Provide a citation and a summary for each article.
The
following links are excellent guides on writing
literature reviews:
- The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting It (University of Toronto Writing Center) - Good, brief list of questions to ask in order to conduct an effective review.
- Literature Reviews - Tips on research strategy and organization of a literature review from the Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
- How to Write a Literature Review - An easy-to-read overview of how to develop your literature review; from Agnes Scott College Writing Center.
You will need a library
card in order to login to the databases from off campus (except for Medline/PubMed). Lone Star College-Kingwood Library
provides an interlibrary loan service to obtain articles not located in
our system. Start your research early to take advantage of this
service!Finding Journal Articles in Dental Hygiene
Most databases include a
way to restrict searches to articles by date, as well as articles that
are considered peer-reviewed or scholarly articles. For this
assignment, you need articles published from January 2003 to date.
Use the following databases to identify articles for your literature review:
- Academic Search Complete
- A multi-subject, general database which includes some articles of interest to dental hygienists. Limit your search to "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" by checking the box on the search screen.
- ProQuest
Research Library
- Over 1900 journals in all subjects, mostly full text, updated daily. A checkbox is provided for "Scholarly journals, including peer-reviewed" to limit your search.
- Health
Reference Center: Academic
- Indexes health and medical articles, including dentistry and dental hygiene. Check the box labeled "to refereed publications" to limit your search. Reference materials and news are also available. The link takes you the 'subject guide' where you can narrow your topic or find related subject terms, as well as choose articles, reference materials or dictionary definitions.
- CINAHL Plus with Full-Text
- (Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature) - Locate articles from over 1,700 current publications dating back to 1982. Check the box labeled "References available" for the best results. Full-text is limited for dentistry and dental hygiene.
- Medline@PubMed
- An international database of references to more than 14 million articles published in 4800 biomedical journals. Search help and an online tutorial is provided. Click on the link to 'Limits' under the search box to limit your search by publication type or by journal subset. There is also a version of Medline that you can search from the same publisher of CINAHL. You will have to use the LinkSource link to find out if the articles are available full-text. If not, you may have time to request articles not found in our libraries or databases through the interlibrary loan service.
 Librarian Talk about getting help Support for a successful paper is more than finding the right resources. Putting it all together takes time and effort. Sometimes it takes additional help from the librarians or tutors. Please consider the following resources if you need additional help. Remember, the expert on the assignment is your professor; use the WebCT email to contact her. |
Support
Citing Sources Using
APA Style | Lone Star College-Kingwood Library style
guide. Examples of both paper and electronic citations.
Citing Sources Using MLA Style
| LSC-Kingwood library style guide. Examples of both paper and electronic
citations.
Tutoring | Information on
services available from the Lone Star College-Kingwood Learning
Center. You may also call 281-312-1439 or email Janis Terry.
|
|
| | Talk to a librarian. If nobody answers, please leave a message and we will e-mail a reply as soon as possible. |
Contact your instructors, Maribeth Stitt and Deborah Vayon, if you have questions about your assignment.
- Lone Star College-Kingwood Library | Write Us
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Page created by Jimmi Rushing.
Jan. 2005; updated 7/08 jfr.
