Law

No directly quoted material may be used in this project paper.

Resources should be summarized or paraphrased with appropriate in-text and Resource page citations.

One of the major forms of research conducted by criminologists is searching for and analyzing information in published materials. These materials include

peer-reviewed journal articles (articles published in academic journals)
government documents (reports such as those published by the National Institute of Justice [NIJ], FBI, etc.)
mass media reports (articles in major newspapers [The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc.] and electronic media outlets [ABC, Fox, CNN, etc.])
Each of these kinds of information sources has its strengths and weaknesses. Depending on the kind of research a criminologist is conducting, one of these may prove more useful than the others.

Your mission in this assignment is to find three examples of publications, articles, reports, or stories from each of these kinds of information sources. You will have a total of nine sources‚ three for each information source type. The topics of the works must be pertinent to some aspect of crime and justice.

Use the Internet to locate the government documents and mass media reports, and use the UMUC online library to obtain the peer-reviewed journal articles. Then, write a report on what you found. In your report, please do the following:

Provide an APA reference for each of the nine works.
Annotation – After each APA reference, provide a brief description of the work. Each of the nine descriptions should be at least 100 words in length. The description should tell your reader what the work is about.
Summary – After this, write an analysis of the value of each of the three types of information sources (article, report, media news item) from which you gathered examples. In other words, after describing each of the nine works, present a discussion of what you learned about the value to criminologists of peer-reviewed journal articles versus government documents versus mass media reports. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each? We are looking for some critical thinking about these sources here!
Format Requirements

· Paper should be in American Psychological Association (APA) format

· Double space

· 12 pt. font

· 1” margins

· Use APA citations for all sources

· Include reference page using APA format guidelines (not included in word count)

NOTE: Support materials are available in the classroom to assist you with APA formatting requirements.

Additionally –

· Create a cover page for your assignment (not included in word count)

· Include your name

· Course title and number

· Project title

· Date of submission
Please note that each article needs to be summarized (NOTE: 100 word MINIMUM) and at the end of the 9 articles summarized, you will need to analyze the 3 types of media used. For example, “I found that the mass media articles were very timely and easy to locate but they were also biased and not validated. The government articles were a great source for statistics but had very little
Also, note that you can select any topic for your research as long as it is criminology/criminal justice and not all 9 articles have to be on the same topic.
The summary at the end should be a good length not to short.

Use as many sources as needed
due by 11:00pm Sunday, Feb. 03