CPSC 203: Assignment Three (Internet research)

Description

Prepare a research paper that talks about societal perceptions and attitudes about nursing. It can take a historical perspective (e.g., talk about perceptions during the Middle Ages), a comparative view (e.g., what are the differences in societal perceptions in North America vs. Gulf countries; how have the perceptions of nursing changed over time) or deal with today's issues (e.g., how have governments addressed negative perceptions of nursing in order to deal with the looming shortage of healthcare professionals). Much like the first paper it's quality rather than quantity that's important but you should aim for 6 - 8 single spaced pages (although you may lose marks if it's significantly longer or shorter than this - see the marking key for further details).

Your assignment should be electronically submitted. Additional details about the assignment submission process will be provided at the following [link]

Marking

Quality and quantity of the references: 15 marks maximum

You should have at least 3 references to support the content of your report. These references should come from a reputable source (i.e., if you just provide three links to Wikipedia then you will do poorly for this component). If you only have 2 reputable references then you will only receive a maximum of 10 marks. With only 1 reputable reference then you will receive a maximum of 5 marks.

Detail/format of the references: 3 marks maximum

The reader has to be able to distinguish: 1) what are your original thoughts and ideas 2) what is the academic property of the other people whose work you are including in your report. Examples of things that you need to reference or cite include: direct quotations, paraphrasing, images or diagrams that you didn't create yourself, or academic studies that are used to justify points in the paper.

In addition, your reader needs to be to find the specific person or persons responsible for the paper or website that you are referencing.  You can use the format that you may have learned in other courses provided that it's clear that you're doing a citation and that the reader can read find your source if needed. Alternatively you can use the format that I've laid out for my other 203 students for citing sources (there will be many links to my Calgary web page so you may not be able to view all the links in the computer lab or from the course folder).

Some good sources of Nursing references:

• Google scholar: the search results are focused more on the work of academics than regular searches: http://scholar.google.ca/schhp?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8
• CINAHL: www.ebscohost.com/cinahl/
• Nursing academic edition
• Medline
• PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
• Ovid Healthstar: http://www.ovid.com/site/index.jsp
• Canadian Journal of Nursing Research: http://cjnr.mcgill.ca/
• Nursing inquiry: you may be able to find information about this journal in the library
• Journal of advance nursing: http://www.journalofadvancednursing.com/
• Issues in mental health nursing: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/apl/umhn
• Nursing philosophy: http://www.ipons.dundee.ac.uk/

Note: The university appears to have subscriptions to at least some of these journals. This means that you can access papers for free if you are using a university computer but may be asked for a fee if you try to access them from anywhere else.

This list is not meant to be exhaustive and if you find information from another reputable web site then you are free to use it. One clue whether your source is a good one or not is to ask yourself if you are just looking at someone's webpage, or is the website referring to work from a published paper (conference or journal). Material that comes from publishers of good academic textbooks can also be used e.g., Mosby, Saunders, Pearson, Thompson, Wiley, McGraw Hill, Elsevier. In the case of a regular website a person can essentially write whatever that they wish (which may or may not be correct) but in the latter case (published work) peer review and acceptance by experts in the field is required for publication. Finally if you get desperate then you can expand your search to into include educational sites (end in the suffix ".edu"). Alternatively you can use websites which don't refer to published papers or don't come from an education (edu) web site but has been created by a person who has a strong reputation in the field of nursing. However you need to indicate this in the report by providing the name of the expert, his or her credentials and why you are including their unpublished work (e.g., this person is a well known professor at a reputable university).