In terms of conducting and writing about your own research, the ability to synthesize past research demonstrates that you have read the appropriate background information on your chosen  topic, and have used the information contained within the articles to generate ideas and hypotheses to be tested.  Your synthesis paper is similar to, but not as extensive as, a "literature review" like the one's you read in the first part of journal articles.
 

You must choose articles written using empirical research (i.e., experiments, surveys, interviews, etc.).  Some of the communication journals include historical essays and pieces of rhetorical or film criticism.  Though historical/critical research is a legitimate part of the field of communication, these types of articles will not work for this assignment.  If you are not sure whether an article is appropriate for this assignment, please check with me.  If you choose an article that is not of the correct type, you will lose points.

Topic Selection

It will be difficult to complete Paper #2 (or Paper #3) if you do not have a relatively good idea of the question(s) you want to address.  Researchers usually do literature reviews to demonstrate that they have gained "adequate knowledge" about their subject area, that the hypotheses they have formulated have not already been tested and that there are good reasons for doing the research. In your third paper, you will take the information from your synthesis paper and propose some hypotheses and methods for testing them. This means that you should have some idea about that now to make your synthesis fit what you will do later.

Analytical Methods

There are a number of alternatives you can use to help you pull the ideas of your different articles together.  The idea is to find a way to make the articles "fit together."  You may want to (but do not have to) try one of the following organizational methods:

• Theme analysis:  After you have read the articles, try to see if there is a general theme which runs through them. Often this theme relates to a set of behaviors that seem to occur with some regularity.
• Variable Analysis:  Sometimes different articles seem to be testing the same variable in different ways and compared against different things.
• Context Analysis:  Some functions of communication might be the subject of research in different physical or relational settings.
• Sequence of Research Development:  In this method, one would find articles which seem to take up where the previous article left off. This is often possible when there is a good bibliography in a recent article and one can find a series of connected articles.

• What is your motivating research question(s)?  What do you what to find out about?  Tell me why you (personally) are interested in this topic.
• What is your thesis (the single-sentence statement that attempts to answer your RQ based on what you have read)?  Include your thesis in the introduction of your paper and underline it.
• How were the studies you read carried out? What methods were used?
• What results did each researcher find?
• How are the studies similar?  How are they different?
• When taken together, what do the studies tell us about the question at hand?
• In your opinion, what weaknesses in individual, or the conglomerate of, studies exists?  How could the studies have been improved?
• What is left to find out about the topic?  What questions are left unanswered?  How do you see this synthesis paper leading to your final paper (i.e., Paper #3--Research Proposal)?

• Don't just pick the first articles that you find.  Make sure that you have good, empirical research-based articles that bear directly on your topic of interest.  A reference page is also required, as is a title page, both of which should NOT be included in your page count.  Papers exceeding the page limits specified above  will receive lower grades, so it is important that you edit well.
• You should use heading and subheadings to organize your paper.  See the paper examples below.
• Don't forget to include and sign the "Statement of Academic Integrity" with your paper.
• You need to turn in your rough draft when you turn in your final paper.
• You need to turn in a copy of the abstract for EACH article that you use (the one at the beginning of the article--NOT one that you write yourself)
• E-MAIL ME A COPY OF YOUR FINAL PAPER.  I can read both WordPerfect and Microsoft Word files.  Save your file as an .rtf or .txt file if you don't use either of these word processing programs.
• Refer to your syllabus for an overview of all the writing assignments in this class, for information about how to choose appropriate articles for each of the assignments, and for other generally useful information.

If you would like to, you can choose to work with 1-2 others in your class on the remaining paper assignments for this class.  Although working with others is not required, I encourage you to do so for a variety of reasons.  Working with a "team" is a common way that much scholarly research is conducted.  This contributes to the ability to investigate your topic more thoroughly because you will have a larger number of total articles from which to draw conclusions and ground your ideas.  Ideally, working with others can result in increased creativity and product quality because of the multiple perspectives represented by you and your team members.

Here are the basic requirements for Paper #2 if you choose to work alone:
For this assignment, you should choose a minimum of 4 articles in scholarly journals (similar to the one used for Paper #1), which may include the article you abstracted for Paper #1 if it is relevant.  The paper should be 4-6 double-spaced pages, and use correct APA citation and formatting.

Here are the basic requirements for Paper #2 if you choose to work in a group of two:
For this assignment, you should choose a minimum of 6 articles in scholarly journals (similar to the one used for Paper #1).  You  may include the article abstracted for Paper #1 if it is relevant.  The paper should be 5-7 double-spaced pages, and use correct APA citation and formatting.

Here are the basic requirements for Paper #2 if you choose to work in a group of three:
For this assignment, you should choose a minimum of 8 articles in scholarly journals (similar to the one used for Paper #1).  You  may include the article abstracted for Paper #1 if it is relevant.  The paper should be 6-8 double-spaced pages, and use correct APA citation and formatting.

In order to address what is probably the most common complaint about group work–lack of participation by a group member or members–each member will need to turn in the rough drafts of their contribution to the paper along with the final draft of each paper.
 
 

* If you'd like to see examples of the Synthesis Paper Assignment CLICK HERE for a Student Paper CLICK HERE to see a paper with comments Example from class lecture  Need help with your reference page?  Don't forget to use the