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How to Write an Annotated Bibliography?

Write an Annotated Bibliography

The annotated bibliography is a list of references or citations of various data sources such as journal articles, books or credible online documents and websites. Each of these citation is followed by a brief description of the same, usually limited to a single paragraph of around 100-150 words. The core purpose of annotated bibliography is make the readers aware of content of the citations, along with its relevance in the paper in which it has been used. Several institutions ask their students to write a paper on annotated bibliography along with their research proposal or dissertation. If you are clueless as most of the other students, here a detailed guide for you to follow.

Preparing the Annotated Bibliography

Before you start writing an annotated bibliography, you need to know how it is different from the concept of how to write an abstract of a research paper, because most students make the mistake of considering both to be the same. If you look closely at an annotated bibliography example, you’ll notice that it contains elements of both descriptive and critical analysis, unlike an abstract, which is mostly descriptive in nature. The annotated bibliography also contains the view points and perspective of the author. It further describes how the particular source fits perfectly in the topic of discussion.

Preparing an annotated bibliography requires higher cognitive abilities, as the candidates are required to present a concise explanation of why the chosen article/source of information is relevant and what it contains. Most student make the grammatical mistakes of thinking that annotated bibliography is all about describing what the topic of the article is about. You need to highlight the findings of the study, their relevance, importance and reliability, along with the perspective of the author towards the chosen subject area, and maintain a correct grammatical format as well.

First of all, list all the referencing style or citations that are a proper fit to the given topic of interest or the subject of your research. Make sure that you have access to all the information or documents of the chosen citations. The easiest way to find citations is to use Google Scholar, which can even give you access to full sized PDF document of journal articles.

After you have listed them down, go through the content of each of these sources. In case of journal articles, look at the research methodology and outline for compare and contrast essay. You need to get a clear idea of the findings of each of these articles/documents. Now you need to pen down very concisely, the key theme and findings of these annotations. You should start by focusing on what the author(s) has found in their study. Then talk about how the study is relevant in terms of the chosen topic. You may also talk about the intended audience of the author, that is who this study is aimed at and how the findings can benefit them. Moreover, you can present a contrasting view against other annotations. As you may have figured, it can be quite challenging to prepare an annotated bibliography without any prior experience or knowledge. You can, however, buy an essay from our company PenMyPaper, where we can help you deal with your annotated bibliography in no time.

Annotated Bibliography Example

Now that we have covered the details of how to prepare an annotated bibliography, let us now have a look at an example. The following citation follows the most popular APA referencing style, but you must follow the referencing style that has been asked by your institution.

Elhai, J. D., Levine, J. C., Dvorak, R. D., & Hall, B. J. (2016). Fear of missing out, need for touch, anxiety and depression are related to problematic smartphone use. Computers in Human Behavior, 63, 509-516.

This article highlights the negative impact of smartphone usage on the mental health of the users. A study conducted on 308 participants have indicated that problematic smartphone use is positively correlated to factors like anxiety, fear of missing out and need for touch, and inversely correlated to depression. It has been also found that behavioral activation plays a mediating role in associating smartphone use with depression and anxiety symptoms. This study seeks to help out the younger generation of people by shedding light on the negative health impacts of smartphone usage. This study suggests that the negative influence of smartphone usage on the mental health should not ignored, thereby providing a ground for further study on this area.

If you still face any issues while writing your annotated bibliography or want to know about more such coursework outline, then rely upon our professionals of PenMyPaper for reliable homework paper writers online.

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