Business Administration: FMGT 8911

Because sources on the web or in social media can be created by anyone, they should always be evaluated for their credibility and authority. A popular benchmark is the AAOCC (Authority, Accuracy, Objectivity, Currency, and Coverage) criteria for evaluating resources:

Authority : Who is the author? 

• Always ask yourself whether the organization sponsoring a particular site is a well known, reliable, and suitable site for the document—a research center, for example, a college or university, or a government office?

Accuracy : How accurate is the source?

• Data and information must be based on observations, measurements, analyses, interpretations and conclusions. All information should be verifiable

Objectivity : How objective is the source?

• Is there a strong point of view or bias? Is there a lot of advertising? Does the language used on this site suggest a specific ideology or social or political agenda? Do they include opposing views?

Currency: What is the site's currency?

• Is the information up-to-date or are the resources outdated? Have they kept up with trends and technology?

Coverage: Does it adequately cover the topic?

• Does the information source leave questions unanswered (ask the "five W's and H" to check: who, what, when, where, why and how)? Consider comparing one source's coverage to another source.

Primary vs. secondary research. In determining the appropriateness of a resource, it may be helpful to determine whether it is primary research or secondary research.

Primary research presents original research methods or findings for the first time.
Examples:

• A journal article, book, or other publication that presents new findings and new theories, usually with the data
• A newspaper account written by a journalist who was present at the event he or she is describing is a primary source (an eye-witness, first-hand account), and may also be primary "research"

Secondary research does not present new research but rather provides a compilation or evaluation of previously presented material.
Examples:
-- A scientific article summarizing research or data, such as in Scientific American, Discover, Annual Review of Genetics, or Biological Reviews
-- An encyclopedia entry and entries in most other Reference books
 -- A textbook

An article in a popular magazine such as Mother Jones about the public health aspects of handgun control -- if it relies on interviews with experts and does not present any new research in the area, this article would be secondary research. If one of the experts interviewed in the Mother Jones article published a study in JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association) documenting for the first time the effect that handguns have on youth mortality rates, only the JAMA article would be considered primary research.

A scholarly journal is published by and for experts in a particular industry or discipline. In order to be published in a scholarly journal, an article must go through the peer review process in which a group of experts reviews the article for content, scholarly soundness and academic value. In most cases, articles in scholarly journals present new, previously un-published research.

The annotated bibliography consists of two elements

• Citation in current APA Style format  see  APA Style Guide for Business Sources: Journal Article from a Database
• Annotation 

An annotation is different from an abstract (an abstract is a summary of the article).
An annotation should have several sentences summarizing the main points or ideas that you've found in the item to describe why you've chose it. It should then include how you've evaluating the quality of the item and how the article relates to your research topic.

Your assignment ask you to specifically write your own synopsis of the article, explaining the article, and any research findings of the author(s). 

Example : 

American Management Association. (1996). The AMA style guide for business writing. New York, NY: Author.

The American Management Association has created its own guide for business writing. Designed as a supplemental text to more thorough style guides such as APA, this guide covers topics relating specifically to business, such as citing financials, formatting of company reports, and professional approaches to information integrity in the workplace. This is an indispensable work for anyone doing professional business writing.

Google Scholar can also search through BCIT Library's full text journals and magazines.

Just log-on to Google, and go to Google Scholar.

In the Settings menu -> Library Links window, Search for BCIT.  

Check the boxes for 'BCIT - Find @ BCIT', and 'British Columbia Institute of Technology'

The advantage to using Google Scholar is that is shows you how many times an article has been cited. The more times the article has been cited, the more valuable the article has to the research body of knowledge of the discipline.

APA (American Psychological Association) style is most commonly used to cite sources within the social sciences. Business papers should use APA Style to format citations.

APA Style Guide for Business Sources at BCIT Library, including all research resources available at BCIT Library online.