You need to select an empirical journal article you think would be relevant and beneficial to an agency.  However, make sure your article focuses on a topic about family socialization (see our textbook chapter on family for ideas). Keep in mind you want to select an article that you think would be beneficial to practitioners and be able to suggest how someone might utilize empirical research to inform their practice. Your task is to summarize and paraphrase the findings, thus, no direct quotations should be used. 

Follow the below criteria in selecting an appropriate journal article. The article must be: 

• published in a peer-reviewed journal in the last 5 years (magazines, websites, or books will not be accepted).  
• You can see if a journal is peer-reviewed using the Ulrich web database. If you type in the journal name and see the “refereed” icon on the left ( ), then that journal is peer-reviewed. If you’re off campus, you need to sign onto VPN to use Ulrich and the library databases.
  • Note that some journals claim they are peer-reviewed, but they are not legitimate, professional journals. Read about Predatory (vs Professional) publishing here.Links to an external site.
• empirical (i.e., the authors collected & analyzed data – hint, look for a methods & results section with participants). Exception: literature review/meta-analysis articles that analyze the results of other studies  (even if published in a journal) and dissertations will not be accepted.  
• on a topic related to the family (e.g., parenting, siblings, types of families, child abuse). Papers that only focus on children are not sufficient.  

If you’re not sure how to get started with research at the library, check out these resources (be sure you first sign onto VPNLinks to an external site. so that you can access the library resources):

• this module will help you find scholarly sources
• this research guideLinks to an external site. was made just for CADV! 

After you select an empirical research article, you’ll need to read it a few times to understand it (or, at least I do!). Check out this reading guide to help you process the article.

Step #2: Identify a Local Agency/Organization that serves families 

Use your resources (e.g., internet, work connections) to identify an agency in Los Angeles that benefits youth and their family. You may use a national organization as long as they have a local chapter in Los Angeles. For examples of agencies, check out the last page of this document. Your task is to learn about this agency in-depth by becoming familiar with key features such as the mission statement, goals, who works there, who they primarily serve, and how they serve families. You may not use a preschool as an agency.  

Based on the family topics from the textbook, think about how the terms and essential concepts we’ve learned in class connect in this agency setting. The goal here is to identify how a real-world situation brings your research article to life (theory-to-practice connection). However, you want to make a connection that is in-depth and interesting, not superficial and obvious (anyone could have made that connection). For example, a  superficial connection might be, “This empirical article is about parent-child attachment and this organization would benefit from learning about how important it is that children have healthy attachments”. Obviously parent-child attachment is important—what new or interesting information about attachment from the article might benefit this organization? 

You are not being asked to find a research article about an agency. For example, if you chose Women, Infants, and Children program (WIC) as your agency, you should not be looking for articles that examined or evaluated the WIC program. If research was conducted about WIC, clearly WIC was informed out the outcome and will work through how to use the information. WIC would benefit more from learning about research they are not aware of.  

Possible Agency/Organizations you might research for this project

This is a list of organizations found on Google on a particular family socialization topic (e.g., foster
care/adoption, parenting classes, abuse, etc). This is not a list to choose from, but rather to show you
examples of local agencies you can research. You are welcome to do national organizations (e.g., Boys & Girls Club), but you might find it interesting to discover what agencies/organizations are in your “backyard” – and as potential ideas for your career exploration.