Western Michigan University Geography Case Study

Case Study will include a short paper (~1500-2000 words).

• Select three professional, peer-reviewed papers that relate to one another in terms of methods, data sources, topic of interest, issues, and/or geographic region that interests you. Including words like ‘spatial’, ‘distribution’, ‘gis’, ‘analysis’ in an Index search often gives the most geographically useful results.

The paper should include two parts:

Part 1 — Annotated Bibliography

Provide a complete citation of each article (in any citation format standard to your discipline), followed by a brief (5 +/- sentences) description of each article’s content.

Part 2 — Critical Examination

Each of your selected papers should relate to both GIS and a topic of personal interest. Begin with a brief introduction to your topic. Explain how each paper relates to the project you have chosen. Critically examine and discuss each of the three papers. Some things you may want to consider:

• What overarching societal concern(s) was GIS used to address?
• Was GIS used to test a specific hypothesis?
• Was the data used observational or experimental (hypothetical)?
• What measurement and representation schema were used in collecting the original data?
• Did the use of GIS provide a solution to the societal concern?
• What were the strengths of the papers?
• Did the papers have any major flaws from your perspective?
• How did the researchers approach the topic compared to your own understanding of the situation? In comparison to one another’s approaches?
• Did the completed research help to clarify the issue at hand, or cast further
  doubt?
• Are there any similarities in the data/approaches/conclusions/issues discussed?
• Did any of the papers contradict one another in terms of goals or conclusions?
• Did the conclusions of the research clearly match with the hypothesis and data presented by the authors?

These are merely suggestions. Which of these is relevant will depend upon your topic and the papers you acquire. What I want is you to: 1) complete a thoughtful and critical examination of the articles; and 2) demonstrate your ability to clearly discuss the strengths, weaknesses and applicability of the GIS papers to your chosen topic.