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Sport Management

The purpose of this guide is to help you successfully locate high-quality information for your research project in Sport Management.

What is an Annotated Bibliography?

An annotated bibliography includes a list of sources that you have found to use in your research paper (books, websites, journal articles, etc.) along with a brief summary and analysis of those sources. Writing an effective annotation requires you to clearly describe and evaluate the overarching argument of the source.

An annotated bibliography is a valuable tool that prepares you to write a research paper by forcing you to closely read a book or article. It is also a means to help others locate a body of scholarship around a certain topic. 

Parts of an Annotated Bibliography (taken from Purdue OWL):

Your annotated bibliography can include four elements: the citation, a summary, an assessment, and a personal reflection.

  • Citation: A list of the elements that reference a work (book, article, etc.), that may include the title of the work, the author/editor, publisher, date published, volume, issue, and, if from the internet or a database, the url or doi
  • Summary: Some annotations merely summarize the source. What are the main arguments? What is the point of this book or article? What topics are covered? If someone asked what this article/book is about, what would you say? The length of your annotations will determine how detailed your summary is.
  • Assessment: After summarizing a source, it may be helpful to evaluate it. Is it a useful source? How does it compare with other sources in your bibliography? Is the information reliable? Is this source biased or objective? What is the goal of this source?
  • Reflection: Once you've summarized and assessed a source, you need to ask how it fits into your research. Was this source helpful to you? How does it help you shape your argument? How can you use this source in your research project? Has it changed how you think about your topic?

Your annotated bibliography may include some of these, all of these, or even others (like an introductory statement of scope). If you're doing this for a class, you should get specific guidelines from your instructor.

Formatting

The formatting of your annotated bibliography depends on which citation style you are directed to use. Use the following guides to format your citation: MLAAPAChicago

The annotated section of your annotated bibliography (summary/assessment/reflection) should be in standard paragraph form. 

Example for Sport Management

 

UNSW/SYDNEY 

https://www.student.unsw.edu.au/annotated-bibliography  

Sample annotation 

The citation goes first and is followed by the annotation. Make sure that you follow your faculty’s preferred citation style. The summary needs to be concise. Please note the following example is entirely fictitious.

In the sample annotation below, each element is numbered (see Key).

Citation:

(1) Trevor, C.O., Lansford, B. and Black, J.W., 2004, ‘Employee turnover and job performance: monitoring the influences of salary growth and promotion’, Journal of Armchair Psychology, vol 113, no.1, pp. 56-64.

Summary:

(2) In this article Trevor et al. review the influences of pay and job opportunities in respect to job performance, turnover rates and employee motivation.(3) The authors use data gained through organizational surveys of blue-chip companies in Vancouver, Canada to try to identify the main causes of employee turnover and whether it is linked to salary growth.(4) Their research focuses on assessing a range of pay structures such as pay for performance and organizational reward schemes.(5) The article is useful to my research topic, as Trevor et al. suggest that there are numerous reasons for employee turnover and variances in employee motivation and performance.(6) The main limitation of the article is that the survey sample was restricted to mid-level management,(7) thus the authors indicate that further, more extensive, research needs to be undertaken to develop a more in-depth understanding of employee turnover and job performance.(8) This article will not form the basis of my research; however it will be useful supplementary information for my research on pay structures.

Note, the end of this summary includes a statement why this article/research was valuable to the research it was being used for.

Key

(1) Citation

(2) Introduction 

(3) Aims & Research methods

(4) Scope

(5) Usefulness (to your research/ to a particular topic)

(6) Limitations

(7) Conclusions

(8) Reflection (explain how this work illuminates your topic or how it will fit in with your research)

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