Educate and Advocate Campaign Paper

Option 1: Select a topic that would benefit your community 

Imagine that you’ve been hired by a Center for Well-Being in your local community. The Director of the Center for Well-Being is so impressed with your efforts and energy, she’s giving you the responsibility of developing a well-researched, scientific PowerPoint presentation and/or Infographic that addresses an aspect of health/dimension of wellness that you are passionate about.

ThePart 1: Determine your question

Directions

The scientific method starts when you ask a question about something that you observe or are curious about. Ask yourself: How, What, When, Who, Which, Why, or Where? (see KIN 220 Educate and Advocate Part 1.pptx for details).Links to an external site.  . Ideally, you’ll become a “mini-expert” on a health topic of your choice. Think carefully about what you’re interested in learning more about and sharing with others. Your question should be very specific within one area of health and wellness—choose one dimension of wellness and focus on a specific population.    

Here are some examples of specific questions and the aspect of wellness on which each focuses:

• “What are the barriers to physical activity for mothers with young children?” Physical health and wellness
• “Who experiences more depression: college-aged men or women?” Emotional health and wellness
• “How do high school students make decisions about their sexual health practice?” Intellectual health and wellness
• “How can college students reduce the risks of hearing damage related to noise pollution from the ongoing construction on campus and around their homes?” Environmental health and wellness

Do Background Research

It’s critical that you do the necessary research to better understand the question you’re attempting to answer and to provide correct information on the topic.

Conducting your Background Research

The Educate and Advocate assignment builds on work you have already completed when doing the Evaluating Claims assignment. Here is the  linkLinks to an external site. back to the UNCG Library KIN 220: Lifetime Wellness site. There is a lot of information you can use to help you complete this project, including guides for setting search strategies and finding quality sources. Feel free to reach out to the UNCG Library for additional assistance.

We know there are a variety of ways to find information, we recommend you try  Google ScholarLinks to an external site. and PubMedLinks to an external site..

Here is a brief summary of how to use Google Scholar.

Visit https://scholar.google.com/Links to an external site. 

Once in Good scholar, search words to find article on your specific topic.  Make sure to be specific in selecting your key words! You can specify for the population your are looking at (College aged, adults, elderly), your intervention (aerobic exercise, length of sleep), and your outcomes (cancer, BMI, happiness).  For example, typing “relationship of sleep and cancer risk in adults” is much more specific and this search will bring up fewer, but more relevant, articles for your project. 

Here is a brief explanationLinks to an external site. on how to use a popular scientific database called PubMed.  NYU Health Sciences Library also made this helpfulvideo (the new PubMed – online tutorial)Links to an external site..

From the UNCG library, you can go to A-Z DatabaseLinks to an external site., select “P” then scroll to the bottom to find Pubmed (or you can click here to access Pubmed directlyLinks to an external site.). Note that you may have to sign into Pubmed with your UNCG username and password. 

Once in Pubmed, you can add search words to find articles on that topic. Make sure to be specific in selecting your keywords!

Non-specific approach: researching “cancer” will lead to thousands of papers and is not specific enough to locate the most important papers for you project!

Specific (and correct!) approach: add keywords to describe your intervention (for example, the length of sleep or cancer intervention), your outcomes (for example, cancer rates, quality of life, types of cancer) and your target population (for example, adults aged 30-60).  

You need to find five (5) peer-reviewed research articles. Each article should have a publication date within the past five (5) years. You may choose to read older articles to help you better understand your topic, but your project (and the annotated bibliography) must use articles published in the past five years.

After selecting your five peer-reviewed articles and creating a reference list, you will need to complete one (1)  annotated bibliography based on 1 of your 5 references. An annotated bibliography includes a citation followed by a brief (usually about 150 words) description and evaluative paragraph, called the annotation. The purpose of the annotation is to provide a brief summary of the article to the reader, as well as to inform them of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited. Here is a link to an  example of an annotated bibliography that I prepared for one (1) research article ( Click here to download word doc  of the  annotated bibliography). 

PART 1 Submit

1. Your question & brief explanation. Be sure your question is clear. Provide a brief explain why you feel this is a good question to ask, including why you’re interested in finding the answer to the question.  
2. Your target audience & brief explanation. Who is your target audience? Be very specific. Examples include your specific demographic, elementary school-aged children, college students, obese men between the ages of 40–50. Briefly explain why this audience will benefit from your topic.