Literature Review

How has writing a literature review effected the way you might do research in the future?



Did you find any part of the literature review writing process difficult?



How has your understanding and knowledge of the topic of your research question expanded due to the analysis you did in writing your literature review?



What questions do you feel are still left unanswered about your research (it is alright to still have unanswered questions, since research is an ongoing endeavor)?



I had never heard of a literature review prior to this assignment. It will help me a lot in future writing assignments. Looking this in-depth into how all of the important information is related and much of it uses some of the same research to reach their conclusions. It allowed me to look beyond the surface of the data and really understand how it was all connected. The process came easy to me. Much of the information was sitting there you just need to understand how to link it all together.

The understanding I have for my topic is getting to be solid. I was able to find out how many factors influence the housing market. Previously, I had a small idea of how it was linked to everything but not to the extent that it is. I still have a few questions. Mostly about the most recent changes that have happened at the government level of encourage more lending by financial institution and to entice people to build new homes.

Week 7

1.     What new sources did you include in your annotated bibliography and why?

2.      What was the search path you took to locate them?

3.      Why do you feel these sources are credible (remember the CRAAP Test)?

4.      What aspect(s) of your research question do they address? 

5.      Are there still aspects of your research question that remain unanswered?

6.      What are some aspects of your research that you feel would be most interesting to a wide audience?

In this week’s assignment I included four new sources. There were a few unanswered questions that I have had from the beginning. After finding a study released by the Los Angeles Economic Development Commission on the economic outlook for all industries in Southern California I was able to come to a conclusion in my research. There were several articles that hinted at positive outlooks for new construction in California as well as mention indicator to look at for growth. The LAEDC study provided all the information in one study and I was able read through and decipher how they came to their conclusion.

I used to google scholar to find my new sources. After searching through pages of results I was able to find relevant information. All of these were peer reviewed articles published by industry professionals making the most reliable information available.

These articles addressed the remaining question that I had able how unemployment rates, mortgage interest rates, and rent cost play roles in projecting the outlook for the new construction industry. A remaining question I have is the expectations of the federal government on keeping interest rates low in the next few quarters.

I feel the most interesting part of my research is how many different industries, policies, and factors affect the price of single and multifamily housing. Most people don’t consider all the aspects on why the pay what they do to live in their area.

Academic Integrity

1.      What did you learn about plagiarism? 

2.      What is your definition of academic integrity?

3.      What is your definition of Intellectual Property?

4.       What did you learn about Creative Commons?

5.       What are open access journals?

1. I learned that even carelessness can be considered plagiarism. In the past I thought that it was a direct attempt to pass off other work as your own. You could be so reckless in your writing that it can go beyond academic dishonesty and become something more serious.

2. Academic integrity to me is conducting yourself in a way that gives other people’s work and idea credit when due. You can use other people’s ideas to aid in your endeavors but you cannot claim them as your own. Even failure to tell others that the idea came from another person is dishonest.

3. I define intellectual property as any original content that is produced by and individual. This could be a physical research paper of digital media that would not have existed without that person.

4. Creative commons allows authors to say in advance how and when their content can be used, rather than needs written permission to use copy written material such is the case for traditional copyrights.

5. Open access journals are peer reviewed journals that are free to access and use in research and are usually free of any copyright and licensing restrictions.

Week 4:The search narrows

1.     This week while I researched my topic I learned that the current budding crisis in the housing market is new home construction. Finding this answered my research question. Now I know what people are looking at in the new construction industry. With this knowledge I will be able to focus my research to few specific questions. How does this article relate to the California building outlook? What are the steps that new home builders need to take to address this issue?

2.     The strategy that was most helpful was to recall information that I can about throughout the week in this topic. I had read several articles talking about this topic and chose the source that provided me with the most current data.

3.     The difficulty I had was determining which article gave me the most useful data. I chose this article because of the many charts and graphs that were available to me. I had to do a brief analysis of large amounts of information to decide what would be the right choice.

4.     This week I was able to answer a lot of ongoing questions. This article gives me more ideas on what I need to research in the future to narrow my searches. From now on I hope that I am able to be more efficient when gather data. I know what I need to answer rather than just gathering general information on the topic.

Week 3!

1.      What knowledge did you gain about your topic as a result of the books you looked at this week? 9 points

2.      What new search strategies were particularly helpful for you in locating books?  Be specific and refer to the notes you took on your search path. 9 points

3.      What difficulties or frustrations did you experience when searching for books? 9 points

4.      What are you hoping to find out as you continue researching your topic? 8 points

1.     I learned that housing markets can be very volatile. While much research and speculation goes into trying to predict housing markets even some experts get things wrong. The 2008 housing market went largely unnoticed before its collapse. Government policy plays a large role in the health of housing markets. Good policies in the housing market can grew entire economies while poor decisions can prove disastrous.

2.     My topic is fairly specific and information needs to be very current. I had a difficult time finding books that worked for what I needed. When I searched for more generic terms I was able to get results. Then by searching for the last ten years I was able to find a couple results that I could use.

3.     Getting a book published takes a lot of time. This made it hard for me to find results that specifically discussed the future of the California housing market. I wish I was able to find something detailing California specifically but I had to settle on an overview of the housing market. This turned out to be beneficial information that I didn’t know I needed.

4.     I hope as I continue to research that I am able to find specific subtopics that I can research. I will do some more reading into the text book that I found for this week’s assignment. This should be able to point me in new directions

First Week of Research

During this week’s research learned that there are many people out their collection data on the topic of new construction. This industry drives several other type of business. The health of the housing market is important to people that invest in the stock markets as well as a way to track the growth of the economy. The search strategies that I used was first to find current publications. Projection for a year ago are no longer valuable because many things have changed. My article referenced the Federal Reserve’s decision to keep interest rates low. This makes getting loans for building new homes cheaper and more attractive to consumers. One other thing that I wanted to find was data that showed all sectors of the new construction industry. I need to be able to compare different type of construction and different regions to formulate a proper outlook on new single family home construction in California. Next I will begin researching more factors involved in why the industry is expected to grow. I think that different policy decisions as well as availability of previous homes will affect projection’s

Hello all, this is my very first class at Brandman University. I have an Associate’s Degree from the College of Southern Nevada and I am pursuing a Bachelor’s in Business Administration. My current employment is with a custom home builder where I work as the Project Manager. I hope once completing this degree I will be able to move on to high level management somewhere else or a fall back plan is to get into teaching.

I would like to research market trends in new construction. I want to be able to find when people are building new houses and what to expect in the future. This would help me in my career because I want to know the future stability of the local markets. Then if I find they are expected to be poor in this area I can think of where the company or myself should focus our efforts.

I have always had a difficult time finding relevant information. It is easy to recognize what source is credible or what type of bias they may have to certain things. It takes my quite a bit of sorting to get to what I need. This wastes a lot of valuable time.