HOMEWORK#1: Due on September 15, 2008



HOMEWORK#1: Due on September 15, 2008

LITERATURE REVIEW ASSIGNMENT

The objective of this assignment is get you acquainted with the process of finding the state of the art research in ergonomics and also to get acquainted with NJIT Library resources, which will be helpful for this process.

NJIT Library resources can be accessed from NJIT home page (njit.edu), then selecting the ACADEMICS tab, then selecting Van Houten Library Menu. This will take you to the Library’s Home Page.

From this page you can select the first menu “Articles via Databases”. That takes you to the database page. There are literally over hundreds of databases that NJIT subscribes. Out of these the database I found to be most useful is Scopus. To access this database click on the letter “S” under the heading “Jump to specific database”. This will show you all databases whose names start with S. Scroll down a little and you will find the Scopus database and click on it.

On the main window of Scopus database, you will find many options. Basically you provide some search keywords to search “in” some specific field. Examples of these fields are “Title, keywords and abstract” or “Article Title” etc. Select the one you feel appropriate and then press the button “Search”. Scopus will do the search and will bring you links for all articles that match your search criteria. For example when I searched for “back pain” in “Article Title” & “ergonomics” in “Source title”, search resulted in 76 articles. You can then read the abstract (summary) of the articles and in most cases you will be able to download the entire article in PDF form into your computer.

In this assignment you will use the above search procedure to select and print a full text journal article in an area that interests you under the general field of Ergonomics. If you are new to ergonomics then you can use one of these keywords: “office workstation”, “hand held computer”, “lifting task”, “checkstand design”, “heart rate”, “hand tool”, “posture analysis”, “vibration”, “heat stress”, “musculoskeletal disorder”, “back pain”, “repetitive strain injury” or you can use a keyword based on the main topics from you text book. You should always use the keyword “ergonomics” in the “and” search field in “Source title” category. This will force your search from source journals which contains ergonomics in its name. From the search results, read some of the abstracts and select the one that looks promising/interesting and then click on the “article linker” button so see if this article is available in full text form. If you get it in full text form, download it in your computer and print the article. Then you should read the article carefully to make a summary of the article. The summary should include the following parts

• Research objective of the article

• What facts the authors have cited to establish the importance of their research

• What was the experimental method

• What were the main results and conclusion

• What is your opinion about the research

• How do you grade this research and why

Your report should be typed; double spaced and should not be more than two pages. Attach the article you are critiquing with your report.[pic][pic][pic]

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download