Update

My literature review is coming along but its coming along slowly. I'm looking for more sources to use in the review right now and once I have all of them I will continue working on the body of the paper. Things are starting to get more crazy now that we are coming down to the end of the semester. Not only in this class but it my other classes also and all things will start converging soon. STRESS!

Update

I have got a great start on my Literature review. Slowly but surely I am finding more and more sources to use. The sources that I have found so far have been pretty good, but I feel like it's going to be hard to find more quality ones. I also spoke with a member of the fraternity to update him on the progress of the project. He asked me a few questions which I was able to answer. That is my update for now.

Update

Recently in my research to find a solution to the lack of diversity in the fraternity I have looked at previous research done. I wrote my literature review on the sources that I have used so far. Some of the sources are a big help but it was a struggle to find good ones. Im still searching for me and things are still slow.

My article

Stolle, Dietlind, Stuart Soroka, Richard Johnston. "When does Diversity Erode Trust? Neighborhood Diversity, Interpersonal Trust and the Mediating Effect of Social Interaction."

Political Studies. Vol. 56 Issue 1 March 2008. 

The study of this article is based upon a survey done between the United States and Canada. I compares the citizenship involved democracy of the United States to the Equality, Security and 

community survey of Canada. This is the first study done the is cross country to find out a comparable result. Both confirmed the negative effect of neighborhood diversity among white majorities. The most important finding is that not all people are equally sensitive to the context. The purpose of the literature review for this article is to point out the flaws in the study. The study being done is a qualitative study. The surveyors when out and tried to find information based on the survey with no numbers involved. The way the data is collected could be a pretty sound method but the only problem is that people might not write the honest truth in the survey. One guideline of critical thinking that they are not paying attention to is to pay attention to bias. The people doing the study might have wanted some certain result and changed the results based upon what they wanted. Also people taking the survey could have had one thing on there mind at the time and this could skew the results. 

Foster Care Article

Orme John, Cheryl Buehler. "Foster Family Characteristics and Behavior and Emotional 

Problems of Foster Children: A Narrative Review." Family Relations. Vol. 50 No. 1. (2001)

Page 3-15.

The article is about the effects of foster care on children after they are adopted into a new family or return to the original family. It looks are all the different effects that could factor into the problems that arise from it. It also states the problems that do occur from foster care. The article is organized by first giving facts about foster care and telling what it is exactly also. It goes on to give real examples of foster care situations. It shows a graph of the results of a study done on foster care also. The graph shows who the study was done by, what the sample size is, and then what was looked at in the study. The article goes on to describe all the factors that could be looked at in the study, how they effect the child, and how each factor should be done. The purpose of the literature review in this article is to show how foster care effects children that are in it. It also can be used to show way of dealing with foster care so that all children turn how to be the best they can. I don't this this article violated a lot of critical thinking skills. If there is any critical thinking skills that are violated it would be avoiding emotional reasoning. Foster care is a touchy subject and a lot people have opinions on the topic. All of the opinions are based upon emotional situations rather than facts. In this article it does a fairly good job of using facts based upon the studies that were done. Overall this was a pretty good article in the way it was set up and for the use of critical thinking. 

Google Tricks

The google trick that I tried to use was to use quotations around the words in order to use them as one. When I typed in my topic the first time I got so many results I didn't know where to start and the the information I got was hard to find good information in it. Then I retyped the topic using quotations and the results were cut back significantly. The data that I got was still not exactly what I was looking for but it was much better organized. I could work with this alot better. 

Research Challenge

A research challenge that I have had in the recent past was when I was researching a paper for my English class. The paper was on stem cell research. I started off great because there is a fair amount of information out there. The problem is that everyone publishes the same information and I ran out of info. I was unsure of how to find more and better information to lengthen my paper. 

Critical Thinking Gone Wrong

I recently read and article about a woman who went blind because she was a victim of an acid attack. If she gets her way, the attacker will receive the same fate that she did. I think this is a crazy though and she is obviously not thinking clearly. She realizes the suffering that she has gone through and she has to be crazy in order to want to put someone else through the same feeling even if they did do something wrong. 

Progress Report

Compared to last time I posted on the progress of my project, not much has changed. I have not met with the organization another time so I haven't made it any further. Sorry for the boring information.

progress

Just a quick up date on the progress of the project. I haven't met with my organization since the last time. I have been brain storming ideas about how to help them out and I'm starting to come up with some solid ideas. That's about where I stand at this point. 

Book Search

I recently had an assignment to find a book in the library that I could use for my research project. How I found the book is by doing a library search on the Miller Center home page. I tried many different key words but I didn't have a lot of luck. I finally choose the world discrimination to find the book. That search didn't show a lot of good results but I did find one selection that I opened up. I didn't use this this book but I used the key words inside it to narrow my search. In this next search I found a book that I believe is almost exactly what I should be looking for. 

Research Topic

My organization and I finally came to a conclusion as what my research topic will be for sure now. We have decided that they need to reach out to more of a culturally diverse crowd for join the fraternity. I know that this is not a serious issue that they have to deal with, but it will be nice for them to have a different group of people. They have not had any problems in the past due to a racial issue but they also have no had to opportunity. Not that they want problems but they struggle to find new members outside of the white race. I plan to help them find ways to reach out to new members of different races. Hopefully they can draw new people into the fraternity with my help. 

Meeting

Once again I spoke with the campus organization I am working with. They contacted me because they wanted to set up a meeting to discuss the project. They want me to describe the project in final detail and to answer any questions that they have. I still have not set up the date for the meeting. Ill be back with more information.

Organization

I recently spoke with a St. Cloud State Fraternity known as Theta Chi. They said that they were very interested in having me sort out some small issues that they have had recently and over the years. They seem very willing to help and excited for my presentation.