GEN499 Discussions 2 Week 3 Scholarly Sources and Research

There are several differences between scholarly sources and popular sources. The first difference is that scholarly articles are written by scholars and they are also meant for scholars whereas popular articles are written by journalists.  Second, popular sources have photographs and advertisements while scholarly sources mainly have charts and tables with no advertisements. Third, popular sources are just a short version of reading an article while scholarly sources are generally long.  Fourth, in scholarly sources, every source has to be cited unlike popular sources. Finally, popular sources do not have a bibliography or reference list whereas scholarly sources must have a bibliography.

One peer- reviewed scholarly source that I looked at was  “Climate Change Effects on Crop Production in Yatta sub-County: Farmer Perceptions and Adaptation Strategies”. This article analyzes how climate change affects crop production in Yatta Sub-county. From the article, it was found there is a decline in crop yields every year by 43% every year (Agesa et al., 2019).  The article is biased since it only analyzes the effects of climate change on crop production in Yatta Sub-county. This is only a small area and the results can not reflect the effects of climate change on agricultural production across the whole world.  One of the strengths of the article is it fully supports most of its claims through proper statistical analysis of the data. The information is also reliable since it used Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) for the analysis of data. The article does not have any limitations.

One popular source that I reviewed was “Life insurance for children: Universal life policy

supplements education savings”. From the article, a person who is insured can transfer the police the child in future (Archer, 2019). This article is not biased at all  One of its strengths is that it deeply analyzes the information it provides by use of tables. This makes the article reliable. The article does not have any limitations.

The popular source does not have an introduction which the scholarly source has. It starts by analyzing information without an introduction. The popular source does not have a  conclusion while the scholarly source has a conclusion. Moreover, the scholarly source has citations for the sources of information. The popular source does not have citations to support its claims. The popular source does not have a bibliography while the scholarly source has a bibliography.  There are statistical charts in the scholarly article while the popular source does not have chats that are analyze information.

References

Agesa, B. L., Onyango, C. M., Kathumo, V. M., Onwonga, R. N., & Karuku, G. N. (2019). Climate change effects on crop production in Yatta sub-County: Farmer perceptions and adaptation strategies. African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development, 19(1), 14010–14042. https://doi.org/10.18697/AJFAND.84.BLFB1017 Links to an external site.

Archer J. (2001). Life insurance for children : Universal life policy supplements education savings, 1–8.