Appendices - Self Assessment

1. Theory

I believe that given the research I was able to find, I drew out some factors that lead people to follow religions, and also critically looked at some of the positive and negative thigns. A subject such as this is really quite big, and to fit it all into 1000 to 1500 words would be quite difficult. As such, I only really gave a brief overview. Had I started sorting through my research earlier I believe I would have included more theory in my blog, and therefore would have produced a higher quality essay.

2. Research

I searched many different databases, and retrieved over one hundred articles. As a result of getting so much information I had a LOT of sorting to do and surprisingly at the end of this I was not left with much relevant information to this essay topic. Perhaps I should have searched for different search terms, but most of the information I received was either about respectign religious perspectives in a clinical setting or whether or not religion had benefits to physical or mental health (which was perhaps a little closer to the aim of the essay).

3. Written Expression

Results from the readability analysis follow (retrieved from http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/readability.php)

Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease: 21
Ideally, web page text should be around the 60 to 80 mark on this scale. The higher the score, the more readable the text.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 15
Ideally, web page text should be around the 6 to 7 mark on this scale. The lower the score, the more readable the text.

Gunning-Fog Index: 23
Ideally, web page text should be between 11 and 15 on this scale. The lower the score, the more readable the text. (Anything over 22 should be considered the equivalent of post-graduate level text).

It appears that all three of the main analyses indicate that the text is not as readable as it could be. I believe I said this last time but I certainly would like to perform these tests earlier in my writing, so that I could then have more time and flexibility to fix and edit my writing. I believe my use of APA style is good, and the use of headings should hopefully make it a little easier to read the essay. As the results from the readability tests state, my essay could certainly benefit from having better readability scores.

4. Online engagement

Whilst I did not make many online contributions in the earlier stages of my research for this blog, I believe that in the last week or so I have made a fair amount of contributions. From commenting on other students blog postings, to voting on polls I have contributed a fair amount. Also, I put a few posts up (apart from my main blog posting) and included a poll on my blog. The poll attracted quite a few comments, and a fair amount of votes. I could have improved my online engagement by posting a few more entries apart from my main essay posting, and perhaps commenting a little bit more, but overall I was quite satisfied with my online engagement. I really was happy with the response to the following post: http://kayeb.blogspot.com/2007/10/religious-happier.html

It is quite difficult to track down each of the blogs that I commented on, or all the polls that I voted on. Next time I do a similar exercise I should make a note of the URL of each blog post I comment on.