Literature Review

AD700 9 November, 2005

College of Advancing Studies Brendan Rapple

Without a Lit. Review, an integrated and comprehensive picture of the research topic cannot be constructed.

Researchers must assess and present their own ideas in the context of existing knowledge and established thinking.

Researcher must be a skilled information processor

and evaluator

RESEARCHER must be proficient in

– locating

– accessing

– evaluating

– organizing

– analyzing

– synthesizing

– writing

Purpose of a Lit. Review to

• get familiar with background/history of problem you are researching

• synthesize results into a summary of what is and is not known

• identify possible ways to study the problem

• assess strengths and weaknesses of previous studies

• identify areas that are controversial

• formulate questions requiring further research

• clarify relationship between your study and previous work on topic

• help you to define your topic

• suggest new ideas to you

Timeliness/Currency of Material Cited

• Timeliness is more significant for some subjects than others.

• Scientists generally need timely material. Just think of AIDS research or research in nuclear physics.

• Scholars in many of the arts and humanities, however, often need not worry about timeliness.

• An historian researching some aspect of Thomas Jefferson's political philosophy might, for example, find research written in 1920, or even 1820, more relevant than recent literature.

Literature Review Process

Five Phases

Phase 1Specifying the Research Question

– What is the precise research question being studied?

– What's the essential PURPOSE of the research study?

To know what is DIRECTLY RELEVANT to the research question, one must know precisely what research question is.

Topic Should have Precise Focus

• "The Teaching of English as Revealed in the Courses of Study of the English-Speaking Nations of the World.“ [Too broad]

• “English Language Teaching in Massachusetts’ High Schools.” [Better – but still broad]

• Video in the English Language Curriculum of a Brighton secondary school.” [Good focus]

Unlimited Topic (MUCH TOO BROAD)

• "Life and Times of Sigmund Freud"

Slightly Limited Topic (STILL TOO BROAD)

• "Psychological Theories of Sigmund Freud"

• "An Examination of Different Emphases in the Psychological Views of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung"

Appropriate/Manageable Topics

• "Freud's Theory of Personality Applied to Mental Health"

• "Freud's Theory of Infantile Sexuality"

• "An Analysis of the Relationship of Freud and Jung in the International Psychoanalytic Association, 1910-1914"

Too Narrow a Topic

"Freud's Pets”

Another Example of an Excessively Broad Topic

"Who Gossips and Why?"

Slightly Limited Topic (Still Too Broad)

"When Do People Gossip?"

Adequately Limited Topic

• Content Analysis of Selected Gossip Columns in Five Women's Magazines During the Decade 1980-1989

Topic

• Suppose you wish to evaluate a certain number of social studies textbooks used in a certain School District for evidence of sex role stereotyping.

Clearly One Must Examine the Books Themselves

Possible Problems that One may Face

• They may not be in the local college/public library

• They may not be accessible through Inter Library Loan

Think of Broader Context

• Perhaps you might want to examine areas other than social studies.

• Essential to examine very carefully the concept of "sex role stereotyping"

-- not easy to define and measure

• Look at general "philosophical" studies of this concept.

• Look at sex role stereotyping in history.

• Look at changing sex roles in home, workplace, wider community.

In short, it's good to broaden one's reading, to place your own study in context.

Another Error to Avoid

• Choosing a topic that is not manageable

• Important factors to bear in mind

• time

• resources

• energy

• travel

• researcher's knowledge and experience (e.g. do

you speak Chinese?)

Another Possible Error

• Choosing a topic that will not keep your interest, enthusiasm.

Questions to Bear in Mind

• Is the research politically acceptable? (to the funding agency or the individual/committee who decides)

• Is the research socially acceptable? (to the funding agency or the individual/committee who decides)

• (What about an advocacy of euthansia to raise the per capita income)

N.B. Remember The Audience

Definition of Terms

• STATEMENT OF PROBLEM: How is intellectual potential and performance in high school related to success in college?

Intellectual potential: student's scores on the verbal and quantitative components of the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Performance in high school: G.P.A. combined with assessment of activities outside the classroom (e.g. editing the school paper, playing the cello in the school orchestra).

Success in College: G.P.A., length of stay in college, extracurricular activities.

Another Example

• STATEMENT OF PROBLEM: "An Examination of How Feminist Organizations in West Berlin Helped in the Reunification and Democratization of Germany during the latter part of the 1980s."

Possible problem words:FeministDemocratization

We must know how the RESEARCHER defines the term.

Parameters of Your Topic

• If research question is specified too broadly or defined too vaguely or abstractly, researcher may be overwhelmed with information.

• If research question specified too narrowly or defined too concisely or concretely, researcher may miss out on peripheral and more general info.

• If research question is very current, scholarly books and articles may not be up to date.

Keep Your Audience in Mind

• Keep the type of audience in mind

• Your writing should be pitched at level of expected readers

• Use the terminology appropriate to them

• Physics terms for physicists; sociology terms for sociologists

• No jargon, e.g., for ordinary reader

• Generally, "plain English" is the best strategy

Researchers must avoid tendency to shun info. that contradicts preconceived notions

• They must keep open minds

• They must look at question from different vantage points.

Scope of the Literature Review

• What exactly will you aim to cover in your review?

• How comprehensive will it be? How detailed?

• Some topics might demand a review of all relevant material; others might limit the survey to recently published material, e.g., the last five years.

• Are you focusing on methodological approaches; on theoretical issues; on qualitative or quantitative research?

Scope of the Literature Review

• Will you need to broaden your search to seek literature in related fields or disciplines?

• Clearly, deciding length will be important.

• About how many citations will you use? • What type of material/documents will you use? • Will you confine your material to that written in English or will

you include research in other languages too?

Limitations of Study

• Important to state precisely what you intend to do.

• Important to state precisely what you do NOT intend to do.

Limitations may be, e.g., of

• time

• personnel

• gender

• age

• geographic location

• nationality

• (and an infinite number of others)

Advantages of Precisely Limiting

• Makes the topic more focused.

• Researcher covers herself from possible criticism for ignoring areas.

Schedule/Timetable

• Set out a timetable -- should be a realistic estimate of time required to complete the project.

Phase 2

Locating and Accessing Information

Some Difficulties -- Leading to Anxiety

• not understanding information;

• overwhelmed by amount of info.;

• not knowing if certain info. exists;

• not knowing where to find info.;

• knowing where to find info. but not having key to access.

Encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, textbooks etc. very useful to get beginning and broad overview:

a) introduce unique vocabulary and terminology;

b) identify key authors and extent of research available;

c) reveal approaches taken to previous researchinvestigations of it;

d) often reveal multidisciplinary nature and connections of question -- scholars of Shakespeare might study medicine, law, psychology, history etc.

e) Often have good basic bibliographies

Using Existing Literature Review

• Literature reviews may already exist on some aspect of your topic. • It is useful to search online databases for literature reviews.

• ERIC Database:DE=(Literature Reviews) and standardized tests.

• PsycInfo Database:

DE=(Monozygotic Twins) and pt=literature review.

• Sociological Abstracts Database:KW=euthanasia and KW=(literature review)

Classic and Landmark Studies

• Sociological Abstracts Database:

DE=suicide and AB=classic

Next Logical Research Steps

• Use Quest: to find materials in BC libraries.

• Use WorldCat: to find books in other libraries.

• Use subject specific databases: to locate journal articles and chapters in books.

• Use multidisciplinary databases: to locate journal articles and chapters in books.

• Use the Web.

Phase 3 Evaluating the Information

Some Useful Sites:

http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/ulib/ref/guides/gen/eval.html

http://www2.bc.edu/~rappleb/evaluatingwebsites.html

Phase 4 Recording the Information

• We all have different ways of recording info., making notes etc.

• But particularly useful is the Web-based bibliographic citation management tool RefWorks

• http://www.bc.edu/libraries/services/ref-instruc/s-productivity/#refworks

Important to know when to stop the

research

Phase 5

Organizing the Information

Examining Themes and Variations

• What fundamental beliefs are expressed in each item? Does the author have an ideological stance?

• What is being described? Is it comprehensive or narrow?

• What is being predicted? Does it predict outcomes satisfactorily?

• How applicable, transferable, or generalizable is the information?

Contextual and Perceptual Implications

• Who posed the research question?

• Who funded the research study?

• What were the political, economic, and social conditions of the time and place of the research study?

Researcher/reviewer must

– categorize

– compare

– make connections among various forms and sources of information

Perhaps she groups findings according to whether they provide

• strong support . . .

• medium support . . .

• low support to her own hypothesis/theory

• Perhaps she groups them by themes

• Perhaps she groups them chronologically

Often Good to Organize One’s Lit. Review Thematically

A lit. review on aspects of standardized testing might be organized according to the following themes or issues:

Background:

– History of Standardized Tests – Different Types of Standardized Tests – Rationale of Standardized Tests – Role of High Stakes Tests – Standardized Tests and the Law

Standardized Tests in Practice

– Testing at Elementary School – Testing at Secondary School – Statistics

Critics and Proponents of Standardized Tests• Testing of Students with Disabilities • Testing of Minority Students • Testing of Students from Different Social Backgrounds • Gender Differences in Testing • Case for Bias • Case against Bias • Teachers’ Perspectives • School Administrators’ Perspectives • Students’ Perspectives

Alternative Assessment Methodologies

One Might Include Comments on

• methods of analysis employed

• quality of the findings or conclusions

• major strengths and weaknesses

• any other pivotal information

Many Similar Studies?

Describe most important one and simply say that the results were confirmed in the other studies listed.

Still, to include only germane studies, you must examine many.

Essential

• to aim at an INTEGRATED treatment that explains why the studies and theories cited are important to your work.

• to avoid a series of abstracts, one per paragraph.

• to keep reader constantly aware that the literature reviewed is related to the research problem.

• Lit. Review can be time consuming

• Usually too much rather than too little to survey (especially in science and in technology)

• Not a list of everything ever written on subject

At End of Review, Reader Should Be Able To Conclude:

"Yes, of course, this is the exact study that needs to be done at this time to move knowledge in this field a little further along."

Lit. Review -- Tips

• Begin with most recent studies and work backwards.

• If the report/article has an abstract, read it first.

• Before taking notes, skim the document to get to the most relevant part.

• Most important part of a scholarly book is the index.

• Write out complete bibliographic citation for each work. Add library call no.

6. Indicate carefully any direct quotations and your paraphrases.

7. Generally, paraphrase is better than lengthy quotation.

8. Avoid "grandfather" citations. Return to original source.

9. Don't cite references that you haven't read.

10. Use headings and subheadings for clarity.

11. Evaluate carefully everything you read. Just because

PLATO or EMILE DURKHEIM or JOHN DEWEY or ROUSSEAU or EINSTEIN orYour GREAT AUNT

argued something, that doesn't mean that you have to accept it.

12. Lit. Review can be time consuming -- usually too much rather than too little to survey (especially in science and in technology)

13. Not a list of everything ever written on subject.

14. Important to know when to stop the research

Title/Cover Page

• Title

• Author's name, address, phone no.,

e-mail, fax no.

• Name of the institution

• Date

• Normal scholarly process.

• Should include all resources used in the proposal.

• Should adopt a particular style, e.g. MLA, APA, Chicago etc. -- style must be consistent.

• Helps the reader to form an opinion of quality of the sources available (and your ability to find them).

Bibliography

Appendices

• Charts, graphs and other information which may interfere with the flow of the proposal or lengthen it may be placed in the appendices.

• Always worthwhile to lavish care on a research paper.

• Writing is perhaps the most important skill in today’s workplace.

Writing

Paragraphs

• Keep paragraphs short

• Use subheadings to clarify the structure

• they break up the material into more readable units.

• they give the reader a place to "dive in" if she doesn't want to read all of the material.

Subheadings

• Write the first draft straight through

• Do it quickly -- this preserves continuity -- gives coherence

• So easy to revise using word-processors

Writing Drafts

Common Errors

• Unattainable goals

• Failure to focus -- going on tangents

• Failure to cite essential pertinent studies

• Failure to maintain a coherent, logical thesis

• Poor organization of paper

• Poor language, grammar etc.